More Texas Republicans and their twins, separated at birth

Starring Glenn Hegar as Jethro Bodine.

Both of them.

Starring Sid Miller as Archie Bunker (in a hat).

And without.

Unhappy Sid.

Unhappy Sid again.

Previous editions include Greg Abbott as Dr. Strangelove.  More as they develop.

And starring Junior Samples as Jim Hogan

I can't claim having made the first comparison but I can sure riff off it.

While Hogan, who resembles the old Junior Samples character in Hee Haw, has granted a few interviews to Texas Observer and Fort Worth Star Telegram, (Hogan said) he's not going to do any more interviews. He notes NBC requested an interview, but Hogan wanted no part of it.

According to Randy Hanna, Democratic party parliamentarian for the Johnson County Democratic Party, where Hogan resides, "Jim Hogan is a nice enough fellow, but he's no Democrat."

Hanna says he was horrified when he attempted to determine Hogan's position vis a vis public school lunch programs, which are overseen by the agriculture commissioner.

"He said what poor people need to do is plant gardens and that would solve a lot of problems with the lunch programs," Hanna recalls. "I couldn't believe he was serious, that he would even say that, but he was dead serious."

Johnson County Democratic Party secretary LuAnne Leonard said she was stunned when Hanna related details of his interview to her.

"The kids in the lunch program here are from low-income families and a majority of them live in apartments, so I was flabbergasted when I heard the 'plant gardens' statement. Hogan really has no clue."

No straight ticket voting this year, Democrats.  Leave Hee Haw to the GOP.

Not a single politician or party operative we've spoken with can pinpoint any specific reason why Hogan is seeking the job, but many suspect some kind of backroom Republican shenanigans similar to Rush Limbaugh's 2008 Operation Chaos. (Limbaugh wanted Republicans to cross-over in the primaries and vote for the weakest Democratic candidates to ensure Republican victories in the general election.) In other words, Hogan could well be an insurance policy for Republican interests in a race where both Republican runoff candidates -- former state representatives Sid Miller and Tommy Merritt -- are weak and seen as fairly vulnerable. [...]

A check of Hogan's voting records finds that he usually votes in the Republican primary, but voted in the Democratic primary in 2008, presumably as Limbaugh urged. So the general consensus that Hogan is a straw-man candidate meant to be a weak sister who will be crushed in the November general election by Miller doesn't seem all that far-fetched.

Maybe it's not a conspiracy; maybe the vast majority of people in Texas really are this stupid.

Hogan has been an object of fascination for political junkies and media types. He may have won purely by chance, but his inexplicable success offers some relief from the absurdity and occasional cruelty of Texas political life. A Tumblr set up by admirers records his exploits. A Texas Monthly piece highlighted Hogan’s runoff win as one of the few bright spots of a generally disheartening night. A column Hogan wrote for the op-ed website TribTalk may go down in the record books as the most memorable piece of political rhetoric from the 2014 election:

It has been reported that I am unknown and do not campaign. If you will pause for a moment and Google “Jim Hogan Texas Agriculture Commissioner,” I believe you will be amazed at the amount of information available about me. I think you will agree that those reports can be put to rest.

Why is he doing this? Does he think he can win? Is he a playful imp, or Chauncey Gardiner? After meeting Hogan, it remains difficult to say. This much is certain: Hogan’s not a fool. He knows Miller will be the likely victor. But, he says, he wasn’t supposed to win the last two times. So who knows? He’s got a healthy belly laugh.

Everybody that can't vote for either Hogan or Sid Miller -- as if there's a difference-- is going to have a better option in November.  His name is Kenneth Kendrick, and he'll be the Green Party's nominee in this race.  More on him shortly.

Texpatriate has another vintage television show in mind, but the resemblance to Bob Crane just isn't there.  Nobody is, for only one example, suggesting that Hogan might be some sort of sexual deviant.

He's just a moron, and perhaps a trickster, a stooge for Sid Miller.  And that's lousy enough for everyone to vote for someone else all by itself.

Democratic consultants: pay me five grand and I'll tell you how to win

I have long chastised local political goofball (it's like a curveball, except dumber) Marc Campos for this sort of "hire-me-and-I'll-tell-you" baloney, and it's not really surprising to see a carpetbagger like Jeremy Bird recognizing a huge business opportunity in Texas when he sees one.

Two top veterans of President Obama’s campaigns are asking political campaigners to pay $5,000 per person for the chance to learn their secrets and then work for five weeks in an unpaid campaign job somewhere in America.

Democratic operatives and progressive activists are questioning this training program launched by Obama campaign architects Mitch Stewart and Jeremy Bird. The $5,000 program promises access to the wizardry of Obama’s presidential bids — and a five-week, unpaid gig on an “important Democratic campaign.”

Run by Bird and Stewart’s consulting company, 270 Strategies, the new program’s emphasis on placing paying customers in essentially volunteer roles on Democratic campaigns is atypical in the campaign training industry, and some Democrats say it sets a dangerous precedent. The firm’s first-ever “270/360 Training Intensive” program is scheduled to begin in September.

The program’s website describes a six-week program, consisting of five days of “intensive” campaign training at 270’s Chicago HQ featuring Stewart and Bird and other “architects of the 2008 and 2012 Obama campaigns,” followed by five weeks of volunteer work on an “an important Democratic campaign in the United States.”

