![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/Conservative-Frontier.jpg\")
Credit: Book cover<\/p>\nLooking at a map of Texas and the voting proclivities of its residents, it\u2019s no surprise that the dominant color is red. But in areas of West Texas, the red is so saturated, that it practically bleeds a deep crimson hue. And cities in the area routinely rank among the \u201cmost conservative\u201d in national polls.<\/p>\n
Credit: Book cover<\/p>\n
How and why West Texas went that way\u2014and how it has affected the rest of the country both historically and in current times\u2014is the subject of the in-depth and incisive The Conservative Frontier: Texas and the Origins of the New Right by Jeff Roche (512 pp., $32.95, University of Texas Press).<\/strong><\/p>\n At the heart of Roche\u2019s treatise is the region\u2019s embracing of not just conservatism, but \u201ccowboy conservatism.\u201d Roche calls in \u201can ideology born on the old cattle frontier that spread across the North American prairies with the cattle business.\u201d<\/p>\n Founded in the roots of entrepreneurism, proto-libertarian beliefs, and spread by mass media and mythology, its (purported) tenets according to Roche include militarism, religious fundamentalism, nationalism, the fear of government power, a devotion to free markets, and certain set ideas about gender and race. Plus, the \u201cCode of the West\u201d that preached (but didn\u2019t always practice) the virtues of honesty, thrift, hard work, self-reliance, and faith.<\/p>\n Interestingly, the first half of The Conservative Frontier tends more to historical than political development. How West Texas was settled by \u201cboosterist\u201d whites like C.W. Post, the ambitious and visionary magnate whose two biggest products were a coffee substitute (Postum) and breakfast cereal (Grape Nuts) made in Michigan.<\/p>\n His \u201cPost City\u201d in Texas, though, was set to be an entirely self-contained capitalist utopia for families who would work, play, and live all within its confines, their every need tended to\u2014so long as they worked and didn\u2019t want to form things like pesky labor unions.<\/p>\n West Texas survived the Depression and depletion of lands in the Dust Bowl years, but when Roche starts to veer to the politics in the 1920s, it\u2019s in a surprising place: Houston.<\/p>\n \u201cAnyone looking to place a historical marker noting the birthplace of the radical right in Texas might consider 917 Main Street in Houston,\u201d Roche writes. He puts a pin on the Kirby Building where one of Texas\u2019 most powerful men\u2014John Henry Kirby\u2014oversaw the most powerful company in Texas\u2014the Kirby Lumber Company. And it was on the 5th floor of this edifice where he headquartered his social and political activities, which leaned so far right it\u2019s surprising that the building itself didn\u2019t topple over and still stands.<\/p>\n The \u201cPrince of the Pines\u201d also had scores of \u201ccompany towns\u201d set up at timber camps, entirely self-contained area where he controlled everything and\u2014while generous with workers\u2014often paid them in scrip redeemable only at the company store.<\/p>\n After the Great Depression shockingly wiped him and his company out, the pro-business, anti-labor union Kirby blamed FDR and the New Deal. And he was not about to go quietly after declaring bankruptcy, founding many groups (including the Jeffersonian Democrats of Texas, the first significant right-wing business group in the state) and launching many PR campaigns to \u201ctake back\u201d the Democratic party.<\/p>\n Roche details the wild rise and fall of flour salesman-turned-statesman W. Lee \u201cPass the Biscuits Pappy\u201d O\u2019Daniel, the state\u2019s first star right wing populist. Though he writes \u201ceven for Texas, the O\u2019Daniel years were bizarre.\u201d Nevertheless, O\u2019Daniel rode the platform of \u201cJesus, Momma, Texas, country music, and the Constitution\u201d all the way to the governor\u2019s office and then the U.S. Senate.<\/p>\n As the book picks up speed, there is story after story of the right-wing infiltrating academia. Like University of Texas President Homer Riley\u2019s struggle against a Board of Regents intending to purge faculty lists of undesirable \u201cliberal\u201d teachers. The Board would eventually fire Riley in 1944, but not before branding him a \u201csecret integrationist\u201d and suggest that his 19-year-old daughter was living with a Black Communist boyfriend.<\/p>\n There\u2019s J. Evetts Haley, an actual cowboy historian from whose journalism pens flowed millions of words syndicated across the country who railed against \u201cegghead intellectuals\u201d and academics. Others focused on school textbook censorship, removing books from libraries, forecasts of doom for the United States, and rooting out \u201csubversive\u201d anti-American influences. Campaigns all financed by millionaires and billionaires with pro-business and pro-status quo interests. Sound familiar?<\/p>\n Eventually, organizations like the John Birch Society and National Council of Churches would find fertile soil for growth in West Texas. But when they started finger pointing at each other\u2014arguing over who was a \u201ctrue\u201d flag wavin\u2019, God-fearin\u2019, Texas conservative, liberals could only eat their popcorn and watch.<\/p>\n But it was still taking hold. When Texas elected rock-ribbed conservative John Tower to the U.S. Senate in 1961, he was the first Republican to occupy a Lone Star State Senate seat since Reconstruction.<\/p>\n Ironically, Roche writes, it was not a Texas political figure who cemented the \u201cWest Texas takeover\u201d of the Republican Party, but Barry Goldwater. The ultra-conservative Arizona Senator running for the U.S. Presidency was more popular in West Texas than his home state. And the intra-fighting (think early condemnations of \u201cRINOs\u201d) spilled over in the 1964 Republican National Convention. The Party\u2014and the New Right\u2014was in ascendancy.<\/p>\n Roche ends the book with the formation of the New Right election of the ultimate \u201ccowboy conservative,\u201d Ronald Reagan. The Gipper gained early and fervent support in West Texas, going back to the 1968 when he unsuccessfully challenged Richard Nixon for the Presidency. George Bush (the senior) also slipped into this mold.<\/p>\n The New Right, Roche sums up, lasted from 1980 up until 2016 with the election of the bomb thrower, Donald Trump. We\u2019ve seen the Republicans return to infighting as to who is more conservative than thou. Today, conservative politics and policies may have may fathers, but as Roche says, it\u2019s got a momma firmly planted on West Texas soil.<\/p>\n \n\tRelated<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Looking at a map of Texas and the voting proclivities of its residents, it\u2019s no surprise that the…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":758668,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5130],"tags":[311886,15784,124009,12730,311887,4345,311888,311889,311890,146011,311891,15119,358,3187],"class_list":["post-758667","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-houston","tag-barry-goldwater","tag-conservative","tag-george-bush","tag-homepage","tag-homer-riley","tag-houston","tag-j-evetts-haley","tag-jeff-roche","tag-john-tower","tag-new-right","tag-pappy-odaniel","tag-ronald-reagan","tag-texas","tag-tx"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116481689182850710","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/758667","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=758667"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/758667\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/758668"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=758667"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=758667"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=758667"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}