Tag Archives: John Cornyn

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Let the FBI join the VA probe

U.S. John Cornyn has it right: It’s time to deploy the Federal Bureau of Investigation in this still-metastasizing scandal at the Department of Veterans Affairs.

http://dallasmorningviewsblog.dallasnews.com/2014/05/shinseki-had-to-go-and-now-its-time-for-a-criminal-probe.html/

Cornyn, R-Texas, wants the FBI to begin looking into whether there are criminal charges to be brought against VA staffers complicit in the deaths of veterans waiting too long for health care from an agency charged with caring for them.

VA Secretary Eric Shinseki has quit. The president of the United States has declared his anger over the treatment of veterans. How about calling your pal, the attorney general, Mr. President, and telling him to order the FBI to look at this matter?

This scandal is huge … and yes, it deserves the “scandal” label while most of the other stuff doesn’t rise to that level of deserved outrage.

Dallas Morning News blogger/editorial writer Mike Hashimoto hits it out of the park with this assertion: “Yes, Shinseki had to go, and there’s a long list of VA administrators at three dozen or more hospitals who should join him. And it was beyond shameful that some of them profited from the scheme in the form of undeserved bonus payments. I’m no legal expert, but doesn’t it seem as if some law was broken here? And, if so, don’t we need a criminal investigation?”

In my mind, yes … absolutely.

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Texas tea party stands tall

I always thought “Texas tea” referred to oil.

It now has a political connotation, as in “Texas tea party.” Ladies and gents, the tea party has taken the Texas Republican Party hostage. It has swallowed it whole and has produced a slate of statewide candidates that’ll make the hair stand up on some of us Texas residents.

Texas Monthly’s Paul Burka is one who is very afraid of what the future might hold.

http://www.texasmonthly.com/burka-blog/tea-party-takes-charge

I concur with his assessment.

He seems to be conceding the November election already to one tea party candidate in particular: state Sen. Dan Patrick, the Republican/tea party candidate for lieutenant governor.

I’m not yet ready to go there.

Democratic nominee, fellow state Sen. Leticia Van de Putte, well could turn out to be the most formidable Democratic candidate on the statewide ballot. She’s Patrick’s opponent this fall. I’m going to wait until all the ballots are counted before declaring him the all-but-certain lieutenant governor.

Of all the assertions Burka makes, the most interesting is this: “One thing I believe with absolute certainty: Dan Patrick as lieutenant governor will hasten the day Texas turns purple. His personal history is one of recklessness and carelessness. There are going to be train wrecks along the way. I have serious doubts about whether the tea party can govern or whether Patrick can get along with his peers without having a meltdown along the way.”

Meltdown? I keep thinking of the release late in the campaign of Patrick’s medical records, which included some time with a shrink who counseled him about his depression. It was a low blow at the end of a tough campaign to bring that stuff up … but is this part of Burka’s calculation about how the Texas Senate might be run under the leadership of a Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick?

Tea party candidates have bitten the dust all over the country. Not in Texas, though. They’re riding high.

One bit of cheer is worth passing on: At least Republicans had the good sense to toss aside Steve Stockman’s challenge to John Cornyn in the U.S. Senate primary.

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Texas Democrats still floundering

David Alameel.

Say that name a few times. Have you heard it before? Probably not.

Alameel stumbled out of the tall grass some time ago to run for the U.S. Senate. He’s now the Democratic Party nominee who will challenge Republican incumbent John Cornyn this fall.

To get that nomination, though, Alameel had to defeat someone named Keesha Rogers in the Democratic runoff. Rogers had called for — get this — the impeachment of President Obama.

Therein, boys and girls, lies an answer as to why the Texas Democratic Party is in such a shambles.

http://www.mystatesman.com/news/news/democrat-david-alameel-handily-defeats-kesha-roger/nf8Gd/

There exists no Democratic statewide officeholder to challenge the Republicans. The party is still looking for candidates to run against powerful GOP incumbents.

