Barrios-Van Os vs. Hinojosa

And something about patrón politics.  From the inbox, from the challenger.

I'm fighting for a Texas Democratic Party that is a party of the people, not a party of insider deals and anti-democratic machine politics. We have to be a true party of the people to inspire a majority of Texas voters to cast their votes for our candidates.

One example of what I'm fighting against occurred when Glen Maxey, a full-time paid Party staff member entitled Director of County Affairs, emailed a resolution to county and senate district party leaders before the county and senate district conventions asking the conventions to endorse Gilberto Hinojosa's candidacy for re-election as state party chair. As a full-time party staff member Mr. Maxey should adhere to strict neutrality in internal party elections, but that is not the case under the administration of Chair Hinojosa, who sees nothing wrong with using the party machinery as a personal political machine. When I was growing up in the Southside of San Antonio this is what people called patrón politics, and they didn't like it.

And now Mr. Hinojosa has sent all the convention delegates an email claiming that various senate districts have endorsed him, obviously intending to make the delegates think their votes have already been decided. But you have a free right to cast your delegate vote however you choose. Nobody can instruct any delegate how to vote at the Texas Democratic Party Convention, as Unit Rule voting is strictly forbidden by Texas Democratic Party Rules, Article IV, Section 4.e.: "The use of the unit rule or the practice of instructing delegations shall not be permitted at any level of the convention process."

When Mr. Maxey, on behalf of Mr. Hinojosa, asked senate district and county conventions to pass pre-emptive resolutions endorsing Mr. Hinojosa for re-election, the filing deadline to run for party chair was still in the future and I was still weighing the very serious decision of whether to run. When I saw this crude anti-democratic action coming from the state party leadership I decided I had to take a stand, because I have learned from spending my adult life as a grassroots activist this is the kind of thing that turns people away from politics. The simple fact is that our party itself must be a true model of democracy if we hope to make more people feel welcome in order to broaden our political base of support to win Texas back.

This is a fairly prominent point B-VO is making, in an alleged "Year of the Woman" in Texas politics.  And the most-clicked post in this blog's twelve-year history is about Gilberto Hinojosa.  I'll leave you to your current interpretations of that old news.

Eight years ago, in Fort Worth, Glen Maxey was the outsider running for TDP chair.  After Charlie Urbina-Jones and Kesha Rogers (!!) were eliminated in the first round, Maxey was the last man standing against Boyd Richie.  Richie had assumed the chairmanship ahead of the convention in an SDEC vote when Charles Soechting resigned early.  Maxey fell about 150 votes short in the runoff, with 46.5%.  Even worse, the Progressive Populist Caucus -- at that time one of the largest in the party, now defunct -- endorsed Richie, to the rage of some of us.

I blogged so much about the worthlessness of Richie as chair over the years that I didn't have the stomach to go pull them all out of the archives... but did get this one anyway, just for you.  When Richie resigned early a couple of years ago, the SDEC picked Hinojosa to be the chairman-in-waiting.  And Maxey is now the insider, trying to rig the game for the establishment incumbent.

See how this goes?  Patrón politics.

Party chair elections usually are not much more than a tempest in a teapot, and Barrios-Van Os lost to Hinojosa once already, two years ago.  So she has a long and tough row to hoe, even laying aside his multiple endorsements and inexorable incumbency.

The thing you really need to understand is that if the Texas Democratic Party were like the Republican Party of Texas, RBVO would have been elected two years ago in a landslide.  She's the base of the party, not the establishment.  She's from the Democratic wing, not the other corporate, conservative one.  So Texas Democrats are just the opposite of Texas Republicans in more ways than the obvious ones.

Whereas the base of the RPT -- the Tea Party -- exercises its clout over things like the platform, scares the nominees of the party into toeing their lines on immigration and the like... the base of the TDP is marginalized and dismissed.  The TeaBaggers may be insane, but they're still calling the shots, and the so-called sane Republicans cannot slow them down.  It's a testament to the power of voting: it doesn't matter how nuts you are, if you outyell and outwork everybody else, you can win.

If you really want to understand why we can't have nice things in Texas... this is it.  This.

This sort of bullshit is why progress always makes Texas its very last stop.  If you can't have liberal Democrats in the Texas Democratic Party, you can't have an effective Democratic Party in Texas.  The results speak for themselves.  Texas Democrats have spent decades trying to be Republican Lite, with nothing to show for it.  Harry Truman said it best.

A revision on the definition of insanity, courtesy Dr. Wayne Dyer, is that if you keep doing the same things you've always done, you'll keep getting the same results you've always gotten.  Texas Democrats, I'm looking at you.

More Bad News for Republicans

It's not just Greg Abbott's unfortunate developments today, though he does bat leadoff.

In May 2009, a former assistant attorney general in Greg Abbott’s office sued the Office of the Attorney General in Dallas County court, claiming she’d been fired for refusing to lie under oath about a Dallas County judge. Five years later, the Dallas-based Fifth Court of Appeals has ruled that Ginger Weatherspoon can go forward with her lawsuit.

