Sylvia Garcia jumps in

And corrals a few endorsements from state legislators. Folloing via e-mail this morning.

Houston community advocate and longtime public servant Sylvia Garcia announced today she will run in the coming special election to represent Texas Senate District 6.

I'll skip the "why I'm running" blather and get to the hot stuff.

“I have worked with Sylvia to improve the availability of health care in East Harris County,” said Representative Ana Hernandez Luna (Dist. 143). “She understands the issues, has the ability to work with others to achieve the goal, and the passion and energy to stay in the fight until the battle is won.”

"Sylvia has never stopped working for us," said House Democratic Caucus Leader Jessica Farrar. "Serving as a social worker, attorney, city controller and county commissioner has provided her broad experience and solid relationships at all levels of governent. She is well equipped to fight against the special interests in Austin putting people first. Sylvia's priorities of education, healthcare, and jobs are what strengthen families most."

“You can trust Sylvia Garcia to say what she’ll do and do what she says,” said State Representative Armando Walle (Dist. 140). “Throughout her years of public service you have always been able to count on Sylvia’s word.  She has the intellect, honesty, maturity professionalism and integrity we want in our representative in the Texas Senate. Someone our children can be proud of”.

"Make no mistake, Rick Perry and his cronies are not going to give up their disrespectful opposition to our President," said Representative Garnet Coleman (Dist. 147).  “They may have lost the election, but our community knows Perry will keep fighting our President's efforts to improve our schools and health care. We need Sylvia Garcia to stand with us."

The significance of these endorsees is that they are all people who have worked alongside Carol Alvarado in the Texas House. Coleman's endorsement specifically suggests that no high profile African American is likely to get in. (Yes, I'm saying neither Jarvis Johnson nor RW Bray can be considered high-profile.)  Anybody else who enters the fray will be by definition second-tier, with only the hope of making the runoff on the basis of Alvarado and Garcia splitting the 70% the late Mario Gallegos just earned last Tuesday.

Roland Garcia is likewise a high-profile 'get', as he was Mayor Annise Parker's money man going back to her first bid for mayor in 2009. (Her last re-election bid is also on the 2013 calendar; there's plenty of time for Garcia to do both campaigns.)

Political consultant Robert Jara is probably the person running Garcia's campaign. Anybody would be an upgrade over Marc Campos, who is working for Alvarado. Fresh off his latest loss in the SBOE race just concluded, Campos is going to remind us every day about knowing how to win and getting things done... when he's not watching the Astros, that is.

Expect to see the Democratic establishment (i.e. plutocrats) line up behind Garcia. They all owe her, including everybody who had a fundraiser hosted by her in the past cycle. If you like the VIPs picking your next Senator, then there will be plenty of them offering their opinion.

Fortunately the people will be doing the voting. And in a low-turnout special and runoff, I just don't see Garcia's track record -- the only incumbent county commissioner in over a generation to lose -- as a plus with the voters (as opposed to the insiders).

So Garcia had better raise a pot full of money.

Update: The Chron's report lists Alvarado's supporters...

Alvarado's backers include state Sen. Rodney Ellis, D-Houston; Controller Ron Green; former mayors Bill White and Lee Brown and Council members James Rodriguez, C.O. Bradford and Oliver Pennington. 

So the elites are choosing sides and squaring off after all. And this tidbit...

Former state representative and 2008 U.S. Senate candidate Rick Noriega confirmed Friday that he is considering entering the race but that it is too early for anyone to be declaring candidacy. It is too soon after Gallegos's death and unclear when a special election might even occur, he said.

"We have a lifelong interest in what happens in this community, so we're going to keep our powder dry," Noriega said when asked if he is running. "We're going to see how this process unfolds without making any commitment." 

Alvarado ran for and won the seat in 2008 that both Noreigas -- Rick and wife Melissa, term-limited from Houston City Council next year -- held in the Texas House for ten years. Melissa was appointed to the Texas Legislature while Rick served a tour of duty in Afghanistan in 2004 and 5.

