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Exclusive! Kay Bailey Hutchison’s Message to the People of Texas
On Friday, following her remarks to the Texas Federation of Republican Women Convention, U.S. Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison issued the following statement to the citizens of Texas, for exclusive distribution by The Texas Observer. (Note: Remarks in boldface are identical to Sen. Hutchison's comments to the Republican women, highlighting the remarkable consistency of her message.)
"Fellow Texans,
We stand today at a historic crossroads in our nation's history. And our nation includes Texas. I pledge to you that I will fight to ensure that it always does. I am proud to have fought for policies that keep us strong. You can trust me to continue fighting. You can trust that I will. Seriously. When have I wavered?
Last weekend a bill passed out of the House, taking us one perilous step closer to a government takeover of nearly-one third of our economy. The Democrats are going to pull out every stop to socialize American medicine. We are a step closer to huge tax increases for the wealthy, for whom I have fought since you first gave me the opportunity to serve you.
The health-care interests from whom I have received $1.4 million over the past five years are not going to take this lying down. And neither am I. You can trust me on this. I will fight for Texas.
From my omnipotent position as ranking member of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, I am uniquely positioned to fight socialized medicine. Without my leadership, there is a grave danger that many of the one-quarter of Texans without health insurance will be covered in just a few years' time. I cannot walk away while this fight is being fought by our fellow Republicans. I must stay and fight with them. Without me, democracy as we know it collapses. The earth darkens. Night reigns. That is why my colleagues have repeatedly begged, pleaded with me: 'Kay, you are our only hope. You must not abandon the fight.'
So fight I will. You elected me to the Senate to fight for Texas. You can trust that I will.
This is why I will not leave the Senate before the end of the year. I have said before that I intended to resign this fall after the government takeover of healthcare is defeated. While it is possible that I may have specifically mentioned October or November, I did not give an exact date for resignation because I was waiting for the socialist assault to begin.
As you can clearly see, I am more determined than ever to become the 48th governor of our great state. But I must put what's best for my campaign aside and do what is best for Texas. For Aetna. For Big Oil. And for my loyal husband, Ray, who has profited so richly from the offices that you have elected me to.
While I am announcing that I will not leave the Senate before the end of the year, I am also saying: this will keep me in the Senate past the primary election. But that is a difference without a distinction. What is a few months between stalwart friends? Because I must fight. Health care looms. Cap-and-trade threatens to clean up the air and water of Texas. These issues are too important to leave the fight to a newly appointed freshman senator. When the Democrats changed the timetable, I imagined how it would be for Texas to be represented by an interim appointee. One who doesn't yet know the Senate during the biggest fight I have seen in my time. Although I want to be home, I know in my heart I could not leave.
Will my critics attack me for this decision? Probably. Will the people of Texas even notice? Probably not. Is this a change of plans? Yes. And I wil be honest. It is certainly not my preference. But it is the right thing to do for Texas.
Let me also be crystal clear about one thing. I will be resigning this Senate seat. For all of the good Republicans out there who plan on running for my seat next year, make no mistake. This is going to happen. It just isn't going to happen until after health care reform and cap and trade are finished. And that will be after the primary election.
And as you know, my friends, any woman can multi-task and that is exactly what I am going to do. I will not give my full attention to the Senate. I will not give my full energy to the campaign for governor.
I will, to put it another way, fight for Texas. You can trust that I will. I simply cannot leave until we have fought to the end.And this is why I am running for governor, because I know the real challenges facing our state cannot be fixed from Washington. Therefore, I will stay in Washington. Because I believe now more than ever that we need a serious leader who will put Texas first.
As governor, you can trust that I will work to keep taxes low. Just as I have in the United States Senate, where I was named “Porker of the Month” for my massive Congressional earmarks. I am proud of this mark of leadership. It is the kind of principled conservatism that Texas deserves.
