Tom Leppert picked up the endorsements of the mayors of Corpus Christi, Arlington, Sugar Land, Richardson, Denton, and several other Texas cities. Though some of those are from his Metroplex base, those are good pickups for him, and it is interesting that he picked up the support of mayors of high-growth, suburban “ring” cities.
Robert T. Garrett of The Dallas Morning News calls Ted Cruz a “social conservative spearchucker.” (I can just picture Garrett using this phrase about Michael William or Herman Cain, and then Having a Little Talk with his editor.) Potentially offensive phrasing aside, “social conservative” is not quite accurate, since Cruz is a classic “fusionist” conservative Republican candidate, as both a social and economic conservative. In this race, Glenn Addison and Curt Cleaver fit the mold of social conservatives more fully than Cruz. And it does make one wonder, yet again, why Garrett insists on pushing the “Cruz sucks/Dewhurst is invincible” angle that has become his recent stock-in-trade…
The Houston Chroniclehas a poll for which Senate candidate you support.
USA Today deigns to notice Sean Hubbard. That’s probably the political highlight of his week, although last week he attended Occupy Dallas, which seems appropriate, since both will be entirely forgotten by this time next year. Judging from the pictures, I’ve thrown parties that had more attendees than Occupy Dallas…
Many candidates have offered up thanks to veterans today, but it took Ricardo Sanchez to turn it into an election pitch. I have no problem with Sanchez running on his military record, or if he had mentioned it in passing in a post appreciating veterans, but to turn a Veterans Day message into a pitch of Democratic talking points while hustling for votes seems…unseemly.
I’ve not been keeping up with the situation in Killeen, but evidently City Council members voted to give the City Manager a $750,000 buyout, then refused to justify their actions to the taxpayers. The result? All five remaining City Council members were successfully recalled. Note to politicians across the state: Texas is not California. Try to get away with this sort of self-dealing here and we will boot your ass out of office. (Hat tip: Blue Dot Blues.)
Speaking of cartel violence, the Mexican government evidently has the La Familia Michoacana drug gang on the ropes. La Familia was previously allied with the Gulf Cartel, but more recently worked with the Zeta cartel. I’d previously mentioned La Familia (and their activity in Austin) here.
Democrats on the “SuperCommittee” propose…wait for it…wait for it…spending more money! Remember, any time a congressional Democrat says they want to cut spending, they’re lying. (If a Republican says they want to cut spending, there’s at least a possibility that they’re telling the truth.)
David Brooks praises Mitt Romney as “smart” and “sophisticated.” Yeah, like conservatives needed another reason to vote against Romney…
By contrast, George Will says that in Romney “Republicans may have found their Michael Dukakis.” (What’s the difference between David Brooks and George Will? One is a well-dressed, articulate, sophisticated, respected conservative columnist, and the other is David Brooks.)
I already mentioned this yesterday, but here’s the video of Sen. John Cornyn laying the smackdown on Eric Holder as to the difference between Wide Receiver and Fast and Furious.
I’ll try to do a Greek/Euro debt update just as soon as I figure out just what the hell Europe is actually doing…
Been a while since I put one of these up, and since I start a new job today, I thought it high time to catch people at least semi-up-to-date on Fast and Furious developments:
The complete text of Eric Holder’s testimony before the Senate judiciary committee. Count the red herrings, and notice, as always, the push for more gun control. Because all the old laws were so effective at keeping Holder and the ATF from breaking them in the first place.
The family of murdered U.S. Border Patrol agent Brian Terry were not impressed with Holder’s testimony: “I thought he was very evasive. I thought that this was his second time around, and I still didn’t get anything out of it — at all. Seems like all the questions that he was asked, he was evading or throwing someone else underneath the bus.” Also: “We’ve heard five different stories, and every time we hear (a new) one, (it) is different. We never got a straight answer.”
Neither was ranking Senator Charles Grassley: “We have his criminal assistant attorney general knowing about it way last year. How could it be that the attorney general didn’t know about it?”
