Capitol Letters

Call it the runoff heard round the state and beyond. Last week Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst failed to hit the 50 percent benchmark to avoid a final showdown with former solicitor general Ted Cruz. The Senate race is another fight over who owns the Republican Party. Is it the grassroots-grown angry citizenry wielding pitchforks and out for blood or is it the old stale establishment seeking to preserve the status quo? These lines were somewhat blurred when Gov. Rick Perry, supposed hero of the tea party and the man who once stoked secession talk, endorsed the very establishment lieutenant governor over scrappy insurgent Cruz. Of course, a Perry endorsement hasn’t brought good fortune of late. Just ask Rudy Guiliani and Newt Gingrich. Though Dewhurst spent $15 million of his own money on his campaign (chump change), Cruz was backed by uber-conservative groups FreedomWorks and Club for Growth, which hammered away at Dewhurst for being a “moderate.” Calling a fellow Republican a “moderate” in Texas is kind of like calling him a “serial killer.” Looks like it worked.

After primary night, Cruz immediately challenged Dewhurst to five debates between now and July 31st. Cruz certainly has the debate chops to make Dewhurst look like Perry. While at Princeton, he finished first in the 1992 U.S. National Debate Championship before attending Harvard Law School. Is the tea party citizenry aware that they’re lining up behind a two-time Ivy Leaguer who graduated with honors? Isn’t that against their code of ethics? As Rick Santorum, a Cruz supporter, would say, what a snob. Meanwhile a reporter from Univision (perhaps prompted by Dewhurst) has suggested that the two candidates participate in a debate conducted in Spanish. Dewhurst, who learned Spanish in his CIA days while in Bolivia, seemed amenable to the idea. Whether Cruz, who admits that his Spanish is more like “Spanglish,” despite the fact that his father is from Cuba, has enough time to complete the Rosetta Stone speed course remains to be seen.

Beyond the theatrics of the race, a Cruz victory would have important policy implications for the state and the U.S. Senate.

If Cruz is the one who replaces the relatively moderate Kay Bailey Hutchison, who’s retiring, he would be a very different senator, beholden to very different interests. (A widely cited—not to mention glowing—profile in the National Review lays out Cruz’s positions on certain key issues.) While Hutchison has never truly been the moderate that she’s been made out to be, she has provided a somewhat bipartisan voice in an extremely partisan Congress.

Hutchison has never fully convinced voters of her pro-life credentials, partly because she has been historically vague on the subject and whether she supports repealing Roe v. Wade. Many political observers have long suspected that, deep down, she’s pro-choice. She has voted in favor of embryonic stem cell research. Cruz, on the other hand, is “unapologetically” pro-life, supporting a ban on partial-birth abortion (Hutchison makes an exception for the mother’s life), which he successfully defended in court as solicitor general. He also successfully defended parental consent laws and the prohibition of state funding of abortion. For his part, Dewhurst can tout the passage of the sonogram legislation, which requires doctors to provide pre-abortion sonograms, and the defunding of Planned Parenthood while presiding over the Texas Senate last session. In other words, they’re both more pro-life than Hutchison.

Both Cruz and Dewhurst oppose amnesty for illegal immigrants—although Dewhurst claimed that his opponent favors amnesty—and both oppose in-state tuition for children of illegal immigrants, though Cruz claimed that Dewhurst supports it. Don’t worry. Neither one of them will get the Hispanic vote so it’s pretty much a wash.

It goes without saying that both Cruz and Dewhurst have vowed to defeat “ObamaCare” in favor of a “free-market” system. On behalf of Texas and four other states, Cruz sued the federal government to strike down portions of the Medicare Prescription Drug program. (For someone who supposedly favors tort reform, Cruz sure does like to sue a lot.) Due to Cruz’s opposition to what he sees as government overreach in health care, one can only assume that he would not be the strong proponent of Children’s Health Insurance Program, which Hutchison has consistently supported.

As a proud Tenth Amendment scholar, Cruz wants to eliminate the Department of Education, Commerce and the IRS. No wonder Ron Paul supports him.

Although Both Cruz and Dewhurst are adamantly pro-gun, Cruz has been honored by the National Rifle Association not once but twice for his role in defending the Second Amendment before the U.S. Supreme Court.