As governor, you can trust that I will officially kill the Trans-Texas Corridor once and for all. As your Senator, I voted for the voted for the Safe, Accountable, Flexible, Efficient Transportation Equity Act which expanded the “flexibility to use tolling to finance infrastructure improvements.” This principled stand made it possible for Governor Perry to advance his Trans-Texas Corridor plans. Which I then fought. And will continue to fight. For Texas.
And that is the kind of leadership you can trust me to bring to Texas. Soon. You can trust that I will.
I pledge to you that I will also fight for the Republican Party of Texas. My remaining in the Senate has made it impossible for up-and-coming leaders of the party to begin their campaigns for higher offices in time to win. It is this kind of principled leadership that will save this great party from irrelevance.
Last year the top of the ticket lost five of the six largest counties in Texas. We are three seats away from losing the Texas House. With an absentee candidate leading us into the 2010 general elections, I firmly believe we can do better. We must. We will. For Texas.
In closing, you can trust that I will, in a word, fight. I will fight for a way to serve as both governor and senator at once. For Texas.
Which reminds me:
Texas is the greatest state in America.
I am running for governor to keep it that way.
And I am asking you today for your support.
Thank you.
God bless you.
God bless Texas.
And God bless America."Posted under:Hate Rears Its Head in Houston
Even a journalist with a well-honed knack for cynicism can sometimes be lured into false optimism. It happened to me last week, when the Observer published my editorial about heartening and surprising—though far from complete—evidence of a trend away from the virulent anti-gay sentiments that have so long flourished in Texas.
One of my main examples was the Houston mayor's race, in which City Controller Annise Parker, an unashamedly public lesbian, is headed into a December runoff against former civil-rights activist Gene Locke. I noted that, leading up to the initial election on Nov. 3, Parker's sexuality had been a "resounding non-issue." I pointed out that Locke, who finished second to Parker in a crowded field, had reacted thusly to an anti-gay attack on Parker that landed in thousands of Houstonians' email boxes: “I vehemently reject this so-called ‘endorsement.’ ... Furthermore, as a church-going Christian, I reject any association with this bogus and divisive style of campaigning.” (The email message turned out to be a fake.)
That was then. As the Houston Chronicle reported on Friday, anti-gay venom has now been injected into the mayor's race. And Locke is encouraging it.
With Parker favored to win the December runoff, and two openly gay contenders still in the running for City Council seats, "Christian" extremists in Houston have launched a campaign to derail what they call a "gay takeover."
The hatemonger-in-chief of the Houston Area Pastor Council, which claims to include more than 200 senior pastors, is a fellow named Dave Welch. He told the Chronicle that his group would be encouraging voters, partly through mailers, to reject Parker because she is gay. He also violated one of the Ten Commandments with a big old whopping lie:
"The bottom line is that we didn't pick the battle, she did, when she made her agenda and sexual preference a central part of her campaign."
Parker has done no such thing. What she has done, from her first City Council campaign in 1997 onward, is be matter-of-factly honest with voters about her sexuality. Her campaign literature makes it clear that she has a long-term partner and three adopted children with her. Beyond that, the fictional and shadowy "gay agenda" has played no role in her previous campaigns, or in her run for mayor. Parker is a solid, even somewhat dull, public servant who's campaigned on the basis of her record of fiscal conservatism as controller, and her plans for such "radical" things as green-energy jobs and improved public transportation.
But merely being honest about one's sexuality constitutes a war cry in the eyes of Houston's leading homophobes. Of course, there's nothing new or especially surprising about that. What is stunning is the role that Locke, Houston's former city attorney, is now opportunistically playing in this campaign of intolerance.
Soon after the election, Locke appeared at the Pastor Council's annual gala, where he was encouraged to beat the anti-gay drums by Republican state Senator and right-wing radio talker Dan Patrick. The Chronicle reports that Locke has also "met with and sought the endorsement of Dr. Steven Hotze, a longtime local kingmaker in conservative politics and author of the Straight Slate in 1985, a coterie of eight City Council members he recruited who ran on an anti-gay platform."
