Burnt Orange Report

Bush's Hometown Newspaper endorses Kerry

By Karl-Thomas Musselman

The Lone Star Iconoclast, the Crawford weekly paper which endorsed Bush 4 years ago has seen the light and has endorsed Kerry.

"The publishers of The Iconoclast endorsed Bush four years ago, based on the things he promised, not on this smoke-screened agenda," the newspaper said in its editorial. "Today, we are endorsing his opponent, John Kerry."

It urged "Texans not to rate the candidate by his hometown or even his political party, but instead by where he intends to take the country."

Update: Byron, here. Karl-Thomas just beat me to this one, as I just spotted it over on mydd. Instead of starting a new thread, here's my two cents on this one. The Crawford paper must be getting a lot of traffic as the site appears to be down.

Crawford is an interesting little town. The mayor of Crawford has endorsed John Kerry.

And don't forget the Crawford Lone Star Iconoclast editorials during the redistricting fiasco last year.

Here's one when the Texas Ten were in New Mexico:

The Iconoclast of the Week is New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, who assigned a state trooper to protect the protesting Texas legislators from bounty hunters. The Rightist lunatics who have taken over the state legislature were reportedly planning to hire gun thugs to go to New Mexico and bring back the 11 Texas legislators who fled the state to stop lying Texas Gov. Rick “Tricky Ricky” Perry’s illegal gerrymandering scheme.

And this one:

The Iconoclast of the Week is Rep. Jim Dunnam, who led the legislative march to Ardmore and protected the voting integrity of McLennan County and surrounding counties.

The Rightist Republican Gerrymander would have pared segments of Waco into the religious radical loony land of southern Fort Worth suburbs and thrown the rest in with Georgetown and Round Rock’s white flight wealthy.

We need only to look at the debacle of Bosque County, represented by Burleson’s sanctimonious socialite who hardly bothers to campaign down here, let alone represent us.

That sanctimonious socialite would be none other than Arlene Wohlgemuth, who's running against Chet Edwards with Club for Growth support. The interesting thing is that the Crawford Lone Star Iconoclast isn't known to be a left-wing rag. Rather, they supported Bush in 2000, and much of his early agenda:

The Iconoclast, established in 2000, said it editorialized in support of the invasion of Iraq and publisher W. Leon Smith promoted Bush and the invasion in a BBC interview, believing Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction.

"Instead we were duped into following yet another privileged agenda," the editorial said.

The newspaper praised Kerry for "30 years of experience looking out for the American people" and lauded his background as "a highly decorated Vietnam veteran."

Times change, people change. The "compassionate conservative" governor dedicated to having a "humble" foreign policy has in fact governed entirely without compassion, with more liberal domestic spending than Clinton or Carter, and with a foreign policy defined by preemption and unilateralism. It's no surprise that the Crawford paper has changed their mind on George W. Bush. President Bush has abandoned the people and policies that elected him.

Update: More on the Kerry Blog. Good for them to be on top of things.