Debra Medina was not given a booth at the Republican Party of Texas state convention in Dallas last weekend. As Christy Hoppe with the Dallas Morning News reports, "Ex-Texas gubernatorial candidate an outlier at state GOP convention in Dallas":
Debra Medina, the tea party favorite who made an impressive stand in the primary for governor, is rousing the GOP rabble.
She's formed a group, called We Texans, to push her agenda on state sovereignty and private property rights. But the party establishment has been less than welcoming to her continued presence. She is a delegate to the state convention and a former GOP county leader, but her group was denied a booth inside the convention hall. [...]
"The party convention is like the cover of a beautiful book. The facade is lovely, it paints a very pretty picture, but look inside," Medina said. "It's all hot air and no substance."
Medina was the only Republican in Dallas to take on the most important issue of substance facing Texas: Rick Perry's $18 Billion Budget Deficit. From her "We Texans" event:
A Texas-size hole in the Lone Star state's budget is putting pressure on Gov. Rick Perry, who is running for re-election this year as a model fiscal conservative. [...]
But as the state's budget shortfall widens—to as much as $18 billion, or about 20% of the next two-year budget, according to the state legislature's latest analysis released earlier this month—critics are complaining that Mr. Perry's policies have left the state with little room to reduce spending.
Texas Democrats, who hold their own confab in Corpus Christi in two weeks, responded to Perry's convention appearance with a gathering four blocks away, using a plastic blow-up elephant as a prop to make their point.
They maintained that for all his Washington bashing, the governor neglected to remind delegates that he took $22 billion in federal stimulus money to help balance the state's budget.
Democrats did not think much of Perry's self-styled conservatism, either.
“This weekend, the largest elephant in the room at the Republican Party convention is Rick Perry's $18 billion budget deficit,” state Democratic Party spokeswoman Kirsten Gray said.
And to drive the point home -- with a prop I had a little too much involvement in getting set up -- was, in fact, the largest elephant in the room:
