A few Senate race updates. Ted Cruz is turning a very good week into a very good month:
Texas Senate Race Updates for June 15, 2011
June 15th, 2011In Which I Come Perilously Close to Defending Lloyd Doggett
June 14th, 2011Paul Burka has a post up in which he basically makes two arguments:
- Republicans are trying to Gerrymander white Democrats out of Congress; and
- “Almost no one has done as much damage to the Democratic cause” in Texas as Lloyd Doggett.
He is mistaken, to differing degrees, in both beliefs.
As for the first, Republicans are trying to Gerrymander as many Democrats as possible out of their congressional seats, white, black, Hispanic or purple, just as Democrats ruthlessly Gerrymandered Republicans out of congressional seats when they had control of redistricting. (Remember, Texas never had as many as three Republicans serving in the U.S. House of Representatives at the same time until James M. Collins joined George H. W. Bush and Bob Price in 1969, despite Texas voters preferring Republican Presidential candidates in 1928, 1952, and 1956.) It’s just that the Voting Rights Act makes it so much easier to do it against white Democrats than minority Democrats.
As for the second, anyone who has been reading this blog for any appreciable length of time should realize that I have no particular fondness for Rep. Doggett. However, laying the lion’s share of the Democratic Party’s precipitous decline in Texas at the feet of Doggett’s unsuccessful Senate campaign is both misguided and deeply ahistorical.
First of all, it was a lot less obvious in 1984 that Doggett was too liberal to win (though he was) than the fact that nobody was going to beat Phil Gramm. After Democrats threw him off the House Budget Committee for supporting the Kemp-Roth tax cuts and co-sponsoring the Gramm-Latta budget reconciliation bill, Gramm resigned from his House seat and ran for it again as a Republican, winning overwhelmingly and turning himself into a folk hero for doing so. In the Republican primary he creamed Robert Mosbacher, Jr. and Ron Paul, and then thumped Doggett by 900,000 votes. Nobody was going to beat Gramm that year, even if Kent Hance had managed to defeat Doggett. And remember that after losing to Doggett in the Democratic Primary, Hance switched to the Republican Party the very next year. Even back then, it was apparent that conservatives had no future in the Democratic Party.
Further, fingering Doggett as the cause of the Texas Democratic Party’s decline ignores the pronounced decline in the fortunes of the Democratic Party in every state south of the Mason-Dixon line over the last 32 years, as the so-called “Reagan Democrats” have fled the party in droves in both the South and Midwest thanks to its unwavering drive for bigger government and higher taxes. That can be laid at Doggett’s feet only insofar as he was one of several hundred Democratic elites pushing their party relentlessly left, no matter the electoral cost.
And as for Burka’s starting that “How could [Doggett] have had so little self-awareness as to not know that he had was too liberal to win a statewide race?”, two points:
There are numerous reasons why the Texas Democratic Party has gone from the overwhelming majority party in Texas to a rump minority party, the biggest one being that their misguided policies of big government liberalism are objectively wrong, financially ruinous and extremely unpopular. But Doggett is only an outstanding exemplar of the problem, not the cause of it.
(PS: Also remember that in 1992, Burka was blaming the Texas Democratic Party’s decline on Bill Clinton’s unwillingness to seriously contest the state against Bush41.)
Democratic Senate Candidate Ricardo Sanchez Comes Out for Illegal Alien Amnesty, Teachers Unions, and…Tax Cuts???
June 11th, 2011Ricardo Sanchez finally has a website up, though Google still can’t find it, and it was only announced on his Facebook page yesterday. I wonder why it took so long, since he announced back on May 11; it doesn’t take a month to put up a website.
Also, he’s apparently going to be running as “Ric Sanchez,” though most of the media (save the Dallas Morning News) don’t appear to have gotten the memo.
The website actually contains some policy substance, though you have to wade through lots of vague, boilerplate, focus-group tested blather to get to it:
It’s in the third paragraph. Click to embiggen.
Granted, anyone can say anything on their website; it doesn’t mean they believe in it, and it doesn’t mean they won’t jettison it ten minutes after they’ve won election. But for a major Democratic candidate to call for tax cuts not before the general election, but even before the Democratic primary, suggests that either Texas is even more conservative a state than even we on the right realize, or (and I mention this only as a possibility) Ricardo Sanchez actually believes in tax cuts as a way to create economic growth. That would put him in agreement with the all the major Republican candidates, but it’s pretty close to heresy in today’s Democratic Party.
