Good read by Jay Root in The Texas Tribune today about whether Governor Oops will run for re-election as governor of Texas or run for something else, who knows what, president of France, whatever. Root suggests it will be the governorship again for Oops, and he talks some about other Republican gubernatorial candidates, for example Tom Pauken and Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott.
Root ponders how Oops might do against them. My only caveat would be that it's not a question of how he will do against them. It's what. And remember: He may be Oops, but he's also the governor.
Absent from Root's otherwise thoughtful analysis is any mention of what Oops did to Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison to beat the socks off her in the 2010 primary, which started with Hutchison way out front. Nor did I see any mention of Dave Carney, the guru from New Hampshire who told Oops how to do it in '10.
Carney's advice was simple. Dive right. And it worked like a Hail Mary. That's how you get elected and re-elected governor of Texas. Just make sure you're at least one football field to the right of everybody else.
Next question: How can Governor Oops get to the right of two ultra-right-wing guys like Greg "No Abortion At All" Abbott and Tom "No Welfare At All" Pauken? Answer: Easy, he's the governor.
When he was running against Hutchison, she said she wanted to clamp down harder on the border with Mexico. Oops said we needed to invade Mexico. So now what does he do if both Pauken and Paul say we should invade Mexico?
Invade Mexico. I told you: He's the governor. He just sends the Texas Air National Guard down there and has them fly around over Matamoros for a couple days. Terrific visuals of Mexicans looking skyward. Oops gets 100 percent of the votes in the Republican primary. Yeah, OK, so Obama and the feds will get all jacked out of shape and tell him what he's doing is illegal. He's got the perfect comeback.
Oops.
Hutchison offered some weak-ass stuff about the feds need to stop telling Texas what to do. Oops suggested Texas might need to secede and start another civil war. Yeah, that got all the libtards in New York in a twist, and people started talking about how it's technically illegal to start a civil war or something. Our governor had the perfect fallback.
Told you already: oops. He changed his position and said we shouldn't secede after all, just drag our feet and try to screw up the nation from within.
OK, so imagine that Pauken or Abbott tries to put the juice back in that one and says we should go back to thinking about secession. You already know what Oops needs to do, right? You got it. Secede.
Then what happens? Nothing happens. What do you think happens if a guy says he secedes? Nobody would even know what to do with that. The rest of the country would ignore him and write him off as one more crazy person in Texas. Here in Texas, he'd get the crazy vote, which is huge.
I have a lot of other great ideas about how Oops could dive to the right of those other half-asses. Before he brings Carney back from New Hampshire and pays him another zillion bucks, I wish Oops would give me and my ideas a look.
For example, I have known Pauken for a very long time, since we both wrote columns for The Dallas Times Herald. I like to think he and I helped make the Herald what it is today. I am telling you: You can count on Pauken coming out for an English-only official language law of some kind in Texas.
What does Oops do with that? Oh, man, it's so obvious: He comes out for a law against foreign accents. I would even include Yankee accents in there, except that I've got one. But you know what kind of accent we mean, anyway, right? One in particular, eh Señor? Nudge-nudge? Republicans would go nuts for that.
It's already obvious both Pauken and Abbott are going to come out against all abortion. So Oops comes out against sex. No, not for Republicans. But like no sex for non-citizens. He might even want to expand the no-sex law to certain other populations according to what kind of music they listen to (nudge-nudge).
How do you enforce a no-sex law? Wouldn't that require some huge new bureaucracy and the growth of government? Oh, hell no. You deputize the Tea Party to watch. Wow, you talk about something that would be crazy popular with the base. If the governor could add gay and lesbian sex to it somehow and put the Tea Party in a position to really get into the homes and observe, it would be like the impossible dream for those guys, their true mission from the beginning.
I could go on and on. Obviously. I promise not to. I'll stop. My point is that statewide politics in Texas is always about one thing only. The dive to the right. He who dives farthest wins the most votes. We already know who that will be, and there's only one thing we can say about it. Starts with Ooooo.
