Tag Archives: GOP

political news, State news

No-brainer: Don’t vote on husband’s salary

Angela Paxton is a solid favorite to be elected to the Texas Senate this fall, representing the suburban region north of Dallas.

She won the Republican Party primary earlier this month. Given the state’s heavy GOP leanings, that puts her on the inside lane en route to the Senate.

Her husband happens to be Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who’s likely to be re-elected in the fall general election.

Ahh, but here’s a potential quandary facing a Sen. Paxton: Does she vote on budget matters that set her husband’s salary as the state’s top legal official? There appears to be some gray area here, with ethics experts debating it.

To me it’s a no-brainer. No matter what the Texas Constitution allows, Paxton shouldn’t vote on her husband’s salary. Let her 30 Senate colleagues determine how much the attorney general should earn.

For the life of me I don’t understand why this is even under discussion. According to the Texas Tribune: “She’s going to have to think about what she does before she does it. If they’re doing [increases] for everyone, I don’t think that’s a conflict because everybody’s getting the same raise,” Hugh Brady, a law professor at the University of Texas at Austin, said. “If it’s something special for the attorney general, I think she should step back and pause.”

I disagree with the professor. I don’t think a lawmaker casting a vote that materially affects his or her income passes the smell test, no matter if it’s a vote for all officials or if the vote affects an individual.

Paxton wouldn’t be the first lawmaker to face this issue. GOP State Rep. Tom Craddick’s daughter, Christi, serves on the three-member Texas Railroad Commission. Rep. Craddick has voted through three legislative sessions in favor of state budgets that include salaries for the RRC. I believe that, too, constitutes a conflict of interest, although it would not be as blatant if Angela Paxton were to vote to approve her husband’s salary, given that she and the AG share the same home.

I’ll fall back on a truism that should govern elected officials’ conduct: Just because it’s legal doesn’t always make it right.

political news

GOP punched in the gut with this apparent loss

They haven’t called it yet, but the Republican Party is likely to get tied up in knots over this loss of a key congressional election.

Conor Lamb leads Rick Saccone (pictured) by a few hundred votes. My hunch is that they’ll recount the ballots cast in Pennsylvania’s 18th Congressional District.

Lamb has declared victory; Saccone isn’t conceding anything just yet. Saccone had better get his concession speech ready.

This one is a serious rejection of the nation’s top Republican, Donald John Trump, who spoke (more or less) for Saccone in the waning days of the campaign. He went to western Pennsylvania and spent more than an hour talking about himself, saying damn near nothing about the guy he was there to endorse.

Hey, that’s what narcissists do. Isn’t that right?

As for Lamb, he isn’t calling his apparent victory a referendum on Trump. I’ll disagree with that one, young man. I believe it is.

Trump won the district in 2016 by more than 20 percentage points. The 18th had been trending Republican for years. It’s previous representative is a Republican who had to resign because of a sex scandal.

So, it’s fair to wonder: Does this apparent Democratic victory signal a trend that will carry through the year in the midterm election?

Republicans had better believe it will. My guess is that they have just received a major punch in the gut.

As Politico reports: “During a closed-door conference meeting at the Capitol Hill Club, House Republican leaders said that Tuesday’s special election, where Democrat Conor Lamb is narrowly leading, could portend a monster Democratic year.”

If that “monster” awakens fully, then I believe we are heading for a period of extreme political tumult.

national news

GOP calls it: No collusion with Russians

THE HOUSE INTELLIGENCE COMMITTEE HAS, AFTER A 14 MONTH LONG IN-DEPTH INVESTIGATION, FOUND NO EVIDENCE OF COLLUSION OR COORDINATION BETWEEN THE TRUMP CAMPAIGN AND RUSSIA TO INFLUENCE THE 2016 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION.

Where do you suppose the above message came from?

Why, none other than Donald John Trump Sr., 45th president of the United States, who fired off the tweet earlier today.

Trump left out a key provision of what the House Intel Committee has declared. He didn’t mention that the findings come from the Republican majority on the panel.

The GOP members of the committee, chaired by Devin Nunes of California, have issued a partisan statement that, shall we say, isn’t shared by the Democrats who also serve on the committee.

So, what the hell is the point here? It surprises not a single person with any knowledge and/or interest in this “Russia thing” that Intelligence Committee Republicans would reach this conclusion.

