Even though I’ve endorsed Ted Cruz, I think it only fair to point out that Dewhurst has, in fact, constantly stated that he’s in favor of repealing ObamaCare pretty much since he joined the Senate race. (I even used the Wayback machine to verify it.) However, Cruz has been more fervent and articulate in campaigning against ObamaCare, making the phrase “repeal every syllable of every word of Obamacare” one of his stock talking points from the very beginning of his campaign. He’s also discussed the 10th Amendment reasons why ObamaCare is unconstitutional, something that I don’t recall Dewhurst doing. (Dewhurst has mentioned the 10th Amendment in support of the Texas Voter ID law.)
Cruz’s worry (which I think is legitimate) is that Dewhurst might be willing to compromise on ObamaCare. And I could easily see Dewhurst signing on with some “Group of 14” (or whatever) to needlessly save ObamaCare despite a Republican House, Senate, and White House, rather than push for full repeal.
Which is why this rings a little hollow to me:
But unlike some of Dewhurst’s other ads, at least that one probably won’t cost him votes…
Here’s the video of last week’s Cruz-Dewhurst debate:
The Dewhurst campaign is pointing to this Cruz appearance on the Dan Patrick show as evidence Cruz is a hothead:
34 minutes? No time to listen tonight…
And here’s still another journalist opining that the mid-Summer runoff date will mean. Memo to the MSM: IT’S TEXAS! IT’S HOT! WE’RE FREAKING USE TO IT!
Grady Yarbrough and Paul Sadler also debated last week. Yarbrough said he supported a border wall, saying that the Berlin Wall was effective. Hmmm, I don’t think I would have made that analogy…
Speaking of things I’m not watching tonight, here’s KERA’s embeddable video of the Democratic debate:
More on the Democratic debate. Another summary. My summary of those two summaries: Yarbrough wants a border wall and legal pot, and Sadler is against both of those. Sadler does actually say the national debt is too high.
I haven’t been doing much coverage of Fast and Furious, mainly because bloggers like Sipsey Street and Snowflakes in Hell/Shall Not Be Questioned were doing such good jobs moving the story forward I didn’t feel a need. But now that the Obama Administration is in full cover-up mode, well, bring the swarm.
Remember: Over 200 innocent people have died due to Fast and Furious. So when liberals tell you that “It’s not Watergate,” they’re right. It’s much worse.
I put off putting up the latest Texas Senate race update until the Republican Party of Texas convention in Ft. Worth concluded. Good thing, too, since a lot of news came out of it, almost none of which was good for Dewhurst, but some of this news may be a bit old.
Ted Cruz appears on Fox News:
Dewhurst claims he wants more than five debates with Cruz. Since Dewhurst did extremely poorly in the ones he did have, color me skeptical.
The Cruz campaign says it’s raised a lot more Texas contributors and small donors than Dewhurst does. While I think they’re probably correct, honesty compels me to point out that comparing Cruz’s internal June 4 donation stats with Dewhurst’s May 17 FEC stats is not an apples-to-apples comparison for many reasons, not last of which is that FEC reports only show donations over $200, so the 69 number for “donations under $250” is simply misleading. (When I pointed this out to the Cruz campaign, they noted that Dewhurst is free to release his own small-donor statistics. Which is true.)
A look at various reasons Dewhurst couldn’t win without a runoff. Ahem: “Just about everybody bet on Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst to win outright.” yeah, Ross Ramsey, everyone except those of us who were actually paying attention to the race.
And as far as I can tell looking at the stats on his official page, the most people who have listened to any David Dewhurst YouTube radio interview posted in the last month is…35.
Still more Wisconsin recall tidbits continue to trickle out. I may have a more substantial reaction to a particularly egregious type of liberal self-delusion regarding the results later, but here’s a nice sampler of links:
“Public employee unions insist that dues money be deducted from members’ paychecks and sent directly to union treasuries. So in practice, public employee unions are a mechanism for the involuntary transfer of taxpayers’ money to the Democratic Party.”
The unions’ defeat marks a historical inflection point. They set out to make an example of Walker. He succeeded in making an example of them as a classic case of reactionary liberalism. An institution founded to protect its members grew in size, wealth, power and arrogance, thanks to decades of symbiotic deals with bought politicians, to the point where it grossly overreached. A half-century later these unions were exercising essential control of everything from wages to work rules in the running of government — something that, in a system of republican governance, is properly the sovereign province of the citizenry.
“The left picked this fight, on the issue and in the place of its choice; it chose to recall Walker because it believed it could win a showcase victory. That judgment was fatally flawed.”