Democrats are trying to talk bravely about turning the state from Republican red to swing state purple. Some folks have actually said with a straight face that this is the year the transition begins.

I don’t think it’s going to happen.

Yes, the party has two quite credible candidates running at the top of the state ballot: Wendy Davis for governor and Leticia Van de Putte for lieutenant governor. Both are state senators, both are articulate and fearless. Their chances of winning remain dicey.

I keep coming back to David Alameel, wondering: Who is this guy?

I don’t know much about him, other than he’s a multi-gazillionaire businessman who’ll likely pour a lot of his own money into the Senate campaign. Other mega-rich guys have won in Texas, the latest of whom, Lt. David Dewhurst, got his head handed to him in the GOP runoff by Dan Patrick in the race for lieutenant governor; but before Tuesday’s vote, Dewhurst had been a successful self-funded politician.

It’s instructive, to me at least, that the state of Texas Democratic Party can be summed up in the fact that its nominee for the U.S. Senate had to endure a runoff against a fellow Democrat who wants to impeach the president of the same party.

Setting aside the races for governor and lieutenant governor, Texas Democrats have a ways to go before finding their way out of the wilderness.

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Tea party takes it on the chin

Those silly tea party insurgents keep getting their heads handed to them.

Then they keep coming back for more.

The results from this past Tuesday showed that the Republican Party “establishment” is getting stronger while the tea party wing of the GOP is losing its punch.

http://thehill.com/opinion/ab-stoddard/206894-ab-stoddard-tea-party-left-in-the-dark

Tea party challenges lost Senate races in Kentucky, Oregon, Idaho and Georgia. Those equally nutty Republican primary voters decided to go with more “business-friendly” candidates, according to A.B. Stoddard, writing for The Hill.

The tea party has shown this amazing ability to present candidates who become true wack jobs. Todd Akin and Richard Mourdock sought Senate nominations and then made bizarre statements about women, rape and abortion. Remember Christine O’Donnell, the loon who ran for the Senate in Delaware? She proclaimed some fascination with witchcraft. You cannot possibly forget Sharron Angle in Nevada, who proved to be unsuitable at every level possible to serve in the U.S. Senate.

I don’t know what this means for the Republicans down the road. My hope is that sanity may be reasserting itself within the once-great political party.

House Speaker John Boehner in recent months has expressed his disgust with the clowns who have taken his House caucus hostage. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell actually has had the “temerity” to broker a budget deal with Democratic Vice President Joe Biden.

The tea party wing of the GOP has no shortage of goofballs. Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas tops the list; Cruz actually is making fellow Republican Sen. John Cornyn, a fellow Texan, look and sound reasonable.

I am longing for a return of the mood in Washington when Democrats and Republicans could work together to solve national problems. Bring back the spirits of Republican Everett Dirksen and Democrat Lyndon Johnson.

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Democratic U.S. Senate runoff on tap

David Alameel is running against Keesha Rogers in the May 27 primary runoff for the Democratic nomination for U.S. Senate.

I’ll admit that this one has gotten past me.

http://www.texastribune.org/2014/05/05/democrats-rally-around-alameel-sideline-obama-crit/

It appears Democrats actually could nominate a wacky pretender to run this fall against Republican Sen. John Cornyn.

Let’s hope it doesn’t happen.

The wack job happens to be Rogers, who finished with 22 percent of the primary vote in March, enough to deny Alameel the outright majority needed to be nominated to run against Cornyn.

“There must be people who don’t know what she stands for,” Alameel told the Texas Tribune.

And she stands for? Well, she wants President Obama to be impeached. That’s right, a Democrat is calling for the impeachment of a fellow Democrat, the guy in the White House, the 44th president of the United States.

Rogers reportedly makes the point about impeachment at the rare public appearances she makes as she, um, campaigns for the Senate.

Alameel was supposed to win the Democratic primary outright. He has the backing of the party apparatus. He has been endorsed by the Democratic nominee for governor, Wendy Davis. He is independently wealthy and is ready to spend a lot of his own money to get elected.

