Oops pushes all in on Iowa, and more Sweet '16

The consultants must laugh behind their hands.  It's like taking candy from a baby.  (A Downs Syndrome baby; if I wanted to be mean).

Former Gov. Rick Perry has brought on board four longtime Republican operatives to help him assemble a likely 2016 presidential campaign in Iowa.

RickPAC, Perry’s political action committee, announced Sunday it has hired Robert Haus, Andy Swanson, Dane Nealson and Kip Murphy.

[...]

Haus co-chaired Perry’s 2012 campaign in Iowa. Since then, he has been informally guiding Perry’s political travels to the Hawkeye State, accompanying him on swings through the state and connecting him with local power-brokers.

Nealson and Murphy were also involved in Perry’s 2012 bid. Nealson served as Central Iowa field director for Perry’s campaign, while Murphy was Western Iowa coordinator for a group that encouraged Perry to run. Also during the 2012 cycle, Nealson worked for Tim Pawlenty and Murphy for Rick Santorum. Swanson was the top organizer in Iowa for Pawlenty’s 2012 bid as well as John McCain’s 2008 presidential campaign.

In recent weeks, Perry’s potential rivals have made serious moves to lay the groundwork for Iowa campaigns. Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush has hired David Kochel, an Iowa-based strategist who advised both of Mitt Romney’s bids for the White House, while Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s PAC has leased office space in a Des Moines suburb.

The Iowa hires come days after Perry announced another addition to the team he has in place for a 2016 run: Greg Strimple, a Republican pollster who will serve as a senior adviser to RickPAC.

Perry rolled out the Iowa recruits a day before he heads to the state for a town hall meeting at Morningside College in Sioux City. The hires were first reported in local media, including the Des Moines Register and Iowa Republican blog.

Walker has gone to Texas seeking help.

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker has hired Austin-based fundraiser Susan Lilly for his likely presidential campaign, according to two Republican sources.

Lilly, who got her start as a staffer for Texas Railroad Commissioner Barry Williamson, is a player in both Texas and national Republican politics. In 1997, she started Lilly & Company, the chief fundraiser for several high-profile officeholders, including House Speaker Joe Straus, Texas Supreme Court Chief Justice Nathan Hecht and Justices Phil Johnson and Jeff Boyd. 

She also counts U.S. Sen. David Vitter of Louisiana, U.S. House Speaker John Boehner and 11 members of the Texas U.S. House delegation as clients, according to her company website.  

She is not the first Texan to join Walker's team. Rick Wiley, an Austin-based former Republican National Committee political director, was one of Walker's first hires.

Is Ted Cruz misunderestimated?  Some who won't let their names be used say yes.

A prominent Republican consultant who isn't working for any of the 2016 presidential candidates and who has been right more times than I can count said something that shocked me when we had lunch recently. He said that Texas Sen. Ted Cruz had roughly the same odds of becoming the Republican presidential nominee as former Florida governor Jeb Bush.

[...]

The combination of (Cruz's) running room as the race's one true tea-party candidate, his debating and oratorical skills and his willingness to always, on every issue, stake out the most conservative position make him a real threat.

Go read it, as much for the laughs (Bobby Jindal is ranked ahead of Huckabee) as for the acorn occasionally found by the blind hog.  Perry's early salvos comparing Cruz to Obama are being launched for a reason; probably that high-dollar pollster is telling him to do it.

We breed these conservative mutants like rabbits down here in Texas.

Update (2/16): GOPLifer also thinks Cruz is being overlooked.  I enjoy Chris Ladd's blog because he is fearless about criticizing the Republican party, but if he's right and Americans are as stupid as Ted Cruz is about net neutrality, then we're all in deep shit.  That contains the proviso that Cruz is not dissembling.

I'll go out on a very thin, early limb, with barely a bud on it, extending the horse race prognostications I posted just a few days ago.

Perry's best possible finish in Iowa will be third, ahead of Cruz but behind Mike Huckabee and Scott Walker.  What to watch for: if Cruz finishes ahead of Jeb Bush.  That's all any talking head will yammer about if it happens. And if I'm wrong and Cruz actually wins Iowa, no matter the margin, he's instantly the golden child.

Bush comes back in NH, but whoever finishes second wins the spin game.  Update: Perry's also putting a lot of effort into the Granite State.

Then you have caucuses in CO (perhaps Perry's best shot to break through with a win, but his main competition is Rand Paul and, by extension, weed) and MN (Walker), and primaries in NY (Bush, followed by Christie) and Utah (Huckabee or Cruz).  Then there are the Nevada caucuses (whomever has established the most momentum from among Bush, Walker, or TeaBagger Twins Cruz/Huckabee, the frontrunners by this time next year).

And then it's on to SC, where Miss Lindsey Graham is the favorite son.  No line here, but the ones who act the freakiest have the best shot -- I'll take Huckabee, Cruz, and Perry.  The Palmetto State is the last stand for the fuzziest of fringe radicals like Carson and Santorum and other wannabees like Jindal and John Bolton and like that.

