Stockman will primary Cornyn

Get your corn popped now.

Stockman, 57, walked into the Texas Republican Party headquarters in Austin at about 5:45 p.m. — 15 minutes before the filing deadline — and withdrew his filing for his congressional seat, then filed a new application as a GOP candidate for the U.S. Senate, said Spencer Yeldell, a GOP spokesman. “Until then, it was a pretty laid-back day,” Yeldell said.

 Taegan Goddard links to WND for the exclusive (I won't):

Stockman blamed the incumbent GOP senator for undermining Sen. Ted Cruz's "fight to stop Obamacare."

Said Stockman: "We are extremely disappointed in the way he treated his fellow congressmen and broke the 11th commandment and undermined Ted Cruz's fight to stop Obamacare. And now, it looks like Cruz was right and Cornyn was wrong. He sided with the president, essentially, in making sure Obamacare became law while Cruz did everything possible to stop it."  

This is going to be some funny shit.  Once Cornyn pinches off that brick, he'll get to work Tweeting some more insanity to the far right.  As for the Congressional seat Stockman leaves behind, there remain three Republicans who filed in CD-36: John Amdur, Phil Fitzgerald, and Kim Morrell.  (Update: This, from Texas on the Potomac, adds the additional names of Chuck Meyer, Doug Centilli -- who is believed to be the chief of staff for Cong. Kevin Brady -- and Dave Norman.  Unless these freaks start cannibalizing each other before next March, I won't post on them again until two of them are in a runoff.)

John Amdar, an attorney from Houston and city council member in nearby Nassau Bay, has filed for the seat. So has Phil Fitzgerald, who owns a construction business in Hull.

Also in the running is Kim Morrell, who ran for the seat in 2012. He’s a former city councilman in Seabrook who owns a printing and shipping company. Morrell says he’s pro-life, pro-gun, and against Obamacare. He’d been thinking about running again for a long time, he said, but Stockman’s Senate run convinced him.

“My sources told me Steve wasn’t going to run for the seat, and so I made a last-minute decision to run,” he said. He says he’s hired a campaign manager and hopes to have the rest of his team put together very soon.

And Michael Cole has filed, this time as a Democrat.

Meanwhile, Michael Cole has had his eye on the heavily-Republican district since 2012, when he ran as a Libertarian. He got about 6,000 votes in that election.

Now Cole, a 38-year-old teacher from Orange, Texas, is running again as a Democrat. He says he has a campaign team in place, has been crisscrossing the district, and is about to file his first report on fundraising to the Federal Elections Commission. He said he’d focus on getting things done and charged outgoing Stockman with wasting time on politics.

“I can listen to what my constituents want instead of just showboating against Barack Obama,” he said, noting that his major focus would be on middle-class job growth.

Cole explains his conversion from Lib to Dem here.  Update: This Daily Kos diarist has written a few about a Cole, with some links and embedded video.

Things just got a lot more fun for those of us who track these things.

Update: So if anybody else wants to file as a Repuke in CD-36... you still have some time to do so.  Thanks, GOP!

CCA Judge Meyers switches parties, to run for SCOTX as Democrat

Burnt Orange, Quorum Report, and PoliTex appear to have it first.

Longtime Texas Court of Criminal Appeals Judge Lawrence "Larry" Meyers announced Monday that he is leaving the Republican Party to run as a Democrat for the Texas Supreme Court.

Meyers, of Fort Worth, filed Monday on the last day of filing to seek Place 6 on the Supreme Court, currently held by Jeff Brown.

How long ago did I say that there would need to be a lot more of this sort of thing before the media people would start sitting up and taking notice?  About six weeks.

Meyers was rumored to have contemplated switching parties two years ago.  The significance of his flip today is that he will still be on the CCA as a Democrat even if he does not prevail in his bid for election to the state Supreme Court.  So the Dems just picked up a statewide officeholder.  More filing updates later.

The Weekly Wrangle

The Texas Progressive Alliance is doing its best to stay warm as it brings you this week's roundup.

Off the Kuff highlights the introductory campaign video by Senate candidate Maxey Scherr, who vividly links her opponent Sen. John Cornyn to his junior master, Sen. Ted Cruz.

Texpatriate opened voting for its 2nd Annual Person of the Year contest. Please consider voting for who YOU think had the biggest impact on Houston and Texas politics by clicking on the link!

Eye On Williamson is still, yes still, blogging at our temporary home. Without any new ideas, the Texas GOP resorts to scare tactics: Fear and the Texas GOP.

Nelson Mandela and the life he lived taught us much about human rights and peaceful protest, observed PDiddie at Brains and Eggs, but the conservative response to his passing taught us almost as much about them.

CouldBeTrue of South Texas Chisme thinks that the GOP candidates for lieutenant governor are vying for king of the racist homophobes, aka the Republican base. Will David Dewhurst outdo Todd Staples?

Neil at All People Have Value posted a picture of the oldest structure in Harris County, Texas. The longstanding virtues of home and family are only strengthened when we add the more modern values of full inclusion for all our fellow human beings. All People Have Value is part of NeilAquino.com.

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And here are some posts of interest from other Texas blogs.

Austin Contrarian explains the difference between "filtering up" and a general rise in rents.

Robb Fickman concludes that one of the biggest problems in our criminal justice system continues to be how we treat the poor.

