Primary Experience, Paul Burka, BurkaBlog (Texas Monthly)
The evolution of the Republican primary into a race to the far right is a sad moment in Texas politics. There is nothing left of the party of George W. Bush, or even the party of Rick Perry.
(snip)
How did this happen? The simple answer is: Ted Cruz. He has remade the state GOP in the image of the tea party.
His contention and conclusion are, of course, entirely false. Not that Texas has moved to the Right politically (it has) but that somehow the election of Ted Cruz has led to a rise in calls for abortion w/no clause protecting the mother's health or exceptions in case of rape or incest, and that every Tea Party member suddenly wants Creationism taught in schools.
This is not to say that the two things above have not been central to the Lt. Governor's race of course. Unfortunately, those two items were the takeaway from the recent debate. But to suggest that this is the fault of Sen. Ted Cruz, who has been focusing primarily on the National Debt and the Affordable Care Act, is ridiculous on it's face.
Lest I remind you it was the Texas Lock Step Political Media who made up the moderator panel, who formulated and asked the questions, and who were primarily responsible for setting a terrible tone for the entire debate. They followed the lead of the other members of the TLSPM who continually confuse the "social-issue Right" with the mainly fiscally-obsessed Tea Party movement. If anything, the current state of the election is due largely to poor coverage by the TLSPM, of which Burka is a founding member.
Has the TLSPM been sharply focused on Wendy! Davis' campaign missteps? Yes. But I would argue that, in an election for an executive position, how you perform the executive function of managing a campaign could be considered part of one's CV. If you can't trust a candidate to hire the best people to run his/her campaign for the biggest executive office in the land, how do you feel about his/her ability to make hiring decisions when in office?
All of the prior said, it is fair to say that the TLSPM has a (very) one-track mind. It should be, theoretically, possible for the TLSPM to focus on Wendy! Davis' campaign follies and on education funding, water funding, infrastructure funding and the loopy-brand of social issues that they think makes for good page-view. They could, but they don't.
Why?
Because Burka and his fellow travelers of the TLSPM have long-ago decided that the citizenry of Texas are (mostly) made up of the mouth-breathing and gormless. And it's much easier to chastise those who you consider to be your intellectual inferiors than it is to try and understand them.
The fact is, most of the TLSPM spends most of their time in Austin sharing drinks and Franklin's BBQ with their fellow Courtiers inside the halls of the ruling class. Texas however, does not provide the endless stream of access and gratification for the Courtier class as one would find in D.C. and other government centers. Texas, you see, is ran by the wrong party for that.
This makes Burka angry, very angry. His dream is to have his mediocre career celebrated in the same manner as the mediocre career of Helen Thomas. Burka wants his seat in the press room named in his honor and painted gold.....or something. The realization late in his career that this is not going to happen that, in Texas, he's just a normal, lightly read schlep much like the rest of us makes him angry. So he lashes out. Earlier it was at Rick Perry, but now that he's gone I guess Ted Cruz and the Tea Party folks will just have to do.
Of course, even if you're a Democrat and reject most of this (mainly because you share the Republican need to view yourself and intellectually superior to your political opposites) then there's always the fact that Burka cribbed his entire idea from former co-worker and current Chron.columnist Patricia Kilday-Hart who, it should be noted, had much trouble in her column getting Texas politics 101 correct as well. County Judges, you see, don't preside in Courthouses.
There are a lot of things wrong with Texas politics these days. I think that the Republicans have an incredibly weak slate of candidates running for most of the State-wide races. Unfortunately, many of them are going to win by default because I find the Democratic ticket all but unelectable.
