He’s already got Sarah Palin, Jim DeMint, Sean Hannity and Ron Paul, among many others. Who will be the next big name to endorse Ted Cruz? Phil Gramm? (Possible) Bush41 or Bush43? (Unlikely) Marco Rubio? (Probably would have happened by now.) Rush Limbaugh? (Nope. He avoids endorsements as a matter of policy.)
You know who should endorse Ted Cruz? In all seriousness? Craig James. With polls showing him around 4% and his latest FEC report showing he had only $9,000 cash on hand, it should be obvious to everyone (James included) that he won’t be the next Senator from Texas.
If James wants to run for office again (and I think he does), he should ask himself which looks better: 1.) Running a no-hope campaign to the bitter end and getting 4% of the vote, or 2.) Announcing Sunday night or Monday morning that he’s ending his campaign and endorsing Ted Cruz? In the later case, he’ll probably still pull 2-4% of the vote, and he can always point out the fact he ended his campaign early as the reason why. The Guy Who Dropped Out is a lot more viable than The Guy Who Got Slaughtered So Bad He Pulled Single Digits. Plus it wins him the gratitude of the conservative activists he’ll have to work with in the future, and maybe a nod for, say, a congressional race down the road. Not to mention depriving legions of disgruntled Texas Tech fans from their expected allotment of schadenfreude on election day…
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…
According to the UT/Texas Tribune Poll released today, David Dewhurst is at 40% and Ted Cruz is at 31%. In April, the same poll had Dewhurst 38%, Cruz 26%. In January, it was Dewhurst 36%, Cruz 8%. So Dewhurst has gone from an 18 point lead to a 12 point lead to a 9 point lead. And this during the same period Dewhurst has been spending more than $1 million a week on the race, much of it in negative advertising aimed at Cruz. That would explain why Dewhurst felt compelled to drop another $6 of his own money into the race.
The poll also shows that all Tom Lepeprt’s spending has done is allow him to solidify his grip on third: he’s at 17%. Craig James languishes within the statistical range of Lela Peitinger and Glenn Addison.
Right now the race is exactly where the Cruz team wanted it to be: heading for a runoff between Dewhurst and Cruz.
State Senator Deb Fischer was sitting in third place in the race for Nebraska’s U.S. Senate seat. Then Sarah Palin endorsed her. Now? She just won the GOP nomination.
Both Ron Paul and Rand Paul have endorsed Ted Cruz. Rand Paul, of course, has been in Cruz’s corner a while. Not as big as the Sarah Palin endorsement, but not chopped liver either.
I still don’t see how highlighting his father’s World War II service is supposed to convince me to vote for Dewhurst. (Cruz’s story of his father (who was at Sunday’s rally) at least dovetails nicely with his campaign themes.)
Any new information in the Texas Tribune round-up of the race? (scans it) Nope.
Even by the previous lame standards of Team Dewhurst leaks, this “internal poll leak” that shows Leppert about to overtake Cruz is lame.
Heh. Team Dewhurst has that “Ted Cruz on Chinese currency ad” appearing on the sidebar of National Review Online. You know, the magazine that just endorsed Cruz. I don’t think that ad will be winning Dewhurst any new supporters…
It’s been a few days since I went down to the south capitol steps to watch the Tea Party Express featuring Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, and Ron Paul. It’s a bit late for me to do a comprehensive write-up of the speeches there. I caught all of Rand Paul and Ted Cruz’s speech, but could only stay for about ten minutes of Ron Paul’s, because I had to get back home to write my review of the Avengers. The crowd was friendly, enthusiastic, and about 75% Ron Paul supporters, with the other 25% there either for Ted Cruz or various other candidates, including Richard Mack and the Libertarian candidate for the U.S. 25th congressional district Betsy Dewey, who was running around in one of those Firefly cunning hats and has the virtue of being quite cute.
Rather than a blow-by-blow description of what was said, or an attempt to construct a coherent Venn diagram depicting conservatives, Libertarians, Republicans, the Tea Party, and Ron Paul supporters, I’m going to just put up some pictures:
“Just four days before the start of early voting in the Texas Senate primary, the Ted Cruz campaign announced the endorsement of Governor Sarah Palin and her husband Todd Palin.”
In response to a letter from Ted Cruz, Governor Sarah Palin wrote: “We’re proud to join conservatives in Texas and throughout the nation in supporting your campaign to become the next Senator from the Lone Star State.”