The AG’s office has spent years trying to get the suit tossed, claiming, among other things, that Weatherspoon didn’t make a “good faith” effort to blow the whistle to the right links in the chain of command. A three-justice panel disagreed, and issued an opinion Monday written by Justice David Evans that said Dallas County Judge Martin Hoffman did the right thing last year when he refused to grant the AG’s office its request for summary judgment.

Weatherspoon’s initial filing in 2009 garnered media attention because of its explosive content: She claimed she refused to sign a “false affidavit” filled with “a number of misrepresentations and mischaracterizations” about David Hanschen, who, at the time, was a Dallas County family court judge involved in a pretty nasty tussle with the Abbott’s office over child support.

If Texas were any other state, if this much relentless corrupt behavior was coming to light about anybody else other than Abbott... that candidate would be electoral toast.

-- Rick Perry, on his way out the door to California in retirement, is doing his best to see that Lone Star Democrats have a fighting chance in November.  The headline: "Why Rick Perry's remarks on gays could sour Texas on Tesla"...

Texas Gov. Rick Perry has made a career out of visiting, recruiting, and relocating businesses from California to Texas. But as the state’s GOP continues to push further and further to the right of the political spectrum, could the state’s ultra-conservative stance hurt recruitment from a progressive state?

First came the Texas Republican Party platform that said homosexuality is a choice and endorsed therapy aimed at “curing” people of being gay – a therapy banned in California.

Then, while on a company recruitment trip – one specifically aimed at enticing California based car maker Tesla to build a factory in Texas – Gov. Perry told a group of businesspeople that homosexuality was like alcoholism: whether or not you feel compelled to do something, you have the ability not to act on your urges.

“I may have the genetic coding that I’m inclined to be an alcoholic. But I have the desire not to do that. And I look at homosexual issue as the same way,” Perry said. (Watch a video of Perry’s response.)

Reporters in the room for the event say people in the crowd gasped after hearing Perry’s statement. The governor took plenty of criticism over the weekend for his comparison, leading up to a testy exchange with CNBC “Squawk Box” co-anchor Joe Kernen Monday morning.

Republicans really don't get how backward and ignorant this sort of thing looks to people elsewhere.  The rest of the article "devil-advocates' that it's not so bad, but that isn't at all the case.  People outside of Texas who aren't conservative -- that is to say, the vast majority of Americans -- are completely appalled at these social developments.  And that's before the topic changes to guns, or women's reproductive rights.

The Texas economy will bust again as soon as oil does.  Don't think it won't.  And the extended opportunities to diversify it will have been squandered by two decades of religious conservative dominance.  Casino gambling, marijuana decriminalization and then legalization... all blocked by the fundies.  Texas has managed alternate energy diversification to the extent that even the oil barons are making a play, which is how you can tell that Big Oil doesn't rule here like you think.

It's Big God that's the problem.  And that's exclusively a Republican problem (that they in turn make a problem for all of the rest of Texas).

-- Another right-wing talking point explodes in their faces: it was, in fact, a YouTube that prompted the Benghazi attack.

Ahmed Abu Khatallah, the suspect captured by U.S. special forces on Tuesday for his role in the 2012 Benghazi attack, reportedly said he was motivated in part by the anti-Islam online video made in America, according to the New York Times.

"What he did in the period just before the attack has remained unclear. But Mr. Abu Khattala told other Libyans in private conversations during the night of the attack that he was moved to attack the diplomatic mission to take revenge for an insult to Islam in an American-made online video," Times reporter David Kirkpatrick wrote in a story on Khattala on Tuesday.

Somebody owes Susan Rice an apology.

Do you think conservatives ever get weary about being wrong about everything? Or, like climate change and evolution and the polling in late 2012, they just refuse to believe the reality that they are wrong about everything?

-- Last, our local conservo-blogmeister Big Jolly seems distressed about the seeming inevitability (I warned you about that) of GOP electoral shoe-ins while he advocates a vote for Leticia Van de Putte in this post.

Folks, get ready for Lt. Gov. Patrick. This is how he operates, throwing money and government at the “crisis” of the day. No long term planning because he has no core belief in small government conservatism. No collaboration with the Feds to find out what they are doing. Just Dan being Dan. Of course, he does have an opponent in November.

I suppose he's going to have to spend a lot of time denying that's what he meant.

I'm willing to keep this "Bad News Pachyderms" series going as long as they do.

Why we need to wring the money out of our politics

Digby, at Salon.

...Whenever a powerful member of the party leadership retires or goes down to defeat, the rest of the members lose a very important resource: money. And lots of it.  The way these people ascend in partisan politics isn’t through their “beliefs” or any kind of ideological purity, it’s through their ability to raise money from big donors and industry and their strategic sense of how best to spread it around. (Eric) Cantor may have been a jerk — everyone says so.  But he was the majority leader because he had bought partisan loyalty over the years from being in bed with big money and judiciously spreading it around.

Heavy sigh.

