Rick Perry vs World

12 June 2007

Oh no! Politics!

Amarillo Globe-News had an unsigned editorial a couple days ago.

Texas House Speaker Tom Craddick, R-Midland, likely will have to fight to keep his job in the 2009 Legislature.

That's good - not for Craddick, necessarily, but for a democratic system of government that should hold our leaders accountable for their actions.

Craddick will have some explaining to do to his Permian Basin constituents and perhaps even to his House colleagues, some of whom have turned against him.

Is this a bad turn of events for Texas government? Not in the least. On the contrary, it produces a healthy cleansing of the process that occasionally gets cloistered too tightly in the hands of too few individuals.

To hear much of the Austin crowd talk, you'd think that there's something morally wrong with recruiting opponents for your legislative opponents. Just sounds like politics to me.

If someone keeps voting against your bills, one of the political tools is to recruit a challenger. Seems fairly standard to me, so I really can't understand some of the brouhaha from the Austin establishment. Sure, it destroys legislative comity, but legislative comity is hardly a goal in and of itself. Trying to pass legislation that you care about should be what politics is about. And sometimes to do that, you gotta give voters a choice.

The point is that recruiting challengers isn't successful unless there is voters have a reasonable basis to throw them out. Remember all the money that Leininger spent? It wasn't spent very effectively, because money doesn't win elections. Messages win elections, and money just helps get the message out. So if Craddick were to go recruit challengers to the fomenters, so what? It's unlikely the Craddick recruits will be successful unless there is substantial underlying discontent with the incumbent.

Posted by Evan @ 06/12/07 08:42 PM | Comments (0)

Unsigned editorials

Chron op-ed:

There were plenty of senators last week who shirked such honest work. Many Republicans rightly wanted to shape a bill that had been crafted by their leaders behind closed doors. But too many also wanted to sabotage reform, preferring the disorder we have now to any measure that would grant illegal immigrants some chance at joining our society.

"If it hurts the bill, I'm for it," said Sen. Jim De Mint, R-S.C.

Republicans John Cornyn and Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas backed reform in principle -- but in the end also gambled against it by rejecting the measure to cut off debate.

What exactly does that last bolded sentence even mean?

Cornyn and Hutchison were against the bill from the start once the back room grand compromise was unveiled. They saw it as a bad bill. Senators -- by nature generally very protective of their privileges -- were in the middle of offering amendments to a 4000 page monstrosity to attempt to mold it into something they liked better. Harry Reid, despite knowing that he didn't have the votes to pass the bill, tried to cut off debate and stop the amendments. [It certainly seems to me that Reid was making a political judgment that he could damage W by not passing the bill and then blaming the president. What else can be concluded since he didn't even pretend to try to pass the bill.]

So what exactly does the Chronicle mean? It's languid, misleading writing in the midst of a disjointed editorial. It sounds to me like the Chron editorial board wanted to criticize Cornyn and Hutchison, but wanted to be oblique about it. Which kinda defeats the purpose.

Posted by Evan @ 06/12/07 08:33 PM | Comments (0)

11 June 2007

Final Sopranos

Stunningly brilliant. Exactly what it should have been. A worthy ending for the best tv show of all time.

Update: William F. Buckley agrees with me. His reasoning is pretty similar to mine.

That was the genius, the parable, of the most successful television drama in history, giving the viewer hour after hour, year after year, exploitation of sex, exhibitionism, murder, sadism, cynicism and hypocrisy. And, according to David Chase, we are to remember that such is as it is. There was no pictorial, no dramatic end to "The Sopranos" because its point was to depict life (a) as practiced by the Mafia, and (b) as tolerated, and in fact swooned over, by the viewing public.

Posted by Evan @ 06/11/07 03:04 AM | Comments (1)

09 June 2007

Blame it on the hack

To hear Todd Gillman tell it, the immigration bill didn't pass because of Cornyn and Hutchison:

The immigration deal that crumbled last week in the Senate had little chance in the House anyway, in part because Texas' senators were never on board.

Without political cover from Sens. John Cornyn and Kay Bailey Hutchison, there was little hope for inroads among Texas Republicans in the House, who demand a security-first approach rather than a security-and-legalization combo.

And without that large bloc, few conservatives from other states would have lent their votes.

I think the failure of the bill has lots more to do with Harry Reid's disdainful approach.

Posted by Evan @ 06/09/07 02:55 PM | Comments (0)

Liberty prevails

Bud Kennedy:

A bill on Gov. Rick Perry's desk would prevent Texas police from using roadside cameras to mail $179-and-up speeding tickets to car owners whose vehicles zoomed through town.

In one of the brightest moments of a mostly languid Texas House session, lawmakers overwhelmingly passed Keller Republican Vicki Truitt's bill shutting off the cams for the sake of Texas parents.

Good. Shame they didn't ban those odious red light cameras too.

Posted by Evan @ 06/09/07 02:43 PM | Comments (0)

The sun rises in the...

AP:

Federal and local authorities have launched investigations after a Bexar County elections official reported dozens of non-U.S. citizens voted in recent elections.

