At the Texas Republican Party’s 2018 convention, Ray Myers was a part of a select group of activists charged with crafting the platform for the biggest and most influential state party in the country. Myers is also a white nationalist, a fact that he declared last week. “Damn Right, I’m a WHITE NATIONALIST and very Proud of it,” Myers wrote in a Facebook post last Tuesday. Myers was also part of an effort from the party’s right wing in 2010 to replace House Speaker Joe Straus, who is Jewish, sending out an email about to his tea party group announcing that “we finally found a Christian Conservative who decided not to be pushed around by the Joe Straus thugs.” His latest comments come as the Texas GOP saw political consequences for its embrace of extremism. The party’s control eroded in the suburbs, losing 14 seats in the Texas Legislature, including a handful of incumbents or candidates affiliated with the party’s right-wing faction. Nearby Tarrant County, the most populous red county in the country, narrowly flipped to Beto O’Rourke. Now, some in the Tarrant GOP are trying to purge the party of perceived heretics, including a Muslim doctor and a precinct chair who is married to a Muslim. Over the weekend, the state party’s executive committee unanimously passed a “non-discrimination” resolution that affirmed its support of religious liberty within the party, though the resolution made no mention of the attempted purge in Tarrant County. In response to a request for comment, a Texas GOP spokesperson referred the Observer to Dickey’s statement regarding the “non-discrimination” resolution, in which he declared that “racism and bigotry is not what the Republican Party of Texas stands for.” The spokesperson did not refer to Myers. J.T. Edwards, an African-American member of the State Republican Executive Committee from Senate District 11, who spoke out against the attempted purge in Tarrant County, condemned Myers’ comments, though he doesn’t see those views as indicative of any broader racist sentiments within the party. “To have so-called white nationalists in our party is basically an abomination of the very foundations of the Republican Party,” said Edwards. “If you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem. Mr. Myers’s position is part of the problem.” https://www.texasobserver.org/damn-...declares-texas-gop-platform-committee-member/