Because Texas, per Gov. Perry, is excluding Planned Parenthood clinics (or those clinics who are associated with PP) from receiving funds the state receives from the Mcaid Women's Health Program, the Feds are, by law, stopping their payment. This is just stupid on Perry's part. Nothing is good about this. Nothing makes sense.
I am the last guy to take up for Perry, but if you're going to blame him, you have to blame the Legislature. I honestly don't know the law on this, so between Perry and the Obama Administration, I don't know who's right and who's wrong. However, unfortunately at least in Texas, Perry is the one who's going to look good in this. He screwed with a group that promotes abortion, and Obama took the abortion promoter's side. That's how it will play out in Texas.
As the article points out, a lot can change in short order but here was the situation in Texas less than a year ago: A new poll released by the non-profit non-partisan group Texas Lyceum found that President Obama is almost as popular as Gov. Rick Perry in the Lone Star State. The poll found that President Barack Obama’s 51% Texas approval rating is only 3 points behind that of Governor Rick Perry (54%). Texas Republicans aren’t thrilled with any of their choices in the GOP primary. Mitt Romney leads Sarah Palin, 16%-14%. Ron Paul is third at 10%, and Rick Perry is fourth at 9%. Herman Cain and Tim Pawlenty were fifth and sixth at 8% and 7% respectively. Interestingly, the combined support of Paul and Perry if rallied behind one home state candidate would be enough to be leading Mitt Romney by 3 points, 19%-16%. When asked if they would vote for Obama or the Republican candidate in 2012, the GOP candidate led Obama 44%-35%. In 2008 McCain beat Obama by 10 points in Texas, but where the Obama campaign sees hope for 2012 is in the fact that the President got 63% of the Latino vote in 2008, and 1.5 million more Spanish speaking voters will be eligible to go to the polls in 2012. As Politico reported, “The spike in voting-eligible Hispanics offers a tantalizing prospect for Democratic strategists who have yearned to flip Texas ever since John Judis and Ruy Teixeira published their landmark book, “The Emerging Democratic Majority,” which predicted just such a shift nine years ago.” Republicans counter with the argument that five Hispanic Republicans were elected to the Texas House in 2010, and there is no evidence that Texas will be in play in 2012. However, Obama could have a billion dollars at his disposal and could easily spend the $15-$25 million needed to get Democratic Hispanic turnout up high enough to match the Republican 3 to 1 advantage with white voters in the state. The Obama campaign showed willingness in 2008 to make Republicans spend precious resources defending Red States. No one should be surprised if the Obama team decides to make the cash strapped GOP spend millions defending Texas in 2012. If the conditions are right, Obama may take a serious run at turning Texas blue. A lot can change between now and next fall, but the long predicted bluing of Texas could take its next step towards becoming a reality in 2012. The Link
Satch, Since 1998, the Texas Democratic Party has put all its hopes in "the plan" - let Texas get overrun by Mexicans, who will vote Democratic and restore the Party to power. The problem is that for this scenario to work, Latino voters would have to continue voting heavily Democratic the way they traditionally did. I understand why you all think it would work. It arguably worked in California. (I don't think it did.) However, it's not working in Texas for two reasons. First, Democrats can't motivate them to show up at the polls. Second, they're not as reliable of a block as Democrats hope and need them to be for the plan to work. You talk about 63 percent of the Latino vote as if that's a good number. (Hell, what if Deomcrats only got 63 percent of the black vote? They'd lose 120 seats in the US House and would be lucky if they could elect 15 senators.) 63 percent isn't good, especially with a crotchety, cranky old white dude and a mindless bimbo on the GOP ticket. Democrats used to get more than that. For example, in 1996, Clinton got 72 percent of the Latino vote, and that was with a major third party candidate on the ballot and a stronger GOP opponent (still weak but stronger than McCain/Palin). Furthermore, Democrats lost 9 points in the Latino vote between the 2006 (69 percent) and 2010 elections (60 percent). Those aren't good numbers. Second, if the plan had validity in Texas, they may not be winning yet, but they'd at least be more competitive. You'd see the signs of it. The opposite is true. They're losing ground. When I worked at the Capitol in the late '90s, Republicans didn't get elected in South Texas (which is dominated by Hispanics). Sometimes a token would run down there just for $hits and giggles and get shellacked by 50 points. That's not happening anymore. They've won a few seats and are very competitive in several districts that just 10 years ago were slam-dunk, blowout Democratic districts. And if you look a little further north at Nueces County, it used to be a Democratic stronghold (mainly because of Hispanics). It now has three state representatives. All of them are Republicans. Furthermore, a big change in the last 20 years is that the most conservative Democratic legislators are no longer the white Democrats. They're Hispanic Democrats. That's not a good omen for the plan. The demographic they've really gained is God-hating white people. That's why they win Travis County reliably and why they've gained a lot in Dallas County. However, the outreach to the God-haters undermines their Hispanic support. Furthermore, just as they've picked up Dallas County, the county is losing population in proportion to other areas. In fact it lost two House districts in redistricting. Winning Dallas County is a nice prize, but it doesn't make up for losing all of East Texas, all of West Texas, everything between Dallas and Austin, most of Corpus Christi, and a significant part of South Texas. Satch, I want Perry gone as much as any Democrat. I don't like the current Republican leadership in the Legislature. 7 out of 9 of the Texas Supreme Court justices are total and complete bought-and-paid-for crooks. I'd rather see Democrats get more of a chance. However, it's a long road back to power, and they're driving in reverse. The strategy of being the Party for anyone who's not a white Christian just doesn't work in Texas, and it's not going to. They need to change course.