Hopefully we get lots of those wonderful debates. ;^)

GOP primary schedule still subject to change, as they say, so besides unpredictable developments and a foggy crystal ball, that's my only disclaimer.  I'm usually better at picking Kentucky Derby contenders.

Sunday Funnies

Markos Moulitsas reads Brains and Eggs

Him, today:

There is no sense in continuing to push for something (Warren for president) that simply won't happen. It's setting up people for failure, disappointment and disillusionment. But yes, a contested primary would be good. So if the draft people are serious, why not find a candidate that will make that statement run? Sen. Bernie Sanders appears ready and willing. Why not him?

Me, three days ago.

If the dumb asses that keep trying to draft Warren would give that up and throw their allegiance to Sanders, then the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party (sans Howard Dean, who has already endorsed Hillary) might have somebody and something they could all get behind. 

Thanks, Kos.  Leave a comment next time you check in.  Oh, and it's okay if you want to support the only progressive woman who has declared she's running for president, even if you can't be out about it because she's not a Democrat.

And if you want to know why, at this point, I would support Jill Stein over Bernie Sanders -- who has simply dithered for too long now -- then here you go.

The permanent Republican majority in Texas

Ten years after Tom DeLay proclaimed his vision, it is fulfilled.  If you haven't read Dave Carney's big brag in Politico, better do so.

Turning the Democrat dream of a blue Texas into the nightmare of a massive loss happened because we ran a campaign that used every tool and strategy a modern campaign has at its disposal, and did so in the most efficient and effective way possible.

Too often campaigns try to fight the last winning war. For Texas Democrats that meant trying to remake their campaign in the shape of Barack Obama’s successful 2012 re-election. And we saw the results.

[...]

With that in mind there are certain principles on which successful campaigns like (Greg Abbott's) can build. We were guided by three basic principles that every Republican running for President needs to apply to their campaign: (1) talk to one audience; (2) measure outputs, not inputs; and (3) test and retest.

I'll let you geek out on the rest.  The point I wish to make is that for all of these analytics, Abbott's colostomy bag could have burst onstage during one of the debates with Wendy Davis and he still would have won.  Carney may think he's that good, and his advisory fees are probably the highest in the nation right now despite being the one whose head went on the chopping block after Rick Perry's 2012 clusterfuck.  But it's also accurate to say that Abbott, et.al. wouldn't have won so convincingly without Carney's software, algorithm, and database schemes.  Abbott -- and the rest of the downballot TXGOP ticket, as well as across the nation -- would not have crushed the Democrats in such humiliating fashion were it not for the successful execution of metrics like these.

Of course, the most severe efforts to suppress minority and working class voters helped tremendously.  Defense wins championships, as they say, and there is nothing approaching the work of King Street Patriots/True the Vote on the left.  The historical slump in Democratic turnout in midterm election years is also part of what Carney claims credit for.  But remember as you read Carney's goals in the link -- 'identify 250 Abbott supporters every week' -- while Wendy Davis' team was bragging about the number of phone calls they made, numbers of door knocked.  Not how many people they actually talked to or persuaded.  Because, sadly, they weren't and didn't.

Here is a personal anecdote I wish to share in regard to database analytics.

In 2004 I made a bet with a Republican I knew online only, never met (and since deceased) that John Kerry would defeat George W. Bush for re-election.  Our bet was $50, payable to the winning party's national committee by the loser.  Shortly after the election I paid off.

In making that payment to the RNC, I used my own credit card but listed the contribution in the name of "Saul Relative", and the credit card I used was at least ten cards ago, having also changed banks twice and addresses three times in the decade since.  For years after that, I got e-mail and postal letters addressed "Dear Saul:", etc.  My favorite was one that began "Frankly, we're puzzled..."  I wrote on their letter with a black marker: "Stop calling me Frankly.  My name is Saul".  And returned it to them postage paid.

Over time the letters and e-mails diminished to a trickle and then down to nothing; consequently I had not thought about this circumstance for quite some time.

On November 20, 2014, I got Dave Wilson's appeal on his anti- HERO mailer (I posted on FB about it, with pictures).  Though it was addressed to "The Dorrell Household", and my wife did serve briefly as a GOP precinct chair during the 2000 election, her voting history since that time is the same as mine (DDD for over a decade).  So I thought it both odd and amusingly wasteful that Wilson was casting such a wide net looking for supporters.

About a month after that (Dec 29th), I received a nice letter from Reince Priebus, addressed to me and enclosed with my 2015 RNC membership card and a gracious appeal for continued financial support.  Within the body of the letter there was this phrase:

"That's why I'm concerned that we have not heard from you since 11/16/04. I know how generously you have helped our Party in the past.  We need you on our team if we are going to win in 2015, 2016, and beyond."

Read Dave Carney's article again, and think about Tom DeLay's mission a decade ago regarding a permanent Republican majority.  Scott Braddock has neatly brought it up to the present day for us.  Then take a look again at Jeremy Bird, Battleground Texas, the hits their reputation has taken in the wake of November 2014, and the extensive, assorted, mostly backchannel conversations within the various metropolitan county party's players as they coordinated with BGTX (a term I use loosely here) to turn the tide -- or stem the tide, as was the case in Travis and Dallas County.  You know who you are and what's been said.