Locke is not just endorsing the kind of anti-gay rhetoric that leads to hate violence. He's also staking himself out as a hypocrite. In an October debate, Locke called for overturning a city charter amendment that bars Houston from extending benefits to city employees' domestic partners. Parker, in the same debate, said she had "no current plans" to do that. Locke appeared, then, to be even more "virulently pro-gay" than his lesbian opponent.
So Locke now looks like a liar and a bigot to boot. A man who's been the object of prejudice himself, as an African-American, might be expected to know better—and act better.
One thing's for sure: I'll know better in the future than to prematurely celebrate the shriveling up of anti-gay prejudice in Texas. It's here, it's clear. But I'm sure as hell not going to get used to it.Posted under:Shocking Development: A Democrat with Guts
Conservative Texans of every flavor have plenty of candidates to get fired up about in next year's statewide races. There's Kay Bailey for the Chamber of Commerce crowd, Perry and Abbott and Dewhurst for the right-wing regulars, and Debra Medina for the Ron Paulers and Tea Partiers, to name just a few ballot-toppers.
The state's long-suffering progressives, on the other hand, have been staring at next year's elections — if they're not averting their eyes, unable to look — and seeing a big old pile of nothing. What leftie in her right mind is going to do cartwheels over the so-called leading Democratic contenders for governor, Tom "George W." Schieffer and Kinky "Book Tour" Friedman? Or the Democratic contenders for the imaginary U.S. Senate seat, John "Who the Hell?" Sharp and Mayor Bill "What's the Opposite of Charismatic" White?
But one Democrat running for governor is showing flashes of actual (gasp!) progressive life. Last week Hank Gilbert, the anti-toll road activist and rancher who ran for Agriculture Commissioner in 2006, burst out with a clarion call to combat anti-gay discrimination in Texas. Among other things, Gilbert called for the state to recognize same-sex unions, for universities to recognize domestic partnerships, and for the state to make it easier for transgender folks to change their gender on birth certificates and drivers' licenses.
"Just because some people see this as controversial or say that Texas isn't ready for this," Gilbert said, "is not a reason I can use to justify remaining silent on the issue."
Dear God, can this be true? A Democrat with guts? This is highly irregular, people. Texans are used to Republicans swinging for the ideological fences and paying no political price for even the wildest swings. But Texas Democrats? Pure-T wusses.
(It's only fair to point out that Bill White has long spoken up for gay rights, to his considerable credit.)
The overwhelming turnout for last year's presidential primary demonstrated that there are progressive Democrats in Texas, and a pretty fair number of them. They're the base. They're the door-knockers and voter-getter-outers. But there's nobody in the marquee races doing diddly-squat to get them off the couch.
On Wednesday, Gilbert signaled that he doesn't just have guts: He also has ideas. Specifically, in this case, bold and (at first glance) eminently sensible ideas for cleaning up Texas' environment — and reforming its euphemistically named environmental "regulators."
Standing in front of Lady Bird Lake, Gilbert rolled out a nine-page "go green" plan. Among other key elements, he called for allocating $150 million to buy and develop state parks; requiring coal plants to use cleaner technologies by 2017; making North Texas' filthy cement kilns cut their mercury emissions by 80 percent; and incentivizing alternative-energy production.
Even more significant, given the pro-polluter boot-licking of the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ), Gilbert proposed a whole new agency called the Texas Environmental Commission. This entity would absorb various state agencies charged with environmental oversight, bringing them all under one (quite possibly) more effective umbrella.
The initial response from leading environmentalists was over the moon, as Dave Montgomery reported in the Star-Telegram: "Fantastic," said Luke Metzger of Environment Texas. "Absolutely great," said Tom "Smitty" Smith of Public Citizen.
More than anything, Gilbert's moves show that there's at least one Texas Democrat with the basic good sense to understand that you don't win elections without giving people something to vote for. The days when mealy-mouthed, money-soaked DINOS (Democrats In Name Only) like Lloyd Bentsen could win statewide elections have long since passed.
