Tag Archives: Texas GOP

political news, State news

Texas may prove to be Trump GOP testing ground

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If Donald J. Trump is having trouble wooing Texas Republicans into his embrace, then he might be having even more trouble everywhere else.

Ross Ramsey’s excellent analysis in the Texas Tribune lays out the problem that the presumptive GOP presidential nominee is having as he tightens the grip on his quest for the White House.

https://www.texastribune.org/2016/06/06/analysis-texas-pols-trying-muster-words-support-tr/

Ramsey hold up Ted Cruz as an example of Trump’s Texas dilemma.

A lot of Texas politicians backed the junior U.S. senator’s bid for the White House. Cruz backed out of the race after the Indiana primary. He’s been mainly silent about Trump’s campaign ever since. Cruz has returned to work in the Senate.

His friends and allies, though, aren’t any more eager to attach themselves to Trump’s train than Cruz has been.

Trump said some pretty spiteful things about Cruz during the campaign. And, no, they didn’t gin up much sympathy from me … as I didn’t want Cruz to be the next president of the United States. If you’re Cruz, though, you should take some of these epithets personally.

And then there was that hideous attack on Heidi Cruz, for crying out loud!

Gov. Greg Abbott is kinda/sorta backing Trump. Ramsey noted that recently Abbott made a speech backing Trump without ever mentioning the candidate’s name. How do you do that?

Then again, Abbott has his own Trump burden to bear, given the state’s investigation into the defunct Trump University and the campaign contribution that showed up immediately after Abbott — while he was Texas attorney general — dropped the state’s legal action.

Hmmm.

Let’s not forget former Gov. Rick Perry, who once called Trump a “cancer on conservatism.” He’s now backing him out loud and proudly. As Ramsey points out, Perry also said he’d accept a vice-presidential invitation if it came from Trump.

Many actual Republicans in Texas accuse Trump of being one of them in name only. You know, a RINO.

But as Texas Republicans have demonstrated time and again since ascending to power in this state, they are willing to put actual qualifications and fitness aside when selecting candidates for high political office. Party labels matter more than anything else.

To be fair, Democrats did much the same thing when they ran the show. We still actually have a smattering of those “Yellow Dog Democrats” out there who’d vote for a yellow dog before they’d vote for a Republican.

Trump’s fight for the love of Texas Republicans remains a daunting task. As Ramsey notes:

“Many others in the GOP seem stuck on the road between their original choices for the Republican presidential nomination and Trump, the apparent winner.  Some will convert. Some will get out and proselytize for the nominee.

“But not yet. That first sale is the hardest one to close.”

political news, State news

A summation of Trump’s unfitness

Donald-Trump_3372655b

Erica Grieder writes a blog for Texas Monthly.

She is highly opinionated, which is why I enjoy reading her blog. She doesn’t hide her disdain for Republican presumptive presidential nominee Donald J. Trump.

She writes: “My contempt for Donald Trump is admittedly sincere and abiding, but I suspect that even observers who take a more temperate view of the man might agree that the Republican Party’s decision to accept him as their presidential nominee is a calculation that could haunt them for years.

Here is more of what she wrote about Trump’s candidacy: “Trump is GOP nominee for president. His opponent, in the general election, will almost certainly be Hillary Clinton. He is technically qualified to hold the office, should he win 270 electoral votes, as he was born in the United States and is over the age of 35. At the same time, Trump is an uninformed and emotionally unstable plague who has, over 70 years of life, proven himself incapable of wielding any form of power without immediately looking for some ham-fisted way he can leverage it to serve his profoundly fragile ego.”

Here’s the entire blog posted on the Burka Blog website:

http://www.texasmonthly.com/burka-blog/greg-abbotts-trump-problem/

She writes that Gov. Greg Abbott is backing Trump even though he knows Trump is a phony and a fraud.

Back to one of the points in her paragraph that I shared with you here.