On social issues, not only does Cruz oppose same-sex marriage, he apparently also has a problem with gay pride parades, criticizing his one-time opponent Dallas Mayor Tom Leppert for marching in them. So apparently Cruz will be fighting to expand the ban on gay marriage to include marching down streets carrying rainbow flags. The lawsuit will be filed any day now.

And, most importantly, let’s not forget that Cruz has always been a champion of such signature conservative issues as defending the display of the Ten Commandments on state property and preserving the words “Under God” in the pledge of allegiance, which he did as solicitor general.

If our Ted Cruz turns out to be our next senator, he’s going to make John Cornyn look like, well, Kay Bailey Hutchison.

What has happened between Rick Perry and Sarah Palin? They used to read each other’s minds, finish each other’s sentences, appear on stage together beaming like the prom king and queen. The one-time shooting star of the Republican Party proudly endorsed Perry in the last gubernatorial election, calling him the “true conservative” as opposed to that faux conservative Kay Bailey Hutchison who finally has the decency to vacate her Senate seat. But now the two soul mates find themselves on different sides of the Texas Republican primary race for Hutchison’s U.S. Senate seat, which begs the question, how well can anyone really know anyone?

Perry is backing Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst while Palin has endorsed former state solicitor general and, more importantly, Tea Party Express darling Ted Cruz. (You know you’re a tea party darling when you’re endorsed by South Carolina Sen. Jim DeMint, the designated Mad Hatter.) This week the Dewhurst campaign released a new ad featuring a strangely orange-faced Perry saying that “our country needs him and so does Texas.” For her part, Palin made a robocall calling Cruz “a conservative we can trust” who has “defended the Constitution and U.S. sovereignty.” Wow. Can Dewhurst say that? (Although some of Palin’s robocalls for Cruz evidently went to people in Kansas. Oops.)

Palin’s melodic voice is also featured in a new ad called “Fighter,” which starts with Cruz’s Cuban father being imprisoned by a “dictator.” (The ad is supposed to make you think Cruz’s father was some freedom fighter jailed by Castro. But that’s not actually the case. Cruz’s father was on Castro’s side and was imprisoned by the Batista government that Castro later overthrew. Details, details. The ad later credits Cruz with taking on the United Nations. So there’s that.)

And on Thursday, former senator and failed presidential candidate Rick Santorum announced his endorsement of Cruz on Glenn Beck’s radio show, calling him “spellbinding, a tremendous orator and principled.” (Cruz, not Beck.) If you’re keeping score Cruz has now secured two endorsements from failed presidential candidates—Santorum and Ron Paul. Dewhurst has been endorsed by Perry and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, but Huckabee’s so 2008. Does Santorum, the devout Catholic, realize that he’s endorsing a Southern Baptist, not to mention a candidate who, according to the Dewhurst campaign, wants to send every single American job to China?

When Cruz is not busy defending the Constitution, he’s being forced to defend himself against the Dewhurst campaign’s negative attack ads. An ad released in April suggests that Cruz helped put a U.S. company out of business by representing a Chinese firm that apparently stole some manufacturing blueprints. (Politifact rated the assertions “mostly true.”) Cruz complained about the “nasty, false attack ads trying to convince every Texan that I’m a red Chinese communist who wants to eat your children.”

In a profile of Cruz, The Texas Observer’s Anthony Zurcher writes that his Republican supporters view Cruz as the next Ronald Reagan, which is just as good, if not better, than being the next Jesus Christ. But, as Zurcher notes, Mr. Cruz has to actually win an election first. There’s the rub.

In the latest University of Texas/Texas Tribune poll, Dewhurst is leading the crowded primary, which includes former Dallas mayor Tom Leppert and ESPN analyst Craig James, with only 40 percent. If Dewhurst can’t win more than 50 percent of the vote in the primary, which looks increasingly likely, he and (presumably) Cruz will face each other in a runoff in July. The conventional wisdom says Dewhurst could be in serious trouble if he finds himself in a runoff with Cruz.

No matter who wins, one of these guys will replace Hutchison, which means there will be one less kind-of-sometimes-semi-moderate member of the U.S. Senate. And that, in itself, is something for conservatives to celebrate.