Gilbert, so far, has next to no money. Schieffer and Friedman will likely fund-raise circles around him. But if he continues to be the sole Democrat with a scintilla of progressive energy and genuine ideas, there's an outside shot that the man in the cowboy hat could catch fire on the netroots, mobilize the TexObamans, and teach the wusses a lesson next March.Posted under:Small-Tent Politics: New Texas GOP Chair Tacks Right. Way Right.
While a few level heads in the Texas Republican Party recognize the cold, dirty truth—that they must expand their base beyond white conservatives or risk long-term marginalization—the "nays" clearly still have it. On Saturday, with no debate allowed (apparently because the party didn't want the press to overhear), Texas Republican leaders replaced one state chairwoman of the Palin/Santorum/Tea Party right with a new chairwoman, Cathie Adams, who appears to be even more neolithic in her politics.
The upshot: Don't expect the Texas GOP to be moving in an "expansive" direction any time soon. Democrats should be dancing a collective gig. Republicans with any licks of sense should be dumbfounded.
Most Texas papers and blogs have simply mentioned in passing that the new chair of the Texas Republican Party also heads the Texas Eagle Forum. The Star-Telegram's report on Adams's election was pretty typical: "The 59-year-old Dallas resident is perhaps best known as the leader of the Texas Eagle Forum, a women’s organization that advocates for socially conservative causes. Adams, its president for 16 years, said she will resign to take over as state GOP chairman."
The Eagle Forum is a little more complicated—and a lot more entrenched on the far tip of the right-wing spectrum—than those polite cliches ("women's organization," "advocates for socially conservative causes") would suggest. And so, apparently, is Adams.
According to the Texas Freedom Network, Adams has followed in Eagle Forum founder Phyllis Schlafly's footsteps with some rather extreme remarks, like saying President Obama's school speech was "eerily like Hitler's youth movement." Or like passing judgment on Obama's faith: "“While many question Barak Hussein Obama’s ‘religion’…, the more important question is whether he has a ‘relationship’ with Jesus Christ because that is the only HOPE that any of us have to obtain eternal life. I personally see NO evidence that Obama has that kind of ‘saving faith.’" Or like arguing thusly against the Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP), which gives health care to children of the working poor: “Now illegal aliens will be able to purchase cheap insurance for their children. This is an incentive for them to come here.”
The Eagle Forum, nationally, has entered the anti-immigration fray in recent years. The Southern Poverty Law Center's Intelligence Report wrote about the Alabama chapter of the group "holding a series of 'grassroots workshops' around the state entitled 'What YOU can do about Illegal Immigration'" while "touting misleading information about immigrants."
This is consistent with the national drift of Shlafly's followers, the report continued. "In the last few years, the group has added immigration to its list of social evils, which had long centered on the gay rights movement. In 2005, the group joined the Secure Borders Coalition. An alliance of Christian Right groups, hard-right organizations like Accuracy in Media and the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, and strident anti-immigration outfits including the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps, the coalition issued a statement attacking all amnesty and guest worker proposals and vowed to oppose any candidate, regardless of his or her stance on other issues, taking a different tack."
All of which makes Adams the right candidate to bring more Latinos into the GOP fold?
The Eagle Forum stands for the exact opposite of a "bigger tent." Like its founder, Schlafly, it is staunchly anti-feminist and pro-"traditional family." It spreads anti-immigration propaganda. It advertised and celebrated the tea parties. ("Check for Tea Parties in your local area during the Labor Day week-end and stand up for FREEDOM!") It is hardcore.
The Texas Eagle Forum website is dominated by Schlafly, whose radio and "print" commentaries are dutifully touted and archived. Some of the anti-feminist crusader's topics (or, rather, stepping-off points) are straight out of the Republican right "message of the day" book: "Good Health Depends on Defeating Government Health," "Obama Is Remaking America into Socialism," "Obama's 'New World Order'."