Republicans deluded themselves in 2012

It wasn't cocky confidence, or braggadocio or even hubris. It wasn't just Dick Morris. Or Sean Hannity or Rush Limbaugh. It wasn't only the Khronically Konservative Kommenters predicting a landslide for Mitt Romney, or even the douchey right-wing blogs.

It wasn't Karl Rove by himself, even though he wanted to recreate Election 2000 by forcing Fox to walk back its call of Ohio for Obama, a little after 10 p.m. Tuesday night -- stalling Romney's concession for a couple of hours -- as he remained convinced that "tha math" had the Republican in the White House when reality did not.

It was also Romney himself and his running mate Paul Ryan, their campaign staff, and most curiously of all, their pollsters. They were all convinced they were going to win -- and by as large a margin as they lost.

Romney advisers are telling CBS News that there wasn't one person on the Romney campaign who saw the loss coming, and the GOP presidential candidate was "shellshocked" by the results. Here's what they have to say:

• "We went into the evening confident we had a good path to victory... I don't think there was one person who saw this coming." 

• "There's nothing worse than when you think you're going to win, and you don't... It was like a sucker punch." 

• Romney "was shellshocked." 

The CBS story indicates that the Romney team even bought into the "unskewed polls" theory, believing that the polls dramatically underestimated Republican turnout and overestimated Democratic enthusiasm.

This report comes after other indications that the Romney campaign was disregarding polling data. On election night, the Romney campaign told the press it didn't have a concession speech prepared. Karl Rove went against Fox News and questioned whether Ohio was going to Obama, contradicting overwhelming electoral analysis. And Wednesday, Romney's website briefly displayed a page indicating he had won the presidency before it was taken down. 

Well, that explains why they were campaigning in Pennsylvania on the day before Election Day, anyway.

This is much worse than Fox or Townhall.com or Newsmax or Michelle Malkin telling people Romney was going to win. When even the Republican nominee and their campaign believed the lies... well, this is mental illness territory, folks.

Republicans down to the last man and woman are suffering a self-inflicted information disadvantage, and while I will shed not even a crocodile tear over what it means for the GOP, the truth is (another pesky fact) that their delusional behavior is harming the nation.

And not just because it reveals the entire conservative "logic" trail: that if truth is inconvenient, invent your own. It explains why climate change isn't occurring -- or isn't influenced by our energy policies. It provides a rationale for rape being God's gift to women and that massive voter fraud is happening and tax cuts create jobs and pretty much everything else they believe to be true, which isn't.

Whose stock responses to things that are true that they don't like include "I don't believe it; it must be the liberal media". "These damned liberals are all brainwashed in college and just want free stuff".

How do you work together with a group of people who supply their own fallacies as arguments? Who refuse to accept science, reason and logic? Who become irritated, outraged, aggressively hostile when presented with clinical factual data?

Lithium? Haldol? Thorazine?

I'm completely serious.

We're about to have another one of those discussions about how much taxes are going to be and will government spend it on guns or butter. And the Republicans are already digging in their heels.

And because conservatives are continuing to act so irrationally, is the president going to have to compromise because they won't (sign of weakness and all). Is Obama going to have to agree once more to cuts in Medicare and Social Security in order to wrangle a tax increase out of John Boehner?

Shouldn't mentally challenged people -- particularly people contriving their own mental challenges -- be on their meds before they resume normal activities of daily living?

That's all I'm asking. And I'm not kidding.

Update: Booman with the "stupid or evil" question. He says 'both'. (See? I'm much nicer than him.) And Politico explains the epic fail of the ORCA vote-tracking project.

Update II: Thanks for all the feedback, everyone. David Frum: "Republicans have been fleeced, exploited, and lied to by a conservative entertainment complex"...



Brutally candid assessment, and from a Republican yet. Still, this might be too factual for conservatives to understand.

"Because the followers, the donors and the activists are so mistaken about the nature of the problems the country faces...just a simple question, and I went to Tea Party rallies and asked this question, have taxes gone up or down in recent years? They can't answer this question."