Archive for the ‘Republicans’ Category
Friday, November 8th, 2013
If you hadn’t heard, Ted Cruz will be chatting with Jay Leno tonight, November 8, 2013.
Obama’s promises were going to appear, but they all had to cancel at the last minute.
I wonder what the over/under is for Cruz guest-hosting Saturday Night Live.
Tags:Jay Leno, Media Watch, Republicans, Ted Cruz, TV
Posted in Media Watch, Republicans | No Comments »
Thursday, November 7th, 2013
National Review is reporting that evangelical historian David Barton is considering a primary challenge to John Cornyn?
Can he take out Cornyn?
I don’t see it:
Barton is well known in evangelical circles, but not outside of them. Despite the endorsements of various Tea Party groups, I don’t see him playing well among fiscal conservative, business conservatives, or libertarian-leaning Republicans, and he can’t win the nomination without significant support from those groups.
Despite the media’s love of a good Republican primary fight, Barton has the profile of someone they would enjoy attacking a whole lot more. Imagine them dragging every “fundamentalist Dominionist” panic attack piece out of the closet.
Most historians, including many conservatives, have been extremely critical of Barton’s history. Greg Foster at First Things (hardly a hotbed of liberal thought), writes of a Barton piece on Locke that it “contains a number of incidental factual errors that don’t even advance his thesis, indicating that his inability to write reliable history stretches beyond ideological cheerleading and into outright incompetence.”
Barton strikes me as a figure that would be divisive among Republicans (much less among regular voters) for all the wrong reasons. He also strikes me as the only name floated as a possible Republican challenger to Cornyn who could actually lose to a Democrat in 2014.
Update: A day late and a dollar short. Barton announced yesterday he’s not going to run. D’oh!
Tags:2014 Senate Race, David Barton, Elections, John Cornyn, Republicans, Tea Party, Texas
Posted in Elections, Republicans, Texas | 1 Comment »
Thursday, October 24th, 2013
Monday’s was late, this one is early:
“A lot of conservatives are angry at the GOP too. They want a Republican Party willing to fight.”
“What Ted Cruz did – and what the go-along, get-along gang of Republican stegosauruses hate – is that he fought. He fought.”
More:
This was really about the war between the growing conservative majority in the GOP and the dying GOP establishment minority.
It’s a war that must be fought, and which we should welcome. And it’s a war we conservatives will win.
The party has changed from the bottom up in the last decade. Those at the top of the pyramid are finally realizing that they and the base below are out of synch. The GOP establishment was very, very happy to support the pre-Obama consensus that government would grow and that the Republicans would campaign against it at home then let it expand unhindered in D.C. The problem – in the eyes of the establishment – is that the newly conservative GOP base, energized and activated by Obama’s radicalism, actually wants to shrink the government.
We’re serious. That’s the problem. And with the unblinking eye of the social media upon them, they can’t fake it anymore.
An awful lot of ObamaCare pricing information exposed (via Ace of Spades and Jammie Wearing Fool).
All the lying shills of ObamaCare.
Thousands get insurance cancellation notices due to ObamaCare.
Death panels come to the Great White North.
The UK’s NHS already has death panels. And they pay doctors to let you die.. “I could keep you alive. Or I could pocket this splendid £50. Decisions, decisions.”
Who knew there were so many black farmers in Chicago?
In Virginia, Nurse Bloomberg is backing gun-grabber Terry McAuliffe to the tune of $1.1 million. Let’s hope his spending is every bit as effective as it was in Colorado…
China is killing our pets again.
“How dare Dan Snyder disagree with something that the left didn’t care about five minutes ago? How dare he?”
Tags:Elections, Football, ObamaCare, Redskins, Republicans, Ted Cruz, Terry McAuliffe, Virginia
Posted in Elections, ObamaCare, Republicans | No Comments »
Saturday, October 19th, 2013
Busy weekend, with lots of non-political stuff, so here’s last week’s LinkSwarm this week:
The Tea Party helped launch the shutdown because the GOP establishment failed so utterly to limit bloated government.
Well, that’s a scary chart. (Via Instapundit.)
Is ObamaCare increasing premiums in all 50 states? Nonsense! Only in 45.
“If you like your health insurance, you can keep it suck it when it’s cancelled due to ObamaCare.”
They’re tracking a huge amount of ObamaCare enrollment data over at http://www.enrollmaven.com/.
Number of people who have bought private insurance through ObamaCare in Oregon: 0. You’d think there would be more than that, what with the widespread dysentery and all…
Add New York doctors to those experiencing the Obamacare fail.
