"Texas law was clearly intended to keep anyone from pulling a Lautenberg-type stunt "
Actually, *New Jersey* law clearly intended to keep anyone from pulling a Lautenberg-type stunt but it didnt stop them.
In this case, your reasoning is invalid. It's not an 'end run' of a law to fulfill the requirements of the law, that makes no sense. If they wanted off the ballot so bad they were willing to move out of state, why stop them? It's *fulfilling* the legal requirements.
"judge is a law-and-order type who seems to have taken strong offense at someone transparently mocking the law with this clever approach."
Wrong. The Judge is anti-law-and-order in other cases, so that cant be his modus operandi.
Let's get real here. Terry Keel successfully showed in January that other candidates to the office he was seeking failed to meet the letter of the election. Yet, in the interest of moving elections forward, the judges let the candidates stay on the ballot, arguing that the interests of open election overcame the technical deficiencies of their submissions to be on the ballot.
In this case, the letter of the law allows for candidates to withdraw if they are ineligible for the office. To use your argumentation, if a 17-year-old accidently (or on purpose) won a primary race, we would be required to keep that person on the ballot, even in cases where it was uncovered well before the election. That doesnt make sense.
"No one believes that Delay established a residence in Virginia for any reason but to get himself booted from the ballot. "
I dont believe that. I believe Delay wants to stay plugged into politics, hence his north Virginia residency.
But, it doesnt matter what his *reasons* for making himself ineligible to be a candidate, the plain fact is that we have a Judge forcing an ineligible person to be the candidate for a party who wishes to replace him.
"If Delay hadn't made this all about himself,"
Blech. He gave up his political career, and the only people who want DeLay on the ballot now are ... Democrats.
This is about Democrats that, after years of trying to do him in, are so desperate to run against Delay that they are insisting he remain on ballots. Oh, the irony!
PS. If you cared about 'the greater good of the party' you wouldn't whine about DeLay.
What many of these drive-by posters don't realize is that the NJ law was stricter and more rational (see my #85). There was a very specific reason for NJ to have the deadline they did. And certainly some deadline is necessary.
Good arguments--I can only wonder why the judge who heard them and compared it to the law found differently.
Delay has been a great contributor to conservative strength at a federal level, and we owe him a lot. He's had some great victories. But his time was up and he has made his exit immeasurably worse by dithering until after the primary and trying to exploit a loophole to violate the spirit of the law. Yes, Lautenberg was worse, but they're both wrong, and that's what the judge found.
I'll "whine" as much as I like, secure in the knowledge it's not going to make an ounce of difference in the election outcome in TX-22.
"PS. If you cared about 'the greater good of the party' you wouldn't whine about DeLay"
Dude's from Mass. So do the math