Francisco “Quico” Canseco is gearing up to take U.S. Congressional District 23 back from Democrat Pete Gallego. Canseco lost the by just over 9,000 votes in 2012, having beaten Ciro Rodriguez for the seat by just over 7,000 votes in 2010. CD23 is the biggest “swing” district in Texas, and Canseco probably has a good chance to take back the seat as Gallego will have to win in 2014 without a boost from the Obama campaign.
More on Canseco’s Facebook page.
Another Friday, another LinkSwarm:
A roundup of reactions and fallout from Ted Cruz’s mammoth 21-hour anti-OabamCare speech effort:
- There is new leadership in the GOP, whether the party wants to admit it or not: Cruz, Rand Paul, Mike Lee, Jeff Sessions
- The popular reaction to Cruz will be immediate and noticeable; the more the old bulls carp, the more the public will rally to Cruz’s side.
- conservatives understand that rather than form a third party, their only hope is to seize control of the corrupt, rotting hulk of the GOP.
- The Cruz faction in the Senate, and its allies in the House (whose leadership is now up for grabs) must now press their advantage. The louder the Democrats squawk, the more they are wounded; the one thing they’ve long feared is a direct assault on their core beliefs as translated into actions, and the deleterious effects of Obamacare, just now being felt by the population, are the most vivid proof of the failure of Progressivism that conservatives could wish for.
- There is no reason to think the Tea Party, if properly organized and harnessed, cannot be even more potent next year than it was in 2010, especially now that its members know the government really was out to get them.
Everyone know the real problem in Washington, D.C. is not that the debt limit is too low, it’s that government is too big and spends too much money that it doesn’t have, and meddles in things best left up to free citizens. Just as Ted Cruz did, we need to make those same points over and over again in the ongoing debt limit and ObamaCare battles, because we’re right.
Because those bitter rednecks clinging to their guns and religion (also known as “voters”), Obama hasn’t been able to disarm law-abiding Americans the way he would like. What to do, what to do?
Hey, how about using that UN Arms Treaty to disarm Americans?
You know, the one Secretary of State John Kerry just signed?
John Lott notes that
The Arms Trade Treaty will regulate individual gun ownership all across the world. Each country will be obligated to “maintain a national control list that shall include [rifles and handguns]” and “to regulate brokering taking place under its jurisdiction for conventional arms.” In fact, the new background check rules approved by the Senate Judiciary Committee include just those rules — a registration system and a record of all transfers of guns.
Will Obama even submit it to the Senate for approval, knowing he doesn’t have even 50 votes in the Senate for it, much less the 67 votes required to ratify it?
When I went to sleep, Ted Cruz was filibustering against ObamaCare.
I just woke up, and he’s still at it.
I’m in the awkward position of supporting Ted Cruz et. al.’s attempt to defund-via-narrow-procedural-filibuster-followed-by-Democrats-blinking strategy while also believing that the effort is almost certainly doomed to failure. The reason it’s doomed is that it requires complex (and somewhat counter-intuitive) Senate rule voting maneuvers, and for Harry Reid and the Democratic majority to give in on key points, which I think is very unlikely. Nor do I agree with the “repeal it now or we’re stuck with ObamaCare for all time” rhetoric. There are no lost causes in American politics, because there are no won causes. The Great Recession isn’t making Obama and the Democratic crony cohort any more popular, making a GOP takeover of the the Senate in 2014 (and of White House in 2016, very possibly by Cruz himself) increasingly likely.
But I do think Cruz’s filibuster is necessary because he’s making the case for repeal and forcing the GOP establishment to either back him or show their true colors. All signs point to ObamaCare becoming more and more unpopular as time goes on, making repeal a winning issue. But the first step is actually fighting for repeal, and Ted Cruz is there.
Here’s the opening of Cruz’s filibuster:
Harping on a theme he’s harped on before, Mickey Kaus dinged Ted Cruz (again) for not opposing illegal alien amnesty with the single-minded focus Kaus thinks he should. (“You didn’t clap loud enough! Tinkerbell is dead!Amnesty is Alive!”) This criticism is misguided:
Given all that, Kaus continuing to harp on Cruz’s appears to be of an idee fixe on Kaus’ part than real criticism.
Sometimes you see a troll attempt so shamelessly blatant that, like the ludicrous science in a Sy Fy channel movie, you can’t help but laugh at the obvious, naked stupidity.
Today’s example of trolling comes from that renowned redoubt of Euroleftisms, The Guardian:
“American gun use is out of control. Shouldn’t the world intervene?”
One can only smile at the image of wave after wave of UN troops, each bearing ammo cans laden with Strongly Worded Letters, landing on America’s shores to liberate their oppressed liberal brethren.
The article itself is the usual insular ruling-class assumption of Absolute Righteousness on the part of the far left agenda and the simultaneous assumption of Evil Incarnate on the part of their political opponents.
In the comments, a few worthies like Clayton Cramer have undertaken debunking some of its more obvious idiocies, but this is really a piece that need only be labeled with the “Maximum Trolling” tag and then ignored.
Here’s a Friday LinkSwarm. I have a big piece brewing on the ObamCare battle I may or may not have out on Monday.
And the battle is joined. I support the move, and hope it’s the right course of action, knowing that it might not succeed. Then again, I would also be willing to see no spending limit raise at all, and force the federal government to live within its (which is to say our) means.
Now the ball is in the court of Senate Republicans, where Ted Cruz says he’ll filibuster any ObamaCare funding if necessary. Now would be a great time for senators like John McCain, Marco Rubio and Lindsey Graham to look at their political ID cards, realize they’re Republicans, and back him. Whether than will actually happen or not is another question.
Don’t speak too soon, for the wheel’s still in spin…
An appeals court has not only overturned former House Majority leader Tom DeLay’s money-laundering conviction, it actually rendered judgments of acquittal.
This is not a surprising decision for anyone who watched the case, which was always based on unconstitutional ex post facto prosecution and former Travis County DA Ronnie Earle’s vindictiveness. Also remember that the DoJ spent six years investigating DeLay and found nothing.
Which is not to say that DeLay is free of sin. Indeed, DeLay’s leadership was one of the reasons the Republican House majority went from backing Newt Gingrich’s Contract With America to succumbing to Washington’s usual big-spending, horse-trading, “campaign dollars for access” in less than a decade. It’s just that none of those were crimes in the eyes of Democratic prosecutors. As far as they were concerned, DeLay’s real crime was helping unseat Democratic incumbents, and for that they had to find something, anything to nail him on.
I do wonder what happens to DeLay’s co-defendants who plead guilty to lesser charges to avoid prosecution (one of whom I used to know back in my college days)…