Posts Tagged ‘Kay Bailey Hutchison’

Quick Impressions: Texas Twenty-First U.S. Congressional District Race

Wednesday, February 28th, 2018

The Twenty-First U.S. Congressional District, the seat held by retiring Republican Lamar Smith, runs from Austin to San Antonio, encompassing much of the western Hill Country. It’s heavily Republican and largely white, though with a significant Hispanic population.

There are no fewer than 13 Republicans candidates for this seat, including a former U.S. Representatives, Ted Cruz’s former chief-of-staff, a State Rep, two previous candidates, and not one but two candidates who are ex-CIA. Also worth noting: The candidate who has the raised the most money so far is a Democrat.

Republican

  • Ivan A. Andarza: Austin lawyer and a former or current member of several state boards. That suggests and ability to self-fund that might get him into the runoff…in another race. But I don’t see him making headway in this packed race.
  • Eric Burkhart: Has an interesting history as an ex-CIA agent. But I can’t tell his current job, and thus don’t see an ability to self-fund.
  • Former U.S. Congressman Francisco “Quico” Canseco: Unseated Ciro Rodriguez for the U.S. 23rd congressional district in the Republican wave year of 2010, and who was unseated in turn in 2012 by Pete Gallego in 2012. (Disclaimer: I donated money to Canseco in 2010, because I perceived (correctly) that he had a good chance to knock off a Democratic incumbent.) However, Canseco’s fundraising doesn’t even show up in the latest report, suggesting he’ll struggle mightily to make the runoff, name recognition or not.
  • Mauro Garza: Former Director of Grants and Contracts at the Southwest Foundation for Biomedical Research. Nothing about his profile or website suggests he’ll be a serious contender.
  • Foster Hagen: Has a barely-used Facebook page, and his website is missing. So I’m going to go out on a limb and suggest he’s not going to be a factor…
  • Texas State Rep. Jason Isaac: Normally being a State Rep at least gives you a good shot to get into the runoff, but probably not here. He’s got some good endorsements (including Railroad Commissioner Wayne Christian), but nothing the level of Chip Roy’s endorsements. Has raised $203,050, third among Republicans. A chance to make the runoffs, but it appears to be an uphill struggle right now.
  • Ryan Krause: Not seeing any indication he’ll be a competitive candidate.
  • Matt McCall: Already run twice for this seat and got clobbered by Lamar Smith both times. Has raised $168,606, which is not trivial, but I don’t think the third time is the charm for him.
  • Susan Narvaiz: Formerly lost to Lloyd Doggett in the U.S. District 35 race. Lagging in fundraising, I don’t see her making any headway in this race.
  • William Negley: Another former CIA member, a former member of Kay Baily Hurtchison’s staff, and backed by deep-pocketed businessman Red McCombs, which explains how Negley raked in $307,127, second only to Chip Roy. A serious contender to make the runoff with Chip Roy.
  • Al Poteet: A veteran and former CEO of Humana Veterans Healthcare Service. Nice hat, but he’s at the very bottom of fundraising for the race.
  • Autry Pruitt is a black media commentator. Maybe he’s flown below my radar, but seeing that his fundraising doesn’t even register, probably not.
  • Chip Roy: Ted Cruz’s former chief of staff, who has been endorsed by both Cruz and Rick Perry, has raised $372,574 (the most of any Republican candidate), and the odds-on favorite in the race. It’s possibly that he wins without a runoff, but with so many candidates in the race that seems unlikely.
  • Jenifer Sarver: Former Kay Bailey Hutchison staffer who voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016. Enough said…
  • Robert Stovall: Chairman of the Republican Party for Bexar County. Not enough money raised to compete with the heavyweights here.
  • Samuel Temple. Pro-illegal alien Republican who promises to be “data driven.” Someone needs to tell him that Technocracy peaked in the 1930s…
  • Peggy Wardlaw: Want to do YouTube videos of your positions in addition to stating them on your website? Fine. Want to do YouTube videos of your positions instead of stating positions on your website? Not fine.
  • Anthony White: Former Marine Colonel. I couldn’t find a webpage, but his Twitter feed has 24 followers…
  • Democrats

