Posted on 01/02/2016 6:03:20 AM PST by cotton1706
Challengers to the Texas Republican establishment have scored impressive victories in the last few election cycles, knocking off several state senators and House members, including a few veteran North Texas lawmakers.
But as the insurgency takes hold in state government, the Republican congressional delegation has been largely untouched.
Most incumbents have easily beaten back challenges from the tea party and other segments of the grass-roots movement, even as their counterparts in state government have suffered humbling defeats.
Activists outside the GOP establishment, successful in smaller legislative districts, haven't figured out how to operate in a larger, more expensive arena that heavily favors incumbents.
"It's a steeper climb," said North Texas tea party leader Ken Emanuelson. "You're seeing a lot of challenges on the congressional incumbents, but the reality is most of them will make it back to their seats."
(Excerpt) Read more at dallasnews.com ...
Excellent!
Of course, it would be better to primary Straus out altogether but that is probably a bridge too far.
Yes, unfortunately the congress critters have a 90%+ reelection rate. Very hard to knock these guys out.
In short, our side has been pathetic looking for a "Neo" instead of whittling away whenever/wherever possible. We make a few gains and when it doesn't turn out to be the tipping point, we decide to punish our side by giving the other side even bigger wins.
If we "fought" this way in WWI and WWII, we would not exist today...
As long as they vet them before supporting them. The last time they did this, they picked people who said stupid things and we lost ever seat. In the President election, more Democrats vote so we have to be careful on choosing candidates. We might be better off waiting until 2018 when we can win elections again.
With all due respect,
The primary system is not working good enough to defeat entrenched
hacks.
I do not know what the answer is but primaries are not working.
Our focus needs to be on the 8 Vulnerable Senate seats and the White House.
Without those, the House doesn’t matter.
The reason the House districts are so large is due to a House Rule established in 1928 limiting House Membership to 435.
In the Constitution, it says there should be no more than 1 Representative for every 30,000 citizens. With constantly growing population, it is now about 1 in every 710,000 citizens. This makes it nearly impossible for a true citizen statesman or woman to get elected.
That rule needs to be revoked, districts split 5-7 ways. Though that would expand the House membership to the thousands. . .each supra-district could vote for one Rep to reside in DC, and all of the rest would reside in their districts and vote/attend meetings electronically.
There may be a better way to do it, but we must take back our House.
Don’t forget Posey from Florida.
He voted with Washerwoman-Schultz and Grayson to continue the ‘No Child’s Behind Left” central government intrusion into local education.
He is a true RINO.
Cruz is going to need more conservatives in congress, I know in the general he will be promoting as many as possible, the election will not be just about him getting elected.
If the 30,000 person per Representative were reinstated, giving us a U.S. House of nearly 11,000 members, it would effectively render that body completely useless and unmanageable. While to many that would be a positive, you would end up setting a permanent precedent of the President ruling as dictator (effectively how Zero has been acting) in order to bypass it simply to be able to act.
I’m not opposed, however, to increasing the current membership from 435 to 500 and up to a maximum of 1,001 over time, although even that would probably start becoming too unwieldy.
I could be wrong, but I think Joe Straus is unopposed in the March 1, 2016, primary. The district is heavily GOP in the general election. Nothing can be done.
CANTORIZE YOUR WEASELS, AMERICA!
If you are represented by a multi-national politician who is more concerned about fraudulently documented foreigners than the citizens of this country, Cantorize them.
If your representative votes for spending money we don’t have on things you don’t want, Cantorize them.
If your representative works for The Cheap Labor Express and not the citizens, Cantorize them.
The paradoxical effect of Cantor’s loss has been that RINOs are more RINO-ey than ever: to get more donations to beat off primary challengers!
That’s the lesson they learned.
We took out the weasel Eric Cantor.
All it takes is committed voters.
I’m skeptical. Some of the current snakes in power were elected while running as Tea Party candidates. You just never know what living in D.C. will do to a person.
Oh, you’re absolutely right! They doubled down. They were hopping mad at Cantor’s loss and were and are out for revenge!
Conservatives will not be allowed a SINGLE victory. That is their object, and you can see the glee in McConnell’s eyes and smirk when he passes EVERYTHING the conservatives are against and thwarts EVERYTHING the conservatives are for.
It’s sick and insidious! But we must continue the battle!
“We took out the weasel Eric Cantor. All it takes is committed voters.”
Yes, you guys were certainly the giant slayers and made all of us cheer to see Brat take Cantor down. I’d love to see it reproduced for Ryan and McCarthy (and Ellmers, etc., etc.).
That’s similar to an argument I have been making for years. Representatives of the people no longer represent the people. Congressman are too far removed and the people no longer have direct access to them. The House should have thousands of voting reps. Floor debate can be limited to the committee members that have passed the bill.
The additional advantage is that corruption could be limited somewhat. Right now, a bag of money supplied to a few dozen key reps is an expensive cost of doing business. Continual supplying of bags of money to thousands of reps means doing that kind of business is now prohibitively expensive.
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