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.
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…
I missed this from a few days ago: “The Dewhurst for Texas campaign today announced the endorsement of John Gordon of Round Rock, former Texas State GOP Committeeman.”
Unless you live in Williamson County, the name John Gordon might not mean a lot to you. In Williamson County, John Gordon is most know for running as the favorite in the House District 52 race in 2010…and getting trounced by Larry Gonzalez. One reason he got trounced was his reputation as a hothead, like suing former business associates and taking a crowbar to a police boot on his car.
Anyway, that’s all water under the bridge. But it does suggest a certain paucity of Dewhurst endorsements when a guy most famous for losing a state house race is worthy of a press release…
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.
Chances are good that Europe’s interesting Eurozone times are about to get more interesting still with elections scheduled across the continent today, including those in France and Greece. So what does all this mean? Well, for one thing, the French socialist candidate (who has a good chance to kick Nicolas Sarkozy out of office) wants to renegotiate the fiscal discipline treaty. Perhaps even a socialist can tell a rotting fish when he smells one. And in Greece, the anti-bailout parties are expected to make dramatic gains at the expense of the “center-right” New Democracy (Tweedledee) and “center-left” Pasok (Tweedledum) parties who managed to bring Greece to this lovely pass in the first place.
Opposing Tweedledee and Tweedledum are a motley collection of small parties, including the Neo-Nazi Golden Dawn. Now in Europe, everyone to the right of the Christian Democrats seems to be labeled a “neo-Nazi,” be they libertarians, Geert Wilders, or the British National Party, but Golden Dawn appears to be the real thing. Take a look at their flag:
The overall color scheme seems vaguely familiar. Where have I seen that before? Let me think…
Of course, Golden Dawn is unlikely to gain enough votes to be a real player in the Greek parliament, so we may be denied the irony of seeing neo-Nazis oppose Greece’s German overlords.
There are also elections in Serbia and Armenia, lower level elections in Italy, and in Germany, regional elections in Schleswig-Holstein. While “regional elections in Schleswig-Holstein” must be almost as exciting a topic to American readers as enhanced rescission authority, it might go a long way toward determining whether Angela Merkel will continue in her role as Europe’s Sugar Momma Dominatrix.
Could the ruling parties lose everywhere? Well, since the ruing parties have collectively lost every single election since 2009, yeah. Now, whether the Eurocratic elite are will to let a little thing like “democracy” derail their dreams for an integrated Europe remains to be seen.
With government debt expected to hit 80% of GDP by the end of 2012, Spain has become like a family with a big mortgage where the primary breadwinner has lost his job. Unless they find a way to increase their income, they are going to go bankrupt. It is only a matter of time.
If people want to know what life looks like in the “Prohibitive Range” of the Laffer Curve, all they have to do is to visit Athens. Greece is literally falling apart. Unfortunately, by raising taxes, Spain is making exactly the same mistake that the Greeks made.
Of course, whatever the outcome of today’s elections are, we can be pretty sure they won’t do the one thing that might help get them out of the crises: rolling back the European welfare state.
The a persistent drumbeat among American liberals that in Europe austerity has failed. This is a myth. In fact, it’s never been tried.
Naturally, conservatives have had fun on Twitter with #Julia, including the observation that her male counterpart would naturally be named “Winston.” Also: “#Julia died at age 78. She voted Democrat until age 92.”
Ad “Twitter” to the list of things The New York Times doesn’t understand. (I know, it’s a long list.) Hey NYT, it isn’t the “Republican Response Machine,” it’s the swarm. The reason I named this blog “BattleSwarm” was after the Rand Corporation’s Swarming and the Future of Conflict: Dispersed, autonomous units come together at a point to concentrate their firepower. It’s the army of Davids. It’s the future of media. It means that the MSM has lost control of the narrative and there’s nothing you can do to get it back.
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.
