Bastrop County Republican Chairman Albert Ellison outside the GOP Headquarters in Bastrop, TX: “The Obama administration has a history of attacking Texas.” (Erich Schlegel/For The Washington Post)
BASTROP, Texas — The office of the Bastrop County Republican Party is in an old lumber mill on Main Street, with peeling brown paint and a sign out front that captures the party’s feelings about the Obama administration: “WISE UP AMERICA!”
Inside, county Chairman Albert Ellison pulled out a yellow legal pad on which he had handwritten page after page of reasons why many Texans distrust President Obama, including the fact that, “in the minds of some, he was raised by communists and mentored by terrorists.”
So it should come as no surprise, Ellison said, that as the U.S. military prepares to launch one of the largest training exercises in history later this month, many Bastrop residents might suspect a secret Obama plot to spy on them, confiscate their guns and ultimately establish martial law in one of America’s proudly free conservative states.
They are not “nuts and wackos. They are concerned citizens, and they are patriots,” Ellison said of his suspicious neighbors. “Obama has really painted a portrait in the minds of many conservatives that he is capable of this sort of thing.”
Across town at the Bastrop County Courthouse, such talk elicits a weary sigh from County Judge Paul Pape, the chief official in this county of 78,000 people. Pape said he has tried to explain to folks that the exercise, known as Jade Helm 15, is a routine training mission that poses no threat to anyone.
Bastrop City Council member Dock Jackson, 62: “I don’t think we would have seen this kind of reaction if he weren’t African-American.” (Ilana Panich-Linsman/For The Washington Post)
Pape chaired a public meeting this spring and invited a U.S. Army Special Operations Command spokesman to answer questions about Jade Helm. The meeting drew more than 150 people carrying signs that read “No Gestapo in Bastropo,” “Keep America Free” and “Dissent is Not a Conspiracy Theory.” Some asked whether the Army was bringing in Islamic State fighters, if the United Nations would be involved, and whether the military was planning to relieve local gun owners of their firearms.