“Former Arizona U.S. Attorney Dennis Burke, who resigned in August, admitted late Tuesday that he leaked a document aimed at smearing Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives agent John Dodson, an Operation Fast and Furious whistle-blower.”
The results of yesterday’s election are up, and three of the ten propositions on the ballot went down in defeat. Since all statewide propositions usually pass, that’s an interesting (and welcome) result.
Proposition 4, which Texans for Fiscal Responsibility said “gives counties new authority for “Kelo”-style redevelopment takings” went down by the heftiest margin, 59.7% to 40.3%.
Proposition 7, which would have allowed El Paso County to use property taxes to build parks, went down 51.7% to 48.3%.
Proposition 8, a technical amendment which allow agricultural/ranching/ etc. land to be developed for water conservation without changing its tax status, lost 53% to 47%.
Propositions 2 and 6 each passed narrowly with less than 52% of the vote. Proposition 1, the only one I voted for and which provided homestead exemptions for the spouses of disabled veterans, passed by the largest margin, 82.9% to 17.1%.
Taken together, the results seem to show that Texans are actually becoming more conservative, and more willing to oppose government spending and Kelo-style eminent domain abuses.
About 675,000 voter participated in yesterdays election.
As a side not, notice how information on the statewide election appears nowhere on the Houston Chronicle‘s main page, though it does provide a link to how Nancy Grace did on Dancing With the Stars. Just another sign of that once great (and conservative) newspaper’s decline into being just another irrelevant liberal MSM mouthpiece.
Trailing in polls, fundraising, name recognition, and stage presence, Elizabeth Ames Jones announced she’s dropping out of the Senate race to run for the Texas Senate District 25 against incumbent Sen. Jeff Wentworth.
Setting aside of the question of why you would want to move from the Railroad Commission to the State Senate (which seems like a slight downgrade to me), the Senate District 25 race already had one Tea Party challenger to Wentworth in Donna Campbell, who may find herself financially outgunned if Jones transfers her U.S. Senate race money. (Naturally, Wenworth wants Jones to return the money.) There have been mutterings in some quarters (at least stretching back to last decade’s redistricting fight) that Wentworth is too liberal for his district. Should all three stay in, this should prove to be a very interesting primary fight.
Clearly Jones was overdue to get out of the Senate race, and had been for some time. Not only were David Dewhurst and Ted Cruz firmly established as the top two candidates, but they and Tom Leppert were all clearly outperforming Jones in every phase of the campaign. From all that I could see, Jones performed poorly at the the various candidate debates and forums and fell woefully behind in the fundraising race. I think there was a much greater possibility that Jones could have come in behind long-shot Glenn Addison in the March primary than that she could overtake Cruz or Dewhurst.
Jones was the very first candidate to declare for the U.S. Senate race, filing her paperwork way back on November 3, 2008, but never seemed to gain any traction once additional candidates jumped in after Kay Baily Hutchison announced she was retiring.
This is good news for the Ted Cruz campaign, and bad news for David Dewhurst, since it gives Cruz a clearer shot at him. Dewhurst clearly has no desire to debate Cruz one-on-one, and the more candidates in the race, the less likely it is for conservative voters to coalesce around Cruz as the anti-Dewhurst campaign.
Now that Jones is out, will Leppert bow out as well? I doubt it. Though he clearly hasn’t caught fire, Leppert has (thanks to a generous measure of self-funding) stayed on pace with the front-runners in the fundraising derby, and he’s clearly a better campaigner, and has a much better organization, than Jones. My hunch says that he stays in until March, and then comes in a distant third. But there’s still an awful lot of campaign left…
Don’t forget that there’s a state constitutional amendment election Tuesday, November 8 (as well as various local elections, bond issues, etc.). A few roundups and recommendations from:
As for myself, I’m currently leaning toward voting Yes on Proposition 1 and No on all the rest.