But it isn’t just money. It’s also organization. As Robert Costa reported last Friday, McCarthy had it in spades. Not that he built it himself, mind you. He inherited the chief of staff of the most ruthlessly effective House majority leader in GOP history:

McCarthy’s office — led by chief of staff Tim Berry, who served in the same role for former House majority leader Tom Delay (R-Tex.) — methodically built their count with a numerical ranking system that DeLay had mastered. That gave McCarthy critical intelligence on who might need extra attention. And McCarthy’s top deputy whips weren’t his closest friends, but rather committee chairmen, a sign he understood how best to reach members — through their bosses.

Tom and his minions learned something from trying to kill cockroaches, obviously.  It's also now clear that we will never completely extinguish the children of The Hammer.  But back to the new-boss-same-as-the-old-boss.

Kevin McCarthy has been planning this ascension since the beginning of his political career. He’s an establishment man all the way, and in the establishment, money talks. (In fact, money’s “speech” has even got constitutional protection.) It’s how power is built and it’s not exclusive to the Republicans. Democrats do it exactly the same way.

I'd like to say 'duh' but there are still too many voters who don't understand this.  And when I say voters, I mean Democratic ones.  You know... the people who have nominated Jim Hogan this year, and in years past, Grady Yarbrough and Gene Kelly and the like.  Voting in midterm elections, especially in Texas, is a minority report, so you have to imagine that the majority -- non-voters -- just doesn't think enough about this sort of thing to care.

Weekend after next, Texas Democrats meet in plenary session in Big D to caucus and rally their partisans for a fall faceoff in which they remain decided underdogs.  I'll be among them as both reporter and delegate.  Unless, you know, somebody holding a grudge about my Green participation decides to try to strip my credential.  I don't expect that to happen, but stranger things and all that.  Still, it'll be nice to have a long weekend in another growing bastion of blue in the Lone Star State.  Dallas County elected a lesbian sheriff before Houston elected a lesbian mayor, after all.

There are Democrats who are suspicious of my midterm election year conversion, just as there are Greens who think I've sold out for access.  Here's how I rationalize it: until the liberal political party devoid of corporate influence can at least grow strong enough as an electoral threat to pull the Democrats back from the right, I -- we -- have to play in the sandbox as it is constructed.  And that does NOT mean trying to raise as much money as the GOP.  It does mean that we need to plug into Move to Amend, and support the infrastructure and local efforts to reduce and ultimately end the corrupting influence of caysh in the body politic.  In terms of minimal impact greater than nothing, some intensification of this movement in Texas sends a message to that toad Ted Cruz.

Eric Cantor, Kevin McCarthy, Tim Berry, and yes, Greg Abbott should be all the evidence you need to see that change is long overdue.

Update: Or perhaps we could just tell our Congresscritters to enforce the Tillman Act of 1907.

Greg Abbott's Bad News This Week

If Texas were any place else in the Union, there's no way a guy so profoundly corrupt would be leading in the polls.

Families who live and work near hazardous chemical facilities no longer have access to information about the type or amount of dangerous toxics in their community. According to a report by WFAA-TV, Greg Abbott recently issued a legal opinion barring the disclosure of such information despite federal law permitting disclosure and longstanding state practice to make that information available to anyone who requests it.

Abbott’s decision reflects an about-face from proclamations made by other state leaders to beef up disclosure of chemical facilities in the wake of last year’s disastrous explosion of an ammonium nitrate storage facility in West, Texas.

Why do you suppose he wants corporations to be able to keep that a secret?

The ruling by Abbott says the locations of explosive and toxic chemicals must be kept confidential because of security concerns. The ruling states that information ”is more than likely to assist in the construction or assembly of an explosive weapon or a chemical, biological, radiological, or nuclear weapon of mass destruction.”

But Tommy Muska, the Mayor of the town of West, where last year’s tragedy struck, believes there is greater danger in withholding the locations of potentially dangerous chemicals from the public. He hopes the state can find some middle ground that will keep the public informed.

“They’re worried it could get into the wrong hands,” he says. “I strongly feel, though, that the public, the 99 percent of good people out there, have a right to know what’s in their backyard.”

He can always roll away and hide for a few days until the dust settles.  Speaking just for myself, I don't trust Greg Abbott to keep me safe from domestic terrorists... or the companies they own that contribute to his campaign.  Like these Wilks brothers.

Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott (R) dodged the question last week of whether he agrees with his party's support for "reparative therapy," a process purported to change the sexual orientation of gay people. But campaign records show the gubernatorial candidate has been flying around on a private plane donated by two billionaires who help fund the "ex-gay" movement.

Texas fracking tycoons Dan and Farris Wilks have given Abbott a combined total of more than $30,000 worth of in-kind donations this year for the use of a private plane. The Wilks' charitable trust, The Thirteen Foundation, has contributed nearly $3 million to groups that promote gay conversion therapy, a discredited pseudo-medical practice meant to change people's sexual orientation from gay to straight. The foundation also donates millions to anti-abortion and conservative religious groups.

Abbott's campaign did not respond to a request for comment.

The Texas Republican Party endorsed reparative therapy in its platform this year and asserted that homosexuality is not "an acceptable alternative lifestyle." 

