These three concepts, coupled with the frontier pragmatism and "rugged" individualism of Texas culture, help explain party development in Texas. For most of the state's history, the dominant political culture has expressed these ideas as a "low taxes, low services" approach to government. Whatever the immediate political issues under discussion during a given period, this orientation has grounded the politics and ideology of our political parties.

Advocating raising taxes has always been politically dangerous to candidates and public office holders in Texas. In political conversations, the phrase "raising taxes" often occurs in close proximity to the term "political suicide," at least as far as political candidates are concerned. That's why whenever the state goes into one of its periodic fiscal crises, public officials go on a mad search for users' fees - driver's licenses, hunting licenses, motor vehicle registrations, student services fees, and more - that can be raised, and why few dare even to utter the words "income tax."

Similarly, calling for an increase in the role of the government also is not advised in Texas. One is unlikely to garner wide political support for any but the most minute increases in the size and scope of state government - unless the state is facing some humanitarian crisis or the money and impetus comes from the federal government.

The "low taxes, low services" creed has endured across generations of both Democratic and Republican dominance of state government. Its lasting influence reflects the importance to party politics of our unique combination of ideas of classical liberalism, social conservatism, and populism. However, these strands of political thinking do not always work in concert, either with each other or with realities in the state, and tensions among these different ideas have fueled divisions within the parties as well as between them.

Those predominantly influenced by ideas of classical liberalism often clash with others influenced by social conservative thinking in the modern Republican Party. Populists wishing to mobilize working class voters and promote a more active state government constantly clashed with social conservatives and classical liberals in the Democratic Party prior to the development of a more competitive Republican Party.

Today, candidates and elected officials in both parties wrestle with their allegiance to the "low taxes, low services" consensus as the state government has increasingly struggled to perform its required tasks in the face of a rapidly growing population and an increasingly complex economy and society.