But more plentiful are reminders of just how far out on the tip end of right-wingdom sits the Eagle Forum. There's " 'Social Justice': Code Word for Anti-Americanism." There's "The Government Death Book." There are the "exposes" of the myriad evils of the National Education Association, which did something to make Schlafly really mad ("NEA Goes All-Out for Same-Sex Marriage," "NEA Resolutions Promote the Gay Agenda," "More Leftwing NEA Resolutions"). And there are the just plain fringey ones: "Con Con Is a Terrible Idea" (indeed!), "Yes, We Still Need an ABM Defense," "Feminism vs. Women," "Big Brother Is in Your Cell Phone."
Adams gets good play on the site as well. "Cathie has a new PowerPoint presentation book review of Mark Levin's, 'Liberty & Tyranny.'," we are told. "In it Levin gives a conservative remedy to the socialist/Statist agenda of the Obama administration and his willing Democrat cohorts in Congress. To schedule 'Liberty & Tyranny,' or other presentations on timely topics (global warming, radical Islam and Republican politics, etc.), please call our office at 972-250-0734."
Oh, please do.
Whether Adams' chairmanship will represent an attempt to impose an Eagle Forum-style agenda on the Republican Party remains to be seen. But she has already shown plenty of pugnacity—and a willingness to plunge right into internal squabbles, rather than trying to tamp them down—by immediately targeting Hutchison in a press conference after she won the GOP chair. “It would help the people of the state of Texas to know more clearly, especially by (the candidate filing deadline of) Jan. 4,” Adams said, “because if she resigns after that, we’re going to throw things into quite an unknown.”
Then, after having spoken on behalf of the Perry campaign, she was asked whether, considering that state parties are supposed to be neutral in primaries, she would consider withdrawing her endorsement of the governor's re-election. “That would be like trying to turn the direction of the river,” Adams said.
She promised, though, that “there’s not going to be any partiality” on her part in her new role. As she had just made crystal clear.Posted under:« Older PostsPolitical Death
In the 1980s heyday of Gov. Mark White, the Democrat played the hang-'em-high card as enthusiastically as any Texas pol. He'd represented the state as attorney general on the first execution after the death penalty came back in 1982, then presided over 19 executions as governor from 1983-1987. Running unsuccessfully for another term in 1990, he aired a commercial featuring pictures of executed men, declaring, "As governor, I made sure they received the ultimate punishment — death."
This week, White told reporters that he'd changed his tune, telling the Dallas Morning News that "as tough as old Mark was on crime and for the death penalty, when I review it today, I have very, very serious reservations about trusting our system of government making the right decision every time and not executing an innocent person."
White's "ultimate punishment" spot did not air during a general election campaign, when you might have expected a Democrat to be on the defensive, running against a swaggering law-and-order Republican. It aired during a wild three-way Democratic fight between then-Attorney Gen. Jim Maddox, White and Ann Richards, who was elected governor that year. The Democrats engaged in a tussle over who was the hang-'em-highest that year, with Maddox accusing Richards of being the choice of death-row inmates (burn!) and touting his own record of representing the state during many an execution.
Nineteen years later, the current Democratic field, hardly the heavyweights of 1990, are singing a slightly different tune on the death penalty in the wake of the scandal over Gov. Rick Perry's handling of the Cameron Todd Willingham execution. But so far, none of them has taken the logical step and called for a moratorium on executions in Texas while the state studies and attempts the fix the manifold flaws in its criminal-justice system.
The three leading Democratic contenders have expressed concern over the governor's stifling of the investigation into Willingham's execution. But "concern" is about as passionate as it gets.
Kinky Friedman made his opinion known during the 2006 campaign, saying he's "not anti-death penalty," but is "anti-the-wrong-guy-getting-executed."
