July 1, 2015 5:06 PM

HK: Paxton contortions on gay marriage opinion raises questions about legal reasoning inside AG office

Opinion reads more like a press release than legal opinion

Not since then-Attorney General Greg Abbott issued an opinion declaring that Speaker Tom Craddick was a statewide officeholder and could only be removed by impeachment (essentially requiring a trial and permission of the Senate) have we seen an AG opinion such as the recent one by Ken Paxton so embarrassingly torqued to get to a pre-ordained conclusion.

The law is largely ignored in the Paxton opinion but the politics are clear. Roughly 40% of the national Republican vote self-identifies as evangelical and probably more than that do so in the Texas primaries. The culture wars ignite voter intensity and while it is almost a foregone conclusion that Texas will vote Republican in the 2016 presidential election, the path to that election leads through multiple Republican caucuses and primaries including Texas.

As hyperbolic as ever, presidential wannnabe Ted Cruz called the gay marriage ruling the darkest day in American history. Some Americans might be surprised that it surpassed Pearl Harbor, the Kennedy assassination and September 11 but then again Cruz has scored more, if not the most, **“False” and “Pants on Fire Rankings” from Politifact than any other contender.

The actors using language about a reckless and “lawless” Supreme Court are the coordinated messaging of the Cruz team. And like the former Texas Solicitor General and current junior Senator in absentia, the actors know better. But Governor Abbott, Lt. Governor Patrick, and Attorney General Paxton** are engineering a Madison Avenue style marketing campaign selling soap, building a brand and a vocabulary of manufactured outrage targeted almost exclusively to motivate culture warriors in the next GOP caucuses and primaries.

By Harvey Kronberg