Doocy: "Do you feel like your side was able to make these American textbooks more pro-American?"

Maybe I said that with the perspective of an Oklahoman - Oklahoma is quite to the right of Texas (Obama received 44% of the Texan vote, but 34% of the Oklahoman vote). In fact, as the only two places I've lived other than Oklahoma are Massachusetts and Ontario, I could simply have a skewed idea of what the American political centre is. But I think if you take President Obama to be left-of-centre, his earning 44% of the Texan vote strikes me as an electorate which was overall right-of-centre, but not far-right. Of course, I think a lot of evangelicals didn't vote because of their lack of support for McCain - certainly Rick Perry is a troubling omen for Texas Politics.

But I think we should distinguish between Texan domestic politics and how Texas goes nationally. It's true that Texas has supported conservative presidential candidates post-LBJ, and that most of its senators have been conservative Republicans. But this is not true in the House, where many Texan Democrats are fairly liberal. It's also not true in state politics; the right dominates most of the scene, but certainly not all of it.

In particular, Hispanic communities in Texas are reliably Democrat (since the GOP is stupidly ignoring their concerns in a last-ditch effort to retain a dwindling white vote), and they are growing in influence. I think Texas may go blue by 2016 - certainly Texan conservatives have gone too far, and I don't think they'll continue to hold the support of most Texans. Back to the point: it seems that their domination of the education board was not done with the most pure of democratic principles, to say the least (i.e., lobbyists and big money, and lots of it); I think many - if not most - Texans, if they know what the textbooks are being changed to, would protest.

(But maybe not. Texans can be fickle, as Ann Richards will attest to.)