Trump’s candidacy is not built on a commitment to public service. It is built solely on his monstrous ego. Listen to what he says about his supposedly immense wealth, about his “world-class business” ventures, about the women in his life, about his singular plans to “make America great.”

Public service? It’s a foreign concept to this guy.

Say what you will about the ills of the nation — which I believe have been grossly overstated by Trump and those who have glommed on to what passes for this fellow’s campaign message.

We must do better than elect an entertainer with zero experience dealing with a government he now proposes to fix. He has no template from which to pattern whatever he intends to do.

If he intends to repair the government, someone needs to explain to me what he intends to produce.

Does this guy have a clue about anything that resembles an understanding of the massive governmental machine he intends to operate?

political news, State news

What does former GOP chief really think … of Trump?

Fort Worth, Texas USA Feb. 26, 2016: Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump gets the endorsement of former candidate New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie during a rally at the Fort Worth Convention Center. Texas is the big prize in the upcoming Super Tuesday primary on March 2. (Bob Daemmrich/Polaris)

I don’t get to talk much these days with my old pal, former Texas Republican Party Chairman Tom Pauken.

He lives in Dallas; I’m way up yonder in Amarillo. Pauken has had business dealings in Amarillo, but I sense he’s backing away from them, as he would call whenever he came to town.

Here’s what I know about him.

He is a true-blue conservative. He’s the real thing. He doesn’t think much of the “neo-cons” who advised President George W. Bush; he also doesn’t think much of the former president, for that matter.

Pauken served as an Army intelligence officer in Vietnam and he believes the Iraq War was a mistake. He believes in low taxes, less government spending and he is fervently pro-life on abortion.

He’s also penned an essay in which he declares his belief that the Texas Republican National Convention delegation will line up to support the party’s eventual nominee Donald J. Trump, even though most voters endorsed U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz in the Texas GOP primary this past March.

https://www.tribtalk.org/2016/06/03/trumps-in-charge-but-he-shouldnt-take-it-for-granted/

What I didn’t read in Pauken’s essay is a personal endorsement from him for the man who’s about to become the GOP’s presidential nominee. I attached the link to this blog, so you can see for yourself. Pauken seems strangely detached from Trump — which has become sort of the norm for many of the party’s elder statesmen and women.

What goes around ...

Trump is getting a lot of endorsements, to be sure. U.S. House Speaker Paul Ryan announced his intention to back him, but one could not escape the feeling that the speaker was swallowing real hard before he uttered his words of endorsement.

My trick knee is acting up again. It’s telling me that former Texas GOP chairman Pauken is getting a lump in his own throat as he ponders his party ‘s nomination of someone such as Donald Trump.

 

political news, State news

Gohmert enters strange new world

immigration-reform

Louie Gohmert must have a lot of friends in his East Texas congressional district, which might explain how he keeps getting re-elected to the U.S. House of Representatives.

Gohmert, a six-term Republican from Tyler, took to the House floor this week to say that gay people would be unlikely to save humanity if they were to settle in space camps out there … somewhere in outer space.

I saw that earlier today and wondered, yet again, who in the world are we sending to write the laws that affect 300-plus million Americans?

The video of Gohmert’s speech is on the link attached.

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/texas-rep-louie-gohmert-argues-gay-space-colonies-article-1.2652661?utm_content=bufferdc934&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=buffer

Gohmert has a history of making bizarre statements.

One of the more ridiculous assertions he made occurred when he speculated that terrorists were infiltrating the United States using pregnant women who would come here, give birth to their children and raise them to become terrorists.

This guy is in his sixth term as a member of Congress. He votes on laws that affect all of us. Therefore, the strange rantings of one member of Congress becomes every American’s concern.

Before you get too worked up  here and accuse me of bashing only Republicans, I am happy to acknowledge that Democrats have their share of congresspeople capable making loony statements. Alan Grayson of Florida comes to mind immediately.

