Political battle erupts in Texas

By Justin Webb BBC correspondent in Texas

Bush may be in trouble, but his party is doing well at state level

All the opinion polls suggest that US President George W Bush is in some trouble.

His approval ratings - once stratospheric - have fallen to roughly the level they were when he first took office.

In other words, half the American people like him and half do not.

But the polls tend to mask the remarkable recent successes of Mr Bush's Republican Party at a state level.

We all know about Arnold Schwarzenegger's victory in California - but no less important for the Republicans were victories this week for their gubernatorial candidates in Kentucky and Mississippi.

The Republicans now control nine out of 11 southern states; states which used to be solidly Democrat.

'Poisoning politics'

But are the Republicans playing fair?

Either way the question is this: Are we seeing simply the cut and thrust of normal American party politics or, as some Democrats suggest, new Republican ruthlessness?

The Democrats - angry and resentful at this turn of events - have accused the Republicans of poisoning American politics.

One of the states where the Republicans have made the greatest inroads is Texas.

The Broken Spoke Club on the outskirts of the state capital Austin is a Texan institution, a Mecca to visiting celebrities.

There is a picture of actor Michael Caine on the wall, but the club still plays the same simple tunes to an audience mainly made up of locals looking for fried chicken and Mexican beer.

This is the Lone Star state, where the simple pleasures of the honky tonk have been passed down through the generations, from the days when cowboys were playing the fiddle beside a campfire.

Standing next to signed photos of Mr Bush and the Democrat former Governor of Texas Ann Richards, the Broken Spoke's owner, Jim White, is apt to get quite sentimental about Texas folk.

They display - he says - a kind of basic civility not found elsewhere; people stop and help if someone has lost his way or has a car with a flat tire.

Re-zoning controversy

But recently that Texan idyll has been disrupted... Austin's political classes are no longer helping fix each others cars.

Texas Democrats quit the state at the height of recent troubles

Instead, they are engaged in a political fight that makes the wildest of Wild West shootouts look tame.

It is a struggle over efforts by the Republicans to use their majorities in the state government to push through a re-districting plan - essentially a carving up of Texan constituencies to make sure that more Republicans get sent to Congress.

Democratic advisor Geoff Crosby showed me round one such area, a liberal enclave in the heart of Austin where he said people drive Volvos and vote for abortion rights.

This area is to be subsumed into a right-wing suburban district.

The result, according to Mr Crosby, is that the votes of the lefties will count for nothing.

'No angels'

At the height of the re-districting battles, the situation became so heated and bizarre that Democrat state politicians actually left Texas in order to prevent a quorum being formed for the plan to be pushed through the legislature.

Particularly in the South, the tectonic plates of American politics are shifting - with the old Democrat dominance in decline and a new Republican assertiveness bearing fruit

In the end they lost their political battle, but it has gone to court now and the new districts could still be ruled unlawful.

Either way the question is this: Are we seeing simply the cut and thrust of normal American party politics or, as some Democrats suggest, new Republican ruthlessness?

Wayne Slater, the veteran politics writer of the Dallas Morning News, told me that the Republicans had behaved badly - but only as badly as the Democrats had behaved in the past.

Neither party were angels.

The two parties are fighting like this - according to Daron Shaw, associate professor of politics at the University of Texas - because for the first time in a generation there is everything to win or lose.

Particularly in the South, the tectonic plates of American politics are shifting - with the old Democrat dominance in decline and a new Republican assertiveness bearing fruit.

It is all very bad news for those who like their politics cosy and non-partisan.

Back at the Broken Spoke honky-tonk the owner, Jim White, waxed philosophical about how all Texans really needed was a cold beer and a pretty girl and they could get along with just fine.

That may no longer be the case.