First, though, he has to fight off a goofball candidate for his party’s nomination.

Rogers suggested recently that the president is a closet Republican. That’s right. He’s one of them.

“Obama is right in line with the Republicans as he’s supporting Wall Street financial interests, as he’s supporting this drive toward thermonuclear war, and as he’s destroying the physical economy of this nation,” Rogers said in a Houston speech, according to the Tribune.

Earth to Rogers: The economy is improving; and thermonuclear war isn’t on anyone’s horizon except your own.

Rogers’s surprising success just might say something about the still-dismal state of the Texas Democratic Party. Yes, Democrats are nominally hopeful that Davis might be able to upset Republican nominee Greg Abbott in the governor’s race; they also have hopes for Leticia Van de Putte’s chances in the race for lieutenant governor.

But boy, howdy. If they nominate someone like Keesha Rogers to run against John Cornyn, well, the party’s in more trouble than many of us ever imagined.

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Primary deals tea party a setback in Texas

What’s the big takeaway from the Texas primary election?

It well might be that the tea party, which claims all kinds of strength in Texas, had its head handed to it by voters all across the state.

Good deal.

U.S. Sen. John Cornyn brushed aside what had been thought to be a stern test in his Republican primary victory. U.S. Rep. Steve Stockman, the Gulf Coast goofball who challenged Cornyn, was trampled by the incumbent.

Other veteran members of Congress survived challenges, including Rep. Mac Thornberry of Clarendon, who was renominated in a three-person race in the GOP primary here at home.

The Texas Legislature primary also saw some setbacks dealt the tea party wing of the GOP. The District 31 primary out here in West Texas produced a win by the incumbent, Republican Kel Seliger of Amarillo — although his margin was far closer than I ever imagined it would be.

A win is a win, however.

Some races still need to be decided. The lieutenant governor’s race is heading to a runoff with state Sen. Dan Patrick in the catbird seat against the incumbent, Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst. Dewhurst has been stung once already, the Senate primary in 2012 that saw him upset by tea party upstart Ted Cruz. He’s been leaning farther and farther to the right ever since. To be honest, he doesn’t seem comfortable in this new role as a newfound ultraconservative and he’s now in danger of losing his party’s nomination to what once was considered the most powerful office in Texas.

The attorney general’s GOP primary featured three guys cut from the same far-right-wing cloth.

The tea party wing of the GOP had hoped for a much bigger night than it got. Instead, it has seen its influence diluted.

All this Republican in-fighting is going to lead the party somewhere, but the destination remains unknown.

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Cornyn’s tea party challenge goes kaput

So much for a serious challenge to U.S. Sen. John Cornyn from the tea party wing of the Texas Republican Party.

U.S. Rep. Steve Stockman, R-Loony Bin, had been counted on by many within the GOP to mount a stout bid to unseat the veteran lawmaker.

Silly them. It didn’t happen. It won’t happen.

http://www.politico.com/story/2014/02/texas-steve-stockman-john-cornyn-republican-senate-primary-elections-2014-103754.html?hp=f2

The tea party wing of the reliably Republican Party of Texas has abandoned Stockman, who’s vanished from the campaign trail — yet again. He’s been a no-show at campaign events. His dismal campaign effort has been described as “horrible” by Texas tea party bigwig JoAnn Fleming.

I’m still trying to figure out why the righties dislike Cornyn so much. He’s racked up a generally conservative voting record in the Senate. He’s led the Senate campaign committee effort to recruit solid GOP candidates for Congress’s upper chamber. He’s been pretty darn critical of his Senate Democratic colleagues and the Democrat who lives in the White House.

What brought about this idiotic challenge — from the likes of Steve Stockman, no less?

They disliked his vote to avoid going over the “fiscal cliff.” He didn’t stand with tea party favorite U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz’s effort to defund the Affordable Care Act. And just recently he voted to extend the nation’s borrowing limit without attaching any spending limits.

In other words, he ain’t vicious enough.

