Posts Tagged ‘Republicans’
Tuesday, December 10th, 2013
Finally, John Cornyn has a real challenger. Steve Stockman has Tea Party support, impeccable conservative credentials, experience in high profile races (he knocked off Democratic fossil Jack Brooks for a U.S. congressional seat in the Gingrich wave of 1994), and a Southeast Texas base that might (might) let him tap into Houston’s rich Republican fundraising base. But he has gotten into the race very, very late, against a well-funded opponent whose deviations into RINO-Land have been far less severe those of Arlen Specter, DIck Luger or David Dewhurst (and that role-call of names is probably slightly unfair to Dewhurst). Ted Cruz had about fifteen months to knock off Dewhurst, while Stockman has three to take down Cornyn. Further, while Cruz’s race against Dewhurst was one of the top Tea Party vs. RINO races nationwide, I get the impression the Stockman/Cornyn fight will take a distinct backseat to Matt Bevin’s attempt to take down Mitch McConnell, and possibly several other races.
It’s certainly possible that Stockman can take out Cornyn, but it’s going to be very difficult, especially while still carrying out his congressional duties.
For the sake of completeness, here’s a look at the other candidates.
Republicans
Curt Cleaver: A retread longshot from the 2012 Senate Race.
Ken Cope: The Midlothian Enigma, about which The Google has precious little to say. This year’s Grady Yarbrough?
Chris Mapp: Boat dealership owner. Seems like a solid Tea Party Republican but the man desperately needs to learn how to use indenting and/or paragraph breaks.
Dwayne Stover: A bridge-builder. I don’t mean that metaphorically, I mean that his company actually builds bridges.
Read Reasor: Good: Former F-15 pilot. Bad: His platform (if you can call it such, being a Facebook post, since his website doesn’t currently work) is a strange mashup of WPA works program, workfare and local autarky. I would like to see his “let welfare recipients build their own home” idea run as a small pilot project somewhere, but his plan has more than a whiff of late-night college bull sessions to it.
Linda Vega: A Houston-area lawyer. She has a good resume…for someone running for a county judge position. U.S. Senate? Not so much.
Democrats:
David Alameel: Former dental chain owner, and worth a reported $50 million dollars. With that big money, he should be a shoe-in for the Democratic nomination, right? Not so fast. “This will be Alameel’s second run for office in as many cycles. Last cycle, he ran for Congress in the newly-drawn 33rd District and finished fourth out of 11 candidates in the Democratic primary. Alameel received 2,064 votes (10 percent)…[he] actually spent $4,485,086 million in the 2012 race, which comes out to $2,173 per vote.” That almost makes John Connally’s 1980 run for President look like a model of model of prudent campaign financing…
Michael Fjetland: Ran as a Republican in the primary against Tom Delay in 2006. Proclaims “I am the ‘Anti-Cruz'” in an all-capital letters font. (Pro-tip: When you use ALL CAPS more often than Time Cube Guy, you’re doing it wrong…)
HyeTae “Harry” Kim: Odessa physician. Sorry, that’s all I’ve got for you.
Lakesha Rogers: The LaRouche Candidate.
Maxey Scheer: El Paso attorney who’s also running as the anti-Cruz candidate, complete with towing a crashed-car prop behind her to protest Cornyn’s “Cruz Control.” (Get it? Get? Cruz control? It’s a concrete metaphor and a pun! Get it? Get it? Wink wink, nudge nudge, say no more!) Given the Statesman‘s polite attention, I’m going to guess she’s the designated “Democratic faithful” candidate if Alameel’s wealth can’t get him across the finish line, though her gas costs may prove prohibitive. Also seems intensely race-conscious.
Tags:Chris Mapp, Curt Cleaver, David Alameel, Dwayne Stover, HyeTae "Harry" Kim, Jack Brooks, John Cornyn, Ken Cope, Lakesha Rogers, Linda Vega, Maxey Scheer, Michael Fjetland, Mitch McConnell, Read Reasor, Republicans, Steve Stockman, Ted Cruz, Texas
Posted in Democrats, Elections, Republicans, Texas | 1 Comment »
Monday, December 9th, 2013
“Rep. Steve Stockman (R-Texas) is challenging Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), the No. 2-ranking GOP senator, in next year’s Republican primary.”
I’m about to go to sleep, you insightful analysis will have to wait until tomorrow. Cornyn is certainly vulnerable, and Stockman is a serious challenger, but he may have waited to long to overcome Cornyn’s fundraising advantage.
This should also put a chill through every sitting Republican thinking of straying into RINO-Land on illegal alien amnesty, ObamaCare, or shrinking the budget deficit. Stray too far, and the grass roots will coming gunning for you.