And the ObamaCare situation is worse than you thought.
Who won the shutdown? Ted Cruz.
Cruz wins Values Summit Presidential straw poll.
Also receives a warm welcome coming home to Texas. “After two months in Washington, it’s great to be back in America.”
Young people in Japan just can’t be bothered to have relationships or children. I wonder if any Guardian readers noticed that the declining birth rates in such a society must inevitably doom their European-style cradle-to-grave welfare states…
Missed this earlier: Australian University bans entire run of student newspaper for cartoon critical of Islam. (Indirectly via Popehat.)
Tea Party members have a better than average grasp on science. And of course, we all know liberals don’t understand debt…
Jews start leaving France.
Dilbert creator Scott Adams on success: “Goals are for losers.”
Heard a grapevine report that “the Austin American-Statesman has offered early retirement to 34 reporters and editors.” No linkable source yet.
The man who stole Christmas sentenced to prison.
Remembering the dark years of the Jennifer Plague.
A look at the strange goings-on of the Grambling football team. Honestly, unless the university is completely and utterly broke, it sounds like someone in the administration was embezzling funds and is now trying to cover their tracks…
U.S. does Mexico a solid in that game where you kick that round ball.
Tags:2016 Election, 2016 Presidential Race, Austin, Christmas Bureau, Elections, Japan, ObamaCare, Republicans, Tea Party, Ted Cruz
Posted in Austin, Elections, ObamaCare, Republicans, Welfare State | No Comments »
Thursday, October 17th, 2013
Following the unexpected retirement of State Senator Tommy Williams, Brandon Creighton announced he’s dropping out of the Ag Commissioner race to run for state Senate District 4.
Republicans still in the Agricultural Commissioner’s race include:
J. Allen Carnes (Note: Auto-running popover videos are not calculated to win over voters.)
Tommy Merritt (Just a splash screen; less annoying, but also less informative.)
Eric Opiela (Just an ordinary campaign website, though it fails to mention Opiela’s close ties to Joe Straus.)
And Kinky Friedman just announced he’s running again as a Democrat.
Tags:2014 Election, Brandon Creighton, Elections, Eric Opiela, J. Allen Carnes, Joe Straus, Kinky Friedman, Tommy Merritt
Posted in Elections, Republicans, Texas | No Comments »
Wednesday, October 16th, 2013
Slowly but surely I’m digging out from my post-Worldcon backlog, so I hope to do more on various statewide races soon-ish (for certain values of “soon-ish” that work out to “before the end of the year”).
Greg Abbott reaches out to Hispanics.
He also promises to keep the Texas economy rolling.
Liberal fossil Paul Burka reiterates that Wendy Davis is doomed.
Battleground Texas is all in on Davis.
And speaking of Battleground Texas, proving they’re super classy, they made fun of Abbott being in a wheelchair.
Official Abbott announcement on Wendy Davis entering the race.
Abbott further said that he’s not worried about Wendy Davis.
Today Davis announced fundraisers in Conroe, Magnolia, and Waco. Ha, just kidding! She’s raising money in New York and Washington, D.C.. Good. The more money she takes from national Democrats, they less they can spend on races they might actually win.
Davis’ “true, natural constituency is the national, mainstream media.”
Davis used to be all-abortion, all the time, but that issue is now strangely missing from her speeches.
Longshot Tom Pauken is touting an Amarillo forum straw poll where he garnered 57% of the vote. Longshot Libertarian Kathie Glass came in second. I think these results are about as significant as that one straw poll Glenn Addison won in 2011.
Republican longshot Lisa Fritsch enters the Governor’s race. Here’s her website.
I do wonder why none of these longshots have considered taking on George P. Bush in the Land Commissioner’s race.
David Dewhurst calls for Obama’s impeachment. Somehow I sincerely doubt that U.S. Senator David Dewhurst would be making such a declaration…
Jerry Patterson suggests kicking four states out of the union. The piece notes this proposal was tongue-in-cheek. It also notes that Patterson was author of the Texas Concealed Carry law back in 1995, which I had forgotten.
Attorney General candidates Ken Paxton and Dan Branch roll out dueling legal endorsements.
Paxton campaigned in Midland.
Kinky Friedman is going to run for Agricultural Commissioner again as a Democrat, running on a marijuana legalization platform.
George P. Bush raised money for his Land Commissioner’s race in Dripping Springs.
