Look! On the Right! It's a Bird...? It's a Plane? NO! It's SuperCarole!
By Jim Dallas
For what it's worth, here's my analysis of Carole Keeton Strayhorn's recent moves:
Look, man, Texas politicians are not very good at pandering, so it's pretty obvious when they're doing it. Watch Bush.
Carole Keeton Questionmark is aggressively pursuing the GOP gubernatorial nomination in 2006; this is taken as a given among most political observers in the state.
She has recently turned to pandering to the religious right, since she doesn't have a natural base (except for fiscal moderates, and those do not a winning coalition make).
The first was the Perry divorce/adultery/queer rumors, which it turns out were not started by we Democrats but almost certainly by someone in Carole's office.
The second was her reaction to Perry's proposed sin taxes; instead of taxing adult businesses, she proposed to shut them down. She should have been yellow-carded for pandering on that one.
Now this. The Unitarians are anathema among the "bible believing" Republican base. She'll lose this court fight. She's just hoping to impress religious bigots along the way.
So sad that Strayhorn had to turn to this in order to get votes; there were hopes up until a few months ago she might defect to the Democrats and run on our side (but then Jim Turner, who would be a much stronger candidate, started dropping hints).
I'd tell Carole to turn away from the dark side, but she's pretty much doomed.
I've been working for seven days straight, and I'm about ready to drop dead. So I'm too lazy to provide links. You either know what I'm talking about, or you don't. (Sorry).
But I think there's a method to Carole's madness; I think she's preparing to run as a grassroots Christo-populist.
Flame on!
P.S. -- The standard which Strayhorn is using seems to go even beyond the "god, gods, or supreme being" test used by John Sharp in 1997 (which was smacked down by the courts). The "uniform system of belief" test ought to disqualify just about every church that isn't a mindless cult -- oughtn't it?
So I guess Carole, unless this is a pander, is gonna go after the presbyterians and the catholics next. Lovely lady, that Comptroller Strayhorn.
Posted by Jim Dallas at May 19, 2004 06:32 PM
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Carole's rants are entertaining, and they have sometimes been useful to the left (the enemy of my enemy, etc.), but there's no way she'd make a passable Democratic candidate for governor. If a Blue Dog is all we can get, it'll still be a whole lot better that someone who doesn't know who she really is.
Strayhorn will be 67 in 2006. She can't beat Perry or KBH in the Primary and she can't switch parties and expect to be nominated - much less win - as a Democrat. She has krapped on too many Democrats over the years, so she'd have no credibility.
I think Strayhorn is simply trying to take Perry down, sort of the "If I can't have it then you can't have it either" mentaility.
I hear that she's packing the pounds back on too.
