I spoke with a friend yesterday who is knowledgeable about the situation at Texas A&M, and here is what he had to say.

1. Perry was not involved in the A&M regents’ decision to leave the Big Twelve for the SEC. He was described to me as “not supportive” but neither did he try to stop it.

2. The impetus for A&M to take action was UT’s decision to establish the Longhorn network in partnership with ESPN. “The regents went nuts,” my source told me. They were looking for some way to make a statement. “Look at what they have done for their brand,” my source told me.

3. A&M decided to “look at everything.” They brought in consultants. The move to the SEC was the answer. It would bring national exposure for the next ten to fifteen years. A&M would be on national television almost every week.

4. Kyle Field will be torn down and rebuilt as a modern stadium, with a seating capacity of 90,000-plus. The only part of the current stadium that will be retained is the north end zone.

5. A&M is “very focused on playing Texas.” It is not clear whether Texas feels the same way.

6. UT will go independent. They have little choice in the matter. The Big Twelve does not have attractive options for expansion. No other conference will take UT because its network and its partnership with ESPN gives UT a huge advantage in the size of its athletic budget.

Unless something goes awry, it is just a matter of time until A&M’s move to the SEC becomes official. As an SEC member, A&M will benefit from one of the most lucrative TV contracts in the country. Its days of meagre athletic budgets are over.

Tagged: a&m, Big 12, Longhorn Network, SEC, UT

St. Catherine Episcopal Church sign

This photograph was sent to me by a cousin in Louisiana. Readers are invited to engage in commentary.

Tagged: church signs, rick perry

The opinion is 55 pages long, and much of it involves a tedious argument over the certification of a class (abortion providers) that involved the sort of legal minutiae that made law school unbearable. I was in court on July 6, the day the case was argued, and anyone who listened to Judge Sparks should have known that he was not going to find for the state. The reason was not bias, or premeditation, as Senator Patrick suggests in his press release. It was that Judge Sparks made several references to the vagueness of the statute in open court. The state had no answer for this. The second reason why the state was in a losing position is that the statute mandated speech that was required of doctors. There is no freedom of speech when speech is mandated by law. To compel speech violates the First Amendment, and to compel listening to speech, as women would have to do, does so as well. That was the second fatal weakness of the state’s case. We will hear a lot of nonsense in the coming days about judicial activism, but the simple fact is that the state overstepped its bounds when it compelled speech by doctors to achieve a political purpose.

Tagged: Judge Sam Sparks, sonogram law

I used to teach a course at the Lyndon B. Johnson school of Public Affairs, for first-year students, called “Policy Development.” The metaphor for the course was a cauldron of soup, into which all the issues of the day were dumped. Sometimes these issues floated to the top; sometimes they sank to the bottom, but together they formed the principal concerns of government. Academics, bureaucrats, and elected officials studied these issues looking for indicators–numbers that suggested that this issue or that one was undergoing change. The unstated premise was that the bureaucracy was the real government–that they knew what was going on, more than the elected officials did, because they knew the numbers. Once the numbers were known–that, say, illegal immigration was increasing, or the number of homeless people–government would address the problem, or, at the very least, make the public aware of it. Together, these issues created a policy agenda on which, presumably, politicians would take action.

I bring this up to make the point that Rick Perry is just plain different from other politicians. He never lived in the world of policy agendas as it was described in “Policy Development.” In that world, politicians identify problems and seek solutions. I can’t recall Perry once urging legislators to improve education and health care, the state’s two main services. In the middle of a crippling drought, his policy response was to ask Texans to pray for rain, rather than to support funding for the state’s water plan. He has never been the kind of politician who tackles problems, unless an issue gets under his skin, such as the rising cost and lackluster graduation rates of higher education have done recently. Texas government is full of indicators that are blinking red–danger! danger!–from dropout rates to families without health insurance, and year after year they go unaddressed. That’s not the way it was supposed to happen, according to Policy Development 101. (more…)

Tagged: ideology and power, politics, rick perry

Perry 27%

Romney 14%

Palin 10%

Bachmann 9%

…and so on

Perry has doubled up Romney in this poll. The more extreme his rhetoric gets, the more extreme his poll numbers get.

Conditions of the poll:

Interviews with 1,017 adult Americans conducted by telephone by ORC International on August 24-25, 2011.  The margin of sampling error for results based on the total sample is plus or minus 3 percentage points. The sample also includes 927 interviews among registered voters (plus or minus 3 percentage points).

The sample includes 805 interviews among landline respondents and 212 interviews among cell phone respondents.

Tagged: poll, republican presidential primary, rick perry

This is an analysis of the race that was developed by the Paddie camp. It is published as it was sent to me. Quoting the analysis:

Basically the district can be divided into 3 parts:

1). Christian base. This is Shelby and Sabine [counties] that are currently in Christian’s District.  In the last GOP primary, these two combine for 26% of the vote of the newly configured district.

2). Neutral. This is Cass and Marion which are now in HD 1.  George Lavender [the incumbent in HD 1 --pb] is not endorsing in this race.  These two combine for 17.69% of the vote.  Like Paddie’s Harrison County, they are on the North part of the district.

3). Paddie base. Paddie is Mayor of Marshall, the biggest county, and broadcasts his radio show countywide.  This county alone, was a huge 44% of the 2008 vote, 39.37% of the 2010 vote.  But Paddie grew up and graduated from High School in Carthage, Panola County.  His family runs the radio station there in Carthage. Panola had 17.18% of the vote in 2010.  These two Paddie “base” counties combined for 56.31% of the vote (of the new district) in 2010.  Paddie also lived in Shelby County (Christian’s home) and is not without support there, but would likely cede most of the support there to Christian.

