Tag Archives: Louie Gohmert

political news, State news

Texas turns 'crazy'

It’s one thing to be called “crazy” by a Florida congressman, who in a previous life was a federal judge who got impeached and then tossed out of office by the U.S. Senate.

Alcee Hastings’ description of Texas didn’t sit well with some Texans. One of them is fellow U.S. Rep. Michael Burgess of, yes, Texas, who demanded an apology from Hastings.

It kind of reminds me of a family that fights among its members and an outsider joins the fight. You dare not join that family squabble. Make no mistake, some Texans actually might agree with Rep. Hastings. Others, though, disagree — vehemently. But that’s best left for Texans to argue among themselves.

http://www.texastribune.org/2015/02/08/inside-texas-politics-crazy-state/

Actually, our state has taken some strange turns over many years. I’ll concede that the current political climate here isn’t to my liking. I believe more than three decades living in Texas entitles me to chime in.

So, I will.

During our time in Texas, my family and I have watched the state turn from moderately Democratic to overwhelmingly Republican. Prior to our arrival in Texas in 1984, the state was much more heavily Democratic. Why, there once was a time when Democrats occupied every statewide office and all but one seat in the 31-member Texas Senate.

I’m betting Republicans around the country were calling us “crazy” in those days, too.

Now that we’ve turned all-GOP all the time, it’s Democrats who are hanging the crazy label on our politics and policy.

There some evidence that we’ve gone a little but loony in the Lone Star State. Texans keep electing some, um, interesting politicians to high office.

U.S. Rep. Louie Gohmert of Tyler just won’t accept that the president of the United States is constitutionally qualified to hold his office; our most recent former governor, Rick Perry, once came very close to suggesting that Texas might secede from the Union if the federal government didn’t stop taxing us so much; we have elected an attorney general, Ken Paxton, who’s been scolded by the state for soliciting clients improperly; our Legislature is likely to enact a law that allows folks to carry weapons in the open and it might approve a bill that gives folks permission to carry weapons onto college campuses; Texas still allows for partisan election of judges, which always results in superior candidates losing simply because they are affiliated with the “wrong” political party.

That’s just for starters.

One-party domination breeds craziness born of arrogance. Democrats wielded great influence in this state almost since its joining the Union in 1845 until the late 1970s. Our state Supreme Court — comprising all Democrats — became so friendly to the plaintiff’s bar that it became the subject of a “60 Minutes” probe into whether the justices were on the take. Then the state became a two-party battleground. For the past two decades, Texas has been a Republican playground.

And just as Democrats produced their own brand of craziness in the old days, Republicans have earned the right to be called crazy.

I’d rather we reserve the name-calling, though, for those of us who live with the craziness.

So, Rep. Hastings? Butt out!

***

OK, having said all that, here’s a link written by a columnist in Roanoke, Va. It was sent to me by a dear friend who lives there, but who grew up in West Texas. He knows Texas better than most folks I know.

Enjoy this bit of crazy talk.

http://www.roanoke.com/news/columns_and_blogs/columns/dan_casey/casey-happy-th-birthday-texas-tavern/article_c1c4c1ed-bbe7-5c60-96e0-17a05dcaee8d.html

 

 

national news, political news

Boehner will keep speaker's gavel, however …

John Boehner is going to be re-elected speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives.

The Ohio Republican, though, is going to pay a price. Or, more to the point, rank-and-file Americans are going to pay the price.

It will be because the challenge to Boehner’s speakership is coming from the far right wing of the speaker’s Republican Party caucus in the House. And those clowns are going to pressure Boehner to keep tacking to the rightist fringe of the GOP.

http://www.politico.com/story/2015/01/john-boehner-speaker-vote-2015-113984.html?hp=l2_3

Bank on it.

The question for some of us — including me — is whether Boehner will rediscover the backbone he has shown in resisting TEA party pressure to do foolish and destructive things, such as shut down the government over disputes with President Obama.

Reps. Louie Gohmert of Texas and Ted Yoho of Florida have decided to run for speaker. The vote will occur Tuesday. Gohmert is a goofball. I can’t speak to Yoho, other than I know he’s a TEA party guy, just like Gohmert.

Boehner has said categorically that impeachment of the president is off the table as long as he’s speaker. Gohmert says quite the opposite. Is Yoho on board with the Gohmert view? Yeah, probably.

This dynamic reminds me of what might happen here in Texas, with a new governor about to take office. He’ll have a lieutenant governor who’ll push him to the right with the threat of a challenge from within the GOP when the governor’s office is up for election in 2018. I hope Gov. Greg Abbott can fend off the pressure that Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick is going to apply.

I wish the same for Boehner once he is re-elected speaker in a House that will be even more Republican than the previous one.

And as the GOP takes command of the Senate, we’ll all get to see if the new brand of Republican lawmakers can actually govern, as in can they present legislation to the president that he actually can sign into law.

I am not feeling good about the prospects.

 

national news, political news

Go, Louie, go for the speaker's job!

This might be the best news yet of the new year — which, I know, is just four days old.

U.S. Rep. Louie Gohmert, R-TEA Party Fringe, has just announced he’s going to challenge John Boehner as speaker of the House of Representatives.

How does it get any better than that?

Gohmert, you see, is in the running as well for being the goofiest member of Congress. He’s got some competition for that honor. The previous frontrunner was fellow Texan Steve Stockman, who had the bad form to challenge Sen. John Cornyn in the GOP primary this past spring; he lost badly. He’s now out of the House. Right up there, too, is Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, who said illegal immigrants are packing illegal drug across the border while running on “calves the size of cantaloupes.”