This grandstander said he’d file a lawsuit if Ted Cruz were nominated for president by the Republicans; his basis was that Cruz isn’t constitutionally eligible to serve as president, as he was born in Canada. Never mind that he acquired U.S. citizenship at birth because Mama Cruz is an American.

So, life goes on inside the walls of the Capitol Building.

With serious issues to ponder — such as funding the government — a member of Congress now is wondering aloud about whether same-sex couples are capable of saving humanity.

As Ricky Ricardo once told Lucy: “I can answer that in five words: Aye, aye, aye … aye, aye!”

 

education news, political news, State news

SBOE runoff turns out OK after all

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Just about the time I was ready to give up all hope of political sanity within the Texas Republican Party …

Those voters over yonder in the Piney Woods do something sensible. Who’d a thunk it?

Tuesday night, they rejected the candidacy of one Mary Lou Bruner to District 9 on the State Board of Education. Yep, the GOP runoff produced another winner, Keven Ellis of Lufkin, a member of the Lufkin school board.

Bruner had been favored to win. She finished first in the Republican primary in March and was considered a strong candidate in the runoff. Then came the torrent of criticism regarding many of the former kindergarten teacher’s social media posts.

The one that got the most attention has been her contention that President Obama subsidized his drug habit as a young college student by prostituting himself. My favorite, though, was the notion she posted about dinosaurs becoming extinct because the baby T-Rexes couldn’t survive after Noah’s Ark made landfall on Mount Ararat.

District 9 Republicans then began to give serious thought to the choices they had. Did they really want someone with that kind of outlook representing them on the board that determines public education policy in Texas?

I’m still not crazy about the notion of electing these board members. I still prefer that they be appointed, subjected to Texas Senate confirmation, and that they have a deep background in education.

A Republican runoff in one East Texas SBOE district shouldn’t be seen necessarily as a harbinger of a return to sanity in the state’s political process. The state GOP, which dominates the Texas political landscape to the point that it has all but eradicated Democrats’ viability, still is capable of enacting some highly restrictive public policies.

Still, Keven Ellis’s runoff victory in East Texas gives me some hope that reason and sanity still have a voice within the state Republican Party.

political news, State news

More evidence of Texas Democrats’ demolition

17swartzWeb-master675

Mimi Swartz’s essay in the New York Times lends support to something I wrote just the other day.https://highplainsblogger.com/2016/05/texas-democrats-already-are-demolished/

It involves the pitiful state of the Texas Democratic Party.

My friend Tom Mechler was just re-elected chairman of the state Republican Party and then called for the demolition of the state’s Democrats. My response was that the Democratic Party already has been “demolished” in Texas.

https://highplainsblogger.com/2016/05/texas-democrats-already-are-demolished/

Now comes Swartz, writing for the NY Times saying that Texas is so reliably Republican that we won’t be “relevant” in the upcoming presidential election.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/17/opinion/texas-red-but-not-relevant.html?smid=fb-nytimes&smtyp=cur&_r=0

She mentioned how it used to be in Washington, with Texans of both parties commanding actual respect among their congressional colleagues. Lyndon Johnson and Sam Rayburn? How about Dick Armey? Swartz said, correctly, that they “got things done.”

I’m glad she didn’t mentioned the looniest of the looney birds now representing Texas in Congress — Louie Gohmert, R-Tyler, the conveyer of lies about President Obama’s birth and assorted other nutty pronouncements.

My favorite paragraph in her essay talks about what has become of the state’s former pull in D.C.:

“That kind of gravitas has quit the scene. Texas boasts legions of engineers, architects, doctors, lawyers, artists and energy executives who enjoy global reputations, but back home pridefully ignorant pygmies run the political show. One example: When our senior senator, John Cornyn, was running for re-election in 2014, the Houston Chronicle’s editorial board asked him for his view of a huge coastal storm-surge-protection project in the Houston-Galveston area known as the Ike Dike. His answer: ‘I don’t even know what that is.’”

That’s pretty bad, yes?

What’s worse is that the Texas Democratic Party remains clueless on how to reshape the state’s political landscape.

