The Republican Primary season is well upon us here in the Lone Start State.
Texas has a well earned reputation for lunacy in politics but the next four months should set records. Conservative purity is at stake here it appears.
You will want to pay really close attention beginning with the Governor's race.
Texas has a large number of white fundamentalist voters that have for some time now been dedicated to the Republican Party. As Democratic inroads have been made in Dallas and other venues, they have become increasingly unsettled. Barack Obama has just about driven them insane.
This Spring the Tea Party activists, inspired by our very own Dick Armey, gathered around the state. In Austin our Governor, called Governor Good Hair by Molly Ivins, Rick Perry called for Texas to secede from the Union unless the Federal government did not follow the demands of the Tea Party activists. Perry is in a race with Kay Bailey Hutchison, our female Senator for the Governor's office. Both have dived for the bottom of the Republican base hoping to woo the extremists to vote for them.
Another candidate for Governor is Debra Medina whose website promoting her candidacy reads like a speech from John C. Calhoun before the Civil War. Will she suck up enough Tea Party votes to win? Who knows? There are also three Libertarians and one Independent, all right wing 'common sense' conservatives.
It is widely accepted that the most archly conservative voters will determine the winner in the Republican primary. But will those Libertarians and Independent candidates suck the air out of the Republican Primary?
This is happening across the state. In my Congressional district we have Independent candidates spouting Tea Party slogans and running against the incumbent Republican and a Democratic challenger.
The Republicans are trying to court the Tea Party voters but no one knows if they will be successful or not.
The real possibility is that the entire state might, just might, be a replay of NY-23.
What fun this is.