Blue Dot Blues has a roundup of several additional sources you can go to, including some from the other side of the aisle. When in doubt, voting against whatever the Austin Chronicle endorses will seldom steer you wrong…
I suppose I should do these updates some day other than Friday night Saturday morning, since few people read them then or over the weekend, but it’s been a busy week…
Mario Loyola discusses Ted Cruz and his father Rafael as part of a longer story on the Cuban exile experience in America, the widespread Cuban opposition to the Batista regime, and how Castro betrayed the revolution to impose Communism. And he delivers such a complete and utter bitchslapping of The Dallas Morning News that I have to quote the last few paragraphs:
Cubans here and there have had to endure the calamities of the Revolution alone. Conservatives in America reached out to us and supported us, and our parents found solace in their enmity to Communism. But they weren’t really with us either, because they had no idea how awful Fidel Castro really was. It simply isn’t within the comprehension of any American that someone could actually choose to be as evil as Castro. The sheer depravity of his crimes against the Cuban people helped to keep the depredations of his rule a secret hiding in plain sight, where only other Cubans could see them.
It’s no surprise that liberal papers such as the Dallas Morning News now think they’re in some position to judge which families are truly exiles and which aren’t. It was liberal papers — particularly the New York Times — that originally built Castro up into an international hero and persisted in romanticizing him long after he offered Cuba’s young men to the Kremlin as a Third World army. It was liberal papers that blamed the U.S. embargo for the economic catastrophe into which Castro plunged Cuba. It was liberal newspapers that helped to occlude the unspeakable daily abuses of Castro’s regime beneath the fantasy of a romantic nationalist who was bravely willing to stand up to imperialism.
“There is power,” the Dallas Morning News tells us, “in linking your past and your future to this unending struggle [against Fidel]. But because the fathers of both these men [Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio] migrated several years before the revolution, as is now clear, the link is at best a stretch. In the case of Cruz, the situation is even more complicated because his father originally supported Castro.” What utter nonsense. It would be offensive if the editors actually had any idea what they were talking about. No Cuban exile would for a second say that the Rubio and Cruz families were any less exile than anyone else. All of our families lost their homeland. That some were already here when it happened is irrelevant — nobody meant to forsake Cuba by coming here. We lost Cuba because Castro took it from us, from all of us, born and unborn, both here and back there.
Among Cuban-Americans, having been an early supporter of Castro in no way diminishes your anti-Communist credentials. On the contrary, it is the typical story for almost every family. Virtually all of our families opposed the dictatorship of Batista. Virtually all of our families believed Castro’s rhetoric of democracy and liberty. The first thing everyone hated about him was his evident relish in betraying his most ardent supporters. That was the first of many very personal reasons he would give us to hate him, reasons that only we can really understand.
What makes us exiles is not merely the fact that our families can’t go back to Cuba. It is that Castro wantonly ruined the land that our families grew up in, the land of our forefathers, and now that land exists only in the fading black-and-white pictures and memories of the happy childhoods of a generation that is dying now. Compared with that, what possible difference could it make that our grandparents arrived one year and not another? Senator Rubio didn’t know exactly what year his father first got here because it doesn’t matter.
Still, I can’t say that I’m terribly surprised by the Dallas Morning News’s display of presumptuousness and ignorance. The editors are decent people, and if they knew even 5 percent of what I know about the Revolution and its exiles, I’m sure they would be deeply ashamed of what they’ve written. But they don’t and they never will — Castro has already seen to that.
Read the whole thing.
Speaking of people that Mario Loyola just made look like petty, misinformed idiots, The Dallas Morning News‘s Robert T. Garrett (who we talked about last week) covers Cruz’s accusations of MSM outlets like The Dallas Morning News targeting conservative Hispanics. Tune in next week for Garrett reporting on Cruz’s complaints about Garrett’s reporting on Cruz’s complaints. Presumably from the inside of a mirror box.
The Ted Cruz campaign has challenged David Dewhurst to five one-on-one Lincoln-Douglas debates (and the King Street Patriots were quick to agree to host at least one). This is a smart way for Cruz to help break further away from Tom Leppert and Elizabeth Ames Jones, and turn the race into a two man contest between him and Dewhurst…which is why Dewhurst would be foolish to take Cruz up on the offer. And, indeed, he does not seem so inclined.
