BSC Republicans: A Review of Election Night, Texas 2010.
March 3, 2010

 
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SPECIAL EDITION

It is election night and the Texas Primary returns are still coming in. If you didn’t think the Republican Party was Bat “$#!+” Crazy before, the primary results seem to all but confirm it. How else does one explain away such huge support for a manifestly insane governor and a series of embarrassing state propositions even making it onto the GOP ballot let alone winning HUGE support among Republican voters?

First off, Governor Rick “Good Hair” Perry, who was Lieutenant Governor under George W. Bush from 1994 until Bush was awarded the Presidency in 2000, became Governor of Texas at that time, where he has been ever since.

In 2007, Perry and the GOP lobbied HARD to put “tort reform” on the November ballot (with frequent ads ridiculing the “hot coffee in the lap” judgment that made headlines years before). The GOP, along with their buddies in the health care lobby, ran ads for months promising that “if we capped injury damages at $5 million dollars, the cost of health insurance would go down and more people could afford to buy insurance.” Opponents of the bill pointed out that they already tried this in California, and it was a miserable failure. But Perry got his way and the motion passed.

The result? Insurance rates did NOT go down (big surprise) and Texas now has the highest percentage of uninsured in the entire country at 26.9%. To make matters worse, the arbitrary “$5 million dollar cap for a lifetime of care” they passed is the same whether the victim is 7 or 70. A seriously injured child can burn through $5 million rather quickly in this era of skyrocketing health care costs (where the GOP “solution” is still “tort reform”.)

As of this writing, Governor “Good Hair” has defeated his equally insane opponent, Senator Kay Baily Hutchinson, despite mercilessly slamming him with a barrage of negative ads. In Perry’s own ads, he slammed KBH “for voting for the $700B Bailout”… which he himself begged her to pass according to KBH. In one ad, Hutchinson is seen telling supporters that she “wouldn’t give anyone a $700 Billion dollar blank check… not even Ronald Reagan”, followed by video of her voting Yea for the bailout the very next day. Hutchinson’s defense in an interview Monday night: “I said I would never give anyone a blank check, and I didn’t. It was limited to $700 Billion.” But as clearly seen in Perry’s ad, it wasn’t “the amount” she was concerned with, it was not knowing what it would be spent on.

In another ad, Perry comes out as a Tenther, pronouncing his “firm belief in the Tenth Amendment” to keep “broken Washington” from “interfering in State government”, and that he would always “fight for the Tenth Amendment”.

Perry already earned his place in the Tea-bagger spotlight when he “threatened that Texas might succeed from the union” if the Government forced health care reform upon the state of Texas. When it was pointed out that “Texas does not have the power to succeed” (a common misconception of many Texans with no more than a tenth grade education), only to “divide itself into as many as five separate states”, Perry responded “that is what I meant all along“, arguing that the federal government “would throw Texas out of the union” before it gave it eight more Senators. Riiiiiiiiiiiight.

Perry managed to draw 51% of the vote and thus avoid a run-off with KBH in April. The “anti-Perry” vote was split between Hutchinson (31%) and Tea-bagger Debra Medina (18%). With 66% of precincts reporting, the local news asked Medina if she was ready to concede the race. “No way!” was her response. “We will wait until ALL the returns are in to see if Perry falls below 50%”, she tells the reporter. Why? You’re not in second place, moron. Even if Perry falls below 50% and there’s a run-off, it will be with the second highest vote getter, and that’s KBH… who leads Medina by 13%. No one ever accused Tea-baggers of living in the “Reality-based community”.

Then there are the Ballot initiatives. On the GOP ballot exclusively, There are five propositions. NONE OF THESE INITIATIVES were on the Democratic ballot, so I have NO idea what the point was of them even being on there… except maybe to draw more pro-Perry Bat-crap crazy Republicans to the polls. The five Propositions on the Texas State ballot might be laughed off any other state ballot, but in Texas, which ranks 49th in Verbal SAT scores, 36th in number of High School graduates, and 40th on education expenditures per child, the results are still surprising (though, I supposed, they shouldn’t be):
 

Proposition 1: Require voters to show a “Photo ID” before they may vote. 83% of Republicans support this proposition. A fix to a problem that doesn’t exist anywhere but in the minds of Republican voters. There is no mention in the ballot initiative where people are to obtain this photo ID. Despite being a big state, not everyone drives (eg: many seniors) so not everyone has a drivers license. Other “unofficial” forms of photo ID are meaningless, so just who is to issue these ID’s and at whose cost? Do you charge voters for a State-provided photo ID? That’s a poll tax, which is illegal. And how do you obtain photos of those who can’t get to their “local” government office to have their picture taken? Does the government now have to offer taxi service to bring people to the “photo ID center”, or do they just go door-to-door with a camera? I wonder what all this would cost? Something tells me these morons didn’t exactly think this thing through.
 