The Wilkses are frackers AND homophobes.  A Teabagging two-fer!

How foul does Greg Abbott have to stink before Texans decide they've had enough?

The Weekly Wrangle

The Texas Progressive Alliance thinks it's the Republican Party of Texas platform writers that need some therapy as it brings you this week's roundup.

Off the Kuff emphatically reminds us that Greg Abbott owns the RPT platform, no matter how much he may try to avoid the subject.

Libby Shaw at Texas Kaos asks why bother to address issues of substance that matter to most of us when it is easier to scare voters with hate talk? The Texas GOP unleashes its Hate Genie.

Almost as rare as Haley's Comet, both houses of Congress actually did some WORK this week, overwhelmingly passing legislation to help our veterans get better healthcare. But as Texas Leftist shares, helping our nation's heroes is simply a bridge too far for some over at Fox News.

The latest poll taken of the Texas electorate for the 2014 elections is what it is, just as Texas voters are what they have been for at least twenty years. All it demonstrates is that everybody's work is still cut out for them. But PDiddie at Brains and Eggs cautions everyone not to buy into the "It is inexorable" conservative spin of those numbers.

In the series "What Idiot Would...." Bay Area Houston adds another truth about Greg Abbott in "What Idiot would hide explosive chemicals from the public?"

WCNews at Eye on Williamson tells us we need candidates that can make undecided voters and non-voting Texas see the Texas GOP as extreme and frightening: In Order To Be A Hero, There Has To Be A Villian.

Neil at All People Have Value posted an updated list of ideas and thoughts for everyday resistance to our violent and money-grubbing culture. All People Have Value is part of NeilAquino.com.

===================

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

Fascist Dyke Motors continues her story of observing the opposition to the Houston Equal Rights Ordinance as it was being passed by City Council.

Scott Braddock reports on negative reactions to the Republican Party platform from Latino GOPers.

LGBTQ Insider laments the harsh homophobia of that same platform, while Lone Star Q identifies the "ex-gay" man behind the reparative therapy plank, and Susan Duty provides some helpful tips to straight people on how to avoid being converted to homosexuality.

Socratic Gadfly noted that Rick Perry hit new depths of cluelessness with regard to homosexuality and alcoholism.

Behind Frenemy Lines reminds Sid Miller that God actually can't make it rain.

jobsanger had a take on the Texas Tribune polls that show Democrats trailing all statewide races by significant margins.

In the Loop reads deeper into the Bowe Bergdahl prisoner exchange.

Grits for Breakfast wonders why we restrict the use of asset forfeiture funds to drug treatment only.

Tar Sands Blockade featured t.e.j.a.s. co-founder Bryan Parras' story about living in the shadow of the refineries where it is processed, and the details of The Healing Walk.

Bluedaze exposes the Mansfield, TX mayor's conflict of interest over fracking in his community.

And finally, the TPA bids a fond and hopefully temporary farewell to In The Pink Texas, whose use of Sleepless in Seattle as a political metaphor remains a classic of the genre.

Sunday Funnies

Not the numbers so much as the analysis of them

Laying aside the almost requistite harshness of the TexTrib's past record in polling, the poll's methodology (left to others to dissect), and even the fact that early snapshots hardly reveal the final picture... the most recent numbers produced by Jim Henson at UT/TT really don't leave much to quarrel about.

They represent a very accurate portrayal of the base electorate in Texas, IMHO.  Yes, Republicans have anywhere from a 8-14 point advantage in statewide races, and have had that for almost two decades now.  They wax a little in midterms (2010 being a great year for them) and wane a little in presidential election years (2008 and 2012) but that's the generic spread.

The problem this go-round is that Henson wants to be a pundit (like all the rest of us).  Start with his first premise at that link.  There probably isn't anything more obnoxiously wrong than the "resistance is futile" meme from the GOP.

That didn't turn out too well for either the Borg or the Emperor, IIRC.  To quote the underdog: you're gravely mistaken.  Zac Petkanas is correct; Greg Abbott is the weakest candidate the TXGOP could have nominated, and he has demonstrated that ineptitude every time he comes out of hiding and says or does something craven and/or stupid.  Abbott has only the home field advantage.  That's it.

Henson's second postulate ("The statewide Republican advantage survived a divisive primary season just fine") is also false and somewhat laughably so.  His poll was taken between May 30 and June 8, at the crest of the GOP primary runoff results, and concluding just as the RPT was holding their convention in Fort Worth.  You know, the one with the party platform planks that received national notoriety for their undue harshness on immigration reform and reparative therapy and reproductive freedom and a host of other issues.

There isn't enough backlash to those outrages --  from Republicans, mind you -- baked into this poll.  I could go on and eviscerate the other three points he and his polling associate, Joshua Blank, make but you get the picture.  These poll numbers are hardly probative of much of anything beyond the established baseline.

"B-B-But Wendy Davis replaced her campaign manager!", you would sputter if you were a crimson partisan.

True enough...State rep. Chris Turner has been brought on to replace DC darling Karin Johanson.  Not that big a deal.