  • Derrick Crowe: Former Nancy Pelosi staffer. Has a bunch of endorsements. Has raised $119,392, or less than one-sixth what Joseph Kopser has. A solid chance to make the runoff, but it may be hard for him to overcome Kopser’s fundraising muscle.
  • Joseph Kopser: At $772,335, he’s raised twice as much as anyone in the race, Republican or Democrat. (Notable donors include game designer Richard Garriott, plus lots of lawyers and CEOs in New York, San Antonio, New York City and Washington, D.C. “Kopser is a U.S. Army veteran and has worked in private industry. Leading up to the 2018 primary election, he was serving as president of the advisory and analytics firm Grayline as well as a member of the Defense Council of the Truman National Security Project. His other professional experience includes serving as the director of Texas Lyceum, a member of the board of directors of the Greater Austin Chamber of Commerce, and the chairman and co-founder of Bunker Labs Austin. Kopser’s military experience includes serving as the department chair and professor of leadership and strategy at Texas Army ROTC and as the special assistant to the Army chief of staff. Kopser spent several years deployed in Iraq. He graduated from Harvard University with his M.P.A. and from the United States Military Academy at West Point with his bachelor’s in aerospace engineering.”
  • Elliott McFadden: He may have only raised 1/7th what Kopser has, but he’s been endorsed by The Daily Texan and The Austin Chronicle! Yeah, he’s toast.
  • Mary Wilson: Her about page talks about her love of math. Thanks for playing!
  • Kopser probably has better chance than Roy of avoiding a runoff, just based on the sheer size of the Republican field. Otherwise, expect a Roy/Negley runoff among Republicans, and Kopser/Crowe runoff for Democrats.

    LinkSwarm for June 30, 2017

    Friday, June 30th, 2017

    The year is half over! Donald Trump has been the 45th President of the United States of America for over five months, and liberals still haven’t stopped freaking out about it.

  • It’s Obamacare that’s killing people, and just two classes of states are showing any immunity. Deaths from opiate overdoses are on the rise across the country, except in states that either legalized marijuana or declined Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion.”
  • President Trump this morning: Repeal ObamaCare now, replace it later. Which is pretty much what Republicans have been campaigning on for the last six years
  • Ted Cruz may kill the ObamaCare mandate.
  • Lying with numbers: CBO estimates 18 million people will be covered by ObamaCare in 2017. Actual number enrolled at the end of 2016: 9.1 million. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • “Maxine Waters Says 700 Billion People Are About to Lose Their Healthcare.”
  • “Anthem Inc.’s decision to quit offering Obamacare plans in much of Nevada will leave large parts of the state without options on the health law’s exchanges.” (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • The House Democrats IT scandal just keeps getting weirder:

    Multiple members of Congress hired as their information technology (IT) administrator an individual whose most recent job experience was being fired from McDonald’s, The Daily Caller News Foundation’s Investigative Group has learned.

    Spokesmen for the members won’t say what their bosses knew at the time, but the hiring decisions highlight the role — witting or unwitting — the representatives played in what turned out to be an alleged multi-million-dollar IT scam in Congress with serious implications for national security.

    Soon after Imran Awan joined the staff of Florida Democratic Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz in 2005, his brothers Abid and Jamal, his wife Hina, and his brother’s wife Natalia all appeared on other members’ payrolls, supposedly as IT administrators. His best friend Rao Abbas landed on the payroll too. Most of them made salaries ordinarily only chiefs of staff earn, but they were rarely seen or heard from in Hill IT circles.

    The crew is now the target of a U.S. Capitol Police criminal information security probe with assistance from other law enforcement agencies as needed. Politico reported the “House staffers are accused of stealing equipment from members’ offices without their knowledge and committing serious, potentially illegal, violations on the House IT network.”

    By my count, the unqualified members of Imran Awan’s circle (who frequently failed to even show up for work) could read the emails of the 31 different House Democrats…

  • Postscript on the Georgia 6th Congressional District special election: Jon Ossoff actually got fewer votes than the ghost candidate that ran in 2016:

    One good reason why Tom Price beat his last opponent by 23 points was that his last opponent was functionally indistinguishable from a corpse or a bag of lettuce. [Democratic candidate Rodney] Stooksbury spent precisely $0 on his campaign and has never been seen in public. Jon Ossoff had the entire national Democratic Party pulling out the stops for him, and flooded Atlanta television with ten million dollars in advertising. Drastically improving on the Stooksbury numbers should be no dazzling feat. (Although, somewhat hilariously, Stooksbury actually got more total votes than Ossoff, 124,917 to Ossoff’s 124,893. Granted, special elections have lower turnout, but good grief.)

