Happy Friday the 13th! The big news this week is Ted Cruz topping David Dewhurst in two separate external polls (none of this internal crap) and Dewhurst not only making a pro-amnesty speech in 2007, but making things ten times worse by trying to scrub mention of it off his website.
Posts Tagged ‘Rick Perry’
Texas Senate Race Update for July 13, 2012
Friday, July 13th, 2012One More Reason to Vote for Charles Schweitner Over Ben Bius
Sunday, May 27th, 2012I’ve already mentioned that, despite having voted for Ben Bius against Steve Ogden in 2010, I wasn’t inclined to vote for Bius over Charles Schwertner in the Senate District 5 race. However, even if I weren’t so inclined, the news that Schwertner supports Governor Perry’s Budget Compact, while Bius opposes it, would be enough for me to vote for Schwertner over Bius.
I don’t want to oversell the budget compact. Getting Republicans to agree to it is the first step of a long (and no doubt frequently painful) process to get it implemented, and I don’t imagine that it will be the absolute “game changer” some have made it out to. And even if passed, it could all be undone in a single legislative session (especially if Democrats ever get their act together in Texas). But if it doesn’t yet create the ratchets for long-term control of the state government’s size, budget, and growth rate, it at least lays the groundwork for those ratchets to be implemented.
For that reason, among many others, I will be voting for Charles Schwertner (who Perry has endorsed) over Ben Bius in the Senate District 5 race, and urge any readers in SD5 to do the same.
More Support for the “Rick Perry Hopped Up on Goofballs” Theory
Tuesday, April 3rd, 2012After Rick Perry’s disastrous fall campaign, I floated the idea that he was still hopped up on goofballs (i.e, taking serious pain medication) following his back operation.
Well now comes word that there’s at least some supporting evidence in the form of Inside the Circus, a book on the 2012 Republican Presidential race. Caveat the first: The Perry camp is hotly denying it. Caveat the second: One of the co-authors is Evan “Obama is a sort of God” Thomas. Caveat the third: The last third of the Chron piece is given over to to professional Perry-hater James Moore to do his usual bashing. Caveat the fourth: The excerpted bit the Chron uses is actually pretty weak sauce unless there are more like it in the book.
Still, the theory nicely explains why Perry, who has been a sharp and relentless campaigner in his state races, floundered so badly at the national level. Indeed, it explains it so neatly that I wonder why the Perry campaign is so insistent in denying it, since it’s much more flattering to him than the liberal “Perry blew it at the national level because he’s a moron that just happened to have kicked our asses repeatedly for the last decade” theory.
On the other hand, maybe they deny it so insistently because it’s not true, no matter how convenient an explanation. And bloggers (myself included) should always be somewhat suspicious of a story that fits our preconceptions a little too neatly…
On the Way Out, Kay Bailey Hutchison Demonstrates Why She’s On the Way Out
Friday, March 23rd, 2012Proving 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.
Perry Out?
Thursday, January 19th, 2012So say the tea leaves. An announcement is scheduled for later today. Word is he’ll endorse Gingrich.
A sad turn of events, but also increasingly an inevitable one. After his autumn gaffes, Perry could just never regain traction. He joins Jack Kemp and Phil Gramm among the list of Republican Presidential contenders I’ve supported who have flamed out early. Sic transit gloria.
(Hat tip: Ace)
Saddle Up Texas Straw Poll Results
Saturday, January 14th, 2012I’ve been busy hosting a family even this weekend, so I haven’t been able to do a post on Thursday’s debate. But I wanted to point out the results of the straw poll at Saddle Up Houston (which, with 3,321 voters, had a lot more attendees than I suspected).
Keep in mind all the usual caveats that apply to straw polls: They don’t tend to mean a lot when it comes to real voting.
President
Ron Paul: 54.4%
Rick Santorum: 15.6%
Rick Perry: 13.3%
Newt Gingrich: 11.9%
Mitt Romney: 4.2%
Jon Huntsman: 0.5%
Charles “Buddy” Roemer: 0.0% (Jeeze, how do you not manage to snag even .1% of the vote?)