Some culturally divisive issues are viewed by Republicans as so potentially dangerous to the moral fabric of our society that they demand an emergency response (see: Texas’s new ultrasound law). The volatile issue of same-sex marriage has been at the forefront for years, as evidenced by countless ballot initiatives and constitutional amendments at both the state and federal levels. But following last week’s historic endorsement of same-sex marriage by President Obama, the majority of Republicans seemed willing to leave same-sex marriage alone, choosing instead to bite their tongues in the hopes of winning those coveted swing voters.

According to a new Gallup poll, which was conducted prior to Obama’s endorsement, the country is split on same-sex marriage with 50 percent of Americans supporting it and 48 percent against it. Of that number, a significant 57 percent of registered independents support it.

In an attempt to assure voters that this election is solely about the economy, National Republican Senatorial Committee Chairman John Cornyn told CNN that the president was trying to “raise divisive issues up to solidify his base and to divide this country,” adding that we should be focusing on jobs, not social issues. Yes, in times like these Americans need to put their partisan differences aside for the good of the country. Just like Cornyn did in 2004, when he helped introduce a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage, declaring that it amounted to an economic emergency:

We know from some of the social experimentation that’s occurred in Scandinavia and elsewhere that when same-sex couples can legally marry, that essentially what happens is people quit getting married across the board, and more people raise children outside of marriage at higher risk for a whole host of social ills, placing additional burdens on the government and the taxpayers that support that government.

Clearly the senator no longer cares about the taxpayers.

Although Texas voters approved a constitutional amendment banning both same-sex marriage and civil unions in 2005, a Texas Tribune poll conducted last year found that those views were, much like the president’s, evolving. Currently 61 percent of Texans support legal recognition of gay and lesbian relationships with 30 percent supporting same-sex marriage and 31 percent supporting civil unions.

Most Texas Republicans have remained relatively quiet concerning this latest development. Earlier this year Congressman Louie Gohmert slammed the reversal of California’s Proposition 8, explaining that marriage should be about the sacred relationship between a loving egg and a willing sperm. “Nature seemed to like the idea of an egg and a sperm coming together because of pro-creation,” Gohmert said. “Apparently [the appeals court] thought the sperm had far better use some other way biologically, combining it with something else.” (The “something else” remains undefined.) Yet despite his impassioned plea for the woefully underrepresented egg and sperm, Gohmert now says that same-sex marriage is “not something we’re focused on right now.” Congressman Ted Poe, a two-time co-sponsor of the Marriage Protection Act, even attended a Log Cabin Republican meeting in Houston this year. Congressman Kevin Brady, however, did respond to Obama’s endorsement of gay marriage on Facebook, the poor man’s version of a press conference: “I suspect the President’s flip-flop on gay marriage is driven by his election fears rather than his principles…In my view, marriage is a sacrament from our Creator, not merely a law created by man.”

Looks like someone didn’t get the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell Same-Sex Marriage memo. And he wasn’t the only one. Gov. Rick Perry’s spokesperson referred to Obama’s endorsement as “election-year politics” and reiterated that Perry is committed to the “sanctity of marriage, defined as a union between one man and one woman.” Not that the governor has ever been shy about his disdain for gay rights. In his controversial campaign ad released last December, Perry said, “There’s something wrong in this country when gays can serve openly in the military but our kids can’t openly celebrate Christmas or pray in school.” And that’s just the military. Imagine what same-sex marriage could do to Christmas.

Whether the issue of gay marriage will have an impact on this election remains to be seen. But the fairly muted response by Republicans, especially in Texas, hints that this is an issue they don’t want to touch. For now, anyway.

Last year the Texas Legislature sent Planned Parenthood to death row by trying to defund it. Planned Parenthood, feeling that it had been wrongly convicted, appealed the ruling and received an eleventh-hour reprieve. But an emergency motion filed by the attorney general put them back in jeopardy. The crime? Planned Parenthood deigns to provide affordable health screenings and access to contraceptives to lower-income and uninsured women through the Texas Medicaid Women’s Health Program. Last session the Legislature singled out Planned Parenthood by passing a bill banning any clinic “associated with abortion providers” (otherwise known as guilty by association) from the program.

On Monday a federal judge ruled that the state of Texas couldn’t enforce its ban, which was likely unconstitutional. On Monday night Attorney General Greg Abbott, taking a brief break from working on his gubernatorial acceptance speech, filed an emergency motion to appeal the ruling and was granted an emergency stay by an appellate court judge. Yes, this is what constitutes an emergency in this state. Texas may have just saved some low-income woman from getting her annual breast cancer screening. She can thank Abbott later.