Hank Gilbert, the East Texas rancher backed by many grassroots progressives, told the Miami Herald that he favors the death penalty, but that "with today's advanced technology, we must ensure that those accused of capital crimes are afforded access to the best forensic tools available to ensure no innocent person is unfairly convicted."
Tom Schieffer, the Fort Worth businessman and former U.S. ambassador, is also pro-death penalty. His campaign put out a statement reading in part: "Opponents and supporters of the death penalty are united in their belief that only the guilty should be executed. If a mistake was made in this case, we need to know it. By the same token, if Mr. Willingham was guilty, we need to know that too." The solution? "The commission needs to reschedule the hearing as soon as possible."
Don't expect to hear anything stronger from former Travis County D.A. Ronnie Earle, another death-penalty supporter, if he gets into the race as expected. "Texans believe in law and order," he told the News, "but mostly Texans are fair. They believe in the death penalty, but the guy had better be guilty."
As reactions go to the fact that the state likely executed an innocent man — and that the Republican governor is actively meddling in an investigation that might establish that fact and force the state to admit its deadly error — this is mighty weak tea. Even Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison's campaign had something ever-so-slightly tougher to say, accusing Perry of trying to "cover up a critical investigation."
The tepidness of the Democratic candidates' responses is a vivid illustration of why none of them has gained any serious traction among the party faithful. You could glom together the collective political guts of these characters and not fill a thimble. Even if the Democrats all support the death penalty, there are grave issues to raise about Perry's interference in the process — and his apparent lack of careful consideration before he allowed Willingham's execution to go forward. There are broader problems with arson investigations, and broader problems with the state's administration of the death penalty. There could hardly be a fatter political target right now — or a better opportunity for a Democrat to stake out some higher ground, clearly and insistently.
But the only gubernatorial candidate who's said anything worth saying is longshot libertarian Republican Debra Medina, who wrote on Facebook:
"While I will agree that there are some crimes so heinous the death penalty is the only just punishment, we must protect innocent human life. That means suspending the sentence where evidence indicates that there is a shadow of doubt. Governor Perry apparently had the opportunity to do that in this case. He chose not to.
"And now five years later just as evidence is to be presented to the Texas Forensic Science Commission the governor has gutted the panel. If the governor cared about justice, he'd work hard to insure that the panel's work is completed in all due haste, that all the evidence is considered. And if that evidence reveals we have a problem in our criminal justice system, he'd work swiftly to remedy it so as not to ever execute an innocent person. It takes some maturity, some serious maturity to face reality. Texas deserves that in our leader. This constant changing of the guard when he doesn't like the findings is more evidence that the governor behaves more and more like a tyrant, 'off with their heads' when people don't agree with him. Texas deserves better."
Would that be too much for a Democrat to say? And is a moratorium truly too radical an idea, under the circumstances, for a single Democratic candidate to call for? While the vast (but gradually shrinking) majority of Texans still support the death penalty, the notion that the state should make sure that no more innocent citizens are killed would surely not repel huge numbers of voters. And it would give Democratic voters, at long last, the choice of at least one candidate with some semblance of courage.Posted under: -
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Recent Posts
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Exclusive! Kay Bailey Hutchison’s Message to the People of Texas
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Hate Rears Its Head in Houston
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Shocking Development: A Democrat with Guts
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Small-Tent Politics: New Texas GOP Chair Tacks Right. Way Right.
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Political Death
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Doing the Kay Bailey Shuffle
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Texas GOP Wins Nobel Snark Prize
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Rick Perry, Twice Burned
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“Internet Sabotage” and Cash for Votes: Rick Perry’s Excellent Tuesday Morning
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Hank Gilbert, Liberal Fantasy?
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The Rick and Kay Show: American Idol Edition
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Joe Wilson’s Rebel Yell: Where did that come from? The New York Times asks; we answer.
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Texas Republicans: A model of diversity?
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“My Kind of People”: Texas Tea Partiers Rally at the State Capitol
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Kinky II: The Ego Returns ... and This Time It’s Serious!
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