| Republican Party of Texas Executive Director Eric Opiela has his head buried so far in the sand that I don't know whether to criticize him or celebrate his ignorance -- after all, the more that Texas Republicans want to follow the lead of Rick Perry, Kay Bailey Hutchison, John Cornyn, and Pete Sessions, the better the chances that Texas Democrats will continue to win elections across the state. Paul Burka posted an e-mail from the RPT about the voter ID hearings earlier this week. It read: We expected and prepared for anything at yesterday’s Senate hearing on Voter ID legislation. Let me tell you — the liberal Democrats in Austin did not disappoint on that front. Hundreds of concerned Texans showed up as early as 7 a.m. on Tuesday morning expecting to provide oral or written testimony on this important issue. Unfortunately, the response from Democrat senators was not very welcoming. That’s right! Rather than taking time to listen to personal testimony on incidents of voter fraud in past elections, these Democrats chose delay with their childish rants ALL DAY AND ALL NIGHT LONG!
Does it matter that Senate Republicans refused to split the testimony across different days? Nope. Does it matter that Senate Republicans decided to make this the single most important issue of the session? Nope. The fringe Republican grassroots own the Texas GOP...and they are willing to put voter ID above every other priority facing Texas voters: [Republican Senator Tommy Williams] even admitted as much. In today's debate, he said at the 1:20:50 mark of the Senate video: Senator West: Is this more important than dealing with tuition deregulation?Senator Williams: Senator West, I believe that it is.
In addition to that, Eric Opiela has picked up on the latest failed piece of Republican conventional wisdom -- that Obama is somehow failing, and the whole country will come flocking back to the Taliban-inspired obstructionism of the Republican Party in the 2010 elections. As he said in the comments on Burka Blog: For those of you who think some blue revolution is brewing, take note, the RPT still picked up a net 41 seats this year and flipped seven courthouses despite the Obama-centric gains of Democrats nationwide. Guess what, he ain’t on the ballot in 2010 (though with the results thus far of his presidency, I almost wish he was…).
Let's take a look at those results:
As you can tell from the graph, Republicans and Democrats had almost the same low level of favorability two months ago. However, following the sensible policies of Congressional Democrats and the obstructionist practices of the GOP -- led by Texas Senator John Cornyn in the U.S. Senate and Congressman Pete Sessions in the U.S. House -- Democrats in Congress have seen their favorability increase, while Republicans in Congress have seen their favorability decrease.These are the facts. And we saw this happen yesterday -- as Governor Rick Perry rejected $555 million in unemployment benefits for his own miscalculated political benefit while, at the same time, Texas Democrats like State Senator Leticia Van de Putte and State Representative Garnet F. Coleman pursued responsible legislation. Keep that head buried in the sand, Eric. You're making my work real easy. |