Earlier this year the Obama administration decided to halt federal funding of the Women’s Health Program because Texas had violated federal rules in banning Planned Parenthood. Realizing the magnitude of the issue, U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey urged Governor Perry to work with the administration so Texas would not lose much-needed funds. Naturally Perry chose to ignore her advice.

For their part, Republican members of the Texas congressional delegation wrote a strongly worded letter accusing the president of “supporting a pro-abortion agenda.” (Never mind the fact that federal funding cannot be used to fund abortion services.) This wasn’t a surprising move considering they were all supporters of last year’s amendment—cosponsored by Congressman Ted Poe—to defund Planned Parenthood completely.

It’s not often that one of the Texas senators makes the House members look sane. But this time, in an interview with the Texas Tribune, Senator John Cornyn decided to align himself with the patently false comments of Sen. Jon Kyl of Arizona regarding family planning services provided by Planned Parenthood. Kyl had claimed that “well over” 90 percent of its services were abortion-related, a statement he has since disavowed as “not intended to be factual.” Cornyn, however, still has questions, saying that he’d heard that 98 percent of services provided to pregnant women are abortion-related.

“I went on Planned Parenthood’s website…to see if I could get some good information,” Cornyn said in the interview. “I came up empty.”

Cornyn couldn’t have looked too hard, so I’ll make it easy for him. Go to plannedparenthood.org. Click on About Us. Click on Annual Report. Select 2009-2010. Open document. Scroll to page five. View colorful pie chart. “Abortion services: 3%.” Takes approximately three minutes. You’re welcome.

Despite strong Republican opposition, the U.S. Senate approved the reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act on Thursday, just in time for senators’ well-deserved vacation. The renewal of an act that has always enjoyed bipartisan support would seem straightforward enough. The law, passed in 1994 under the Clinton administration, provides funding and grants to local law enforcement to combat domestic and sexual violence, as well as a myriad of programs and services. Why, then, did every Republican member of the Judiciary Committee, including Texas’ own John Cornyn, vote against the legislation in February? Because this time the Democrats sought to extend those protections to same-sex couples, illegal immigrants and Native Americans. Will the liberals stop at nothing to promote their radical agenda?

With last week’s announcement by the Romney campaign that the presumptive nominee—finally endorsed this week by Rick Perry!—supports the reauthorization of VAWA, Republican senators felt compelled to drop their opposition, punting instead to their more cunning counterparts in the U.S. House. But they still introduced their own version of the act, crafted by Sens. Kay Bailey Hutchison (one of the few Republican women left in the Senate) and Chuck Grassley. The substitute would effectively strip the new provisions sought by Democrats.

In the Senate debate on Thursday, Hutchison claimed that VAWA already protects same-sex partners because of its gender-neutral language—it applies to male victims of abuse as well. The current law also provides visas for some illegal immigrants. What the Democrats want to do is expand and enhance these existing protections. Hutchison’s effort failed and she ended up voting for the Democrats’ version of the bill.

The Democratic version of VAWA ensures that a victim of abuse cannot be denied services based on sexual orientation and increases the number of visas for undocumented female immigrants. A new provision would expand the ability of Native American officials to prosecute domestic abuse occurring on their reservations. Apparently this attempt to help curb domestic abuse by making the law more inclusive is just an underhanded ploy to help President Obama win the election.

In an op-ed last week in the Houston Chronicle, Cornyn accused Democrats of shamelessly trying to use the law as a “partisan football to score cheap political points and raise campaign funds.” Meanwhile Cornyn introduced the Justice for Victims Amendment, which, among other things, would increase funding for rape kits and strengthen existing penalties for domestic violence and sexual abuse. Whether this is just another “partisan football” is hard to say. In the Senate debate Sen. Patrick Leahy, the sponsor of the bill, warned that Cornyn’s amendment would undermine existing measures. (The amendment failed.)

Earlier this week Cornyn told The Hill that he had “every confidence” that VAWA would pass the Senate and that he didn’t expect any problems. Maybe not from any other senators. The junior senator from Texas ended up voting no.

Now the bill goes to the House, where Republicans are planning to introduce their own version (try to keep up), modeled after the Hutchison-Grassley alternative, when the bill is brought to the House floor sometime in mid-May.

Get ready for the War on Women to get much more interesting.