“Your conservative principles, passionate defense of our Constitution and our free market system come at a time when these cornerstones of our freedom and prosperity are under attack,” Governor Palin added. “Our shared goal isn’t just to change the majority in control of the Senate, but to assure principled conservatives like you are there to fight for us.”
Palin is not only a superstar, she’s also a Tea Party kingmaker; numerous of the candidates she endorsed in 2010 won their primary and general election races over GOP establishment types, even when the challengers weren’t initially favored. Expect a lot of donors (both large and small) to look at contributing to Cruz, as well as a lot of on-the-fence Texas voters who hadn’t been paying attention to the race yet seriously considering Cruz. So this endorsement is just a wee bit more important than my own.
Also, former Democratic state Rep. Jim Solis has been debarred for professional misconduct. “Solis pleaded guilty in April 2011 after admitting to involvement in the extortion scheme of former state District Judge Abel C. Limas, who pleaded guilty to racketeering in March. Solis’ sentencing is scheduled for August.”
I may have posted this before, but it bears repeating: the “Texas only creates low-paying jobs” myth debunked. “It turns out that the opposite is true. Since the recession started hourly wages in Texas have increased at a 6th fastest pace in the nation.”
Warren is playing an important role in our political discourse: she is the ghost of liberalism future. Warren’s alleged use of affirmative action, if true, would have to be the most egregious abuse of the system at the expense of minorities we’ve seen yet. Elizabeth Warren is, as a white woman, statistically speaking very much a member of this country’s majority. The only category in which she is a true minority is wealth: Elizabeth Warren is very, very rich… If Warren, a rich, white, Harvard professor, is a victim, everyone is.
Why does this matter? Because it reveals that the left thinks affirmative action is a joke, another cudgel with which to attack political opponents at the expense of minorities who might, thanks to liberalism’s insistence on keeping students in failed school districts, actually put the policy to some good use. And because if Elizabeth Warren is unable to advance coherent liberal policy arguments, then there may be none to advance.
There’s a Tea Party Express event in Austin on the south Capitol steps at 2 PM Sunday, May 6th, with Ted Cruz, Sen. Rand Paul, and Rep. Ron Paul. I will try to attend if my busy schedule permits.
You can watch it here, or live on-air at various PBS stations around the state. From the poll found here, I’m assuming the candidates will be Ted Cruz, David Dewhurst, Tom Leppert, Craig James, Paul Sadler and Sean Hubbard.
I might watch if I get some other stuff done, but I won’t be liveblogging it.
As fewer and fewer Democrats were elected in Texas over the past two decades, liberals would console themselves with the thought that demographics were on their side. “Just you wait, Hispanics will turn Texas back into a blue state.” Indeed, the likes of Ruy Teixeira considered the triumph of Democrats riding an ever-rising tides of Hispanic immigrants to permanent majority party status all but inevitable.
But a funny thing happened on the way to Blue State Nirvana: Illegal alien amnesty failed, even with Democratic majorities in both House and Senate, depriving Democrats of what they assumed were certain Democratic voters. And thanks to both the recession and various state-level illegal alien measures in places like Arizona and Alabama, illegal aliens are now leaving the United States faster than they’re entering it.
Now fast forward to 2012. After the Ricardo Sanchez’s withdrawl from the senate campaign, there are now absolutely no Hispanic Democrats running a statewide race in Texas this year. As horrible and lackluster a candidate as Sanchez was, at least you could see him protecting down-ballot races. But now Republicans will have at least one Hispanic (incumbent Judge Elsa Alcala of Texas Court of Criminal Appeals Place 8) and as many as three (including incumbent Judge David Medina in Texas Supreme Court Place 4), one of whom, Ted Cruz, could be the top statewide name on the ballot.
Hell, even the Libertarians (Texas Railroad Commission Place 2) and the Greens (U.S. Senate) managed to find Hispanic candidates to run statewide. That’s a major Hispandering failure for the Texas Democratic Party. And to add insult to injury, by failing to run a candidate for Railroad Commission Place 2, where the Greens do have a candidate, Democrats have pretty much ensured that Greens will continue to qualify for automatic ballot access (and thus continue to leach liberal votes away from them).
In an ideal world, people would choose all their candidates based on the content of their character, not the color of their skin. In the real world, ethnic identification does affect voting patterns. Even a few percentage points of Hispanic voters crossing the aisle to vote for Cruz rather than straight-ticket Democratic might be enough for Republicans to pick up a handful of down ballot races.
And that dream of a Blue State Texas grows still more distant.