    Ghost workers in the House, ghost candidates on the ballot. Your modern Democratic Party, ladies and gentlemen… (Hat tip: Director Blue.)

  • Speaking of the modern Democratic Party: Members of the all-Democratic City Council in White Plains, New York selected party chairwoman Elizabeth Shollenberger for a plum six-figure judicial seat. Tiny problem: She’s too morbidly obese to perform her duties. If ever there was a metaphor for Democratic-run government…
  • Democrat Seth Williams, former Philadelphia District Attorney, has resigned as part of a bribery plea deal. “In addition to accepting that he could face a maximum five-year term when he is sentenced, Williams agreed to forfeit $64,878.22.” Part of the plea deal was pleading guilty to one count of bribery so he could skate on the other 28…
  • Democrats and the national media sure put the Scalise shooting behind them quickly so they could get back to saying Republicans want to kill you:

    Less than 48 hours after a multiple assassination attempt on members of Congress, there were no media vans or cameras at the Alexandria baseball field where it occurred. Just for perspective, when Republican staffer Elizabeth Lauten committed the offense of writing something critical of President Obama’s daughters on her private Facebook page, news cameras were camped on her parents’ lawn staking her out for the better part of a week.

  • The Islamic State is close to defeat in Mosul and being driven out of Iraq:

    Col. Ryan Dillon, the Baghdad-based spokesman for the U.S.-led coalition battling Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, said that Iraqi forces on Thursday cut a wedge in the middle of the area held by Islamic State, seizing the Nouri mosque and cornering the few hundred remaining fighters in half of Mosul’s Old City on one side, and an area around a hospital that has been a stronghold for the group on the other side.

    Col. Dillon predicted that the fighting would be over in a matter of days and that it would then take time to fully clear the areas the Islamic State holdouts.

    (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)

  • Also, all Islamic State escape routes from Raqqa are now blocked off. (Hat tip: Prairie Pundit.)
  • “Since Donald Trump was elected I have seen a spate of local news stories about companies building, expanding, or investing in manufacturing plants within a 50 mile radius of Chattanooga.”
  • Based on the evidence, everything the experts know seems to be wrong, at least if those “experts” are in the news media.
  • Third Project Veritas CNN video drops. Jimmy Carr, Associate Producer for CNN’s New Day, calls American voters “stupid as shit.”
  • Have those CNN videos finally gotten the MSM to give up on their Russia fantasy?
  • House passes two border control bills. “One is known as Kate’s Law that increases penalties for illegal immigrants who keep trying to re-enter the United States, especially those who have criminal records. The second denies federal grants to sanctuary cities.”
  • Three gay Jews asked leave the “2017 Dyke March Chicago” because their Jewish pride flag bore the Star of David. “If the Star of David makes you feel unsafe, there’s a word for that …”
  • More on the same theme:

    Intersectionality functions as kind of caste system, in which people are judged according to how much their particular caste has suffered throughout history. Victimhood, in the intersectional way of seeing the world, is akin to sainthood; power and privilege are profane.

    By that hierarchy, you might imagine that the Jewish people — enduring yet another wave of anti-Semitism here and abroad — should be registered as victims. Not quite.

    Why? Largely because of Israel, the Jewish state, which today’s progressives see only as a vehicle for oppression of the Palestinians — no matter that Israel has repeatedly sought to meet Palestinian claims with peaceful compromise, and no matter that progressives hold no other country to the same standard. China may brutalize Buddhists in Tibet and Muslims in Xinjiang, while denying basic rights to the rest of its 1.3 billion citizens, but “woke” activists pushing intersectionality keep mum on all that.

    One of the women who was asked to leave the Dyke March, an Iranian Jew named Eleanor Shoshany-Anderson, couldn’t understand why she was kicked out of an event that billed itself as intersectional. “The Dyke March is supposed to be intersectional,” she said. “I don’t know why my identity is excluded from that. I felt that, as a Jew, I am not welcome here.”