Turner was Davis’ first choice to manage her bid, said someone close to the campaign, but was initially unavailable due to timing with the legislative session. Washington Democrats had been excited about Johanson, who they saw as an experienced hand who lent credibility to the campaign.

It was, in fact, Johanson's idea.

Johanson took credit for the decision in a farewell email.

“A few weeks ago I suggested to Sen. Davis that she reach out to Rep. Chris Turner to lead the campaign to election day. Chris has managed tough Texas races and as member of the Texas House is respected across the state for his smarts and common sense,” Johanson wrote in an email to the campaign staff, which was forwarded to msnbc by the campaign. “I am proud of what we have all built in this campaign…We have raised more money, have more donors (133,600) and have more volunteers (18,222) than any candidate ever in Texas. We have raised more money than any non-incumbent candidate for Governor in the country. We are organizing voters in every region of the state.”

Though Johanson was a D.C.-based consultant who helped get Tammy Baldwin elected in Wisconsin and spent decades working Democratic politics and with EMILY’s List, Turner is a seasoned Texas consultant and Democratic state representative.

Even if you would rather believe this is campaign spin, I will suggest what I believe is the real reason Johanson decided to leave.

Recently the Davis campaign got into a bit of a spat with the Democratic Governors Association after Johanson criticized the organization for not listing the Texas gubernatorial race as a top targets for Democrats in the 2014 cycle.

"The uninformed opinions of a Washington, DC desk jockey who's never stepped foot in Texas couldn't be less relevant to what's actually happening on the ground," Johanson said.

In response the DGA communications director Danny Kanner said that Texas is a historically difficult state for Democrats to win statewide.

"Governor Shumlin stated the obvious fact that Texas has historically been a tough state for Democrats, but that -- because we have a strong candidate -- we are hopeful about our chances this year," Kanner said.

The DGA isn't going to send millions of dollars to Texas for Wendy -- exactly the opposite in fact, as has traditionally been the case -- but they did not need to be dismissive of the Davis campaign... and Johanson shouldn't have kicked them in the shins when they were.

Anyhow, the worst way this can reasonably be interpreted is as a tempest in a teapot... and the seas are calming.

We're coming off an election just a couple of weeks ago where 1% of registered voters cast a ballot in the D primary runoff.  Three times as many voted Republican, but that's still not saying much.  Obviously this is what Battleground Texas is working hard to change.

It's way too early for any declarative statements about the 2014 election until Texans start paying more attention, and that won't happen until sometime after Labor Day.  Meanwhile, BGTX is performing the Aegean task of building the political infrastructure necessary to break up the Texas monolith.  And that remains a massive work in progress.

Abbott 44%, Davis 32%

In third place was "no opinion", with 17%.

“Abbott remains strong and this, in a lot of ways, confirms the strategy that we’ve seen from his camp: Leave well enough alone,” said Jim Henson, director of the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin and co-director of the UT/TT Poll. “The Davis campaign seems to be not able to reverse the trend.”

That's about right.  I don't think this is the reason that Chris Murphy was brought in to replace Karin Johanson, by the way.  But certainly he takes over a campaign that appears to be treading water, for any variety of reasons inside and outside its control.

Dan Patrick is still riding the wave.

In the the race for lieutenant governor, Republican Dan Patrick has the biggest margin in the pack of statewide races, leading Democrat Leticia Van de Putte 41 percent to 26 percent, with 23 percent undecided and the remainder going to third-party candidates and unnamed candidates.

Historical trends holding.

Republican candidates lead in all of the other statewide nonjudicial races, with the number of undecided voters climbing as you go down the ballot:

• U.S. Sen. John Cornyn leads Democrat David Alameel 36 percent to 25 percent in a race where 26 percent of the voters said they have not made up their minds. Rebecca Paddock, a Libertarian, got 5 percent, the Green Party’s Emily Sanchez got 3 percent and 5 percent said they would vote for “someone else.”

• In the race for attorney general, Republican Ken Paxton leads Democrat Sam Houston 40 percent to 27 percent, with 27 percent undecided. Libertarian Jamie Balagia and Green Jamar Osborne each have 3 percent.

• Republican Glenn Hegar leads Democrat Mike Collier 32 percent to 25 percent in the contest for comptroller of public accounts, followed by Libertarian Ben Sanders at 5 percent and Green Deb Shafto at 2 percent. In that race, 37 percent said they had not formed an opinion about their vote.

• In the race for land commissioner, Republican George P. Bush leads Democrat John Cook 36 percent to 25 percent, followed by Justin Knight, a Libertarian, at 6 percent, and Valerie Alessi from the Green Party at 3 percent. Thirty percent of the voters were undecided.

• Republican Sid Miller leads Democrat Jim Hogan by 8 percentage points in the agriculture commission race, with 32 percent to Hogan’s 24 percent. The Green Party’s Kenneth Kendrick got 5 percent and Libertarian Rocky Palmquist got 4 percent in that race. The remaining 34 percent were undecided.

