Tag Archives: Lloyd Bentsen

national news, political news, State news

Mitt falls far short of saying 'no' to 2016 run

Don’t believe Mitt Romney’s non-denial about whether he wants to run for president one more time.

The 2012 Republican presidential nominee told Fox News Sunday’s Chris Wallace that “I am not running. I have no plans to run.”

OK, Mitt. That ain’t one of those Shermanesque statements, you know, where you’re supposed to say “If nominated I won’t run; if elected, I won’t serve.”

http://www.politico.com/blogs/politico-live/2014/09/romney-195006.html?hp=r6

Mitt says he’d be a better president than Hillary Rodham Clinton, the Democrats’ presumed frontrunner for the 2016 nomination. He also says he’d do better than the man who beat him in ’12, President Barack Obama.

Mitt told Wallace that his time had “come and gone.”

Hey, doggone it, he still hasn’t said he won’t run under any circumstances.

These non-statements about political futures are so frustrating. Politicians keep saying they “have no plans” to do something, then turn around and do what they said they have no plans to do.

The problem with that non-statement is the verb “have.” It’s a present-tense verb that doesn’t rule anything out, say, for tomorrow. Or the next day, or the day after that.

I remember in 1988 I asked the late Sen. Lloyd Bentsen if he would consider running as Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis’s running mate on the Democratic Party presidential ticket. Sen. Bentsen said his plate was full serving as Texas’s senior U.S. senator. He never actually answered directly: yes or no. Turned out he was dodging. Dukakis selected him to run with him for the White House.

Bentsen had an out. He was able to run successfully for re-election to the Senate that year.

Is Mitt Romney really and truly not going to run for president in two years?

I’ve heard nothing from him that says “not just no, but hell no.”

 

 

Uncategorized

Texas politics always is bloody

I’ve noted before how Texas politics is a contact sport.

The source of that description came to me from the late great Democratic U.S. Sen. Lloyd Bentsen. It’s more than mere contact, however. At times it becomes a blood sport.

Take the Republican runoff race for Texas lieutenant governor or the GOP runoff contest for state attorney general. Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst and state Sen. Dan Patrick of Houston are going at each other hammer and tong. It well might be that the Dan Branch-Ken Paxton contest for AG is even nastier, with Paxton running TV ads accusing Branch of being a — gulp! — “liberal Republican” who voted for third-trimester abortions and has backed the dreaded Obamacare.

This kind of campaigning isn’t new to Texas.

The Texas Tribune looked back at the 1990 Democratic race for governor as its prime example of how low it can go.

http://www.texastribune.org/2014/05/20/analysis-politics-as-limbo–how-low-can-it-go/

Attorney General Jim Mattox squared off against State Treasurer Ann Richards. They finished at the top of the primary heap that year and faced each other in a runoff for the party nomination.

Mattox actually accused Richards of using illegal drugs. Richards, a recovering alcoholic, had been clean and sober for many years. That didn’t matter to the bulldog Mattox, who made the accusation during a live TV debate with Richards, according to the Tribune.

Richards would win the runoff and would go on to beat Republican oilman Clayton Williams in the fall after Williams (a) made that terrible gaffe about rape and how women should “just relax and enjoy it” and (b) refused to shake Richards’s hand at an event they attended jointly, instead calling her a “liar” within hearing distance of an open microphone.

Yes, we should lament the nastiness of these current campaigns. Let’s not get too overwrought about them, however. They’re hardly new creations of this new age.

This nastiness is part of what makes Texas politics so, um, invigorating.

Uncategorized

Group hits Dewhurst where it hurts

The late, great U.S. senator, Lloyd Bentsen, was fond of calling politics “a contact sport.”

Granted, he didn’t create the description. He was accurate in describing it to those of us who follow politics and government.

David Dewhurst has just taken a body blow from a long-time ally, illustrating just how much contact can be delivered during a heated campaign season.

http://www.texastribune.org/2014/04/18/analysis-betrayal-roils-top-political-race/

Texans for Lawsuit Reform has bailed on the Texas lieutenant governor. It has long backed him in previous campaigns, right up through this year’s Republican primary for the seat he’s seeking to hold. But as Ross Ramsey writes in the Texas Tribune, the group likely has redefined “political treachery.”

It’s looking more and more as though Dewhurst is toast.

Ramsey writes: “The standard for good old-fashioned treachery in politics is pretty low — in fact, many people think politics is a synonym for treachery. Even with that, the latest move by one of the state’s biggest business groups against the sitting lieutenant governor was breathtaking.”

Texans for Lawsuit Reform now is backing state Sen. Dan Patrick of Houston in the May GOP runoff. Patrick finished far ahead of Dewhurst in the primary, but failed to reach the 50-percent-plus-one-vote threshold to avoid a runoff. Now it’s Patrick and Dewhurst going head to head in the May 27 runoff; the winner will face Democratic nominee state Sen. Leticia Van de Putte this fall.

Ramsey calls the reversal “jarring.” He continues: “This group has stood beside Dewhurst through one successful race for land commissioner and three for lieutenant governor. After he lost to Ted Cruz in the 2012 race for the United States Senate, many supporters urged him not to seek another term in his current post. He tuned that out, and TLR stuck with him through a March contest that included, along with Patrick, the state’s sitting land and agriculture commissioners. The other candidates saw a vulnerable incumbent, but the lawsuit reform group hung on.”

There are frontrunners and then there is this. Texans for Lawsuit Reform has hitched up behind Patrick, apparently believing he’ll win the runoff and then go on to become the state’s next lieutenant governor. Van de Putte is a lost cause in the eyes of the lawsuit reformers, given that she’s from that other party, the one that favors plaintiffs.

Dewhurst has been a friend of TLR for many years. He doesn’t deserve this kind of treatment, even in the rough-and-tumble world of Texas politics.