Gohmert hails from East Texas and he’s challenging fellow Republican Donald Trump for the unofficial title of “birther in chief.” He and The Donald just do not believe that President Obama was born in the United States of America, in Hawaii, and that — by golly — he’s constitutionally qualified to serve in the office to which he was elected twice.

Now he’s running for speaker. He told his pal Tucker Carlson on Fox News that someone needs to challenge Boehner. Gohmert says he’s gotten “a lot” of support to mount that challenge.

I’d love to ask him how he defines the measure of so-called support. Maybe it is a lot. It surely must be vocal because that’s how the TEA party wing of the GOP operates. It outshouts the other side within the Republican Party and then it outshouts the Democrats.

Hey, the truth is he’s just firing a shot across Boehner’s bow. He’s telling the speaker to watch his right flank. The TEA party will be watching, waiting and looking for any opportunity to undermine the speaker’s instincts to work with the other side.

I’m still glad to see Rep. Gohmert step up — even if it does embarrass some Texas residents back home who really would prefer that he shut his trap.

State news

Texas Monthly scores big with Bum Steer of Year

Stand up. Take a bow, Texas Monthly’s editors. You’ve done yourselves proud with this year’s selection of the Bum Steer of the Year.

The “honor” goes to soon-to-be-former state Sen. Wendy Davis, this year’s losing candidate for Texas governor. Davis didn’t exactly snatch defeat from the jaws of victory in losing to Gov.-elect Greg Abbott. However, she did manage to turn what should have been a competitive contest into yet another (ho, hum) Republican rout.

http://www.texasmonthly.com/stand-desk/and-bum-steer-year

As Texas Monthly notes, 2014 produced its share of goobers and goofballs from which to choose.

It cites Gov. Rick Perry’s indictment for abuse of power and coercion of a public official; U.S. Rep. Louis Gohmert for being, well, Louie Gohmert.

But oh, no. They didn’t hold a candle to Davis.

She entered the governor’s race as the prohibitive favorite among Democrats. She won her party’s nomination in a breeze. National party leaders swept into Texas to stand with her. The applauded her 2013 filibuster of that Republican bill that would severely restrict a woman’s ability to end a pregnancy. She got lots of money from rich donors.

Davis was going to make a real race of it, by golly.

Then she fooled us all by screwing up her biography and then making a mess of it by trying to explain it away. Once her campaign got started — in a manner of speaking — she never got traction on anything. No issue became her campaign signature.

That “competitive” governor’s race turned into a 20-point blowout. The Texas Democratic Party is in even worse shape than it was before the election and, as Texas Monthly notes, her Senate seat will be held by a Republican when the next Legislature convenes in January.

Congratulations, Wendy Davis, on your richly deserved (dis)honor.

And Texas Monthly’s editors? You have chosen well.

 

Uncategorized

Impeachment talk is ridiculous

Put a sock in it, Sarah “Barracuda” Palin.

You too, U.S. Rep. Louie Gohmert, R-Loony Bin. Same for the rest of the clowns on the far right wing of the Republican Party who believe Barack Obama has committed an impeachable offense.

At least one leading Republican, the speaker of the House of Representatives, is sounding a note of sanity.

Boehner says no to impeachment

John Boehner knows better. He was there when the House commenced impeachment proceedings against President Bill Clinton and then watched as Republicans took it on the chin in the 1998 mid-term election.

Palin, the ex-half-term Alaska governor, says Obama should be impeached because of the immigration crisis on our southern border. Someone needs to ask the former GOP vice-presidential nominee: What “high crime” and “misdemeanor” has the president committed?

I think I know the answer: none.

She wrote in an op-ed: “The many impeachable offenses of Barack Obama can no longer be ignored. If after all this he’s not impeachable, then no one is.”

Let’s allow the grownups to run the country. Speaker Boehner said simply to the impeachment calls, “I disagree.”

Enough said.

Uncategorized

Cornyn vs. Gohmert? Really?

Texas Monthly’s Paul Burka reports that U.S. Rep. Louie Gohmert is being pushed to challenge U.S. Sen. John Cornyn in next year’s Texas Republican Party primary.

Please, please, say it is so.

http://www.texasmonthly.com/burka-blog/gohmert-v-cornyn

Gohmert is running neck and neck with Rep. Steve Stockman of Friendswood in the contest to be Texas’s goofiest Republican member of Congress. Gohmert enjoys tremendous strength among the party’s tea party wing. Cornyn — the former Texas attorney general and state Supreme Court justice — is a more “establishment-type” Republican, meaning that his support comes from the more mainstream sources.

Gohmert remains committed to the notion that the president may have been in a foreign country. His list of idiotic statements in recent years has become the stuff of legend.

It puzzles me, though, as to why Cornyn might become a tea party target. As head of the Republican Senate Campaign Committee, Cornyn has earned his spurs criticizing President Obama at every turn. He certainly was no shrinking violet during last year’s presidential campaign, as he tried repeatedly to derail the president’s successful re-election effort.

That doesn’t appear to be good enough.

What would happen if Gohmert were to run? He’d likely lose the primary, but that would mean he’d also surrender his House seat in 2014. But whoever his East Texas constituents send to the House to succeed him remains a dicey proposition.

If next year’s Texas primary features these two gut-fighters, though, it’ll embody the intraparty warfare that’s brewing between those who want government to do something and those who want it to do nothing.

I’m hoping Gohmert runs. Texans need a good laugh.