• The numbers in the race for railroad commissioner were similar: Republican Ryan Sitton, 32 percent; Democrat Steve Brown, 24 percent; Libertarian Mark Miller, 6 percent; and Green Martina Salinas, 4 percent. The other 33 percent have not picked a favorite.

I would not expect to see any great shakeups in the numbers before Labor Day.  All the bad news for Republicans, with the possible exception of the fallout from their various party platform disasters, is baked in here.  Update: Notice in the next post that I reconsidered and abandoned this premise after some time to analyze the results... and not just because the TexTrib pollsters decided they agreed with it.

It's going to be a long hot summer for Battleground Texas volunteers, sweating it out to have something to show for their hard work in November.

Cantor gets 'bagged

Yeah yeah, "no one could have predicted that terrorists would fly airplanes into buildings", but they did.

In the most stunning upset since Republicans took over the House of Representatives four years ago, Majority Leader Eric Cantor lost his GOP primary Tuesday to a poorly funded and disorganized Tea Party activist. David Brat, an economics professor, beat Cantor by 12 points when the Associated Press called the race shortly after 8 p.m. Cantor served as the congressman from Virginia's 7th district since 2001 and as the leader of House Republicans since 2011.

 Cantor was the chief opponent of President Obama in the House, organizing unanimous opposition to the stimulus act in 2009 and opposing a deal led by John Boehner to end the government shutdown in 2011 in part by raising revenue. Cantor felt the heat from Brat over immigration, airing ads in the closing days saying he opposed "amnesty." Brat will face Democrat Jack Trammell in the general election.

There's a few more interesting angles to take on the morning after than "Tea Party rises! Flexes muscle! Eats GOP! Fires all of its guns at once and explodes into space!!!1!"

The first revealed itself early yesterday evening: that Virginia Democrats heeded the call from former Georgia Congressman Ben Jones -- also known as Cooter from 'The Dukes of Hazard'.

Cooter, who ran against Cantor in 2002, has penned an open letter calling upon Democrats in his former Virginia district to vote in the open primary next Tuesday for tea party opponent Dave Brat in order to defeat U.S. House Majority Leader Cantor.

Crossing party lines to vote in an open primary has a long tradition in the solidly one-party South, Cooter argues in his letter. "[B]y voting for David Brat in the Seventh District Republican primary, we Democrats, independents, and Libertarians can make a big difference in American politics," he argues. "It is your right to cast that vote. It is an 'open' primary and it doesn’t preclude anyone from voting anyway they wish in November. It may be the only way to empower those who want to make a statement about the dysfunctional Congress and 'politics as usual.'"

This is what happens in Texas frequently, and what Rush Limbaugh branded Operation Chaos in 2008.  Be sure you read both of these links, all the way to the end, in order to gauge the value of the tactic versus its ultimate 2008 result.  Nobody can apparently measure the effectiveness of this sort of thing (unless I just can't find the evidence, that is). So I'm going to go with 'urban legend' on the power of the crossover vote, as the district went 57-42 for Romney in 2012, until I see something more convincing in terms of empirical data.

Update:

While Republican primary turnout spiked by 28 percent over 2012, according to the State Board of Elections, Cantor received nearly 8,500 fewer votes this year than he did in the 2012 Republican primary, a drop that was larger than Brat's 7,200-vote margin of victory. Regardless of how many Democrats turned out to oppose Cantor, he still would have prevailed had he maintained the same level of support as in his 2012 landslide.

If Democrats showed up in large numbers to vote against Cantor, turnout should have spiked highest from 2012 in Democratic-leaning areas, with Cantor seeing an especially large drop-off in support. In fact, turnout rose slightly more in counties that voted more heavily for Mitt Romney in the 2012 presidential election.

The second, from Politico this morning, reveals that immigration reform -- or amnesty, as conservatives now derisively call it -- isn't the reason Cantor got upset by Bagger Brat.

Democrats are making the case that it was Cantor himself – not immigration – that dealt a powerful blow to the one-time rising Republican star’s political career. And they are releasing new data on Wednesday to back up their argument.

About 72 percent of registered voters in Cantor’s district polled on Tuesday said they either “strongly” or “somewhat” support immigration reform that would secure the borders, block employers from hiring those here illegally, and allow undocumented residents without criminal backgrounds to gain legal status – three key tenets of an overhaul, according to a poll by the left-leaning firm Public Policy Polling and commissioned by the liberal advocacy group Americans United for Change.

Looking just at Republicans in Cantor’s district, the poll found that 70 percent of GOP registered voters would support such a plan, while 27 percent would oppose.

Meanwhile, Cantor was deeply unpopular in his district, the PPP poll found. About 63 percent of those surveyed in his district said they did not approve of the job Cantor has been doing, with 30 percent of registered voters approving. Among Republicans, 43 percent approved of Cantor’s job performance, while 49 percent disapproved, the survey found.

“Cantor didn’t lose because of immigration,” pollster Tom Jensen wrote in the memo obtained in advance by POLITICO. “He lost because of the deep unpopularity of both himself personally and of the Republican House leadership. Even in his conservative district voters still want immigration reform passed, and they want it this year.”

