From this DMN story about the fight over local control in the Legislature this session.
“[States’ rights] generally sounds good until you realize that some [states] are out of control,” said Rep. Jeff Leach, R-Plano.
That of course is not what Rep. Leach said, but it illustrates the issue as clearly as I can. Republicans, in Texas and elsewhere, don’t believe in “local control” or “states’ rights” or whatever phrase they’re using at the time to justify their actions. They believe that any laws they don’t like don’t apply to them, and they will act on that belief. Right now in Texas that means that the only valid form of government is state government. They didn’t have any problems with the federal government (besides the usual kind of turf wars one sees all the time) while George Bush was President, and they won’t have any problems with the federal government if the next President is a Republican. They didn’t have any problems with city governments until cities started getting all uppity about attacking problems they didn’t want to be solved. The only legitimate form of government is government they control and that does what they approve of. That’s what this all comes down to.