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Liveblogging the Texas Senate Debate Friday, April 13, 7 PM

Wednesday, April 11th, 2012

I’m livebloggiong the debate here.

This is announcement that I will be attempting to liveblog the Texas Senate debate happening this Friday, April 13, at 7 PM CDT.

Some of the things I’ll be looking at most keenly:

  • David Dewhurst’s performance: As the only one of the four major Republican candidates I haven’t interviewed, I’m interested in seeing how Dewhurst performs; several commentator’s dinged him for slow, hesitant answers the last time he attended one of these.
  • Ted Cruz hitting Dewhurst over the Payroll Tax: I’m hoping a lively exchange between the two may clarify the “was Dewhurst proposing a state income tax or not” question.
  • Whether Dewhurst will try to ding Cruz over his law firm work for a Chinese company (weak sauce) or work for George Soros by other members of the firm (non-existent sauce).
  • Will anyone bring up Leppert playing footsies with ACORN and gay rights organizations while he was mayor of Dallas? Or, for that matter, anything concerning his record as mayor?
  • Will Craig James bring up more policy specifics than he has before? Not any area of strength for the James campaign so far.

    • As for Senate debate drinking games, sip every time:

  • James says “real street.”
  • Cruz says “proven conservative.”
  • Leppert or Dewhurst says “businessman.”
  • Anyone but Cruz says “I’m not a lawyer…”

    • Chug when:

  • James uses a football metaphor.
  • Leppert says “I don’t speak in 30 second sound bites.”
  • Cruz or Dewhurst mentions their fathers.

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    Posted in Elections, Media Watch, Republicans, Texas | 3 Comments »

    Texas Senate Race Update for January 20, 2012

    Friday, January 20th, 2012

    Still waiting on Q4 fundraising numbers from the candidates. In previous quarters they came out around the 15th of the month after the deadline, but maybe the deadline is longer for End-of-Year reports.

  • Jason Embry notes that hey, this just might be a real senate race. Thanks for noticing.
  • Another blogger grading the TPPF debate. He ranks Tom Leppert first (followed by Ted Cruz, Craig James and Glenn Addison) and David Dewhurst last. However, the Leppert campaign will find no comfort in his analysis of their candidate: “Once Texans take a closer look at his actual record (and how deeply he appears to be in the back pocket of T. Boone Pickens), I think he’ll be reduced to what he actually is: the least conservative and—other than Craig James —the least qualified candidate running for KBH’s vacated seat.” Ouch! But his rating of Dewhurst is even worse: “There is a reason that Dewhurst has been ducking Ted Cruz and refusing to attend any of the previous debates: he’s really, really bad at it…Remember the cartoon Droopy the dog? That’s pretty much exactly what Dewhurst sounded like on stage on Thursday evening. No energy, seemed lost and confused at times. Halting, slow speech.” Double ouch!
  • KYFO has a poll up on the race.
  • They also did an interview with Cruz.
  • In The Dallas Morning News, Robert T. Garrett brings newspaper readers up to speed on the Huckabee/DeMint stuff I covered one to three weeks ago. Though he does manage to add some sneering liberal condescension at Fox News.
  • The American Jewish Committee and the World Affairs Council of Houston are sponsoring a foreign policy Senate candidate debate on Monday, January 23, at the Omni Houston Hotel. According to an email from the AJC, “12 of the 16 [candidates] have confirmed,” though Dewhurst and Democrat Paul Sadler were not among them.
  • Here’s a crappy headline: “Texas Republican candidates hold first debate.” Uh, no. It’s more like the 20th. Or maybe the 25th.
  • Speaking of which, maybe I just wasn’t paying attention heretofore, but I don’t recall nearly this many debates for statewide elections in previous cycles. I mean, we’ve already had three times as many Texas Republican Senate debates as there were Lincoln-Douglas debates in 1858! Thanks to the Tea Party, Texans are really enjoying a golden age of grassroots democracy…
  • Dewhurst gets the endorsement of Michael Reagan, AKA “Ronald Reagan’s non-goofy son.” That won’t hurt him, but I also don’t see it swaying any undecided voters.
  • Glenn Addison gets some attention from his local Community Impact newspaper. (For those unfamiliar with the, Community Impact newspapers are very local (I get the one for NW Austin) free monthly newspapers delivered by mail. I generally find the quality of their stories better than the Statesman.)
  • He also gets compared to Ron Paul by KVUE. The problem with almost right analysis of this sort is that it would probably take way too much time to list the salient differences between the two than it’s worth expending…
  • David Dewhurst appeared on the Mark Davis show on WBAP:

  • As did Addison:

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    Posted in Elections, Republicans, Texas | 1 Comment »

    TPPF Texas Senate Debate Roundup and Video, Plus A Few Other Race Tidbits

    Monday, January 16th, 2012

    I was busy with a family even over the weekend, so I haven’t had a chance to sit down and watch the debate all the way through. But I’ll go ahead and put it up for others to take a gander at (Hat tip: The Right Side of Austin). Be aware that the debate doesn’t actually start until over an hour into the video. I’ve heard of long intros, but that’s ridiculous…

    Watch live streaming video from texaspublicpolicyfoundation at livestream.com

    I’ll save my own comments until I get a chance to watch the whole video.

    Here’s a live blog of the debate.

    The Cruz campaign sent out a list of links, and rather than link all of them and claim them as my own, I’ll just direct you thataway.

    One link they didn’t send out was this review over at Big Jolly Politics, where he gave James, Addison and Dewhurst As, Cruz a B, and Leppert a C.

    Kathleen McKinney ranked it Cruz first, James second, and Leppert last (“Not a lot of flash there”), though her overall impressions of all were positive.

    In other Senate race news:

  • Reuters on the Tea Party/Establishment dynamic of the race.
  • Here’s another piece on how Ted Cruz told the absolute truth, but lazy reporters might misinterpret what he said.
  • Craig James appears on Fox News:

  • Democratic candidate Paul Sadler finally has a website, plus Facebook and Twitter pages.

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    Posted in Elections, Media Watch, Republicans, Texas | No Comments »

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