    She isn’t. Because though intersectionality cloaks itself in the garb of humanism, it takes a Manichaean view of life in which there can only be oppressors and oppressed. To be a Jewish dyke, let alone one who deigns to support Israel, is a categorical impossibility, oppressor and oppressed in the same person.

  • Progressive urban policies make life harder for the working class. (Hat tip: Borepatch.)
  • President Trump nominates former Texas Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison as the next NATO ambassador. Not my favorite Texas Republican Senator by a long shot, but I fail to see how she would be unqualified for this role.
  • 100-year-old crime boss beats the odds, is released from prison.”
  • Lawyer who committed $600 million in Social Security fraud has evidently skipped the country, claims to be broke. Sure, sport…
  • Label drops Austin band Dream Machine for WrongThink. Including a legal immigrant who was critical of illegal aliens:

    Doris Melton, who came to the United States from Bosnia told the website she was “glad they’re finally starting to work on deporting criminal illegal aliens too. It took ages for me to get my green card here legally and because there’s so many illegals coming in they make it hard for the people who do want to become part of American society the right way. They’re handing out free money to people who come here illegally, but when you want to work hard to become an American citizen to start a family they make it so hard on you, and expensive!”

    Later in the interview, Doris Melton was asked to name something that bothers her about the music industry. She responded by saying “girls have mostly become lazy jellyfish and are starting these horrible feminist bands just to try and ‘show men what they got’.”

    She went on to say, “The safe space mentality has made them weak. They don’t even know how to play their instruments! They’ll make songs about being ‘sexually assaulted’ or about how ’empowering’ abortions are or some (expletive) and it’s (expletive) retarded, they’re embarrassing themselves. If men did that they would be crucified! You see the longing for a gender supremacy under the guise of ‘equal rights.’ What happened to the incredible female singers from back in the day with real talent, singing about finding true love and wanting to be a good woman?”

    (Hat tip: Dwight.)

  • Sarah Palin sues the New York Times for defamation over their claim that she “incited Jared Loughner” to murder people.
  • New York Times staffers rebel against cutbacks. Hey, when you alienate half of your potential audience, a Mexican billionaire’s largess only goes so far…
  • “Wrestling’s new villain named himself ‘Progressive Liberal.'” (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • I have no idea how this happened:

    I don’t recall getting into a Twitter tiff with John Cusack, and I’ve liked most of the Cusack films I’ve seen (Being John Malkovich, Grosse Pointe Blank, High Fidelity). I even had mostly kind things to say about him in 1408. I assume he must be using one of those autoblockbot things to avoid running into #WrongThink…

  • You know you suck when Phil Donahue tells you to stop being such a pussy.
  • Methhead with nine prior felony convictions given life for evidence tampering. Previous convictions include manslaughter of an Arizona State Trooper and engaging in a “deviant sex act involving a squash.” And then there’s the creepy stuff…
  • “A BBC investigation found fecal bacteria in iced drinks from Starbucks and 2 other chains.” Is this a Starbucks problem, or a UK water quality problem? (Hat tip: Todd Kincannon’s Gab feed.)
  • LinkSwarm for July 31, 2015

    Friday, July 31st, 2015

    Another month down! here’s one final LinkSwarm to finish off July:

  • “Donations to the Clinton Foundation by Swiss bank UBS increased tenfold after Hillary Clinton intervened to settle a dispute with the IRS early in her tenure as secretary of state, according to a published report.” What are the odds?
  • Hillary way, way, way underwater in swing states. (Hat tip: Moe Lane.)
  • Lot of Democrats listed among indicted congress critters. And the Kay Baily Hutchison indictment was bogus.
  • “Nineteen sixty-eight was the year normal Americans saw the Democrats for what they were, and that’s the danger for them in 2016 too – that normal Americans will be reminded about what a circus of welfare-chiseling, race-obsessed, work-averse, baby-shredding freaks the Democrat party is.”
  • Iran says it can ban U.S. arms inspections at will. Wow, that Iran deal just keeps getting better… (Hat tip: Jihad Watch.)
  • Speaking of that Iran deal, the Obama Administration is hiding documents from the public, even though they’re not classified.
  • And the International Atomic Energy Agency refuses to testify to the Senate on Iran, even in a classified setting. Golly, it’s almost like they’re trying to hide something… (Hat tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)
  • Michael Totten on Hanoi’s Capitalist Revolution. I dare say that Hanoi more capitalist (and hopeful) than Detroit these days…
  • Medicare/Medicaid: Driving us into bankruptcy for half a century.
  • And Social Security could be broke in 12 years.
  • Another day, another American murdered by an illegal alien.
  • More guns, less crime. (Hat tip: Adam Baldwin’s Twitter feed.)
  • “The fact is that there is no point in arguing with liberal gun-control advocates because their argument is never in good faith….The liberal anti-gun narrative is not aimed at creating the best public policy but at disarming citizens the liberal elite looks down upon – and for whom weapons represent their last-ditch ability to respond to liberal overreach.”
  • “Anti-bullying” school seminar is turned into gay sex demonstration.
  • Brazil joins the league of the boned.
  • The mystery of China’s capital outflows.
  • Dice to sell Slashdot. They managed to take a thriving community and managed to drive much of it away with a combination of poor UI design (Beta, anyone) and pro-social justice warrior posts.
  • How #GamerGate shattered shattered Gawker’s myth of invincibility. Turns out that insulting your readers on behalf of social justice warriors isn’t a sustainable business model. Who knew?
  • Even before the hack, Ashley Madison was a complete scam. (Hat tip: Borepatch.)
  • Public Integrity Unit Oversight Removed From Travis County

    Tuesday, June 23rd, 2015

    Democrats won’t be able to launch partisan witch hunts against statewide Republican officeholders from the Travis County Prosecutor’s Office anymore, as Governor Greg Abbott has signed the bill stripping oversight of the statewide Public Integrity Unit from the Travis County prosecutor’s office

    “Under House Bill 1690, the Public Integrity Unit would be shifted from Travis County to the Texas Rangers – part of the Department of Public Safety – which would take charge of investigating alleged corruption among public officials. District attorneys from the home county of the accused would prosecute the cases.”

    Travis County Democrats in general, and District Attorney Rosemary Lehmberg in particular, have only themselves to blame. Both Lehmberg and equally partisan predecessor Ronnie Earle have pursued vindictive and flat-out-fraudulent cases against Republican officeholders, from Rep. Tom Delay (accused of violating a law that hadn’t been enacted at the time, and whose conviction was overturned and converted into an outright acquittal) to Kay Bailey Hutchison.

    But it was Rosemary Lehmberg’s actions that pretty much sealed the fate of the Public Integrity Unit. The video of following her DUI arrest (when she decided that rolling around Austin with an open bottle of vodka in the car and a blood alcohol level of .239 would just be a swell idea) lead to Governor Rick Perry demand for her to resign. When she refused, Perry carried through with his threat to veto funding for the Public Integrity Unit, at which point the Travis County prosecutor’s office indicted Perry for using his constitutionally enumerated veto powers.

    If it hadn’t been for Lehmberg’s poor judgment and criminal activity, and and the grossly partisan overreach of herself and Earle, the legislature would never have felt compelled to act.

    Given the sterling reputation of the Texas Rangers, the unit is now in far better hands, and the move to their oversight takes effects September 1.

    Lamar Smith Among Four Texas Congressmen Who Voted for Massive Tax Hike

    Wednesday, January 2nd, 2013

    In addition to both Texas Senators (John Cornyn, who should have known better, and the retiring Kay Baily Hutchison, who came in like a lion and is going out like a RINO; thank God Ted Cruz is replacing her), four Republican Texas congressmen voted for the “Fiscal Cliff” tax hike deal:

  • Pete Sessions
  • Lamar Smith
  • Mac Thornberry
  • Kevin Brady
  • All should have known better than to vote for a bill that contained $41 dollars in new taxes for every $1 in spending cuts, but the name Lamar Smith certainly sticks out thanks to such previous hits as “Hi, I’m a SOPA/PIPA Recording Industry Whore.” It’s no surprise, given the bill includes big tax breaks for Hollywood. I guess Smith is one of those politicians that stays bought.

    All should expect primary challenges.

    I’m happy to say that my own Representative, John Carter, voted against the bill.

    I haven’t had time to read the entire bill yet, so I can’t tell you whether it’s merely bad or actively horrific…

    Texas Senate Race Update for November 5, 2012

    Monday, November 5th, 2012

    And here’s your final Texas Senate Race update for 2012! I’ve been covering this race since Kay Bailey Hutchison decided not to run again on January 13, 2011.