Well, it was a "librul" poll, so cons sure aren't going to believe it.  They would rather place their faith in God's will or their own self determination, after all.

Update: There are a few Republicans also saying that it wasn't immigration that brought him down.

Candidly, the most interesting thing to me is that we might have a Texan as Speaker of the US House, sooner than later.  Because it's always about us, after all.

And because (Cantor) was next in line to be Speaker of the House, his ouster means that Dallas Rep. Jeb Hensarling could be in for a promotion. It had already been widely assumed that Speaker John Boehner may call it quits within a year, tired of tangling with tea partiers.

Whether Hensarling would have challenged Cantor, the party’s No. 2 leader, for Speaker was never clear. The Texan, elected in 2002, gave up his post as the party’s No. 4 leader last year to become chairman of the House Financial Services Committee — a perch that comes with lots of attention from deep-pocket donors. He has been widely viewed as a plausible contender for Boehner’s job, having led the Republican Study Committee, a key conservative bloc, before joining the party’s leadership team.

Cantor’s defeat will trigger a leadership scramble that will play out in coming months, and it opens a fresh path for Hensarling’s further ascent.

Plenty of tea leaves still to be read on these developments.  You can start with Booman and TPM, and I'll add more if it tells anything more significant than the stock takes.

Update: For Jewish Republicans... oy vey.

A few more words about Bergdahl and his family

-- Our local cretin Burt Levine (yes, cretin) posted this on his Facebook page.

Never underestimate the depths to which conservatives can lower themselves.  Can they dive deeper into their own sewage than suggesting Bergdahl's mother is making sexual overtures to the president?  We would hope not, but the truth is they probably can.

-- On Bergdahl's father:

Bob Bergdahl is a devout Presbyterian, not a Muslim; he self-taught himself Pashto and Urdu to better understand his son’s captors and the “world he could not escape;” he followed jihadis on Twitter to gain information; he researched Afghanistan to acquire information he didn’t have; along with his son, he questioned the war.  All of this has made Mr. Bergdahl an incomprehensible entity in this unfolding story. And as we have seen over the past many years, what the right doesn’t understand, what it can’t grasp, what eludes the very limited thinking it engages in, has to be something malodorous, something foreign, and therefore evil. Mr. Bergdahl, despite his deep religious beliefs, a strong commitment to his son, obvious intelligence and resourcefulness and patience – all positive attributes –  is not easily placed in one of the little boxes the right-wingers love to use. After all, if you’re unable to critically think, the only option left is to label.

As Sean Elder at Newsweek wrote of Mr. Bergdahl, “He wept, he suffered, but he persevered, and like any resourceful man, he tried to understand the nature and origin of the problem.”

-- Last, on the soldier/POW himself.

Republicans are so consumed by racial animus and rage that they have finally sunk to a level of attacking a white American soldier, a prisoner of war, as surrogate for Barack Obama. The conservative movement appeared to have sunk to the depths of depravity when they shutdown the government and tried to destroy the good faith and credit of the United States that was borne of racial hatred for this president. However, all their anti-American actions over the past five years pale in comparison to attacking a young man who volunteered to fight and die for his country, was held in captivity as a prisoner of war for five years, and escaped his captors twice, only to be the recipient of Republicans’ racial hatred for the president that negotiated his return home.

Racism is a vile cancer that has metastasized to such a level in the conservative movement that their animus extends to a white American soldier as surrogate for the black president who brought him home. Conservatives have indeed hit rock bottom.

No, they haven't.  There is no fathomable depth -- and not much waiting, either -- to the next craven display of political opportunism.  There is nothing too revolting for them to say, nothing too vile for them to attempt.

This is where we are in the state of our political discourse today.  Conservatives will say any hideous thing they can think of to score a point with their side, and the rest of us are left with our mouths agape in disgust.

Update: A soft call for sanity from the right.

I'd like to have that conversation, but...

-- ...what's the point? As long as the RepubliTea Party of Texas keeps calling it a narcotic, it's just a parlor game to speculate on the future date when Texas will make some progress on marijuana decriminalization/legalization.

It turns out that the Houston Chronicle’s Baker Institute blog has put up a range of views on the idea of changing Texas’ marijuana laws. The Statesman has posted two pieces on the subject, one from the ACLU and one from an opponent. The opponent, who heads the Drug Free America Foundation, looked down her nose this way at pot vacationers who head to Colorado: “Colorado experienced an infestation of ‘drug tourism.’ ”

I don’t imagine people consider Napa Valley wine tourism an “infestation”. Napa Valley tourists will spend tons more more money and sport fewer tattoos. They may head to Napa to get a buzz, but it’s a refined, expensive buzz.

Until those people who want to see that progress happen start lining themselves up at polling places across Texas and vote to remove from office those who oppose it, that is.

Yes, it could happen in less than five months... or it could take as long as ten years.  Not even Colorado's swelling tax coffers and a corresponding reduction in crime will sway the religious fundies.  They're the ones who lifted Dan Patrick up and have placed him at the gates of heaven.

If weed is your issue, then you are going to have to vote them out.

-- ... that immigration conversation needs to happen among Republicans.  And apparently it is.

