Tag Archives: Pat Fallon

local news

No mention of 1/6

By John Kanelis / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

A town hall meeting in Rockwall, Texas, this week produced plenty of fiery rhetoric from a congressman who represents the Northeast Texas region contained in the Fourth Congressional District.

Rep. Pat Fallon came loaded with plenty of ammo to fire at President Biden over Afghanistan (the withdrawal), infrastructure spending, COVID-19 and the Democratic House caucus over the rules it is imposing over the way lawmakers behave.

But … no mention from Rep. Fallon about 1/6 and — if you’ll excuse my use of a term not heard among members of the GOP caucus — the insurrection incited by the former Insurrectionist in Chief.

Nor was there any mention of the riot from any of the folks crammed into a Rotary Club office to hear from their congressman.

Now, I suppose I could have raised the issue, given that I was there covering the event for a local weekly newspaper near where I live. Indeed, I did give it some thought. Then it occurred to me: If I raise the issue and ask Fallon why he and most of his fellow congressional Republicans refuse to examine the why and wherefore of the attack on the Capitol, I would have become part of the story.

I feared the folks in the audience would have turned on me, given that Fallon already had taken shots during his remarks at what he called “the mainstream media.” The audience also took a dim view of the media’s coverage of the 2020 election,

My task while there was to report on the event, to record what Fallon said and to chronicle the town hall meeting for the readers of the newspaper for which I write. That’s it, man. I did my job.

However, it did frustrate me a little to hear not a word from Rep. Fallon — an ardent supporter of the former POTUS — about his take on what went down on 1/6 and whether he believes POTUS 45 was in any way culpable in provoking the attack that sought to overturn the results of a free, fair and legal presidential election … which the former president lost to Joe Biden.

Well, I know the answer to that notion. I just wanted to put him on the record. Oh well. There might be another time. I’ll wait.

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That’s why they’re called ‘exploratory committees’

What do you know about this? Texas state Sen. Pat Fallon, a Republican from Prosper, has decided against running for the U.S. Senate in 2020.

He had formed an exploratory committee to, um, explore the possibilities of challenging U.S. Sen. John Cornyn in the GOP primary.

He’s decided to stay in the Texas Senate and not expose his wife and young sons to the rigors of trying to pull Sen. Cornyn even farther to the right.

It’s a smart move, Sen. Fallon.

For starters, Sen. Cornyn is pretty far right already. He is a reliable opponent of gun control measures, of abortion rights, of the Affordable Care Act. That’s just three issues.

Trust me on this: Pat Fallon didn’t need to seek to make Texas’s senior U.S. senator even more conservative. So he’ll forgo a race against Cornyn.

It just goes to show that these efforts occasionally produce the kind of result that Pat Fallon has found. It’s why they’re called “exploratory committees.”

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As if Sen. Cornyn needs to bend more to the right

I hear that Pat Fallon wants to run against U.S. Sen. John Cornyn next year.

Who is this guy Fallon? He’s a rookie Texas state senator from down the road in Prosper. He got elected to the Senate in 2018 by upsetting longtime Republican incumbent Craig Estes; Fallon is no political novice, though, having served in the Texas House of Representatives before moving to the other chamber at the other end of the State Capitol.

Fallon seems to think Sen. Cornyn isn’t conservative enough. He wants to steer public policy even farther to the right than Cornyn is willing to take it.

Hold on here! Cornyn, to my way of thinking, is pretty damn conservative. What in the world is young Sen. Fallon intending to do that Cornyn hasn’t already done?

Cornyn fought against the creation of the Affordable Care Act, along with everything else that President Barack Obama pitched during his two terms in the White House; he has resisted efforts to strengthen laws controlling firearms purchases; he is avidly anti-abortion rights; he stands pretty damn firmly in Donald Trump’s corner as the impeachment forces start gathering steam.

That isn’t good enough for Fallon … or so it might appear.

Fallon is a darling of what used to be called the TEA Party in Texas. The term “TEA Party” has fallen out of favor. It now operates under the name of the True Texas Project, apparently believing that only the most fervent right-wingers represent the “True Texas.” I happen to believe that is just so much horse manure.

As for Cornyn, he needs a strong challenger from the left, not the right. Cornyn has demonstrated, the way I see it, that he is as conservative in his thinking as almost any member of the U.S. Senate Republican caucus.

Fallon, for his part, sounds more like a stooge for Empower Texans, that ultra-right wing outfit led by Michael Quinn Sullivan, who’s waging a fight of his own with fellow conservative Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick.

Good grief! Texas doesn’t need another GOP primary challenge to yank the state’s senior U.S. senator farther to the right. He’s already on the fringe!