    I expect Ted Cruz to beat Paul Sadler handily (and here’s my endorsement of Cruz). Later today I hope to have a prediction up on just how well I expect him to do.

  • Last poll shows Cruz leading Sadler 57%-36%.
  • Cruz picks up the endorsements of Texas mayors.
  • Sen. John Cornyn backs Cruz, but may be wary of the rising power of the Tea Party he represents. As well he should.
  • Paul Sadler managed to raise more money for his 2004 Texas Senate race than his 2012 U.S. Senate race. (Repeated from last week’s LinkSwarm.)
  • Sadler finally buys some ads a week before the election. Note how Robert T. Garrett references the previous item, but doesn’t have the decency to link to it.
  • Sadler gets in some last minute hispandering by pushing amnesty down on the border.
  • Perry vs. World wonders why Sadler’s ads suck so badly.
  • In his ad, Sadler asks if Texans really want to elect a Tea Party candidate. I suspect voters will answer overwhelmingly in the affirmative.
  • LinkSwarm for March 27, 2012

    Tuesday, March 27th, 2012

    News! in tiny, bite-sized portions!

  • Kay Bailey Hutchison tries to walk back her comments, unsuccessfully. She says she opposes abortion, but supports taxpayer funding of Planned Parenthood. That’s like saying you support the Second Amendment, but also support the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence. You can believe one or the other, but not both at the same time.
  • Hey, how about sending some of that military surplus to the Mexican border?
  • Even The New York Times has noticed the absurdity of the Obama Administration’s position on ObamaCare: “The Justice Department is essentially arguing that the penalty is not a tax, except when the government says it is one.”
  • “Europe will never forgive the Jews for Auschwitz.” The new Europe will be Judenfrei.
  • Escape from North Korea.
  • Thanks to Muslim pressure, SUNY Stony Brook will no longer celebrate Good Friday, Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, or Passover.
  • Speaking of New York, here’s another case of insider looting at a Brooklyn hospital. (Hat tip: Dwight.)
  • Still no signs of Global Warming.
  • On the Way Out, Kay Bailey Hutchison Demonstrates Why She’s On the Way Out

    Friday, March 23rd, 2012

    Proving that she’s become part of the problem, Kay Bailey Hutchison took Planned Parenthood’s side in the current funding dispute. It’s an object lesson in why, even if she hadn’t retired, Hutchison was no longer going to be a Senator after January 3, 2013. As Texas has gotten more conservative, Hutchison has gotten more liberal. And her argument that Planned Parenthood is vital to the Texas’ Women’s Health Program is bunk.

    Not only should the U.S. government not be providing taxpayer funded abortions, they shouldn’t be subsidizing family planning services period, because it’s not the proper function of the federal government. The idea that Uncle Sam should dispense abortions and condoms is a recent one, and panders not only to big government feminism, but also (speaking of debunked) neo-Malthusian thinking and religious environmentalism. Defunding Planned Parenthood and its ilk should be an easy decision for both economic and religious conservatives. The fact that Hutchison is far more concerned with hoovering up federal dollars just goes to prove Rick Perry’s assertion in the 2010 gubernatorial race that “Washington changed Kay.”

    There has long been grumbling about Hutchison not being conservative enough, but only in her last term did it become loud enough to ensure that somebody would launch a primary challenge against her; her suicidal attempt to bring down Perry in 2010 just hastened the process. (Why both she and another moderate Republican woman, Carole Keeton McClellan Rylander Strayhorn, both felt such burning animus toward Perry that each destroyed their careers in futile attempts to take him out is an interesting topic I don’t have enough insight on to address.)

    Both Sarah Palin and Michelle Bachmann have proven that it’s possible to be elected as a strong conservative woman. It’s just a shame that Texas doesn’t have one as a U.S. senator.

    The Case for Rick Perry

    Monday, January 2nd, 2012

    Ace of Spades makes his case for Rick Perry here.

    Since that piece came out December 19, it’s hardly cutting edge news. But I’ve been ruminating on it for a while to try and figure out if I have anything more to add. I think I do. And with the Iowa Caucuses looming, I probably should.

