Posted on 09/16/2011 7:45:31 AM PDT by Titus Quinctius Cincinnatus
The two guys I saw in the debates that I really wouldn’t want in the whitehouse are Paul and Huntsman.
NO to Huntsman as well.
Oh don’t bother, the official Perrybot line is that the Republican party did not exist in west Texas in the 1980’s outside of the Bush family. They don’t say Perry succumbed to peer pressure they flat out claim he “had no choice” but to be a democrat. If you breathed in Paint Creek you had to be in the same party as filthy commie scum like Jesse Jackson and support lying scumbags like Al Gore, it was the law. ;)
The same reason Fred Karger isn't. Candidates who's support rounds down to zero usually don't get invited to debates. I don't see why an exception should be made for former Governors.
Really? Revolting.
So you didn’t pick up on a sort of arrogant, self-righteous tone to Perry’s quote? I did, and it reminds me of Bush.
Demographics is destiny. Immigration is going to turn Texas into a battleground state. As a lifelong Texan I’m sure you know that the only reason Texas has remained solidly Republican is because the GOP there routinely wins over 70% of the white vote. (If Californian whites were as conservative as Texas whites, then that state would still be in play.) But winning an overwhelming share of the white vote will not guarantee victory much longer. Despite all the hype about Bush’s appeal to Hispanics (and to a lesser extent Perry), did he ever carry a majority of the latino vote in Texas? I’ve read that an exit poll put Bush at 49% in his 1998 gubernatorial reelection. One deeply flawed exit poll had him carrying 55% against Kerry, but that was almost certainly nonsense.
But anyway, it would be nice if Perry were conservative on immigration. Without conservative immigration reform (i.e. less legal immigration and no path to citizenship for illegals), the GOP and conservative movement will be demographically buried.
Roemer would get more support, if he was in the debates. Few people have heard his great ideas. If they hear his views, a lot more people would support him.
Ping to post #148 if you want to chime in.
That’s true, his support has no where to go but up. Most people haven’t even heard of him.
But it’s exceedingly unlikely he could go from zero to a hundred.
His decision not to raise sufficent money doomed him from the start. It’s too bad actually, I like him better than Slick Perry.
I think these people are projecting. Their parents and grandparents or they themselves if they are older were still democrats well into the two-party era in Southern politics. And they just can’t come to grips with the fact they were myopic or ignorant so they engage in these gymnastic apologetics.
Some of them will insist that new deal liberal LBJ was a conservative until he “sold out” or “lost his mind” or somesuch prattle.
*Of course* President Bush won a majority of TX Hispanics in the 2004 election. Are you suggesting that he carried 88%-Hispanic Cameron County (Brownsville), or gotten 59% in 80%-Hispanic Val Verde County, or 63% of the vote in 62%-Hispanic Atascosa County, or 70% of the vote in 50%-Hispanic Medina County, or 57% of the vote in 60%-Hispanic Nueces County, or 63% of the vote in 54%-Hispanic San Patricio County, or 78% of the vote in 67%-Hispanic Deaf Smith County, without getting a huge chunk of the Hispanic vote?
TX Hispanics usually give Republicans between 35%-40% of the vote. Writing off their vote would be tantamount to writing off the state within the next decade. That does *not* mean that we should support amnesty, or in-state tuition, for illegal aliens, and it is perfectly legitimate to criticize Gov. Perry for his positions on immigration and his support for in-state tuition. But what is counterproductive and just plain counterfactual is to say things like “Texas Hispanics always vote overwhelmingly Democrat” and to refuse to consider evidence to the contrary.
The 2004 exit poll that got all of the attention and attributed a national 44% share of the Hispanic vote to Bush was almost certainly wrong. That 44% figure was debunked from both the Right and Left, and it’s hard to buy that Bush won 55% of the latino vote in Texas. His overall margin would have been much higher in Texas.
I would say that Hispanics always vote overwhelmingly Democratic in national Presidential elections, because they do. The best any Republican has done in the last 30 years is Reagan in 1984 and Bush in 2004, and at most Bush won 40%.
As to Texas, as you say the norm is large, double-digit margins for Democrats. So as long as the absolute number of Hispanic voters increases, it can more than offset the election here and there were the GOP does relatively well with latinos.
So long term it looks grim for Texas, and the nation, unless demographic trends change or at least slow. Even if we reduced immigration like we should, the momentum from decades of mass immigration and higher birth rates from Hispanics will still push up their share of the population and electorate considerably, but at least the GOP and conservative movement might have a fighting chance. If large scale immigration continues, I see very little reason to be optimistic.
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