One of the skills that has kept Rick Perry in power is that he has a knack for knowing where his constituency stands on most issues. But his instincts failed him when he comingled states-rights with gay marriage. I’m referring, of course, to Perry’s statement to the Family Research Council, a Christian advocacy group, that New York’s approval of same-sex marriages was “fine with me.”

This will probably turn out to be a minor bobble in Perry’s pursuit of the presidency, but it is definitely a bobble. It looks as if Perry hasn’t yet figured out who his constituency is, for a presidential race. Talking states rights works great for a Texas constituency that Perry has kept stirred up with his repeated confrontations with the federal government over EPA interference, lack of border security, immigration, and health care, but it isn’t going to play well in the states that were on the winning side in the Civil War. Do Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New York care about the Tenth Amendment? Taking the country as a whole, millions more are concerned about gay marriage than states rights.

If Perry is going to have a successful race for the presidency, one of the first things he is going to have to come to grips with is that the rest of the country (outside the South, at least) doesn’t think like Texas does and isn’t as conservative as Texas is. That is certainly true when it comes to states’ rights, and also for gay marriage. Perry tried to undo his flip-flop in an interview that the Family Research Council posted on its Web site, stating (as he often has) his opposition to gay marriage and his support for an amendment to the  U.S. Constitution limiting marriage to one man and one woman (an issue that was a favorite of Karl Rove’s during the Bush years). (more…)

Tagged: family research council, gay marriage, rick perry

Chairman Ritter posted a comment about the water bond thread of discussion. Rather than having it buried in the comments section, I am going to post it separately, below.

Paul,

I can certainly understand your frustrations with the legislature not finding a dedicated source of revenue to fully implement our State Water Plan. As you know, I carried legislation this year that would have provided a mechanism for funding the plan. I also carried the joint resolution that resulted in Proposition 2. I cannot stress enough that a dedicated source of funding is only one component in the overall implementation of the plan which cannot be accomplished without bonding authority. The passage of Proposition 2 is a crucial step towards accomplishing this goal for the State of Texas.

Proposition 2 furthers our progress in meeting the future water needs of Texans. The importance of Proposition 2 is that it allows a self-supporting debt which is borrowed from the state through the Texas Water Development Board. These bonds would be issued only to provide funding requested by local communities, and the debt is then repaid by the borrowing entities.

Currently, many local entities are not able to access the financing necessary to complete projects without partnering with the state. The bonding authority enables a water provider to borrow funds backed by the good faith and credit of the state, lowering the cost of the loan, and thereby lowering the bottom line cost to the consumer. In fact, authorizing this type of bonding authority is the most fiscally conservative and responsible way to do business.

The failure of Proposition 2 means the imminent end of that partnership for water projects around the state, with or without a dedicated source of funding. I strongly support the passage of Proposition 2, and I hope that you will encourage your readers to do the same.

Representative Allan B. Ritter
Committee on Natural Resources, Chairman
Texas House of Representatives

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I appreciate Chairman Ritter’s contribution to the discussion. My encouragement is surely not needed, as I am certain that the water bonds will pass (voters know when they are getting something for nothing), and I will probably end up voting for them. One can only reflect how much better off the state would be if, at the start of the Perry governorship, it had invested in water and transportation infrastructure through normal revenue-raising means–highway bonds secured by an increase in the gasoline tax, and water bonds secured by a tap fee. The state has made little to no progress in these areas in that time. No doubt the public would scream bloody murder if there was a serious proposal to increase the gasoline tax, but it never occurs to them that their opposition to raising the gasoline tax dooms them to drive on toll roads, which are not only costlier, but in some cases are not meeting their traffic projections.

Tagged: Allan Ritt, proposition 2, water plan

[This post has been revised since it was first published yesterday to reflect that the water bonds will not have to be paid for with general revenue. Since then, a reader has posted the fiscal note. It says that the bonds include both self-supporting and not self-supporting debt, and that the latter (which is paid for from general revenue) counts against the state's 5% debt limit.]

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The answer is obvious, right? Of course we should vote for them. We’re in the middle of an historic drought.

Well, I’m not so sure about this. Governor Perry and the legislature are up to their old tricks. We’re supposed to have a pay-as-you-go fiscal system, but that is just a fiction. In fact, we’re borr0w-as-we-go. We borrow to build highways. We have borrowed to buy “equipment.” We borrow to build college buildings with tuition revenue bonds, knowing that the tuition will not cover the cost of the bonds and they will have to be paid out of general revenue. As will the water bonds. The debt service will eat away at the meagre general revenue that our tax system produces. Can you imagine how much it is going to cost to pay the debt service on $6 billion in water bonds?

The boosters are lining up behind Senate Joint Resolution 4, which will be proposition 2 on the November 8 ballot. In this case, the boosters are the H2O4Texas campaign, which they self-describe as “a newly created 501(c)4, nonprofit corporation – brought into existence to develop the Texans for Prop 2 Campaign, which will educate voters about the importance of passing Proposition 2 in November.” (more…)

Tagged: Lyle Larson, proposition 2, rick perry, water plan

Not a bad resume: nine terms, chair of calendars, speaker pro-tem, and the kingmaker in the 2011 speaker’s race. She was also a major player in eminent domain legislation. A lot of members have left with lesser legacies.

Tagged: Beverly Woolley

The July ARG poll is based on 600 telephone interviews conducted July 18-24. MOE +/-4.