Nunes has been colluding with the Trump campaign and with the Trump administration from the get-go to subvert the committee’s search for the truth behind allegations that the campaign conspired with Russian hackers to influence the 2016 presidential election outcome.

The House panel’s work has been politicized from the beginning.

The GOP members want the investigation to end. Democrats want it to continue.

To be honest, no one on the outside can draw any conclusions about what the Trump campaign might have done. Committee Republicans say it’s over.

Here’s a thought. Let’s allow special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation to reach its own conclusion. Perhaps his probe will end up in the same place. To be honest, I would rather hear the “no collusion” verdict from Mueller, given the dysfunction that has infected the House Intelligence Committee from the beginning of its investigation.

Mueller has a lot of ground to cover. It involves business dealings, obstruction of justice and, oh yes, whether the Russians actually meddled in our 2016 electoral process.

House Republican Intelligence Committee members say there’s no evidence of collusion? That’s their view. It’s not necessarily the view of others who also are up to their armpits in a search for the truth behind this sticky, sordid mess.

local news, political news

Seliger’s GOP win was big, really big

I cannot overstate the significance this week of state Sen. Kel Seliger’s victory in the Texas Senate District 31 Republican Party primary.

It’s significant on at least two levels.

One is that he faced — count ’em — two GOP foes in this primary. Empower Texans, a far-right political action organization, decided to “primary” Seliger because its leadership wanted someone who’s “more conservative” than Seliger has demonstrated during the 14 years he has represented West Texas.

Empower Texans sought to outflank Seliger, a former Amarillo mayor, on the right. His response was to remind voters that he’s conservative. His voting record is mainstream — but he’s a conservative. He proclaims his pro-life, pro-gun rights voting record as demonstrable proof of his conservatism.

The second level of significance deals with this fact: Unlike in 2014, when he faced just one foe in the GOP primary, this year he had two of them. One of this year’s opponents was Mike Canon, the former Midland mayor who Seliger beat four years ago by just 4 percentage points.

Let’s throw in a second right-wing opponent, Amarillo businessman Victor Leal. Between them, Canon and Leal garnered 49.5 percent of the vote. Seliger finished with 50.5 percent, or one-half of a percent more than he needed to avoid a runoff.

I have been unable to analyze the vote as it developed from top to bottom of District 31. My first glance at the vote totals tells me that Canon and Leal battled between themselves for the TEA Party wing vote, leaving the rest of the West Texas Republican voting bloc open for Seliger to harvest.

Canon’s first run for the state Senate in 2014 revealed to me that he spoke mostly in TEA Party slogans when the lights came on. In private, I found him to be personable, intelligent and articulate.

As for Leal, he spent much of his effort accusing Seliger of alleged nefarious relationships and too little of it explaining in any detail how he planned to represent West Texas differently than what Seliger has done.

Thus, Canon and Leal fought for the Republican fringe vote that exists out there. Critics of the senator are liable to say he “barely” won the primary. However, I look at it differently: He beat Canon by nearly 20 points and Leal by more than 30 points.

I would call that a serious drubbing.

local news, State news

Texas set to take political center stage

It hasn’t been often of late that Texas has drawn the nation’s political attention. This big ol’ state is about to do that in just a few hours.

Texans are casting their primary votes and national pundits are looking at how the state votes not just in the Republican Party primary, but also in the Democratic primary.

Election officials report a significant surge in Democratic early voting, suggesting that Texas Democrats — for the first time since The Flood — are more energized than Texas Republicans. Democratic voting numbers are outstripping GOP early voters in places such as Dallas, Harris, Bexar and Travis counties.

Might there be a Donald Trump backlash developing in a state the president carried in 2016 by nearly 10 percentage points?

This is merely anecdotal evidence, but if the plethora of campaign signs is any indication, then I am inclined to believe the pundits are on to something with regard to voter interest in this year’s primary.

In Allen, Texas, where my wife and I have been visiting for the past few days, several corners along Bethany Road are festooned with signage proclaiming the virtues of candidates. Hey, I’ve even seen some Democratic candidates’ signs alongside the Republicans who usually dominate the discussion.

So, the first round of campaigning is about to conclude. Our mailboxes have been stuffed to the brim with campaign flyers and assorted forms of propaganda.