Proposition 2: “Control Government Growth”. A proclamation limiting the growth of State government by a formula based on population and inflation, which can only be overridden by public vote or in cases of emergency. 92% are voting Yes. I see a few problems with using such a narrowly defined formula to calculate state spending, but for the most part, this is probably the least bat-crap crazy initiative of the five.
 

Proposition 3: Cut Federal Income Taxes. A demand that the U.S. Congress “stimulate the economy by cutting taxes.” 93% agree with this measure… you know, because the Bush tax cuts worked so well. I guess no one has told these asshats that 95% of them already GOT a tax cut under President Obama. And when you have Tea-baggers in the streets protesting the size of the deficit, what smarter move is there than to cut tax revenue so the government will have to borrow more money to operate?
 

Proposition 4 (my favorite): Decree on the “public acknowledgment of God”. This initiative would “allow the word ‘God’, prayers, and display of the Ten Commandments in all schools, public buildings, and public gatherings“. 95% of Republicans voted yes on this measure. The remaining 5% are Scientologists (/snark). I suspect this vote says more about the make up of the GOP than anything else… that is, no Muslims, Hindus, Buddhist or Atheists. No one but “the Big Two”: Christians and Jews. And since when ars religious displays/speech/activity prohibited at “public gatherings” outside of schools or government buildings? And if just ONE of these Right-wing tools can explain the legal justification for displaying Commandments such as “Keeping the Sabbath holy” or “No other Gods before Me” in a government building, I’m all ears.
 

Proposition 5: Mandatory Sonograms (and forced viewing) for women seeking an abortion. 69% voted Yes (surprisingly low in this BSC state.) This ballot measure is truly offensive. As if the entire abortion process isn’t traumatic enough already… between the protesters calling you “baby killer”, and (in some states) forcing women to watch videos showing aborted fetuses, followed by the abortion procedure itself and the shame many women are already feeling… let’s heap on top of that, forcing women… some of them rape victims… to view the fetus they are about to abort. Let’s see how deep we can dig those emotional scars. Seriously now, isn’t that the precise goal of such a law… Either change you mind or be deeply traumatized for life? Republican pro-lifers have this delusional image of smiling young women skipping to the abortion clinic on their way to homeroom.
 

With Perry winning 52% of the vote and a run-off now unnecessary, it will be Perry (who won re-election in 2007 with just 39% of the vote thanks to a carefully orchestrated 4-man race splitting the anti-Perry vote three ways) vs. the former Democratic Mayor of Houston Bill White (who was just replaced with the city’s first openly-gay mayor Annise Parker).

And those GOP Ballot Initiatives… since they weren’t on the Democratic ballot, their purpose clearly was not to see if they appear on the November ballot… I have NO CLUE what their purpose was other than to entertain Republican voters while they cast their ballot. A fun activity to attract wingnuts to the polling station. Cheaper than coloring books I suppose.

It’s going to be a fun next eight months. 🙁
 

 

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March 3, 2010 · Admin Mugsy · One Comment - Add
Posted in: Election, Politics, Rants

One Response

  1. Grant in Texas - March 3, 2010

    I see that Republicans are complaining about Democrats crossing-over and voting a Republican ballot in our OPEN primary state. Democrats had few real contests and in my county, Galveston, only 7 contested positions. We had a 12.5% turnout in our county of 300,000 with nearly twice as many Republicans and Democrats voting. Americans love to complain but don’t bother to vote!

    Rick Casey had a good column today about Hutchinson’s poorly run campaign:
    http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/metropolitan/casey/6894315.html

    What was she thinking promoting the endorsements of the Dick Cheney, the Bush Family, Henry Kissinger, and James Baker, which played into Perry’s claims that she was a “Washington Insider”?
    Perry ran a vicious campaign nit-picking the 9000 earmarks Hutchinson voted for during her 17 years in the U.S. Senate, mostly when it was under Republican Control.

    http://www.khou.com/news/politics/85254702.html

    The minuscule “fruit fly research” money earmarked for FRANCE was part of a mostly Defense Appropriations bill (H.R. 2764) in 2008 under G. W. Bush. But the reich-wing loves to hate on FRANCE so Perry pandered to them. So what if a few dollars was given to France contributing to Mediterranean fruit fly research (after all they are on the Mediterranean!) when that fly could devastate the citrus industry in our nation!

    http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/D?c110:9:./temp/~c110VkoKPp::

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