That’s what he says. I’ll believe it when he files. This seems more like a sign of weakness than a sign of strength — an effort to remain relevant in the wake of his failures in the presidential race, as if he is trying to fend off potential opponents. If Perry is planning on running in 2016 — which I do believe — he can’t take the chance he might lose a race for governor. That would finish him as a presidential candidate. Not that he has a realistic chance of winning the presidency.

I have expressed most of these opinions before, but if Perry is going to keep saying that he is running, it is important to recognize that he is speaking as a wounded and deeply flawed candidate who proved that the lack of respect for him over the years was well earned.

The worst thing about the likelihood that Perry may run for president again is that it means he will put the state through another bloodbath in the 2013 session, as he did in 2011, throwing the school children and the sick and the frail under the bus in the name of conservatism.

Before he talks about running, he needs to repair the damage he has inflicted on his brand. The way to do this, for a normal politician, is through good works. Perry doesn’t do good works. He revels in saying no. He immediately poured cold water on suggestions that he call a special session on school finance. In the middle of a horrible drought in the 2011 session, he refused entreaties to provide funding for the water plan — and, no, a few hundred million in bonds isn’t the answer. Perry’s strength is his understanding of his constituency. He knows they don’t care about school finance, or anything else having to do with governing. Old white guys don’t spend a lot of time thinking about the future.

I have made some inquiries today about internal polling in the Senate race. I am satisfied that the 38-27 spread in the UT/Trib poll considerably understates Dewhurst’s lead over Cruz.

Dewhurst 38%

Cruz 27%

Leppert 7%

James 7%

Jim Henson, co-director of the poll, writes, “David Dewhurst is roughly splitting the extremely conservative primary voters with Ted Cruz.  That’s not a sign of failure or defeat, but it is a yellow flag.”

Maybe I’m reading this wrong, but it seems to me that if Dewhurst is “roughly splitting” the extremely conservative vote with Cruz, that’s good for Dewhurst, not problematical. It means Dewhurst gets half of the extremely conservative voters and, presumably, all of the moderates. In this scenario, he wins.

An interesting question is whether the delay of the primary caused by redistricting helps Dewhurst or Cruz more.  It might be Cruz. He needs the extra time to increase his name ID. A longer race helps Dewhurst too, because Cruz’s campaign doesn’t have the deep pockets that Dewhurst’s does. Dewhurst wins a war of attrition.

I still have a hard time believing that this is really a 38-27 race.

The case is brought by two white students who attended Stephen F. Austin High School in Sugarland. UT won in the district court and before a panel of the Fifth Circuit. It will be heard in the fall term of the Court, which begins on October 1.

The big change in the Court since the last major affirmative action case involving higher education (Grutter v. Bollinger, upholding the use of race in college admissions) is that Sandra Day O’Connor, who wrote the opinion upholding the use of affirmative action at the University of Michigan Law School, has retired from the Court, and has been replaced by Samuel Alito, a much more conservative judge. Alito could provide the fifth vote to overturn Grutter’s support for allowing consideration of race in college admissions.

I am familiar with this case [Abigail Noel Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin] and am writing an article about it for TEXAS MONTHLY.

As I have written before in this space, I regard Chief Justice Roberts as an activist judge, who is eager to promote a radical conservative agenda that includes Citizens United, Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, the use of the commerce clause to justify government programs, and anything else he can get his hands on. This is going to be a wild term for the Court.

From ScotusBlog:

As the case reached the Supreme Court, it was primarily a claim that the current admissions policy is unconstitutional as a form of “blatant racial balancing.”  But Fisher’s lawyers argued that, if the Texas plan satisfies the Supreme Court’s analysis in the Grutter decision, then the Court should reconsider that ruling.   That is an issue that will loom over the case as it moves through the Court’s review.

Sherry Sylvester of Texans for Lawsuit Reform submitted a response to my recent post, “TLR bets the farm.” I have edited portions of the response that did not directly address matters that were in my original post. Some of the omitted material appears in a comment posted yesterday by Ames Jones’ consultant Todd Olsen.