 

political news, State news

Cruz’s omission spoke volumes at GOP gathering

tedcruz_0

Texas Republicans gathering at their state convention in Dallas over the weekend waited to hear from one of their golden boys.

He went to the podium and delivered a typically fiery speech about how the Texas GOP should stand firm behind its “conservative principles.”

The message came from U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, who until just about three weeks ago, had contended that he would be the party’s presidential nominee.

He won’t make it.

That prize is now left for Donald J. Trump to grasp.

http://www.texasmonthly.com/burka-blog/ted-cruz-chooses/

So, the question becomes: Will the vanquished junior senator from Texas endorse the presumptive GOP nominee for president?

Excuse me while I laugh … out loud.

As Erica Grieder writes for Texas Monthly, it ain’t gonna happen.

Cruz’s speech to the convention delegates contained a lot of references to those conservative principles. He didn’t mention Trump’s name a single, solitary time.

No mention of the nominee, the guy who’s going to hoist the party banner and traipse across the land proclaiming himself to be the party messenger.

Are you as not surprised as I am that Cruz wouldn’t mention Trump?

I ran into Randall County Judge Ernie Houdashell just before he shoved off for the GOP convention. He and I exchanged a few friendly words in the supermarket parking lot. He mentioned Cruz’s name in passing. The judge — as reliable and devoted a Republican as you’ll ever see — made no mention of Trump.

I’ll have to ask Houdashell the next time I see him to ask him straight away: Are you going to “support” the party nominee? I’ll try to avoid asking whether he’d vote for Trump this fall, given that he’s entitled to cast whatever vote he wants in private.

Sure, Trump is gathering his share of public endorsements in Texas. Gov. Greg Abbott is on board, as is former Gov. Rick Perry.

I haven’t heard much from Sen. John Cornyn or from former Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison on whether they’re going to back Trump.

Cruz, of course, has been gored terribly by his party’s nominee. Trump’s “Lyin’ Ted” label surely hurt the senator, as did Trump’s hideous reference to Heidi Cruz, the wife of his former GOP presidential foe.

So, he didn’t mention Trump’s name at the GOP convention podium. Cruz’s silence spoke volumes.

As Grieder writes in her blog about Cruz: “He recognized Trump’s political appeal earlier on, in other words, and responded with an eye toward his strategic goals rather than his values or principles. He deserves criticism for that. But so too do many of his critics in the Republican Party — all too many of whom are now, after nine more months of this lurid spectacle, making an even more cynical bargain, and one that Cruz, clearly enough, is unwilling to accept. It’s like he said. You learn a lot about a candidate over the course of a campaign.”

 

local news, political news, State news

Texas Democrats already are ‘demolished’

1 Comment

mechler

I consider Tom Mechler to be a friend. I’ve known him for about a dozen years and we have a nice relationship — even though we disagree politically on just about, oh, every single issue.

Still, I was glad to see the dedicated Panhandle Republican re-elected chairman of the Texas Republican Party this weekend. He survived an attempted coup by a fringe wing of his party that sought to topple him because he’s supposedly too friendly with LGBT elements within his party.

I’m going to take issue with something Mechler said in a statement after his re-election as party chairman had been assured.

https://www.texastribune.org/2016/05/13/mechler-wins-re-election-texas-gop-chairman/

According to the Texas Tribune, Mechler said this in a statement: “Our Party is strongest when we are united and I look forward to working each and every day to keep the RPT the most dominant state party in the country. Today the work begins to demolish the Democrats this November.”

Demolish the Democrats?

You mean, Mr. Chairman, that you’re going to wipe them off the face of the state map?

By my way of thinking, the Texas Democratic Party already is demolished. Good grief, dude. You guys occupy every statewide office there is. Democrats can’t field a credible challenge in any of them.

Has the chairman really considered just how dominant his party is these days?