    I haven’t covered much of the 2012 Presidential race, mainly because I’ve been focusing on the Texas Senate Race and everyone and their dog was blogging every twist in the POTUSA race.

    OMG! Ron Paul is up 3 points!

    Plus I don’t have cable, so I wouldn’t be able to watch the interminable numerous debates.

    Finally, a baseball team the Astros can beat

    Which is why I didn’t see Perry commit his brain freezes, of which there were many. (My theory is that he was still hopped up on goofballs from his back operation.)

    Percocet makes me see tiny little Jim Hightowers, and I have to grab and crush each and every one of them

    Having lived in Texas for the entirety of Rick Perry’s tenure as governor, I can attest that he is not a perfect candidate. There have been times (Gardasil, the Trans-Texas Corridor) when he’s strayed from conservative principles. And he’s not as polished as Mitt Romney or as articulate as Newt Gingrich.

    But Perry isn’t running against the second coming of Ronald Reagan, or even Sarah Palin. Every other major Republican contender is not only at least as flawed, they’re considerably more so.

  • Despite cheer-leading from the likes of Kathryn Jean Lopez and Jennifer Rubin, Mitt Romney has always struck me as a phony without any real core convictions except that he should be in charge; sort of the Republican answer to Bill Clinton, without the charm or adultery. Pick an issue and Romney’s been on both sides of it at one time or another. He seems the most likely of all the major candidates to be praised by The New York Times and The Washington Post for “growing” in office. Romney is most likely to disappoint me in caving in to D.C.’s usual free-spending, pork-barrel log-rolling.
  • I could get behind voting for the Newt Gingrich of 1994, the one whose laser-like focus on the holding the Democrats accountable for their misdeed and promoting the Contract With America helped Republicans take the House and Senate, set the stage for a welfare reform and helped (temporarily) balance the budget. Sadly, that Gingrich is not up on offer. We have to deal with the idea-a-minute-and-many-of-them-bad, ex-lobbyist, “Big Government Conservative” Newt Gingrich of 2012, the one so devastatingly and accurately skewered by Mark Steyn in this week’s National Review. (As Bruce Sterling once said at a Turkey City Writer’s Workshop, “Cruel, but fair!”) No matter how many times he tries to sound like Reagan, there are all those other times when he sounds like everyone from Al Gore to Faith Popcorn. I imagine that I would be disappointed many times in a Gingrich Presidency. Unlike Romney, I’m sure Gingrich would find entirely new and innovative ways to disappoint me.
  • I could almost get behind Ron Paul, based on his absolute, rock-steady position on the biggest problem facing America: out-of-control government spending and ever-increasing size and power of the federal government. The debt bomb is an existential threat to American prosperity, and If we don’t shrink government and get the deficit under control, none of the other issues really matter. And I lean heavily on the libertarian side of the spectrum. But even given that, there’s just too much weirdness (what Kevin Williamson called “his Ronness”) about the rest of Paul’s policies: the newsletters, the footsie with racism, the conspiracy theories, the weirdness about gays and wishing Israel didn’t exist, the running against Reagan. Being just one of 435 House members was a great place for Paul to be, since he could bring up conservative and Libertarian issues without any chance that his wackier ideas would ever end up in legislation, but the Presidency is a different kettle of fish. Plus there’s the problem of his electability, or rather lack thereof. With all his diverse baggage, I believe that Paul is the GOP candidate Obama would have the best chance of defeating. Ignore all the hard-left liberals talking up Paul as a better choice than Obama; it’s just a smokescreen that would evaporate at the first excuse to jump back on the Obama bandwagon. William F. Buckley always said conservative should support the right-most viable candidate. I don’t think Paul is a viable candidate.
  • Michelle Bachmann’s star has faded even more than Perry’s, and she doesn’t have Perry’s executive experience or record on job creation. The fact she’s neither dumb nor crazy doesn’t mean the MSM won’t pull the Full Sarah Palin Treatment on her (Andrew Sullivan womb-diving optional) were she to get the nod.
  • Rick Santorum: Too little, too late, he lost his last election, and his strengths don’t lie in the economy and job creation.
  • Jon Huntsman: Which part of “Republican” was unclear?
  • By process of elimination, that leaves Perry. As I said before, Perry isn’t perfect, but he has a record on holding the line on government spending and enabling job creation that puts Romney to shame. One again, let’s go to the charts that the indispensable Will Franklin of Willisms has provided on Texas job creation:

    And the case for Perry over Romney (again thanks to WILLisms) is even more stark:

    More on the Texas job success story here.