A report by Bexar County Elections Administrator Jacque Callanen included the names of 330 non-citizens on the voter rolls. Those named had received jury duty summonses but told the court they weren't eligible to serve because they were not U.S. citizens.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement, part of the Department of Homeland Security, requested Callanen's report in an administrative subpoena. And the Bexar County district attorney's office is investigating whether up to 41 of those non-citizens voted in more than a dozen local, state and federal elections since 2001.

"You bet your bottom dollar we'll prosecute ... if we find people voted illegally in violation of the state election code," Bexar County District Attorney Susan Reed said.

David Dewhurst wishes this article had been printed about a month ago.

I don't know why this should surprise us, given how unsecure American voting is.

Posted by Evan @ 06/09/07 02:29 PM | Comments (1)

So far from God and so close to the United States

Dave Schiller, SAEN:

He's rich, powerful and generally seen as a nice guy whose star continues to shine despite his political mentor's plummeting popularity.

As Tony Garza seems poised to become one of the longest-serving ambassadors ever posted to Mexico — and still sure-footed in one of the perennially difficult jobs in U.S. diplomacy — circumstances prompt the question: What comes next for this South Texas son?

There long has been speculation that when Garza returns, he'll strongly consider making a run for governor, the U.S. Senate or some other elective office.

Few believe Garza isn't thinking about it, but during a recent interview, he wouldn't tip his hand.

"I enjoy what I'm doing at a time, when this relationship could not be more important," Garza said of the interaction between the U.S. and Mexican governments on border security, trade and immigration.

...

When people talk about those who might run for governor in 2010, Garza is mentioned in almost the same breath as U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison and Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst, [Bill] Miller said.

...

Dan Kornfield, a Washington-based analyst for the Stratfor consulting firm, said Garza has done a good job.

"I think he's balanced it out, having an empathetic view on immigration while having a tough stance on counter-cartel activities.

"He is not a sort of neutral, uninteresting figure," Kornfield said. "He has managed to interact with businessmen and get to know society and they like him."

Can't be that easy to run for guv after 6 years living abroad, even if money can buy name ID.

Posted by Evan @ 06/09/07 02:11 PM | Comments (0)

07 June 2007

W(h)at(t)s he got to lose?

I already tried to post on this, but it doesn't show up on the blog, so I'm rewriting this post. How annoying. Maybe it'll find its way from the nether regions of the internet back to the blog.

RG Ratcliffe:

San Antonio trial lawyer Mikal Watts has launched his bid for the Democratic U.S. Senate nomination by donating and loaning his campaign fund a total of $3.8 million -- an amount equal to Republican incumbent Sen. John Cornyn's cash on hand.

"I took John Cornyn's first-quarter report and matched it to the penny," Watts said. "We're going to start with a level playing field and then we're going to start raising money and see what the people of Texas have to say."

Watts, 39, donated $1.9 million to his exploratory committee and loaned it another $1.9 million. He formed the committee June 1, and its paperwork became available Wednesday.

Cute gimmick. Certainly the Democratic political consultants are rejoicing. The bigger question here is how he decides to fund the campaign from this point on.

Cornyn could lose; it's not impossible. Watts could even get the race pretty close before the law of diminishing returns kicks in. But it looks highly unlikely that 2008 will be as toxic for Republicans as 2006.* A presidential election is more polarized than a mid-term election, and that's going to make it awfully tough. Plus, folks don't abandon their partisanship as often in federal races as they do in state races.

But even so, it does make sense for the Dems to try. Every once in awhile lightning strikes! If you have rich people (read: trial lawyers) who want to give away millions of dollars to keep your consultants happy...

And 2006 Democratic U.S. Senate nominee Barbara Ann Radnofsky has said she is planning on a run for state attorney general in 2010 but is not ruling out another run for the Senate next year.

Radnofsky's campaign was always about building name ID for a future run. But she didn't help herself when she called Kay Bailey Hutchison a liar. Doesn't make much sense to call the most popular politician in the state a liar.

*2006 was the election where the Texas Democrat ticket topper got 29.8% of the vote...as Chris Bell said, "You could be a corpse and get 31 percent as the Democratic nominee...").

Posted by Evan @ 06/07/07 04:51 PM | Comments (0)

I'm really not Bob Shrum's publicist

Although I just posted on something I found interesting from Dem uber-consultant Bob Shrum's new book the other day, there was something else I found surprising.

Bob Shrum claims that pollster and focus grouper Frank Luntz -- after polling for Pat Buchanan in the primary and Ross Perot (before he imploded) -- was interested in working for Bill Clinton's campaign against Papa Bush. Shrum says the conversation took place when they were on a two day trip to Slovenia, and that Luntz told him he had "more than you might think in common" with Clinton (that quote may not be exact, as I'm working from memory right now).

As Shrum notes, he should've at least passed it on to Clinton. If Luntz had done any work for Clinton, it would've disqualified Luntz from working for Republicans (see Dick Morris). That would have precluded the good work Luntz did for Gingrich, DeLay, Armey, et al, in 94 on the Contract with America.

An interesting anecdote and one I'm sure Luntz -- who attempts to downplay his Republican leanings whenever possible, because it hurts business -- wouldn't like to be told. [Anyone know if Shrum and Luntz have had any tiffs?]

Posted by Evan @ 06/07/07 04:28 PM | Comments (0)

06 June 2007

Awesome

I'm giving money.

Posted by Evan @ 06/06/07 11:41 AM | Comments (6)

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