TLR PAC’s decision to back Elizabeth Ames Jones’ challenge to Sen. Wentworth was based on principle. In recent legislative sessions, Sen. Wentworth has stood with the trial lawyers on every contested vote and has carried bills that would push the balance of our civil justice system back to favoring personal injury trial lawyers.  In contrast, Elizabeth Ames Jones campaigned for Proposition 12 in 2003. She supported tort reform when she served in the House and she knows that lawsuit reform is critical to keep the Texas economy growing.  She has been an able Railroad Commissioner and has strong policy positions favoring free enterprise.  TLR consistently does what we consider to be the right thing in politics and policy and we are always prepared to accept the consequences of our decisions and actions.

Finally, given that most everyone in Austin is very familiar with Wentworth’s shoddy record on this issue and many others, your prediction that there will be “high fives all around the Capitol” if Wentworth is re-elected is hard to imagine.  Other than the trial lawyers, who would care?

It should come as no surprise that Rick Santorum is far ahead in the Texas primary. Evangelicals are a major factor here, and Santorum carries their banner. Neither Gingrich nor Romney has done anything to get back in the race nationally, although Romney has the most resources. Intrade, the Internet wagering site, gives Romney a 71% chance to win the GOP nomination to Santorum’s 15.1%

There are still questions about whether Santorum holds views on social issues that are too extreme for the electorate — he recently questioned government-funded prenatal testing because it “often” leads to abortions — and he favors allowing states to ban access to birth control. He would overturn the landmark privacy case of Griswold v. Connecticut (1965), which prohibited states from passing laws that ban the use of birth control.

The poll results:

Santorum 45%

Gingrich 18%

Romney 16%

Paul 14%

A recent survey by the Barna Group found that 57% of Republicans believe that the Bible is accurate in all of the principles it teaches, and 51% regard themselves as born again. If Santorum has locked up that constituency, it not going to be easy for a challenger to take it away. But the history of this race is that most of the damage done by the main contenders has been self-inflicted. Santorum has a low-key, no-sharp-edges personality that separates himself from the rest of the Republican field, but his Achilles heel is that he is prone to extremist views on social issues that could undermine his surge.

Another factor that could allow Santorum to continue his success is that he comes from Pennsylvania, a state that once was the bellwether of American industrial might but today is in the economic doldrums. This allows him to relate to disaffected blue collar voters in a way that Romney, the capitalist, and Gingrich, the career politician, cannot.

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The current issue of The Weekly Standard features this interview with an unnamed Democrat:

“If he’s not on his social crusade, he’s a really dangerous candidate,” says a well-connected Democratic strategist of Rick Santorum. “When he talks about the importance of manufacturing in America, he’s talking straight to Clinton Democrats.  But when he talks about states being able to outlaw contraception, he goes over the edge and he’s too far gone.”

That’s Santorum’s problem, in a nutshell. And the edge is never far away in politics.

Does  TLR’s jihad against Jeff Wentworth make sense? Forget that Wentworth has voted with TLR on all but a handful of occasions. Forget that Wentworth is a well known incumbent who will have the support of the local business community, and TLR is, in this race, a bunch of carpetbaggers from Houston. The real question is whether TLR has given serious thought to the risk/reward that comes with loading up on Elizabeth Ames Jones. Ms. Jones has not distinguished herself in this race. Her continuing insistence that she could remain as chair of the Railroad Commission after changing her residency to San Antonio in order to run for the Senate indicated that she didn’t have the judgment to know when to hold ‘em and when to fold ‘em. She is vulnerable to future attacks by Wentworth, who argues that (1) her chairmanship of the Railroad Commission was invalid because she was ineligible to serve due to her failure to meet the constitutional requirement for all statewide elected officials to reside in the capital city, and (2) her resignation could imperil the validity of any decision the Railroad Commission made while she was ineligible to serve. At the very least, it is a matter than needs to be determined.

