Posted on 10/30/2010 5:35:01 AM PDT by Kaslin
The Texas Democrats' Great White Hope hasn't materialized, and a photo from the campaign trail gives strong clues as to why.
When Gov. Rick Perry (an Aggie) defeats Democratic nominee Bill White (who may have had questionable help from struggling UT) on Tuesday to win his third full term at the top of Texas’ government, postmortems on the Great White Hope campaign will begin. The Democrats pinned their hopes on White as their best chance to win since the last time they won the slot, 20 years ago when Ann Richards defeated Clayton Williams. Big name Democrats have been coming to Texas for the past few years to meet with White and prime him to be their savior here, as the Perry camp lampooned in this web ad that hit the streets this week:
Those meetings and his policies show Bill White to be the liberal that he has claimed not to be, for the purposes of having a chance to win in Texas. And that liberal record is a major part of why White will lose. But when the deeper postmortems begin, they should begin with this photo, which appeared today in the El Paso Times.
Note the headline — the candidate is “jogging.” Now take a good look at his footwear. Granted this is Texas, and granted we have interesting wildlife-like rattlesnakes and copperheads in these parts, but who in their right mind jogs in cowboy boots? Rick Perry is an agile campaigner, arguably the most talented campaigner Texas has ever produced (Texas’ Wiliest Politician Award will always belong to the crooked as a snake LBJ). Perry is also an avid jogger. You’re not going to catch up to Rick Perry by jogging in boots. And if you do, well, he’s packing heat.
Yes, I want one of those Coyote Specials, but that’s neither here nor there.
Also note the direction White is running in in that photo.He’s running to the left, and he’s running uphill. When you run to the left in Texas, you are always running uphill. Texas is a conservative state. It’s currently in better fiscal shape than any of the other large Democrat-run states, to the point that we’re endlessly favorably compared with California (leaving the Golden State green with envy, no doubt). To win anything statewide in Texas, the direction to run is to the right. Bill White tried to sound like he was running to the right on some things, but the reality was that he was always running to the left of Gov. Perry and of the state’s majority. That’s just not going to work.
Note also that he’s not looking at the camera, and therefore not connecting with the viewer. That’s pretty much how his campaign has gone. He spent his first major campaign ad salvo with a huge buy in … Houston. That’s his own backyard. The summer ad buy there indicated what the polls have since borne out, which is that he’s even struggling in the city that made him mayor. If he can’t dominate there, he won’t win elsewhere. He just never connected.
And finally, Bill White is alone in that photo. Where are the adoring Rocky crowds urging him on to fly, now? Where are his campaign advisers? Word out of the White camp has long been that he has micromanaged everything, to the point of personally approving every tweet, Facebook post, and scrap that’s gone out. While having strong authority at the top is generally good, it’s only good to the extent that the authority knows what’s it’s doing. If it micromanages as White apparently has, it ends up strangling good ideas from its top minds, and alienating them. And no one on the Texas political scene would even argue that White had top talent on board.
Democrats and the mainstream media — sorry to be repetitive there — have long trumpeted the Perry-White match-up as the most competitive governor’s race Texas has seen in 20 years. Before that, they all but wrote Perry’s political obit when Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison challenged him in the GOP primary. She was too popular, and he’s just Gov. Goodhair, was basically their story. Perry won that contest by 21 points. He’s poised to beat White by 10 on Tuesday. He beat Chris Bell in 2006 by 9, in a field so crowded it looked like a basketball game.
The 2010 race has been a head-to-head battle, pitting the Democratic mayor of Texas’ largest city against its longest serving governor. The main thing that has kept it competitive isn’t White at all, but Texans’ natural and healthy allergy to incumbency at the top: until George W. Bush, Texans just didn’t re-elect governors to consecutive terms. And if things stay on their current trajectory, the 2010 race won’t turn out to have been the most competitive race in 20 years. The photo above sums up why, very nicely: Bill White has just been doing it wrong.
Update: I talk about this photo plus the Democrats’ obviously racist ploy against Marco Rubio on today’s Members Only comments at PJTV.
that jogging pic looks like Halloween
The pic needs to be lined up with Obama hanging curtains, Kerry in his bunny suit and Dukakis in the tank.
Did something I’ve never done before. Voted straight republican. I hope millions of others do, too. With the exception of Colorado. I want Tancredo to win.
First CONGRATS and thank you for voting!
When you said that, I kept thinking of Nevada, where the complaint was that if you voted straight Republican on their machines, the ticket would automatically reset to select all democrats. Can you get over how blatantly they are cheating this year?
In a piece by BRADLEY OLSEN, Houston Chron:
But several problems have come to light since he left office.
The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development faulted his housing department’s use of federal funds nearly 30 times, issuing findings that could require repayment of millions to HUD on projects worth more than $36 million.
The most severe issues have been at Metro, an agency that before White largely had been run out of City Hall and to which White appointed a majority of the board.
An FTA investigation found that Metro leaders failed to follow federal procurement rules, actions that cost the agency tens of millions and have significantly delayed a $900 million federal grant that was critical to the light rail expansion plan.
White has said he is not responsible for the actions of those Metro officials, noting that he did not meddle in matters of procurement as mayor and would have had no way of knowing they had botched the contracting process.
...............
He also does a nice “What Me?” routine.
Goodhair will win because he has defied the EPA, and preserved the energy and manufacturing sectors in Texas. A ballsey move that has deflected teaparty ire.
I voted early in Texas. Straight republican with the exception of Governor. I voted for Kathie Glass over Goodhair. She’s more serious about the border. First time I ever voted for a libertarian.
I voted yesterday. It was tough, voting for Goodhair, but I had to do my part to keep the Dem out of the governor’s chair. Houston as a sanctuary city was the disqualifier.
White thanks you for that vote.
I’ve always voted republican. But there were always some local guy who I may have wanted to vote for. Maybe a libertarian. This year I said “To heck with it” and it took me about 10 seconds. I also noticed last Sunday that most people weren’t taking that long. I hope that’s a good sign. I also hope people do that in DE. Apparently islamabama and plugs are worried or they wouldn’t be spending so much time there.
Nice ‘jogging’ outfit! Street clothes and boots! This tells me he ‘jogged’ for about 10 yards for the camera shot, then sat down on that stone wall and asked the camera mope, “How was that take? Good enough? ‘Cause I’m getting tired and need to finish that bag of Cheetos I have laying on the coach.”
I don’t know why so many people have an antipathy for Perry. It seems to me that he has done a pretty good job of keeping Texas in a robust economy. In my county alone an average of 94 people a day are moving here. They aren’t coming for welfare. They are coming for jobs and a low cost of living. They are coming from the Rust Belt states and the northeast and are darn glad to be here in most cases.
I don’t see the Democrats doing anything to help this country. Why kill the golden goose here in Texas?
Yes, I remember when the Houston Chronicle was all giddy at the thought of White beating Perry!
A libertarian serious about the border-come on!
Occasional screwball statist things like trying to mandate the cervical cancer vaccine to 9-year-olds.
Yes, he does.
Note that here in Texas at least, you have the choice of a paper ballot if you wish.
Use it; it can’t reset when you turn your back.
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