That’s an excellent showing for Ron Paul, but Paul has consistently proven himself much more adept at winning straw polls than primaries. Caveats aside, it’s a bad showing for Rick Perry (if you can’t win a straw poll in your own state, where can you win it?) and Mitt Romney (the frontrunner should get more than 4.2% of the vote, even against two favorite sons).
Senate
Ted Cruz: 49.1%
Craig James: 12.9%
Glenn Addison: 12.0%
Tom Leppert: 9.1%
Lela Pittenger: 9.1%
David Dewhurst: 7.1%
Charles Holcomb: 0.3%
“Doc Joe” Agris: 0.3%
Curt Cleaver: 0.0%
Ben Gambini: 0.0%
That’s good news for Ted Cruz, Craig James and Glenn Addison, and bad news for David Dewhurst. And even though Tom Leppert outpointed Dewhurst, he can’t feel good at merely tying Lela Pittenger, who has neither campaigned as much as him, nor spent 1/1000th of what he has. (Also, Doc Agris can’t feel good about putting up such a paltry total in his own back yard.) Gambini getting 0% isn’t a surprise, since he’s been the invisible man. Cleaver getting 0% is a bit more surprising, since he’s had at least the semblance of a campaign.
But again, these results don’t mean much, as I seriously doubt we’re going to see Craig James battle Glenn Addison for a spot in the runoff against Cruz. They do highlight an enthusiasm gap between Cruz and Dewhurst, but just how much of that gap will translate into votes remains to be seen. I don’t think we’ll get a glimpse of how the race is shaping up in the minds of actual primary voters until we see polls from some of the established polling companies like Gallup, Zogby and Rasmussen.
LinkSwarm for January 12, 2012
Thursday, January 12th, 2012I had a maid service come clean my house in advance of a family event I’m hosting this weekend. It’s amazing the difference between “Bachelor Clean” and “Clean Clean.” It’s almost as big as the difference between “Obama Smart” and “Actually Smart”…
If we build the Raspberry Pi in Britain, we have to pay a lot more tax. If a British company imports components, it has to pay tax on those (and most components are not made in the UK). If, however, a completed device is made abroad and imported into the UK – with all of those components soldered onto it – it does not attract any import duty at all. This means that it’s really, really tax inefficient for an electronics company to do its manufacturing in Britain, and it’s one of the reasons that so much of our manufacturing goes overseas. Right now, the way things stand means that a company doing its manufacturing abroad, depriving the UK economy, gets a tax break. It’s an absolutely mad way for the Inland Revenue to be running things.
(Hat tip: Slashdot)
LinkSwarm for January 9, 2012
Monday, January 9th, 2012Like a squirrel hording nuts for winter, I’ve set aside a few tasty links for you to chew on:
Liberals have a rendezvous with regret. Their largest achievement is today’s redistributionist government. But such government is inherently regressive: It tends to distribute power and money to the strong, including itself.
Government becomes big by having big ambitions for supplanting markets as society’s primary allocator of wealth and opportunity. Therefore it becomes a magnet for factions muscular enough, in money or numbers or both, to bend government to their advantage.
[snip]
Not only does redistributionist government direct wealth upward; in asserting a right to do so, it siphons power into itself. A puzzling aspect of our politically contentious era is how little contention there is about the ethics of coercive redistribution by progressive taxation and other government “corrections” of social outcomes it considers unethical or unaesthetic.This reticence, in an age in which political reticence is rare, reflects the difficulty of articulating principled defenses of these practices. They go undefended because they are generally popular with a public that misunderstands their net effects and because the practices are the political class’s vocation today. The big winners from these practices are that class and the interests adept at collaborating with it.
Government uses redistribution to correct social outcomes that offend it. But government rarely explains, or perhaps even recognizes, the reasoning by which it decides why particular outcomes of consensual market activities are incorrect. When taxes are levied not to efficiently fund government but to impose this or that notion of distributive justice, remember: Taxes are always coerced contributions to government, which is always the first, and often the principal, beneficiary of them.
Call it The Dennis Moore Effect. “He steals from the poor, and gives to the rich…”
Hat tips: Real Clear Politics, Insta, Ace.
The Case for Rick Perry
Monday, January 2nd, 2012Ace 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.
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.