Chad’s Morning Brief: Doom and Gloom From the Left and Right Over Dan Patrick’s Rise, Time Magazine Thinks People Forgot About Wendy Davis and Abortion, and Other Top Issues
Here is your Morning Brief for the morning of May 29, 2014. Give me your feedback below and tune in to The Chad Hasty Show for these and many more topics from 8:30 to 11am. Remember, you can listen online at KFYO.com or on your iPhone/Android with the radioPup App.
Important Election Dates:
Election Day for Lubbock City Council District 3 Runoff: June 21
Burka Sounds the Alarm!
Not everyone is taking Dan Patrick's runoff win well. Paul Burka of Texas Monthly warned of doom and gloom in Texas with Patrick as Lieutenant Governor. He also believes that Patrick with usher Texas into the swing state era.
The big winners from the primary runoff were Dan Patrick and the tea party. The big loser was the state of Texas, which sailed into unknown territory. The tea party, collectively, is in total control of the state, and the consequences are going to be staggering. All state services are in peril, in particular, the public schools. It’s the revenge of the know-nothings.
What will Dan Patrick be like as lieutenant governor? We know that he is aggressively anti-immigrant, so we may have to deal with Arizona-style immigration legislation, sanctuary cities laws, disinvestment in higher education, and privatization of public education. The one thing we know about the tea party with certainty is that they are angry--they are the definition of sore winners. The new lieutenant governor is not going to inherit a bed of roses. He has no relationship with the Speaker of the House. I doubt that he will have a good relationship with Greg Abbott. My guess is that Patrick is already thinking about the next election, and that he plans to challenge Abbott for governor in 2018. His ego won’t let him stop at lite guv.
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. His followers have no understanding of, or inclination for, negotiation and compromise, and they didn’t run the table at the ballot box last night; Straus’s team outperformed Michael Quinn Sullivan’s. The fundamentals of politics don’t change. You have to understand that you can’t always get what you want.
The question looming over the 2015 session is, frankly, whether state services can survive the session. The state has a lot of money, but will the tea party allow lawmakers to spend it? Or will the money just linger unspent in the Rainy Day fund? There are going to be some potholes in the road ahead--assuming that the tea party lets us build any roads.
Burka and the Dems aren't the only ones who feel this way. I've seen some of the same written by Republicans in recent days. Will Dan Patrick turn Texas purple? Of course not.
Abortion Barbie Posters and Wendy Davis
Time online seems to think that abortion was a forgotten issue in the race between Wendy Davis and Greg Abbott. Luckily, the Abortion Barbie posters have reminded them.
Texas Democratic gubernatorial candidate Wendy Davis recently came upon life-sized posters of her head on a naked Barbie doll’s body, with a tiny infant doll in her stomach and a giant pair of scissors hanging ominously, and inexplicably, over a black baby doll to her side. The posters, which greeted David as she traveled to California for fundraisers last week, read: “Hollywood Welcomes Abortion Barbie Wendy Davis.”
The posters were signed Sabo, a self-described conservative street artist who told the San Antonio Express-News he was paid by Kathryn Stuard for the work. Struad, a supporter of Davis’s Republican opponent Greg Abbott, confirmed this on Twitter. “I find it fascinating that my support of a talented artist is the story,” Straud wrote. “He is the story. Why hate that he expresses visually what u [sic] support.”
Abbott, the Texas attorney general, disavowed the posters. “These posters are not affiliated with our campaign and we find them appalling,” Abbot spokesman Matt Hirsch said in a statement.
Davis first rose to prominence for an 11-hour filibuster of an anti-abortion bill in the Texas state Senate. But abortion is not a top issue for Texas voters and Davis, trailing Abbot by 12.3 percentage points in a RealClearPolitics average of state polls has tried to focus her campaign on the economy, education and immigration. Abortion isn’t a top issue on her website.
The issue grew so cold that some Republicans accused Davis of running away from it. “There are early indications that the so-called ‘War on Women’ has run its course. Look at Wendy Davis, who catapulted to national fame a year ago on this issue of abortion,” a GOP strategist told TIME in April. “If you go on Wendy Davis’ campaign website it’s completely scrubbed of anything having to do with abortion and she now describe herself as pro-life. She has a 46% approval with women in Texas and Greg Abbott is beating her among women.”
While Davis never went so far as to describe herself as pro-life, groups that favor abortion access did go after Davis for saying she’d support a ban on 20-week abortions, though she’d said even before the filibuster that that was a piece of the anti-abortion legislation she would have supported.
But with the poster controversy, abortion has returned as a campaign issue with a vengeance. Davis’ campaign has sent out no less than five fundraising emails off the scandal. “We’ve had a really strong response regardless of where people stand on the issue to the poster,” Davis spokeswoman Lauren Weiner said. National women’s groups and other candidates have condemned the posters. All of which shows, there’s little candidates can do sometimes when some supporters take things too far.
I guess we can forgive Time for thinking the issue of abortion was forgotten in this race. Those outside of Texas may not remember what gave rise to Wendy Davis in the first place.
Other Top Stories:
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