Tags:2014 Attorney General's Race, 2014 Election, 2014 Governor's Race, Dan Branch, George P. Bush, Greg Abbott, Jerry Patterson, Kathie Glass, Ken Paxton, Kinky Friedman, Lisa Fritsch, Paul Burka, Republicans, Texas, Tom Pauken, Wendy Davis
Posted in Elections, Media Watch, Republicans, Texas | 1 Comment »
Tuesday, October 15th, 2013
In the tiny time left before the Senate Republican leadership decides just how far they want to sink their knives into backs of conservative hopes, here’s a tiny roundup of ObamaCare- and shutdown-related news.
Also, for the record: Any deal that involves abandoning sequester cuts is cringing, abject surrender and deliberate betrayal of Republican voters.
The ObamaCare website is still an unmitigated nightmare.
Megan McArdle: And it’s only going to get more screwed.
“The electorate is like a diamond, waiting to be cut at exactly the right spot. Ted Cruz pointed the chisel correctly. There is no way to get from here to there except by making a stand against Obamacare. There is no downside, for the Republican Party as presently configured already is a guaranteed loser.”
“Turns out Progressives really liked the idea of other people paying for the health insurance of the poor and sick. When it turned out that many of them were those Other People, suddenly it becomes a problem.”
A fox is living on the White House grounds, and ‘no one can catch it because of the shutdown.” Or keep squirrels out of the White House kitchen garden. Yeah, right. Because 436 “essential” employees just aren’t enough… (Via Ann Althouse.)
Tags:Ann Althouse, Megan McArdle, ObamaCare, shutdown
Posted in ObamaCare, Republicans | No Comments »
Wednesday, October 2nd, 2013
Time for another (no doubt incomplete) roundup of statewide race news:
Holly Hansen interviews Greg Abbott.
Wendy Davis expresses enthusiasm for gun control, because that will go over so well in Texas. Next up: Wendy David calls for banning BBQ, Tex-Mex, football and Christmas.
Davis is expected to announce for Governor tomorrow.
Politico previews the Abbott-Davis fight as “bruising.” Well, yeah. It’s going to bruise Democratic egos and wallets to accomplish very little. Also contains this gem: “Republicans control more than 60 percent of statewide offices.” Well, yes, 100% is indeed more than 60%…
Left-leaning Texas Monthly just goes ahead and says Abbott will be the next governor. And here’s an excerpt of their cover profile of Abbott.
Unless Debra Medina runs as an Independent. Is she trying to elect Wendy Davis? Also, “I couldn’t raise money for a Comptroller race, so I’m going to run for governor” doesn’t make a lot of sense.
A roundup of Abbott vs. Davis fundraising between June 17 and August 5.
There was a Lt. Governor candidates forum in Houston.
There’s another one in Houston tomorrow, October 3, from 5-8 PM at Grace Community Church, 14505 Gulf Freeway.
PJ TV Interviews Todd Staples:
Also Jerry Patterson:
And David Dewhurst (but I’m not seeing one for Dan Patrick):
Jerry Patterson slams his rivals as soft:
Three Attorney General candidates (Ken Paxton, Barry Smitherman, and Dan Branch) also had a debate.
They also clashed over who had endorsed who.
Paxton unveils a list of 100 important Texas Tea Party supporters.
Smitherman picks up a Right-to-Life endorsement.
George P. Bush visits Seguin and San Angelo.
Jason Gibson, who briefly competed in the 2012 Senate race, is considering running against John Cornyn in 2014, presumably (as in 2012) as a Democrat.
Dem State Rep. Mike Villarreal prefers not to lose a statewide race for Comptroller.
Three Joe Straus allies (Bill Callegari, Rob Orr and Tryon Lewis) decide that now is a good time to retire.
Tags:2014 Attorney General's Race, 2014 Election, 2014 Governor's Race, 2014 Lt. Governor's Race, 2014 Senate Race, Barry Smitherman, Dan Branch, Dan Patrick, David Dewhurst, Debra Medina, Elections, George P. Bush, Greg Abbott, Jason Gibson, Joe Straus, Ken Paxton, Mike Villarreal, Texas, Todd Staples, Wendy Davis
Posted in Elections, Republicans, Texas | No Comments »
Tuesday, October 1st, 2013
There’s been a lot of criticism of John Cornyn in Tea Party circles over his failure to back Ted Cruz in procedural votes on the ObamaCare defunding fight. Given that, the muttering over someone primarying Cornyn have grown much louder.
Can anyone take Cornyn? It’s something of a tall order. He had some $6 million on hand as of the July reporting period, and any potential candidate will have a much latter start than Ted Cruz had when he beat David Dewhurst.
