Bullish on Reagan

Jimmy Carter once pledged never to lie to us, so who can fail to believe him when he says, “There can be no more important state than Texas’’? It is a judgment not merely amiable to Texans but utterly in keeping with the political realities as Campaign ’80 draws, thank God, to its close.

The potency of the Lone Star State is hard to overrate these days. The loutish Ewing family of Dallas is everywhere wreaking havoc on popular culture. More to the point, 13 million Texans afford their state 26 electoral votes, the same number as Illinois. Only California, New York, and Pennsylvania have more. The last two times Texas backed the Democratic presidential slate—in 1968 and 1976—the margins were exquisitely slim. Out of four million Texas votes cast in the last election, Jimmy Carter won by just 129,000. That he won at all was due not only to his Georgia accent and moderate image but also to Democratic Governor Dolph Briscoe’s vigorous support. In the waning weeks of the ’76 campaign, Briscoe was as busy as a square-dance fiddler in Carter’s behalf. (And why not? Carter, in a letter to Briscoe, had promised he would “work to deregulate’’ the price of new natural gas.) Without Texas, Carter’s Electoral College margin would have been reduced to precisely three votes.

WM

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William Murchison

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Presidential Election

Jimmy Carter once pledged never to lie to us, so who can fail to believe him when he says, “There can be no more important state than Texas’’? It is a judgment not merely amiable to Texans but utterly in keeping with the political realities as Campaign ’80 draws, thank God, to its close.

The potency of the Lone Star State is hard to overrate these days. The loutish Ewing family of Dallas is everywhere wreaking havoc on popular culture. More to the point, 13 million Texans afford their state 26 electoral votes, the same number as Illinois. Only California, New York, and Pennsylvania have more. The last two times Texas backed the Democratic presidential slate—in 1968 and 1976—the margins were exquisitely slim. Out of four million Texas votes cast in the last election, Jimmy Carter won by just 129,000. That he won at all was due not only to his Georgia accent and moderate image but also to Democratic Governor Dolph Briscoe’s vigorous support. In the waning weeks of the ’76 campaign, Briscoe was as busy as a square-dance fiddler in Carter’s behalf. (And why not? Carter, in a letter to Briscoe, had promised he would “work to deregulate’’ the price of new natural gas.) Without Texas, Carter’s Electoral College margin would have been reduced to precisely three votes.