The cost for the five-day training with Bird and Stewart is $3,500. It costs $1,500 more if a student wants the five weeks of work experience. Critics say those costs are way above the market rate for campaign trainings.

“It’s deeply concerning that leaders in our party are launching a ‘pay to play’ system for would-be campaign staff,” said a Democratic campaign veteran. “As Democrats, we should be working together to eliminate workforce barriers — such as unpaid internships — rather starting programs that further discourage participation in electoral work.”

I saw a Tweet from Houston's uber-Dem-activist Erik Vidor about this -- seeming to offer his own experience for hire -- and breezed on past it, thinking he was just being, you know, entrepreneurial.  But in context he's miffed, and then I saw that Juanita Jean was pretty steamed.  When she goes off on a Democrat about something, you know it's gotta be bad.

Yeah, it’s Jeremy Bird doing his damnest to turn Democratic politics into WalMart.

He also owns Battleground Texas (where they fight each other) and Ready for Hillary (where they openly admit that they want you to collect emails and phone numbers for them so they can “sell” them to Hillary if she decides to run).

When you put politics in the hands of people who want to get rich off of free labor, you’re might as well try to make honey out of pig poop or go on and elect the Tea Party because that’s what they want, too.

Worthless as corn flake recipes.   I’ll tell you something  - I’d rather have a four card flush than these guys.

Progressive Texans don’t know whether to laugh our butts off or to be totally mortified.  Mostly, we’re pretty damn mortified.

Democrats have long forgotten that they're supposed to be the party of "socialism" -- in the sharing sense of the word -- and not pure, raw, brutal, naked-and-afraid capitalism.  They've abandoned it because, like the the denigration of the word liberal (which only goes back to the Reagan administration) it's become a perjorative that they shirk from.

Give conservatives credit for being masters at framing the discussion.

Besides that, you might have noticed -- if you carefully read the links above -- a certain amount of frustration that extends to the Wendy Davis campaign.  As Kuff likes to say, make of that what you will.  I think it's notable that we haven't gotten to August yet and the criticism is starting to go public.  Another reminder that when someone says 'nobody pays attention to elections until Labor Day', that person is full of shit.

As far as paying a political expert for anything, you should know how I feel about that.  As far as paying a political expert this kind of money for this kind of experience, my advice is to negotiate a train car of lubricant for the sellers to throw in.  It's not like anything is going to blow up in your face, it'll just feel better after you have completed your training.

P.T. Barnum at work here, people.  It's just business.  My only question: is this a facet of the booming Texas economy for which we need to thank Rick Perry?

Unlike the credit he gets for having killed and buried all those dinosaurs millions of years ago in places like the Permian Basin and Spindletop and elsewhere across our Great State, in this case I would have to answer 'yes'.

The battle for control of the US Senate, updated

I'm not changing my mind; I'm just adding some point/counterpoint for the sake of watching the trend.  These updates deserved their own post.

Point (Booman):

I can't blame Stu Rothenberg for bitching about a polling firm that won't show its work, but I think he's just annoyed that polling keeps coming out that doesn't look good for Republican Senate candidates and governors. In the end, Rothenberg doesn't even really doubt that the race in Montana has grown closer and he lists it as a Toss-Up/Tilts Republican race, which is maybe even a little more of a pessimistic assessment than is warranted by the polling. I'd say that Montana Leans Republican right now, and the only toss-up part of it is that a lot can change between now and November.

A look at the latest polls shows Gov. Scott Walker in real trouble in Wisconsin, Gov. Rick Scott trailing in Florida, Udall and Hickenlooper up narrowly in Colorado, Sen. Kay Hagan up in North Carolina, Gov. Andrew Cuomo up by 37 points in New York, Michelle Nunn crushing David Perdue in Georgia, Rep. Gary Peters up by nine in Michigan, Mary Landrieu up in Louisiana, and Sen. Jeanne Shaheen comfortably ahead in New Hampshire. People have already written obituaries for Gov. Tom Corbett of Pennsylvania, and the Republican governors of Oklahoma, Kansas, Georgia, and Michigan aren't looking like they're in too great a shape, either. The last poll out of Maine has Democrat Mike Michaud win a narrow lead in a three-way race.

The news isn't all good. Some races are scarily close, for example, the Senate races in Iowa, Arkansas, and Colorado. But only in Arkansas does an incumbent look to be in truly serious danger. Unless these races all tilt against the Democrats in the end, the GOP is on course for a galactically bad election night. 

Counterpoint (Associated Press, referencing the Montana contest in the first paragraph above):

Montana Sen. John Walsh's thesis written to earn a master's degree from the U.S. Army War College contains unattributed passages taken word-for-word from previously published papers.

The Democrat is running against Republican Rep. Steve Daines to keep the seat Walsh was appointed to in February when Max Baucus resigned to become U.S. ambassador to China, and national Democrats said Wednesday they remained "100 percent behind Sen. Walsh."

The apparent plagiarism in Walsh's 2007 thesis, titled "The Case for Democracy as a Long Term National Strategy," was first reported by The New York Times in a story posted online Wednesday afternoon. Walsh submitted the paper to earn his Master of Strategic Studies degree nearly two years after he returned from Iraq and about a year before he became Montana's adjutant general overseeing the state's National Guard and Department of Military Affairs.

Walsh's campaign said the senator did not intend to plagiarize and that he would speak to The Associated Press later Wednesday.

Walsh is saying he was suffering from PTSD at the time he "wrote" the thesis in question.

I think that race is safe for the GOP.