All four want to force a woman to give birth to a child that is the product of rape or incest. All four said that the judge who compelled the hospital to end life support for a brain-dead pregnant woman carrying a deformed fetus was wrong, and would support a bill in the next session to prevent another judge from doing so.
All four support the teaching of creationism in public schools. All four are opposed to the decriminalization of marijuana. (Only Patterson among them favors the use of medical pot.) All except Patterson want a fifty-foot-high wall at the Rio Grande border armed with machine gun turrets and high voltage current running through the concertina wire at the top. (That's barely an exaggeration.)
Dan Patrick wouldn't pay back the debts he went bankrupt on, even now that he has the money. Jerry Patterson can say "tetrahydrocannabinol", several times, without mangling it. Todd Staples' head is still too large for his body. And Dewhurst is so confident of victory that he didn't bother to work in any time for debate practice.
No questions about infrastructure, or water, or the environment, or the Texas economy, or education, or Medicaid expansion, or predatory payday lenders, or anything of substance to anyone outside the Tea Party base of the Texas Republican Party.
Thus, the winner of last night's Texas lieutenant governor debate was... Leticia Van de Putte.
Update: More from Wayne Slater (who still has miles to go to redeem himself, IMHO)...
If a single candidate doesn’t win a majority of the vote on March 4, the GOP primary fight will go to a runoff between the two top vote-getters.
The political calculus Monday night was finding a way into that runoff — either by saying something appealing about yourself (Land Commissioner Jerry Patterson declaring himself the friend of guns in virtually every public place in Texas) or critical of an opponent (Agriculture Commissioner Todd Staples telling Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst he ought to put more money in education and less on his personal security detail).
Sen. Dan Patrick of Houston targeted Dewhurst all night with a Texas equivalent of “Who lost Panama?” Patrick asked who created Democrat Wendy Davis — and pointed straight at Dewhurst.
In Patrick’s telling, Dewhurst bungled the handling of an abortion-restrictions bill last year, allowing the filibuster that catapulted the Fort Worth state senator to national prominence.
If there’s anything conservative Republican primary voters probably agree on, it is that they don’t care for Davis.
“Barack Obama and the Democrats created Wendy Davis,” Dewhurst protested. And he predicted: “Davis is going down faster than she went up when [likely GOP gubernatorial nominee] Greg Abbott beats her in November.”
Well at least they're not yammering like chauvinistic pigs.