JULY POLL

Perry 16%

Bachmann 15%

Romney 15%

Palin 13%

Cain 11%

Giuliani 7%

Paul 4%

Gingrich 3%

Pawlenty 1%

Huntsman 1%

Santorum 1%

Undecided 12%

MAY POLL

Romney 26%

Huckabee 14%

Gingrich 11%

Palin 9%

Trmup 7%

Giuliani 6%

Bachmann 5%

Cain 4%

Daniels 3%

Paul !%

Pawlenty 1%

Santorum 1%

Undecided 11%

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Perry’s name was listed on the May poll, but he did not receive a measurable percentage of votes.

Posting problem: ARG lists candidates in alphabetical order, not in the order of candidates that receive the most votes. I made several posting errors in an earlier version. My apologies to readers.

Tagged: presidential polls, rick perry

When the Texas Freedom Network puts out an approving statement about an action taken by the State Board of Education, you know something strange is going on.

Here was the TFN statement:

“Today we saw Texas kids and sound science finally win a vote on the State Board of Education. Now our public schools can focus on teaching their students fact-based science that will prepare them for college and a 21st-century economy. And our schoolchildren won’t be held hostage to bad decisions made by a politicized board that adopted flawed science curriculum standards two years ago. Moreover, today we saw that the far right’s stranglehold over the state board is finally loosening after last year’s elections. That’s very good news for public education in Texas.”

Now, I hate to be accused of being a cynic, but…do you suppose the far right members on the board had a sudden conversion experience that led them to abandon their strident positions of yesteryear? Or is it possible that, with the entire political world focused on Rick Perry, a call went out to SBOE chair Barbara Carghill suggesting that she round up the votes to adopt the education commissioner’s list of recommended science materials and adjourn the meeting ASAP before somebody says something about creationism?

Tagged: barbara cargill, rick perry, sboe, texas freedom network

I am totally dismayed to see that Governor Perry chose Donald Rumsfeld and several of his neoconservative disciples to advise him on foreign affairs. Rumsfeld was the worst secretary of defense in American history. He couldn’t even manage to put armor on humvees. How many young lives did he snuff out? The neocons have been wholly discredited. It’s not hard to see why Perry likes them. The neocons believe in utilizing America’s military might to extend American power, and Perry loves the exercise of power.

I don’t know whether, what, or how much Perry reads, but there are plenty of good books about how the Bush administration in general and Rumsfeld in particular bungled the war in Iraq and allowed the insurgency to flourish. Bush will carry the stain of the war to his grave and into the history books. Believe me, I’m no anti-war hand-wringer. When it comes to issues of war and peace, I’m a realist, not an idealist. What concerns me about Perry’s playing footsie with the neocons is that he is following his instinct to make policy based on ideology instead of acquiring knowledge about the mistakes of the past. And a failed ideology at that.

There is a wealth of great reading material on the war in Iraq: Fiasco, by Thomas E. Ricks; Cobra II, by Michael R. Gordon and Gen. Bernard E. Trainor; and the “Bush at War” series by Bob Woodward. These books are rich in lessons about the arrogance of power and the propensity to overestimate the importance of military power. Perry should read them, if he hasn’t already done so. Then he should remove Rumsfeld’s number from his cell phone contact list.

[From a review of Cobra II:

The bulk of the book is taken up with a near-comprehensive blow-by-blow account of the fighting that occurred over four weeks in March and April 2003. But while these chapters shed new light on several important facets of the war, and demonstrate how realities on the ground did not match Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld's  theories of military transformation, the book's beginning and ending sections are the most valuable. Here the authors explain how the administration of President George W. Bush drove the nation to war in Iraq, and how decisions made before the invasion and immediately following Mr. Hussein's ouster precipitated the vicious insurgency now wracking that country.]

Perry’s decision to embrace Rumsfeld and his disciples as his mentors in diplomatic and military affairs calls into question his judgment, his knowledge of history, and his fitness to lead American troops into harm’s way. Those who fail to learn from the mistakes of the past are condemned to repeat them.

[The article on which this post is based appeared in the Dallas Morning News, but I am unable to link to it.]

Tagged: George W. Bush

He’s not running for CD 14 (the former Ron Paul seat). He’ll run for Mike Jackson’s Senate seat if Jackson runs for Congress. If Jackson doesn’t run for Congress, Taylor will run for reelection to the House

Taylor was going to have a hard time vs. SREC member Michael Truncale, a former SREC member, and former congressman Steve Stockman.  Chris Peden, a former Friendswood city council member, is also considered to be a likely entrant. Friendswood is a rich source of votes in northern Galveston County.

As I noted in an earlier post, if Taylor remains in the House, he has to be considered as a potential rival to Straus.

Tagged: congressional district 14, ron paul

Stephen Colbert of The Colbert Report weighs in on Perry’s presidential “calling.”

Tagged: rick perry, stephen colbert, the colbert report

I got a robocall from Dewhurst over the weekend — along with 850,000 other Texans. The text was very similar to a video he has posted online. It’s about what you would expect: loser pays, kept $6 billion in the rainy day fund, balanced the budget without raising taxes. And then, the coda: “We did all this while making sure we kept our best teachers in the classroom.”

Who gets paid to write lies like this? We did nothing of the sort. Teachers will be laid off all over Texas. So, Mr. Dewhurst, how did you make sure we kept our best teachers in the classroom? Please tell me. I’d like to know. It’s almost enough to make me want to watch another video, the one where crazy talk show host Alex Jones says Dewhurst worked with “top Nazi Klaus Barbie.” Maybe Barbie is the guy who figured out how to keep the best teachers in the classroom.

Every time I hear Dewhurst say an obvious falsehood like this, it makes me think he’s is laughing at how stupid the public is.

Tagged: david dewhurst