We’ll see what sort of reaction his positions get, assuming people can actually find his website…
The Unexpected Return of This Week in Jihad
June 10th, 2011I stopped doing This Week in Jihad because it was eating up too much of my time. But this week there were enough big Jihad-related stories to justify putting one up:
Newt’s Staff Quitting En Masse=Rick Perry Jumping Into the Presidential Race?
June 9th, 2011So Jim Geraghty suggests over at The Campaign Spot. He’s not the only one to to do so.
This would seem to address Texas Iconoclast’s first point about why Perry won’t run.
Make no mistake: If Perry jumps in, he will be a very formidable foe. Kay Baily Hutchison was supposed to beat him in the Governor’s race and he dismantled her. Texas has shown the type of economic growth the rest of the Obama-stricken nation can only envy. Though he has real baggage (the Trans-Texas Corridor, toll roads, and the Gardasil blunder all come to mind), but nothing compared to Romneycare or Obama’s disastrous handling of the economy.
Perry has the name-recognition, the executive experience, the fundraising prowess, and the instinct for the jugular necessary to win both the primary and the election. Unless Sarah Palin or Chris Christie jumps in, no one else has the national stature Perry has.
And as for the possibility of any lingering Bush fatigue, well, Bush is starting to look pretty good in retrospect, isn’t he? Bush’s worst economic month in office still beats Obama’s best.
If he gets in, I like Perry’s odds better than Romney’s. Or Obama’s.
Quick Impressions of the Texas Senate Debate
June 8th, 2011I attended the Texas Tribune Republican Senate Candidate Forum tonight, and thought I would post a few quick impressions before I have to walk my dog.
Three of the four candidates came across as prepared, articulate, polished and effective speakers, and all four tried to portray themselves as tea party conservatives:
Not a lot of policy differences on display. All agreed not to raise taxes under any circumstances (I wondered why moderator Evan Smith didn’t ask any of them “Not even in the event of a World War with China?”), all were on-board with the Ryan plan or an even more immediate cutback in federal spending, all for greater border control measures and against amnesty, all pro-life (one of Jones’ most effective moments), all more national energy exploration, all against earmarks, all slamming Obama.
Enough for tonight. I’ll post more tomorrow if I have the time.
Percy Bysshe Shelley, Now With Added Dick Jokes
June 7th, 2011Iowahawk has outdone himself this time.
`My name is Weinermandius, Dong of Dongs:
Look on my junk, ye mighty, and despair!’
Anthony Weiner’s Seat Could Be a 2012 Pickup Target for Republicans
June 7th, 2011So now that Anthony Weiner has fessed up to twitting his Little Tony to multiple women, what’s next? He claims he won’t resign, despite Nancy Pelosi asking for a House ethics committee investigation. A poll on whether Weiner should resign was evenly split, though interestingly, more men than women said he should resign: “42 percent of women agreed that Weiner should pull out.” This poll was of all NYC rather than just the 9th Congressional District.
I remember thinking that the scandal would have very little impact on 2012 elections, since Weiner’s 9th district is in New York City, and thus a deep blue liberal stronghold Republicans have no chance of picking up.
But now that I’ve looked into it more closely, the answer is: Not so much. Despite Weiner being one of the most liberal Democrats in congress, New York’s 9th Congressional District is probably the least liberal congressional district in New York City. Indeed, the district seems to be drawn to get white voters out of other NYC majority minority districts. Obama only beat McCain there 55% to 44%, much worse than Gore’s 67%-30% drubbing of Bush there in 2000, and Weiner only pulled in 60.8% of the vote against an underfunded Republican opponent in 2010,about which Hotline on Call notes: “For Weiner, that was a limp performance.”
Whether Weiner resigns or not, New York’s Ninth congressional district will still be a tough target for Republicans, but not an impossible one. It just went from “Solid Democrat” to merely a “Strong Lean.”
Michael Williams to Drop Out of Senate Race to Run for Newly Created 33rd Congressional District
June 7th, 2011So the Texas Tribune is reporting, backed up by an email from the Williams for Congress campaign, and confirming the piece they published last week.