Tags:2014 Senate Race, Elections, John Cornyn, Republicans, Steve Stockman, Texas
Posted in Elections, Republicans, Texas | 1 Comment »
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 »
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 »
Friday, October 11th, 2013
A LinkSwarm heavy on shutdown-related news:
For epitomizing what Democrats have done to Detroit, Kwame Kirkpatrick gets 28 years.
Hey Venezuela, how’s that Socialism working out for you? Inflation hits 49.4%. (Hat tip: Prairie Pundit.)
Victor Davis Hanson thinks Republicans are winning.
ObamaCare, or food?
Steyn on the shutdown. “The conventional wisdom of the U.S. media is that Republicans are being grossly irresponsible not just to wave through another couple trillion or so on Washington’s overdraft facility.”
Catholic priests prohibited from giving Mass.
The revolving door between the Democratic Party and the IRS.
How the GOP establishment tried to seize control of Freedomworks.
The Magic of Obama: White House gift shop goes bankrupt.
Department of Fish & Wildlife lift ban minutes before North Dakota files lawsuit.
Le Pen poised to win European Parliament elections? That’s Marine Le Pen, or Le Pen: The Next Generation.
Five years after the meltdown, families still hoarding cash.
Kent Hance to retire as Texas Tech Chancellor. Hance’s political career is in many ways emblematic of the evolution of Texas politics, starting out as a conservative Democrat, elected to the state Senate in 1974, defeating George W. Bush for a U.S. congressional seat in 1978, played key roll in backing the Kemp-Roth tax cuts in 1981, narrowly losing the Democratic nomination for the U.S. Senate to Lloyd Doggett (who would then get stomped by Phil Gramm in the general election) in 1984, followed Gramm by switching to the Republican Party in 1985, losing the GOP Gubernatorial nomination to an un-retired Bill Clements in 1986, getting appointed to the Railroad Commission in 1987, winning re-election to it in 1988, and losing to Clayton Williams in the 1990 Republican Gubernatorial primary. He had a long, long career as a bridesmaid…
Raising the debt limit means bankrupting your children.
“This 20 year old has discovered Sex Is Awesome!!! and just wants us all to know that. Yeah Sugar-Tits we sort of know. We’ve been enjoying it for years, but without quite as much Noob Squeeing about it.”
Tags:Bill Clements, Catholics, Crime, Democrats, France, George W. Bush, IRS, Kent Hance, Kwame Kilpatrick, Lloyd Doggett, Marine Le Pen, Mark Steyn, North Dakota, Obama, ObamaCare, Phil Gramm, Republicans, shutdown, socialism, Venuzuala, Victor Davis Hanson, War on Catholics
Posted in Crime, Democrats, ObamaCare | 1 Comment »
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 »
Friday, September 20th, 2013
Here’s a Friday LinkSwarm. I have a big piece brewing on the ObamCare battle I may or may not have out on Monday.
Poland seizes half of private retirement funds.
Republicans in the House actually manage to cut something.
On the other hand, if you’re a Republican congressman, and you make $172,000 a year, you don’t get to complain about it. That means you, Rep. Phil Gingrey.
Ted Cruz says the ObamaCare fight is just beginning.
Speaking of Cruz, nothing says class quite like the Communications Director of the Sacramento Democratic Party wishing for the children of a Ted Cruz staffer to die of a horrible disease. If a Republic staffer said that about Obama’s children he’d be gone faster than Domino’s could get there. (Bonus: An extra evidence to Allan Brauer’s extreme classiness, he also refers to a woman as “cumrag.”) Sacramento Democrats have taken down Brauer’s page, but you can still find it on the Wayback Machine.)
“Like your health care plan? Then you can keep it” suck it up and get shoved into an ObamaCare exchange by your employer.
The IRS scandal just keeps getting worse.
Congressional Budget offices says that the deficit is going to get much, much worse.
Biggest story you’re not hearing much about? German elections this weekend. If Angela Merkel’s party should lose, and be replaced with a party less enthused with endless PIIGS bailouts, well, things could get interesting.
Obama official refuses to release information pertaining to a a Freedom of Information Act request. Stonewalling the press and withholding evidence? Obviously he must be bucking for a promotion.
Obama Express busted for paying cash for food stamps.
FEMA grounds UAVs, preventing them from providing mapping of Colorado flood victims for free.
Mainly read this Ann Althouse piece on “lean-in” circles for the catty comments.
Amarillo restaurant closes, evidently pens insulting message to patrons?
Remember China’s “Ghost Cities”? They’re bigger, and emptier, than ever:
Tags:Allan Brauer, Amarillo, China, Colorado, FEMA, Germany, Ghost Cities, Phil Gingrey, PIIGS, Poland, Republicans, Ted Cruz
Posted in Democrats, Media Watch, ObamaCare, Republicans | No Comments »