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Last week, Rasmussen released the first poll on the Rick "Cyborg" Perry vs. Kay "Coward" Hutchison in quite some time. We wrote about it previously on BOR: In a primary will relatively low turnout, the intensity of support matters greatly. To see Perry's "strongly approve" go down and "strongly disapprove" go up, even slightly, may worry the Governor's campaign team. While the polling at first glance seems like good news for Hutchison and bad news for Perry, a question still remains about how a challenger, even one as popular as Hutchison, can defeat a ten-year incumbent governor who has a nearly 70 percent approval rating among likely primary voters.
Most analysis of the polls was straightforward, like ours -- but one person is thinking outside the box, and I wanted to highlight that. Glenn Smith, writing at Dog Canyon, raises the idea that those numbers reflect a backlash against hate talk, secession (bold emhpasis added): The conventional wisdom is that Perry has secured the GOP right-wing base, the people most likely to turn out in the 2010 Republican primary. But if there was ever a year when conventional wisdom was worth exactly what you and I paid for it, this is it. I think it’s too easy for people to look at a few racist yahoos in Texas and assume they are what the state is all about, politically or culturally. It’s not the case, of course. Most Texans are live-and-let-live, tolerant folk. We are “the friendship state” after all. There’s no question that the electoral impact of racism is significant here, as it is throughout the South. But Texas is not a Southern state. In many ways it is the most demographically complex state in the country. We’ll explore that complexity more in the future. I just want to raise a warning about listening too much to conventional wisdom, including talk that by securing the far right-wing Perry has all but won his primary. I don’t think it’s true. What if the alarm and disgust at the yahoos generates a significant turnout of moderate voters? What happens when health care reform passes and the controversy disappears, as it always does? What happens if there’s buoyancy in the economy? What happens if people are just sick and tired of Perry’s hair?
Some interesting thoughts. Read more over at Dog Canyon. |