The question I have is whether it is really worth it to TLR to spend $2 to $3 million to defeat Wentworth. I’m sure Dick Weekley and Dick Trabulsi think they’re going to win, but elections don’t always turn out the way folks think they will. TLR is betting the farm that Ames Jones will win, but what if she doesn’t? TLR risks losing its aura of invincibility. That is a big gamble for an organization that is not very popular to shoulder. (Of course, if TLR wins, they get the benefit of knowing that senators will be afraid to take them on.) I think TLR is rolling the dice here. If they lose, a substantial chunk of their clout is going to disappear. I’m not saying they are going to lose. TLR has a ton of money to spend, and the Wentworth camp can’t match their deep pockets, if it comes to that. Furthermore, Wentworth has vulnerabilities of his own. But TLR is taking a risk, and if they lose, there are going to be high fives all over the Capitol.

His family has asked me to post an update on his condition. Reggie will return from M.D. Anderson to Austin and will go into hospice care, most likely at his home.

“Senate District 10 partners victorious in preserving&strengthening ’08 district. Lege damage repaired. Thanks to all who supported&believed.”

[tweeted @ 1:33 p.m.]

* * * *

Just pointing out the obvious: The saving of Davis’s seat could take on added significance if senators choose the successor to Lieutenant Governor Dewhurst.

Tagged: david dewhurst, redistricting, Senate District 10, wendy davis

One of the most interesting aspects of a Texas presidential primary, if there is one, will be how Mitt Romney fares. Romney is the establishment candidate. The size of the Romney vote will clarify what percentage of the state’s Republican vote is still cast by the establishment. In its early days, the Republican Party of Texas was an establishment party, in which people named Bush and Hutchison were prominent. That begin to change with the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980. Over the next decade, social conservatives gained in strength, and the establishment began to lose its grip on the party. The tipping point came at the 1996 state convention.

The delegation to the national convention is traditionally headed by the governor of the party in power. But the convention produced a rebellion by social conservatives against Governor Bush and Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison for their purported moderate views. Establishment figures were treated shabbily. Former state party chair Fred Meyer, who was largely responsible for the party’s rise to power in the 1980s, was denied delegate status to the San Diego convention. So was  Congressman Henry Bonilla. Hutchison was allowed to be an at-large delegate only after the interventions of Bob Dole, the nominee-to-be, Texas senator Phil Gramm, and state party chairman Tom Pauken. But social conservative leaders were anointed as at-large delegates, including Texas Christian Coalition leader Dick Weinhold, longtime activist Steve Hotze, State Board of Education member Donna Ballard, Eagle Forum president Cathie Adams, and Home School Coalition founder Tim Lambert. The longstanding tradition that the governor of the  party served as chairman of the state’s delegation to the national convention was ignored; the delegates rejected Bush (a compromise was reached to allow Bush to serve as honorary chairman) and installed Pauken instead. When the convention was over, the social conservatives had seized control of the party, and they continue to control it to this day.

Following the convention, Bush adviser Karen Hughes told me, “It’s my party and I’ll cry if I want to.” No one understood the significance of this development better than Rick Perry. He had never been much of a social conservative before the convention, but he could read the tea leaves and has been one ever since. The shift of the Republican party in 1996 toward a conservatism that is less interested in governing than in internal doctrinal battles has been the most significant development in Texas politics over the last thirty years. It will only end when the party loses an election, and that doesn’t seem likely any time soon.

Here is what I had to say about this pivotal moment in the August 1996 issue of TEXAS MONTHLY:

THE LEGACY OF THE TUMULTUOUS Republican state convention in San Antonio is that the state GOP is headed for open warfare between its mainstream and ultraconservative factions. The defining incident of the convention was not the unsuccessful attempt by pro-life dissidents to prevent U.S. senator Kay Bailey Hutchison from becoming a delegate to the Republican National Convention in San Diego. It was the successful overthrow of Governor George W. Bush as the chairman of the Texas delegation to San Diego, in which the essential perpetrator was none other than state Republican chairman Tom Pauken.