I queried a few people more tied-in than I, and three names of possible Cornyn challengers came up:
U.S. Congressman Louie Gohmert was the most popular choice. Gohmert is a solid conservative, and Mark Levin has even put up a Draft Congressman Gohmert for U.S. Senate page on Facebook. The drawback is that Gohmert isn’t wealthy enough to self-fund, and his East Texas district puts him far away from the Houston and Metroplex fundraising pools that would be necessary to fund a statewide campaign.
U.S. Congressman Michael McCaul was a very close second. McCaul is widely considered to be “conservative enough” (and has an ACU rating of 91%) and with a personal fortune estimated to be around $300 million (his wife is the daughter of the founder of Clear Channel), he could clearly self-fund. McCaul was considering a Senate run in 2012, but ultimately opted against it.
Texas Supreme Court Justice Don Willet has also been mentioned as a possible candidate, and he’s well-respected among conservatives. But stepping from the Texas Supreme Court to the U.S. Senate is a tall order (Cornyn did it via a stint as Texas Attorney General), and Willet has joked about not being rich, so self-funding is probably out for him as well.
(Unmentioned by anyone, but someone who’s family connections would bring instant media coverage: George P. Bush. But name recognition and family connections only take you so far. Bush would go from an overwhelming favorite for Land Commissioner to a distinct underdog in a Senate race, plus there’s no guarantee he would be any more conservative than Cornyn. And Tea Party opinion of the Bush Dynasty is not exactly one of, shall we say, unrestrained affection.)
It’s going to be a tall order to take out a sitting U.S. Senator, barring scandal or even more deviation from conservative principles. But of those mentioned, McCaul probably has the best shot to beat Cornyn.
Tags:2014 Election, 2014 Senate Race, Don Willet, Elections, George P. Bush, John Cornyn, Louis Gohmert, Mike McCaul, ObamaCare, Republicans, Tea Party, Texas
Posted in Elections, ObamaCare, Republicans, Texas | 1 Comment »
Thursday, September 26th, 2013
A roundup of reactions and fallout from Ted Cruz’s mammoth 21-hour anti-OabamCare speech effort:
The battle is joined:
- There is new leadership in the GOP, whether the party wants to admit it or not: Cruz, Rand Paul, Mike Lee, Jeff Sessions
- The popular reaction to Cruz will be immediate and noticeable; the more the old bulls carp, the more the public will rally to Cruz’s side.
- conservatives understand that rather than form a third party, their only hope is to seize control of the corrupt, rotting hulk of the GOP.
- The Cruz faction in the Senate, and its allies in the House (whose leadership is now up for grabs) must now press their advantage. The louder the Democrats squawk, the more they are wounded; the one thing they’ve long feared is a direct assault on their core beliefs as translated into actions, and the deleterious effects of Obamacare, just now being felt by the population, are the most vivid proof of the failure of Progressivism that conservatives could wish for.
- There is no reason to think the Tea Party, if properly organized and harnessed, cannot be even more potent next year than it was in 2010, especially now that its members know the government really was out to get them.
“Ted Cruz spoke on the Senate floor for 21 hours for a simple purpose: to focus the eyes of Washington and the nation on the fact that Obamacare has failed.”
Cruz’s basic talking points.
The power of conviction.
Ted Cruz is making all the right enemies.
Four things Ted Cruz accomplished. “Cruz’s talkathon revealed that there was substance behind the sizzle that he represents to the Republican base.”
NY Rep. Peter King is furious that Ted Cruz has a spine.
“There is a real and genuine disconnect between grassroots conservatives and many in Washington.”
Chris Matthews compares Ted Cruz to Father Coughlin and Joe McCarthy.
The hypocritical difference between the media’s fawning coverage of Wendy Davis’ filibuster and Cruz’s.
The only reason young people would sign up for ObamaCare is if they suck at math.
Cracks in Democrat’s resolve are already appearing.
A complete transcript of Cruz’s filibuster.
Everyone know the real problem in Washington, D.C. is not that the debt limit is too low, it’s that government is too big and spends too much money that it doesn’t have, and meddles in things best left up to free citizens. Just as Ted Cruz did, we need to make those same points over and over again in the ongoing debt limit and ObamaCare battles, because we’re right.
Tags:filibuster, Joe Manchin, ObamaCare, Peter King, Tea Party, Ted Cruz, Wendy Davis
Posted in ObamaCare, Republicans | No Comments »