I am looking forward to the end of this round. I also am looking hopefully toward some outcomes I want to come true in the Texas Panhandle.

There will be plenty to say about those races once the results come in. You’ll be the first to hear from me.

Meanwhile, let’s all bite our fingernails and watch our cherished representative democracy do its work.

local news, national news, political news, State news

Conservatives are winning the labeling war

Let’s give a sort of shout-out to the conservative media and the politicians they are backing.

Those on the right wing of the spectrum are winning the war of epithets, labeling and name-calling. They have turned the term “liberal” into a four-letter word.

I see it daily as I watch the political debate swirl and churn across the land. To be called a “liberal” in Texas — which is run by Republicans at every level of government — is to be called the son of Satan himself. A candidate for the Texas Senate who is running against state Sen. Kel Seliger, an Amarillo Republican, has called him “liberal” and “corrupt” — in that order. Do you get it? The implication is that to be liberal is to be corrupt. By the way, Seliger is campaigning for re-election as a dedicated conservative, which he is.

It’s gotten so bad among liberals that they no longer are even identifying themselves with that epithet. Oh, no. The operative word now among those on the left is “progressive.”

Admission time: As one who tilts to the left, I find myself using the this new P-word when describing myself. Have I gotten, um, self-conscious about what liberalism? Oh … maybe.

Liberals, er, progressives, haven’t yet been able to turn the right wing’s labeling against them. I suppose they could shorten the word “conservative” to, oh, “con,” which of course brings up another connotation altogether. I mean, liberals are called “libs” on occasion. But I digress.

The political debate often becomes a contest of sorts. One side seeks to demonize the other with words that sound a bit jarring. Republicans back in the early to mid-1990s began using the term “Democrat” as an adjective, referring to “Democrat politicians,” which doesn’t sound quite the same as “Democratic politicians.” That word usage was part of former House Speaker Newt Gingrich’s strategy to label “Democrats as the enemy of normal Americans.”

If I were wearing a cap at this moment, I would tip it toward Republicans, conservatives and those in the right-wing media for the success they have enjoyed in this rhetorical battle with those on the other side.

However, as a dedicated political liberal, I offer my salute as a form of damning them with faint praise.

local news, political news

Hoping for an outright GOP primary victory

I want to restate my desire for state Sen. Kel Seliger to win the upcoming Republican Party primary outright in his bid to return to the Legislature representing Senate District 31.

He’s got two GOP foes in this primary. Four years ago, he had just one, who has returned for a second go-round against the former Amarillo mayor.

However, here is what I do not know at this moment: It is whether Seliger has consulted with another Republican officeholder who four years ago won her party primary without a runoff while facing four opponents.

Potter County Judge Nancy Tanner (right, in photo) faced the daunting task of winning the GOP primary for the seat she now occupies. Of the four foes she faced, one of them also was a recent Amarillo mayor, Debra McCartt, who made quite a name for herself setting governing policy for a city of nearly 200,000 residents.

When the votes were counted in 2014, Tanner won in a relative breeze. Tanner was able to parlay her experience as a longtime administrative assistant to former County Judge Arthur Ware into an easy primary victory; with no Democrat on the ballot four years, the primary was tantamount to election.

Indeed, I called her “Judge Tanner” years before she actually became the county judge.

My strong hope is that Seliger or his campaign team has consulted with Tanner about what she did to fend off those four challengers. I know that Seliger is working with a young political consultant who has been assigned to work exclusively with the senator in his re-election effort.

What I don’t know is if he has sought out a local politician with plenty of knowledge of how to win a crowded primary race outright.

local news

GOP is ‘eating its young’

The late state Sen. Teel Bivins once offered a metaphor that, frankly, I never quite understood: He said the Legislature’s once-a-decade exercise in legislative and congressional redistricting offered an opportunity for “Republicans to eat their young.”

If I could speak to him at this moment, I would tell Bivins that we are witnessing actual political cannibalism among Texas Republicans. They are dining on each other right here in the Texas Panhandle, which Bivins represented in the state Senate from 1989 until 2004.

Bivins’s successor, Kel Seliger of Amarillo, is fending off challenges from two fellow Republicans. They are seeking to portray him as something he isn’t. He’s been called a “liberal,” which in the Panhandle is fightin’ words.