So, the scenario [which I described in yesterday's post--pb] of the smaller counties ganging up against the big county is quite less likely in this district.  Paddie will be the hometown favorite for more than 56% of the Republican voters and he has a better than even chance of getting his share of his next door neighbors Cass and Marion.  Jefferson, Texas (Marion County) is 17 miles from Marshall and 72 miles away from Center, where Christian lives.  Linden (County seat of Cass) is a full 100 miles away from Christian’s hometown but a short drive for Paddie.

To summarize, Paddie starts out with a 20% advantage in home county GOP vote size.  When you extend to their broader bases, the advantage goes to +30% for Paddie.

And the two remaining smaller counties do not provide much comfort for Christian.  They are clearly in Paddie’s backyard.  Any appeal to “I am from a small county and so are you” would probably not be too effective.

[end of analysis]

My comment:

No one should be surprised that the district has been drawn in a way that makes it difficult for Christian to be reelected. Clearly, the Straus team would like to see someone else representing HD-9. What I don’t know is whether Solomons et al drew the district with the aim of eliminating Christian, or whether the population numbers were such that the district fell into place naturally. There really wasn’t anywhere for the district to go. It was blocked on the east by the Louisiana state line, on the north by HD-1, on the south by the Golden Triangle, and on the west by the relatively large counties of Nacogdoches and Rusk.

Tagged: Chris Paddie, George Lavender, House redistricting, Joe Straus, wayne christian

Ken Herman has a story today about Mr. Morrow’s efforts to dig up dirt about Rick Perry. This includes a full-page ad in the Austin Chronicle soliciting information about Perry’s personal behavior earlier in his career. Readers of this space will recognize Mr. Morrow’s name. He is a frequent commenter on the blog, usually about subjects so bizarre and so scandalous that I am forced to send them to trash rather than publish them. He is convinced that the JFK assassination was a massive conspiracy. Once he posted a list of the 50 best books about the assassination. One of his bete noirs is George H. W. Bush, who allegedly had a hand in some dark deed that I have forgotten. Had my e-mail not been hacked a couple of months ago, I would be able to restore some of those posts. Mr. Morrow is a libertarian and a supporter of Ron Paul. Most of his submissions to the blog are not publishable. He doesn’t have much credibility, IMO. but he is relentless about stirring up the rumor mill.

Tagged: rick perry, Robert Morrow, rumor mill

Marshall mayor Chris Paddie will seek the Republican nomination for District 9, a redrawn district that runs along the Texas-Louisiana border. The district is currently represented by conservative stalwart Wayne Christian. Paddie’s home county, Harrison, is the biggest county in the district. This will be one of the most-watched races in the state, if only because Christian is one of the most high-profile representatives. That Paddie comes from the most populous couny is not necessarily an advantage. Sometimes the smaller counties gang up on the big county. In addition to serving as mayor, Paddie hosts a radio talk show.

Tagged: Chris Paddie, District 9, primary battle, wayne christian

I’m speaking of Steve Ogden, who ripped into Lieutenant Governor Dewhurst and his own Senate colleagues this week in a speech in College Station. What he said was the truth–that Dewhurst was ineffective and that all his colleagues cared about was politics.

During the discussions over a school finance bill late in the session, I visited with a group of senators at the doorway near the press table. “If there were a vote [of confidence] on Dewhurst, it would be 31 to 0 against him,” one Senate veteran told me. Heads nodded all around. His about-face on the Rainy Day fund sunk his relationship with the Senate, what was left of it.

What about the Senate race? Dewhurst has been following a rose garden strategy, relaxing in Aspen–not that I wouldn’t do the same if I could. He makes some campaign appearances in Texas but doesn’t attend forums, and generally is the pluperfect absentee candidate. Clearly, Dewhurst’s plan for the Senate race is to ignore the base and simply hitch a ride on Rick Perry’s record; whatever successes Perry had, Dewhurst will claim his share of. Dewhurst is going to try to buy the race, overwhelming Ted Cruz with money and name I.D. Dewhurst’s achilles heel is that he has no constituency and no resume of achievement. The thing he has to worry about is that word-of-mouth is still a powerful force in Republican politics, and the base of the party is not, and never has been, enamored with him.

I don’t understand why Dewhurst wants to be in the Senate. He’s too old to build a meaningful career. He has an executive personality, not a legislative personality. The only way he would slap a colleague on the back would be to try to kill a fly. And–the fatal flaw in a legislative body–he doesn’t have a good reputation for keeping his word. Every vote is going to be a thousand deaths for Dewhurst. And there is a possibility that the Democrats might keep the majority. Being a freshman in the minority is no piece of cake. I wouldn’t be surprised, if Perry wins the presidency, to see Dewhurst choose being governor over being senator.

Tagged: david dewhurst, rick perry, Ted Cruiz

Huge numbers for Perry. He turned Romney’s 23-18 lead into a 17-29 deficit in one month.

By region:

East: Perry 16%, Romney 17%, Paul 15%

Midwest: Perry 23%, Romney 20%, Paul 18%

South: Perry 39%, Romney 12%, Paul 9%

West: Perry 28%, Romney 22%, Paul 12%

Among voters 65+, Perry leads Romney by 40% to 16%

* * * *

Perry is going to be the Republican nominee. His coalition is pretty obvious from these numbers. It’s the South, the evangelicals, and the tea party geezers. What’s more, these elements of his constituency appear to be fiercely loyal. We’ve all seen this before. The only way he can lose in the primary is to make a huge mistake — but he doesn’t make huge mistakes — or be brought down by a major scandal — but he has never been implicated in a major scandal. We might as well skip the primary and go straight to the general election.

Tagged: poll, rick perry