I’ve long been a supporter of a strong two-party state. Before you accuse me of wanting to see Democrats come back, I assure you that I’ve said the same thing back when Democrats stood over the landscape. I once lived and worked in a Democratic bastion — the Golden Triangle — and I witnessed plenty of political arrogance there.

Texas is a one-party state. There can be no doubt about that.

What the GOP must concern itself with, though, is what is happening at the national level. The Party of Lincoln has become the Party of Trump. Mechler and his fellow Texans cannot control what the probable GOP presidential nominee is going to say as he stumps the nation. If anyone is capable of making Texas competitive this fall it’s Donald J. Trump.

Mechler need not worry about demolishing Texas Democrats. He needs to focus his concern about whether the party’s presidential nominee’s statements about Hispanics and women will breathe life into an opposing party that’s already been given up for dead.

Good luck with that, Mr. Chairman.

 

political news, State news

Texas GOP at war with itself

texas-republican

Do you want to see a prime example of how badly fractured the Republican Party has become?

Take a look at the fight for the Texas Republican Party chairmanship.

This is an amazing development.

http://trailblazersblog.dallasnews.com/2016/05/challenger-for-texas-gop-chairman-says-incumbent-promotes-disgusting-homosexual-agenda.html

State GOP Chairman Tom Mechler has been accused of promoting a “disgusting homosexual agenda.” The accusation comes from supporters of Jared Woodfill, a Houston GOP activist who’s challenging Mechler for the party chairmanship.

Why is this so amazing?

Well, I happen to know Mechler. He hails from Armstrong County. He’s a Panhandle guy who is as conservative a politician as one can imagine. I consider Mechler to be a friend and, take my word for it, he doesn’t exactly line up with gay-rights activists’ world view.

The Texas GOP had the temerity to allow a gay and lesbian group to set up a booth at the upcoming state Republican convention. Does that constitute a “disgusting homosexual agenda”? I do not believe it does.

What it constitutes is a recognition that Texas comprises a wide array of individuals who have differing orientations.

That’s it.

Mechler is putting some distance between himself and the gay-rights group. According to the Dallas Morning News: “Mechler said he had nothing to do with the decision to allow the group, the Metroplex Republicans, to have a booth at the state GOP convention.”

Just as the national Republican Party is fighting among itself, the Texas GOP is exposing deep fissures within its own ranks.

The ultra-uber conservative wing of the Texas GOP is tossing out the “RINO” epithet at Mechler, who is the farthest thing possible from being a “Republican In Name Only.”

Believe me when I say this: Tom Mechler is a true-blue Republican believer. He’s the real thing.

 

State news

Can’t we just end this ‘secede’ talk? Now?

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I can’t believe this topic is still being discussed in some dark corners of Texas.

Some people actually want the state to secede from the United States of America.

It won’t go anywhere. The Texas Republican Party — which controls almost everything in this state — won’t allow it.

And yet …

The talk continues to fester.

https://www.texastribune.org/2016/04/19/texas-secession-debate-getting-kind-real/

The Texas Tribune reports that when the Texas Republican Party meets next month the talk is going to get some traction in some quarters.

Sheesh, already!

The article I’ve attached to this post lays out an interesting summary of state history. The most fascinating element of it is how — after the Civil War, which the Confederacy lost — a law came into being that denied all the former states of the Confederacy the ability to ever secede from the Union.

Which state brought that prohibition forward? Texas!

Here, though, is where we stand today — with elements of the state GOP talking openly about persuading Texans to actually vote to secede.

Then-Gov. Rick Perry didn’t help matters when, in 2009, during a TEA Party rally he talked about how Texans might secede if they got angry enough at the federal government. He took back those comments, saying he opposes secession.

https://highplainsblogger.com/2009/04/what-he-could-have-said/

His retraction seemed to fall on a few deaf ears.

I take heart in the belief that the state won’t secede. History tells us the only time we did so didn’t turn out so well. The state and the rest of the Confederacy lost the bloodiest war in American history.

If only some of our fellow Texans would just heed that lesson.