Seliger’s response has been a vow to remain positive and to speak about his record, which he touts as “conservative.” Indeed, he is a mainstream conservative, a traditional conservative. The current political climate has forced him to slap the conservative label on his sleeve and proclaim it proudly.

Seliger shouldn’t have to make that declaration.

He is not alone. We’re seeing all across Texas, which is among the most GOP-leaning states in America. We have Republican incumbent legislators and members of Congress campaigning on the margins of their ideology to fend off well-funded challengers.

Contenders and incumbents are spending tons of advertising space and broadcast air time trying to persuade voters that their brand of conservatism is more desirable than the other candidate.

What is being lost in this discussion are statements about precisely what they would do for their constituents if they get elected. How would they govern? What good would electing them bring to their legislative or congressional district?

I’m hearing a lot of name-calling, innuendo, allegations and criticism that — to my ear — borders on defamation. It’s been a disgraceful display of demagoguery.

A famed Texas Democrat, the late U.S. Sen. Lloyd Bentsen, once told me that Texas politics is a “contact sport.” Indeed. Sen. Bentsen served in the Senate when Democrats and Republicans actually sought — and often found — common ground on legislation that benefited the entire state.

I can argue that these days, Texas politics has become a “collision sport,” with a healthy dose of cannibalism, to boot.

If he were around today, my hunch is that Sen. Bivins would rethink his definition of how Republicans feast on each other.

I also believe he would be ashamed of what is happening.

business news, national news, political news

It’s true: Trump has stolen the GOP

As if we needed any more evidence on top of the mountain of it that has piled up, Donald Trump’s decision to impose steep tariffs on imported steel and aluminum has proved what already has been known.

The president has co-opted the principles of the party under which he was elected. He is no more of a “Republican” than, um, I am.

And I am not.

What we have here is a man who has turned the Republican Party into the Trump Party. The right and far-right wing of the GOP stands behind this man — even though this protectionist trade policy flies in the face of traditional Republican principle.

This is a dangerous trend, folks.

I believe we are witnessing — and this is not an original thought; I didn’t think of this — the development of a “cult of personality.” This is the kind of tag one usually associates with dictators and despots.

Kim Jong Un? Pol Pot? Fidel Castro? Hugo Chavez? Francisco Franco? Adolf Hitler? Benito Mussolini? Juan Peron?

Is the president of the United States a despot and dictator in the mold of those men? No. However, I believe it is a legitimate concern that he has perverted the principles of a once-great political party and turned them into a political tactic.

I cannot pre-determine what Donald Trump has in store for the party for as long as he is president. I do believe that we are witnessing an evolution of sorts. The most fervent Republicans in this country should be aghast at the trade war that Trump seems willing to launch. Instead, they are standing by their man.

If that doesn’t define a cult of personality, then I don’t know what does. It’s a very good thing, indeed, to have two other co-equal government branches — Congress and the federal courts — on board to keep the president’s power grab in check.

But still … this is frightening.

business news

Donald Trump: trade protectionist

Just how many more somersaults can the contemporary political structure endure?

There once was a time when Republicans hated tariffs and taxes; they called it protectionism. They were free trade advocates. Let the market determine all things involving trade, they would say.

Democrats invoked trade protectionism because their union movement allies insisted on it. They believed tariffs on imported goods protected domestically produced material. They were the champions of U.S.-made goods and commodities.

What in the name of free trade is going on here?

The nation’s top Republican, Donald John Trump has just announced steep tariffs on imported steel and aluminum. The GOP president has imposed a policy long favored by those hated Democrats.

So, how have the markets responded? Badly. Wall Street tanked again today on that news, with the Dow Jones average plunging more than 500 points, before closing at just a little less than 500 points in the red.

Tariffs are taxes. The result is that the price of the goods being imported is going to increase. I also thought rampant inflation once was considered a bad economic trend. Wasn’t it? Isn’t it still?

Me? I am a free trader. I like the North American Free Trade Agreement. NAFTA opened this hemisphere to free trade among the United States, Canada and Mexico. Trump doesn’t like NAFTA. It’s that “populist” theme on which he campaigned for president in 2016.

This brings to mind a curious question for me: How does this president hang on to such strong Republican support when his economic policies — such as they are — run counter to traditional GOP principles?

It’s all gone topsy-turvy. I can’t keep my balance.