Delegate Maria Espinoza, who has compared the Texas Solution to the Nazi’s Final Solution, told the thousands gathered in the convention hall that granting any kind of legal status to those here illegally would be tantamount to negotiating with terrorists. Instead of laughter, her comparison was greeted with thunderous applause.

Go back and read that graf again.

When it was over, one hardliner proclaimed: “Boom, the Texas Solution is dead.”

“What kind of message is that for Hispanic voters?” said Norman Adams, a Houston insurance agent who was part of the team that got the Texas Solution inserted into the platform in the first place. “As far as I’m concerned we’ve moved the party back 10 years,” he said.

[...]

“While I have tremendous respect for the will of the people and the direction of our Party’s grass roots activists, I am saddened today by the substantive elimination of the Texas Solution from the Party’s platform,” Rep. Jason Villalba, R-Dallas, told Quorum Report.

[...]

A young Latina who did not wish to be identified because she has worked on various Republican campaigns in North Texas said she wasn’t giving up on the GOP, but the events that unfolded on Saturday were “breathtaking,” as she put it.

“I’m going to see if my friends want to help Leticia Van de Putte,” she said, referring to the Democratic nominee for Lt. Governor.

Now we're talking.  That is progress.

GOP plots revenge against Cruz

After his sweet two weeks of high exposure and straw-poll dominance in Fort Worth, it certainly is nice to see that not every conservative in the land is swallowing Poop Cruz's BS.

Ted Cruz has not made himself a popular man in Washington. The Texas Republican would argue that’s the point. But even for a Senator — an elected office with the backing of an entire state — ticking off powerful people can have consequences.

In his first two years in Washington, Cruz has managed to help force a government shutdown, undermine the GOP’s chances of taking over the Senate and force uncomfortable votes for his fellow Republicans — not to mention the verbal bombs he lobs on a regular basis, many aimed at his own party. His colleagues, aware of the threats they face from primary challengers, have mostly held their tongues and their fire so far. But Cruz has already done some damage without much trying. A week after his election to the Senate in 2012, Cruz was named vice chair of the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC), which works to elect Republicans to the Senate. But he subsequently refused to endorse incumbent Senators, or help them in their races, a fact that many Tea Party insurgents have seized upon. He hasn’t set foot in the NRSC in more than a year, sources say.

“They tried to channel him to be somewhat productive. They tried that with NRSC,” says John Feehery, a former longtime GOP Hill aide. “Lyndon Johnson once said he’d rather have people inside the tent pissing out. But (Cruz) seems to be inside the tent pissing in. (my emphasis)”

That towel-pop from a high-ranking GOP consultant is so revealing.

Cruz hasn’t campaigned or raised money for GOP challengers, but he has forced a series of uncomfortable votes — the most prominent one being a debt-ceiling bill in February — that put imperiled incumbents on the spot. “After already forcing a strategic blunder on the conference, he stood up, looked his Republican colleagues in their eyes and said he wouldn’t work against them in the primaries.” says Kyle Downey, a former GOP Senate leadership aide. “Then he broke his word. Breaking your word, or lying, has consequences in the Senate, both seen and unseen. When it comes to the currency of relationships, he’s running up big debts.”

Not that Cruz needs much help. He remains enormously popular with a small but vocal part of the base. That has given him a powerful grassroots-fundraising platform. Even though he’s not up for re-election for another four years, Cruz has raised $1.8 million so far this cycle, $1.5 million of it coming from individual donations. He’ll need this kind of support and much more if he decides to run for President in 2016. By all accounts, Cruz’s push to shut down the government did not play well with business and corporate donors. “He’s the last person Wall Street would give money to,” says a big Republican donor. “They’re more interested in a Chris Christie or Jeb Bush. Even Rand Paul would be a preferable alternative to Cruz. How [Cruz] is going to run for President without big donors is beyond me.”

Ted will just 'trust the grassroots' to sign over their life savings, AND take out a reverse mortgage and donate it all to him.  He's a populist, you see.

At home in Texas, Cruz has little to worry about, given the Tea Party’s dominance of Texas primaries. He’s much more secure than fellow Senate Tea Party Caucus member Mike Lee, a Utah Republican Senator who’s up for re-election in 2016 and is likely to be facing a tough primary at home. That said, Texas is a state with changing demographics. “If he’s not careful the changing demographics in Texas is going to make it harder for him to get re-elected,” Feehery says.

Yeah, sooner or later the Latinos -- and women and young voters of all creeds and the 50%+ of Texans in general who would rather watch the Emmys or soccer or the NBA Finals or whatever else was on TV this weekend, and every weekend -- will show up at the polls and turn the tide from rabid red to some nice shade of purple.  Hope it happens in my lifetime.

While we wait, there'll be another TexTrib poll released any day now.  They were polling at the end of May (as a YouGov panelist, I was polled nine days ago), all statewide executive races and all four ballot-accessible parties (D, R, G, L) on the November slate.  Maybe those results will give everyone who's not drinking the tea-flavored Kool Aid a whiff of encouragement.