    While I have criticized Perry’s campaign budget proposals for being too timid, Perry insisted on balancing the Texas budget without tax hikes. I assure you that California would love to have Texas’ budget. Indeed, adjusted for inflation, population growth, and federally-mandated spending, the Texas state budget has actually gone down under Perry. His guiding principle has been “don’t spend all the money,” and it’s one that Washington desperately needs.

    One final, very big reason to support Perry: He can win. Perry’s never lost a race, because he’s a tough and tenacious campaigner who’s not afraid to hit his opponents hard. Everyone thought Kay Bailey Hutchison was going to cream Perry in the 2010 governor’s race, and he beat her like a rented mule.

    Or maybe a rented donkey.

    In the general election against Bill White, he ran an ad featuring a police widow talking about how her husband had been killed by a multi-arrested illegal alien while White was touting Houston as a “sanctuary city.”

    Even professional MSM Perry hater Paul Burka says that Perry is a hard man. “He is the kind of politician who would rather be feared than loved.” Perry will have absolutely no fear of taking the fight to Obama and going negative early and often, and he won’t let political correctness cow him into treating Obama with kid gloves.

    Will the media savage Rick Perry for his flubs? Of course they will. But, as Ace noted, they’ll always find a way to crucify any Republican candidate to make Obama look better. They’ll use the same “he’s an idiot” line of attack they used on Reagan and Bush43…and you saw how far that got them.

    If you’re still undecided on Perry, this video should at least give you a more rounded picture of him:

    For those who think Perry is already out of the race, remember that at this point in 2004, the consensus was that Howard Dean was going to be the nominee. There’s a reason Americans actually get to vote, and they frequently prove the pundits wrong.

    One final reason to vote for Perry: he’s a pretty good shot.

    Jones Bows To The Inevitable, And Out of Senate Race

    Tuesday, November 8th, 2011

    Trailing in polls, fundraising, name recognition, and stage presence, Elizabeth Ames Jones announced she’s dropping out of the Senate race to run for the Texas Senate District 25 against incumbent Sen. Jeff Wentworth.

    Setting aside of the question of why you would want to move from the Railroad Commission to the State Senate (which seems like a slight downgrade to me), the Senate District 25 race already had one Tea Party challenger to Wentworth in Donna Campbell, who may find herself financially outgunned if Jones transfers her U.S. Senate race money. (Naturally, Wenworth wants Jones to return the money.) There have been mutterings in some quarters (at least stretching back to last decade’s redistricting fight) that Wentworth is too liberal for his district. Should all three stay in, this should prove to be a very interesting primary fight.

    Clearly Jones was overdue to get out of the Senate race, and had been for some time. Not only were David Dewhurst and Ted Cruz firmly established as the top two candidates, but they and Tom Leppert were all clearly outperforming Jones in every phase of the campaign. From all that I could see, Jones performed poorly at the the various candidate debates and forums and fell woefully behind in the fundraising race. I think there was a much greater possibility that Jones could have come in behind long-shot Glenn Addison in the March primary than that she could overtake Cruz or Dewhurst.

    Jones was the very first candidate to declare for the U.S. Senate race, filing her paperwork way back on November 3, 2008, but never seemed to gain any traction once additional candidates jumped in after Kay Baily Hutchison announced she was retiring.

    This is good news for the Ted Cruz campaign, and bad news for David Dewhurst, since it gives Cruz a clearer shot at him. Dewhurst clearly has no desire to debate Cruz one-on-one, and the more candidates in the race, the less likely it is for conservative voters to coalesce around Cruz as the anti-Dewhurst campaign.

    Now that Jones is out, will Leppert bow out as well? I doubt it. Though he clearly hasn’t caught fire, Leppert has (thanks to a generous measure of self-funding) stayed on pace with the front-runners in the fundraising derby, and he’s clearly a better campaigner, and has a much better organization, than Jones. My hunch says that he stays in until March, and then comes in a distant third. But there’s still an awful lot of campaign left…