The Walker reforms hurt AFSCME in Wisconsin almost as badly as Ronald Reagan hurt PATCO, the air traffic controller union he famously crushed in 1981. Public sector workers have deserted their unions in droves since the state clipped union bargaining rights and stopped automatic collection of dues. After a string of bitter, humiliating and expensive defeats, labor in Wisconsin will now be a shadow of its former self, lacking the troops, the money and the morale.
The public sector unions are critical to what remains of the American left. The power of the public service unions in Democratic politics pulls the entire party to the left and gives ideas that are important to the left an access to power that they would otherwise lack. But more important than that, they provide a kind of center to a movement that otherwise threatens to fragment into antagonistic cliques.
It is not clear the left was outspent in its attempts to reverse Gov. Walker’s reforms. And the widely-repeated claim that the left was outspent by more than 7-to-1 in the most recent recall election is clearly false.
I may have a more comprehensive roundup of reactions later, but for now let’s enjoy the rich, zesty aroma of liberals going down in defeat in the battle they choose.
First up, scoring a weepy 10 on the Drama Queen Schadenfreude scale, is this extremely pale recall supporter proclaiming how Walker’s victory is “the end of democracy”:
How upset were Barrett’s liberal supporters? One of them was upset enough to slap Barrett, the candidate she was supporting, for conceding:
Here’s DNCC chair Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, the gift that keeps giving to Republicans, on how no one can match their grassroots organization:
I’m well aware that politics is a blood sport. The “working for Communist China” smear was pretty weak sauce, but at least there was a tiny grain of truth there. But the amnesty smear was just made up out of whole cloth. Neither Cruz, nor the groups mentioned, ever supported illegal alien amnesty. David Dewhurst and Team Dewhurst were simply liars to push it. Now the MSM confirms what anyone paying attention already knew.
But to drive the point home even further, never mind Polifact, here’s the Sex Pistols (NSFW. Duh.):
Finally, the Obama Choom Gang story finally breaks through in the one medium the MSM can’t possibly ignore: wacky Taiwanese animation.
Again, the issue isn’t that our 44th President used to regularly get baked out of his gourd, the issue is why the MSM was unwilling to investigate and report such stories in 2008, and the hypocrisy of Obama carrying out a futile War on Drugs and imprisoning people for the same laws he used to habitually break.
Since tomorrow is election day, here’s a final Senate race roundup. You might want to take time today to find your voter registration card, locate your polling place, and figure out who you want to vote for.
Since it’s possible people who haven’t been following the race until now are tuning into this blog, you might want to take a look at:
Peggy Fikac’s roundup of the race. Including this: “Retired teacher Addie Ratliff tossed a verbal grenade at Dewhurst. ‘He’s trash,’ said Ratliff, 74. ‘I just don’t like him. I think he’s a RINO,’ a Republican-in-name-only.”
Somehow I missed the fact that Dewhurst picked up the endorsement of Senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma back on May 18. I think they would have trumpeted that more, since it brings the total of sitting Senators who have endorsed Dewhurst to [long pause while Your Humble Narrator counts on his fingers for dramatic effect] one.
One source familiar with Texas politics who supports Cruz says that he knows “a number of significant donors” who also have business interests in the state and have been “told by their lobbyists in Austin, ‘Don’t dare give money to Ted, don’t endorse Ted . . . because if you do you’ll never get anything else through in Austin.’”
Dewhurst says Cruz hasn’t met a fighter like him before. Maybe, but when was the last truly competitive race Dewhurst ran? 2002? And his last contested Republican primary fight was against Jerry Patterson for Land Commissioner in 1998.
Speaking of candidates with one notable sitting congressman supporting them, here’s Rep. Michael Burgess on Tom Leppert:
Paul Sadler cements his standing as the MSM anointed Democratic candidate, snagging the endorsements of The Austin American Statesman, The Dallas Morning News, The Austin Chronicle, and The San Antonio Express-News.
The Democratic Senate race is a much more low-key affair. “Sadler has raised less than $80,000, Hubbard less than half that with $30,000.” Also this: “‘I’ve talked to people who have said, “Get through the primary and we’ll make sure you have money to work with,”‘ Hubbard said.” Psst, Sean, hate to tell you, but those people are lying to you. Chances are good they said the same thing to Ricardo Sanchez, and look where it got him…
Leppert also gets the nod from The Ft. Worth Star-Telegram editorial board.
Speaking of Leppert, a true story: At a party this past weekend, a friend (who is not the political junkie I am) asked “Who’s that creepy old guy with the suits?”
Craig James picks up two San Antonio endorsements. Just because I haven’t heard of these people doesn’t necessarily mean no one else has…