If you really want to understand why I have given up hope for Democrats in Texas in my lifetime, I think you have all the datapoints you need.  If you are the kind of person who remains committed to turning Texas blue during your lifetime, you have all of the blessings and strength of conviction that I could wish to give another person.

I feel compelled to spend my fruitful hours, days, months, years, whatever is left in another endeavor.  Long after Dave Carney dies and goes to Hell, the future of Texas is all but chiseled into the pink granite walls of the state Capitol.  I think this understanding is why you see LVDP quitting the Senate and running for mayor, along with state legislators like Mike Villarreal and Sly Turner doing the same.  They see the future as clearly as anyone, and it reveals a few Democrats in cities and a couple of blue counties and a handful of statehouse and Senate districts that are gerrymandered minority blue in perpetuity.  And that's pretty much it.

Unless a meteor or a frackquake or a measles contagion takes out millions of Republicans in rural, exurban, and suburban Texas, the TDP will simply not have much influence at all regarding state affairs for at least another generation.  That means good young Democrats like this fellow and others in their 20's and 30's are going to wake up one fine morning on their 50th, or 55th or 60th birthday, with children their own ages now, never having witnessed a Democrat elected to a statewide office.

And no quantity of ten-grand-a-month consultants, advisers, pollsters, and strategists with terabytes of demographic data and direct and e-mail lists and six-inch thick Rolodexes is going to make one iota of difference.  Those people have never been in the game to win it anyway; their victory was getting hired and paid.  They either take both sides or avoid taking a public one at all politically: they're just mercenaries.  (Note the names and bios listed under Billl King and Stephen Costello for the most recent example of how these prostitutes trade jerseys.)  This is one more reason why fewer and fewer people have enough confidence in a system that is so broken, so dysfunctional that most of them can't be bothered to participate in it.

Maybe something will reset the chessboard and the Dems can rebound, but I can't see over the horizon.  I'd rather bet on a old-fashioned torches and pitchforks revolution, especially since the conservatives already have such a large head start on guns and ammo, but that's just me.  Noah's only a little less pessimistic than I am.

I'd like to be wrong about all this.  Hell, I'd just like to be wrong about some of it.  Short of self-immolation, the Republicans are large and in charge for as far as the eye can see and the mind can comprehend.  Like it, lump it, it is what it is.  And will continue to be.

Federal judge blocks disclosure of FBI's assassination plot against Occupy Houston

Any doubts about the police state we live in should be cast aside now.

Details of a plot to kill Occupy Houston leaders won't be released after a federal court upheld the FBI's claim that the documents are legally exempted from the Freedom of Information Act.

The FBI argued information was withheld, including 12 of 17 relevant pages, to protect the identity of confidential sources who were "members of organized violent groups," according to Courthouse News Service.

A heavily-redacted FBI document first revealed a Houston plot "to gather intelligence against the leaders of the protest groups and obtain photographs, then kill the leadership via suppressed sniper rifles."

However the plotter's identity is redacted.

This isn't an equal opportunity tactic by the FBI -- as far as the courts have allowed us to know.  There have been no reported assassination plots against the leaders of Open Carry Texas, or Open Carry Tarrant County, or the ultra-conservative freaks who surrounded Cliven Bundy and actually pointed their rifles at federal agents.  There has been no arrest of the woman who forcibly interrupted the Muslim day at the Capitol, but there have been federal agents making inquiries of Keystone XL and fracking protestors.  There have been examples of law enforcement and gas industry representatives exchanging "intelligence" about these activists.

So it is revealed -- even as it is concealed -- that the peaceful protestors associated with Occupy Wall Street and its affiliate, Occupy Houston, are the ones who most terrify law enforcement and, by extension, those by whom they are employed and deployed to "serve and protect".  The people whose only weapons are a sign, a chant, perhaps a bullhorn, and the might of right on their side are the enemies, not the ones with guns threatening state lawmakers, or killing Muslim honor students, or the ones with badges shooting people because they are black, or poor or mentally ill or disabled.

They make federal judges quake in fear, federal agents concoct plots to assassinate them, their membership and communications are infiltrated in low- and high-tech ways, all because the power of social justice is considered a terrorist threat.  Those who feel the most threatened by a change in the social order gift them with military grade weapons and the legal authority to kill anyone they desire without the slightest accountability, all to ensure the authority of our overlords.  That would be the unelected overlords, those who make sure their pawns, lackeys, and stooges are elected.

This is the state of our union today.  It is not hyperbole.

It is increasingly doubtful that voting is going to change much of anything in this regard, and the fact that fewer and fewer people are voting suggests they are aware of the charade.  I'm still looking for some peaceful solutions to this state we have gotten to, but those options are narrowing significantly.

Something has got to give, and as Frederick Douglass said over 150 years ago...

This struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, and it may be both moral and physical, but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.