The OK and TX GOP held strong for now in 2008 too, but the party lost ground in AL and esp. VA.
“The OK and TX GOP held strong for now in 2008 too, but the party lost ground in AL and esp. VA.”
Ted R my man! Given your persistent pessimism, I am shocked that I am actually less optimistic than you wrt Texas.
We did NOT hold strong. After a weak 2006, we lost ground, with a few bright spots but also with some troubling trends in particular in the core urban counties.
We only “held our own” in Texas at the top. The rot in GOP support spread. We lost Harris county, which after losing Dallas in 2006 is like the break in the dam. The top 5 urban counties outside El Paso are - Travis, Harris, Tarrant, Bexar, Harris. All now tilt Dem.
Here’s Gary Polland ripping into the Harris GOP:
http://travismonitor.blogspot.com/2008/11/polland-on-election-joan-huffman-for-sd.html
The Obama/Dem side targetted Harris, the GOP knew it and tried to respond, but failed. We NEED a way to win back the core urban areas or at least get more competitive.
This is the trendline to purple from deep red. The topline was a 12 point McCain win, with Cornyn not even making 55%, and I know that his campaign staffers were aiming for 60%.
We lost 1 State senate seat (Davis beat Brimer), and lost several good conservatives in the Statehouse, so we now have a narrow 2 seat majority.
You can read here about how ticked off I am with the LP of Texas, who robbed Travis of our last GOP commissioner and let a liberal Democrat take HD52:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/2125794/posts?page=182#182
BTW, the loss of Brimer also had an LP spoiler.
Other local bad news, we lost the 3rd court of appeals, which in 2006 and prior years we held off by keeping the Travis margins low enough.
The good news is we won TX-22, Pete Olson is a new Congressman, and we still won every single statwide race, by about 8 points or more.
Last, underfunded candidate Rob Curnock against CHEAT Edwards in TX-17 did a creditable job of keeping CHEAT to 53%.
While there is a bottom-line of GOP strength in the state of Texas, the urban county trends are not good, and the top-line numbers are such that a strong Democrat could defeat a weak Republican. We will have to reverse them or stop those trends if we are to keep Texas an enduring Republican states.