Deez, Texas will follow the trend of the other Southern states when it holds its GOP primary. Those casting votes will be 95% or higher white while the rest of country will continue to have a more balanced distribution of votes across racial and ethnic boundaries. As the state continues to become more ethnically diverse, Stevie Wonder can see where the GOP is headed.
Well, since you brought the dead into it, Helen Keller sees it differently: 8.As Texas Goes, So Goes the Rest of the Nation Posted on March 17, 2012 By Alex Gonzalez In 1984, Ronald Reagan received 37 percent of the Hispanic vote. Two decades later, George W. Bush, running on a Texas-grown record of inclusiveness, boosted that figure to 40 percent. But in 2008, Arizona Sen. John McCain received only 31% of the Hispanic vote. With the exception of George W. Bush, since the 1980s, Republicans in the southwest have been free-riding the Reagan Wave with little effort to recruit Latinos. As a result, and even though Texas has voted Republican in the Last 6 presidential election, if the current Latinos voting trends continues–within 2 presidential elections–Republicans will not be able to keep Texas Electoral votes; and thus, without Texas, the national Republican Party will not be able to elect another Republican president in the near feature. In California, Hispanics began leaving the Republican Party after 1987, and four years later the Republican nominee got only 22% of the Hispanic vote. This trend has not changed (California was a Republican states in the 1980s) but Texas went the opposite direction of the California trend. Bush received 44% of the Hispanic vote when he ran for election in 1998, and re-election in 2004 for President. Currently, however, Hispanic identification with the Texas Democratic Party leveled off, and currently a Republican running for statewide office in Texas can for the most part, rely on getting a third of all Hispanic vote. Part of this support for Republicans in Texas was created in 1994 when George Bush rejected Pete’s Wilson Proposition 187* when he was running against Ann Richardson for Governor. Moreover, by looking at the Presidential elections, we can see that Republicans have been free-ridding the Reagan wave since 1980 nationally. During the last few years, however, this trend has slowly started to lose ground to Democrats in the west coast and with Latinos voters in California and Texas—the two biggest Electoral votes states. More importantly, while Texas has maintained a 38% average in the Latino vote, the Latino registered vote in the state grew exponentially more than the “Anglo.” Thus, if this trend continuous, with the 2/3 of the exponential growth of Latinos voting in the state as democrats, soon the Republicans will not be able to keep the 38 Electoral votes necessary to send a Republican candidate to the White House. If we look at the electoral map of the last 30-years we can see the actual Electoral shift from 1980 Reagan Wave to 2008... The Link
Satchel, I don't know where you are heading with this but it seems to me that the Democratic-Hispanic link peaked out during the Clinton administration.
Satch, I'll admit I can't top the Helen Keller reference. That was smooth. Nevertheless, the article is interesting but still doesn't explain what's happening in Texas right now. (63 percent is also still down significantly from the last time a Democrat faced a non-Texan at the national level.) Areas of Texas that are very heavily Hispanic are electing Republicans. Obviously, many of them voted for Obama in '08, but they're electing Republicans to important down-ballot offices in significant numbers. That is undeniable. Why is that happening if Democrats are doing so well in the Texas Hispanic community? Can you answer that? Even if you can't, can you offer some speculation or a rationale on that? The parallel to California doesn't hold up for a reason Gonzalez mentioned but didn't highlight - the Prop. 187 battle. You might recall in '94 that Pete Wilson was a big advocate for Prop. 187. It probably gave him a slight bump in the white vote in the short term (one election cycle), but it cost his Party far more in the long term. I think the California GOP screwed up on three fronts, and two were about their contributors' money, while the other was just complacency and stupidity. As you've heard me discuss, the way to deal with illegal immigration is on the employer level, not the individual level. The practice of just slamming the actual immigrant is stupid, ineffective, and politically destructive. The California GOP chose the wrong route in that regard and took it to the extreme. The second way it screwed up is on the environment. People of all colors in California tend to be pro-environment because they're in an aesthetically beautiful place that they don't want destroyed and because the pollution is visible and has an odor (smog), no one can deny its existence. The California GOP was lax on the environment. (They're less so now, but they've closed the barn door after the cows got out.) Third, the California GOP never recruited minorities to run for high office in significant numbers. They pretty much just rolled out the usual old white dudes. That shouldn't make a difference. People shouldn't consider a candidates race or gender in voting, but let's be honest. They do. That's just reality. The environment isn't as big of an issue in Texas, but of course immigration is. However, the Texas GOP has never handled immigration the way other state GOPs have, including California's. It has political figures who favor the more divisive anti-illegal immigration measures, but the high-profile leaders do not and actively make sure they never reach the political forefront. Bush was openly hostile to them. Perry and Dewhurst are apathetic to them at most. Furthermore, the Texas GOP actively recruits Hispanic candidates, especially in the Rio Grande Valley but even at the statewide level. For example five out of our nine Supreme Court justices are minorities or women. (By the way, the two non-crooks are Wallace Jefferson (black male) and Debra Lehrmann (white female). The other seven are as crooked as a dog's hind leg.) They're even electing some Hispanics in white areas. In short, Texas Republicans approached and still approaches the Hispanic demographic differently that other Republican organizations. It's a challenge for them - no question about it. It's also not too late for them to screw it up. However, I think the Democrats are overly complacent about it and have done a poor job connecting with them on grassroots level. Linda Chavez-Thompson agrees. (A side note - I've known Steve Munisteri for 12 years. He's not a dumbass like Tina Benkiser and Susan "Two Wine Coolers Away from Taking her Top Off at a NASCAR Race" Weddington were. He's making major grassroots efforts to incorporate Hispanics into the Texas GOP, and he's good at that sort of thing.)