Paul Burka eulogizes Texas historian T. R. Fehrenbach.

Zippidy Doo Dah gives an update on Rep. Steve Stockman.

Lone Star Ma criticizes the principal that forbade students from speaking Spanish at school.

The Bloggess promotes her annual holiday philanthropy project.

Sunday Funnies

Sid "Sonogram" Miller, Ted Cruz, and Louie Gohmert

The updates are flying in over the transom as we close in on Monday's candidate filing deadline for 2014.  Let's focus on the news of the weird... and that -- generally speaking, at least -- involves the TXGOP.

The former state legislator responsible for the Texas sonogram law -- in which women must have a wand inserted in their uterus, and must look at the generated image of the fetus before the clinic can perform an abortion -- is, naturally, running for Texas agriculture commissioner.  And it seems he thinks as highly of his prized quarter horses as he does the women of Texas.  First, Gator in The Bayou...

Former state representative Sid Miller wants to be the next Agriculture Commissioner of Texas. He was fired by his constituents in a 2012 Republican primary run-off election.

A serious candidate for the Republican primary, Sid hired ‘Nuge’ as his campaign manager. Yes, Ted Nugent.

Now the hopeful and self-described ‘arthur’ of the Texas sonogram law has been accused of mistreating his high-dollar, prize-winning quarter horses.

It happened at the Alamo Quarter Horse Breeder Association show in San Antonio back in May of this year.  He tied three of his horses to a trailer and pulled it with a truck.

And from that DMN article...

 “If anybody thinks that I would tie three half-million-dollar horses to a trailer and they had a chance of getting a scratch on them or injuring themselves, I would have to be an idiot,” (my emphasis) said Miller, who raises and sells the animals. “My horses get the very best of care that they can get, and not just because they are worth a lot of money, but because I think a lot of them. I love my horses.”

Sid, you took the words right out of our mouths. Sid also seemed to eventually come to an agreement with himself that he indeed is an idiot.

“I shouldn’t have done it. I just wasn’t thinking. It’s just such a common practice for me that I really didn’t think nothing of it,” Miller said. “I just should have known better because not everybody understands it.”

There's some excuse-making in there -- he's probably not going to trot his quarter horses behind a truck when anybody else can see him doing it -- but since this is Sid Miller, half-baked contrition still qualifies as progress.

I ran this cartoon by Ben Sargent last month that explains exactly why Sonogram Sid is going to be the Republican nominee, and it has nothing to do with Ted Nugent or quarter horses.

All Sid needs to do now is go on an Obamacare rant and he'll have the nomination locked up.

-- Speaking of rants, Ted Cruz seriously misjudged the depth of the bigotry among his base.  He posted a respectful acknowledgement of the passing of Nelson Mandela to his Facebook wall, and what he got back from his followers almost defies belief.  For that development we go to Burnt Orange.

... (O)ur Senator Ted Cruz shared kind words and condolences to Mandela's family and the people of South Africa. Unfortunately, the response to his statement on his Facebook page did not reflect this sentiment. And while Ted Cruz's Facebook page has never been ground zero to discover human intellect and compassion, the outpouring of racism, bigotry, and ignorance was absolutely unprecedented to see for a man who had just recently passed and did so much for the country he led. Instead, the majority of comments referred to Mandela as a communist and a terrorist.

BOR has posted some screenshots of the filth, just in case the original should disappear.

Apparently the people who comprise Ted Cruz's supporters think it's better to be a racist than it is to be a communist.  This really shouldn't surprise anybody.  More on this from TFN Insider.

-- Finally, ahead of John Cornyn's hilariously ridiculous Tweets, ahead of Joe Barton declaring he would vote to repeal the minimum wage, and even ahead of Pete Olson and Steve Stockman circulating proposed articles of impeachment (of the attorney general and the president, respectively)... we have the undisputed king of the dipshits, Louie Gohmert.

Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) seemingly tied Christianity to U.S. national security during a bizarre speech on the House floor on Thursday, the Huffington Post reported.

“If you were completely areligious, completely atheistic, but you wanted to have a free country, and you wanted to have it safe and protected, then it would sound like, from historical purposes, that it might be a good thing to encourage those who believe in God to keep doing so,” Gohmert said. “Because when a nation’s leaders honor that God, that nation is protected. It’s only when it turns away that it falls.”

The remarks came during a speech about what Gohmert described as the continued persecution of Christians worldwide. The Tea Party congressman also referred to Israel during his remarks, which came less than a month after he criticized President Barack Obama’s administration for not using Biblical prophecy as the basis for U.S. policy in dealing with the country.

“If the God who protected Israel since its inception through many generations until they stopped honoring the god of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob — which, by the way, no country has ever fallen while it was truly honoring the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob,” Gohmert argued.

The Post also noted that Gohmert has blamed atheists for the June 2012 mass shooting at a Colorado movie theater and for the increase in suicide among military service members.

This half agnostic/half atheist is going to take a pass on the encouragement to anyone of speaking to an invisible Duck-Dynasty-bearded senior citizen living in the clouds for any purpose whatsoever.  But you go ahead and pray your ass off, Louie.  Hell, you can even pray for me if it makes you feel better.

The rest of you Republican elected pikers can quit now; there's no topping that.  This week, anyway.