I’ve been traveling and haven’t had access to my normal resources, so I’m just going to throw out a few other items that I’ve been thinking about…

Conservatives and Women’s Sports

Republicans are rallying around women athletes, with red state legislatures passing laws to protect female athletes from cross-dressing men who want to compete against the girls…and to share locker rooms with them.

Democrats and the media have aligned with the men who want to crash women’s spaces. One of their favorite gotchas is that conservatives never supported women’s athletics before, so why do we care now.

This headline and story are typical. “GOP claims to champion women’s sports, after decades of blocking it” [SanAntonio Express News – 4/23/2023]

That headline and story are deeply ignorant about the passion for girls’ sports in conservative rural areas.

My job had me running the roads of Central and South Texas for several years in the ‘90s and ‘00s. Small town folks, in addition to supporting their Friday night gridiron heroes, were very supportive of their girls athletic +teams too. If I was driving home at night and scanning small town radio stations, I’d often hear a broadcast of a local girls basketball or softball game. It was common for the restaurant marquees in small towns to have a sign reading something like “Go Lady Bearkats - Beat Sinton!” If a girls team was heading to the playoffs, the town would get decorated and follow the girls to cheer them on.

Back in my high school days in the 1980s at a big metro high school, I will acknowledge that there was almost no support for our girls’ teams. I was good friends through church with a girl on the high school basketball team, and I would frequently go watch her games. There were times when our little group of church friends were the only students in attendance, while the only adults in attendance were the parents of the players. But something special happened when a team from a small-town rolled into the city to play our girls. The small-town team would bring banners and signs and cheerleaders and a bus full of students and proud boosters from their town. I wished that my school and my friend could have received the support that I saw from all those small-town folks who were so passionate about their girls’ varsity athletics teams.

Did you hear about the women’s volleyball game in Nebraska that drew 92,000 fans last year?

If Republican-voting Nebraskans didn’t hate women’s sports so much, they might have been able to draw 93,000 fans.

“Democrats for Nixon,” “Reagan Democrats,” and “Minority Democrats for Trump”

Like the “Democrats for Nixon” in 1972 and the “Reagan Democrats” in 1980, a rebellion seems to be brewing among a core Democrat constituency, this time among minorities who are struggling with Biden’s inflation, and who are incensed about the illegal aliens that Biden has flooded into their communities.

One great thing about establishment Republicans having turned their noses up at Trump is that it provides reassurance to those flirting with casting a one-time protest-vote for Trump that it won’t make them Republican. There is a solid history in recent decades of loyal Democrats crossing party lines to vote for a Republican presidential candidate if the Democrat’s nominee is just too toxic, while proudly retaining their identity as a Democrat.

The first presidential race I have any recollection of is the 1972 race between McGovern and Nixon. I was only 8 years old, but I recall it because the father of a good friend of mine was a prominent mover and shaker in the Texas Democratic Party, and he was deeply involved in the “Democrats for Nixon” campaign, which was led by former Texas Governor John Connally.

These bumper stickers were everywhere that election.

Democrats had carried Texas in the three prior presidential elections, but Nixon won 66% of the Texas vote in 1972, and he won 48 other states too. A lot of Democrats cast one-time votes for Nixon in 1972, then returned to voting Democrat.

Trump would be wise to pursue a similar strategy of getting minority Democrats to cast their first - and perhaps only - Republican vote for him in November’s election.

Hippies, Rednecks, and Girls in Bell Bottoms

Speaking of Texas in the 1970s, the worst excesses of the hippies seemed to have passed by then, and by now the hippies, rednecks, and kickers (urban cowboys were called “kickers” before the John Travolta movie) started to create a cultural overlap, which was captured in the “outlaw country” music phenomenon. My formative musical heroes in the ‘70s were the likes of Jerry Jeff Walker, Asleep at the Wheel, Gary P. Nunn, Rusty Wier, and of course, Waylon and Willie.

Although the legendary Armadillo World Headquarters closed before I got a fake ID I was old enough to go to clubs, this quote from Eddie Wilson who owned the ‘Dillo captures the era well.

"It was girls in halter-tops. That’s what caused the petri dish to runneth over. When the rednecks were coming into the beer garden and seeing the hippie girls in their bellbottoms, they’d immediately start missing haircuts. And the hippies were already wearing cowboy hats, because if they wanted to buy a case of beer when they were traveling, they had to put their hair out of sight. The costumes were interchangeable, and the hormones were raging. All those guys with cowboy hats started growing their hair and all those guys with long hair started wearing cowboy hats and pretty soon there was nothing but girls in halter tops standing between them."

Well dang me. Now I’m stuck in Texas in the 1970s. Let’s finish off with a 1978 performance of Jerry Jeff Walker performing “Jaded Lover”.

Have a great weekend.

[buck.throckmorton at protonmail dot com]