Newsflash!
August 7th, 2007 at 9:47 am
Hot item from a Republican Party of Texas e-mail blast: some guy on the internet totally pwned(*) Mikal Watts because his campaign video = suxorz.
Okay, the e-mail wasn’t quite that bad, but it was just as fatuous. The e-mail’s only purpose was to pass along a column in Roll Call by Stuart Rothenberger that criticized Watts’s website’s campaign video. The bulk of the charges? Watts abused the words “fight” and “fighter.” Sure, it’s a valid point — especially near the end, when the repetition gets borderline absurd — but “Watts Needs Better Video Editor” hardly seems like the kind of headline to rile up the base and fire up the checkbooks.
The only interesting thing about the email, though, is the GOP’s continued pattern of attacking Watts’s Senate campaign while steering clear of Rep. Rick Noriega’s. Already, Sen. John Cornyn has made hay about Watts’s job as a lawyer in order to raise money. And this e-mail concludes with a line from GOP spokesman Hans Klinger: “When the ‘inside the beltway’ crowd is starting this early to critique every move Watts’ makes he may want to rethink his decision to jump into a ‘fight’ [clever! — eds.] against podium storming State Rep. Rick Noriega which Watts is neither prepared for nor can handle.” (Hmm, speaking of editors…)
No telling what’s up here. Are the Republicans genuinely scared of Watts’s money? Is he just an easier target than Noriega, a veteran of the war in Afghanistan? Maybe they assume Watts will be the nominee and are getting a head start. Or could it be reverse psychology? Might also be pure opportunism. Or any number of other scenarios that aren’t popping to mind just now. At least, it’s one more data point toward a trend.
October 2nd, 2007 at 8:10 am
[…] about as useful as oven-mitts for backscratching. The Texas GOP does seem to have a certain fixation on Watts, […]