Stockman emerged as the leading challenge to Cornyn within the Republican Party. The congressman held true to his form, however, in acting weirdly in public. He invited has-been rocker and Second Amendment firebrand Ted Nugent to the State of the Union speech in January. He’s faced questions about his staff’s campaign activities — but has disappeared for days and weeks on end to avoid answering them.

Sen. Cornyn will be re-nominated in a few days. He’ll go to on face a Democrat this fall. He’ll likely be re-elected.

I was hoping for a more serious challenge for Cornyn. Sigh. It wasn’t meant to be.

So long, Rep. Stockman.

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New guy joins GOP Senate nut brigade

It looks like Steve Stockman has company in the nut house corps seeking to unseat U.S. Sen. John Cornyn.

The new guy is Chris Mapp, a Port O’Connor businessman who is running for the Republican nomination to the U.S. Senate, right along with Stockman.

http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/local/article/GOP-Senate-candidate-from-South-Texas-slammed-for-5255976.php#src=fb

Mapp said that South Texas ranchers should shoot “wetbacks” and called President Obama a “socialist son of a bitch.”

Well.

Cornyn said this in response: “I recognize this is a free country but that’s not the sort of way to gain people’s confidence that you care about them and you want to represent their concerns in the halls of Congress.”

Do you think, Sen. Cornyn?

I almost am speechless. But not quite.

It seems as though the debate keeps taking these intermittent radical right turns. Candidates keep popping up — and popping off — with these off-the-wall comments. They want us to take them seriously.

It’s impossible to believe they expect Texans or any Americans for that matter to believe they have the country’s best interests at heart when they advocate such idiocy in public.

As Robert Stovall, Bexar County GOP chairman, said of Mapp’s comments: “That is way out of bounds and I can’t imagine many people in Texas, much less Texas Republicans, voting for that guy.”

I hope he’s correct.

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Stockman reveals his whereabouts

Steve Stockman was touring the Middle East and Europe instead of casting votes for his congressional constituents, the U.S. Senate candidate said today.

There. That settles it. Yes? Not exactly.

http://www.politico.com/story/2014/01/steve-stockman-trip-102638.html?hp=l7

Stockman is a Republican firebrand who’s challenging Sen. John Cornyn in this year’s GOP primary. Why wasn’t he voting on measures? Because he doesn’t have “a zillion dollars” like Cornyn. He said has to campaign for the office.

But … why was he in Egypt, Israel, Russia and the United Kingdom? Are there voters in those countries he needs to court?

He needs to get back to the business of studying issues and then voting on them when they come before the House. That’s what his constituents are paying him to do.

As for campaigning for another office, he can fly home to Texas on weekends — which many lawmakers do routinely — and hit the campaign trail.

Come to Amarillo, Mr. Stockman, and tell us why Republicans should toss out the state’s senior senator for yet another new guy.

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Waiting for Stockman to come clean

I’m waiting anxiously for U.S. Rep. Steve Stockman’s revelation as to where he’s been hiding out the past few weeks.

The goofy Texas congressman is running for the Senate against incumbent Republican John Cornyn. He made his announcement with a bit of a splash. Then when the ripple disappeared, so did he.

The tea party favorite really doesn’t — or shouldn’t — have a chance in Hades of winning the Republican primary this coming March. But with Texas politics being as volatile as it is — especially on the GOP side — nothing would totally surprise me.

Stockman has been MIA for some time. He has canceled campaign appearances amid some questions about whether he has the endorsements he claims.

Late this past week, he tweeted something about an announcement as to where he’s been. I’m hoping he’ll tell an anxious public where he’s going, such as whether he’s going to keep running for the Senate.

A part of me wishes he’s been hiking along some mysterious trail, a la former Republican South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford, who had his staff lie about his whereabouts, only to have it revealed he was cavorting in Argentina with a woman other than his then-wife Jenni.

But we’ll see come Monday where Steve Stockman’s been hiding.

Welcome back to the spotlight, congressman.

I hope.