ABC News notices the hit pieces on conservative Hispanic politicians in this interview with Cruz:
New Revolution Now emailed to say that Cruz won the straw poll at the Tuesday’s Texarkana senate forum. The total results were:
Ted Cruz: 54%
Glenn Addison: 21%
Lela Pittenger: 20%
Andrew Castanuela: 5%
David Dewhurst: <1%
Speaking of polls, this David Catanese Politico piece says that Dewhurst’s “internal poll” has Dewhurst at 50%, Leppert at 9%, and Cruz at 6%. I’m sure it does.
The Texas Tribune says “Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst is running a state version of a Rose Garden strategy.” As indeed he is.
I get the distinct impression that someone at D magazine doesn’t like Leppert. They also evidently don’t like using anything that’s actually funny in their “comedy.”
This page on possible Senate race takeover targets had the Texas race down at 21st (i.e., not bloody likely), and had this to say: “Ricardo Sanchez hasn’t made the impact the local Democrats hoped he would.” Indeed.
Evidently all tuckered out from his 18-minute interview October 23, Sanchez seems to have returned to hibernation this week.
Other than appearing in that poll and turning 55 on October 29, Elizabeth Ames Jones doesn’t seem to have been much more active than Sanchez. Hey, here’s an idea: They’re both from San Antonio. Why not meet each other for a weekly debate? Nothing else they’re doing seems to be attracting donations or attention, and both need to bone up on their public speaking skills…
The Ted Cruz campaign noted that a new UT/Texas Tribune poll showed Lt. Governor David Dewhurst’s support among Republican voters down to 22%, which is about half what previous polls have shown, and even less than that possibly anomalous Azimuth Research Group poll that showed both Cruz and Dewhurst tied around 30%. The UT/TT poll shows Cruz in second place at 10%, with a whopping 50% undecided. Still, to have such huge name recognition and to only be sitting at 22% must be frustrating for Team Dewhurst.
The same poll shows Ricardo Sanchez at a mere 11% of Democratic voters. He’s even running behind Chris Bell at 15%, even though Bell isn’t in the race…
A roundup of Texas Senate Race news, some of which I would have reported sooner if my week hadn’t been so packed…
Rep. Mike McCaul passes on the race. Big news, and I think the Ted Cruz campaign is heaving a sigh of relief at not having someone as rich as David Dewhurst (but demonstrably more conservative than the Lt. Governor) in the race.
Here’s the audio for Ted Cruz’s appearance on the Mark Levin show.
Standard democratic talking points, well-spoken, but delivered in the tone of a slightly bored high school algebra teacher. Gravitas he’s got, but if this is the best he can do charisma wise, I don’t think any of the likely (or even unlikely) Republican candidates have anything to worry about. That accomplished, Sanchez seems to have gone back in hibernation for the rest of the week.
Robert T. Garrett of the The Dallas Morning News offers up a hard-hitting expose that absolutely nails Cruz…on not doing reporter’s homework for them. The upshot is that Cruz’s father was tortured by and fled the Batista regime rather than Castro’s communist regime. Did Cruz tell his story in a way that led people to believe that his father fled Castro? Yeah, he did. And that’s worth reporting. I can see doing at least a paragraph on that as part of a general article on Cruz. But it doesn’t explain why Garrett felt the need to expend 769 words explaining not that Cruz lied, but that he told an easily misinterpreted truth. Given that he hasn’t lied about anything, and has told the precise story forthrightly upon being questioned about it, it’s hard for me to work up any indignation about people misconstruing one part of a candidate’s father’s history.
Curt Cleaver raised $3,208, which is respectable for a longshot, especially considering his late start. (Psst, Curt, handy campaign tip: It actually costs you nothing to update your Facebook and Twitter pages more than once a month…)
Andrew Castanuela has raised $1,503. Coming up the rear is Beetlebaum Stanley Garza with $200…of which he’s spent $199. Got to save up for that big ad blitz…
