Does the 15% support Howling Howie's idiot in action rant that they are taking back Texas?

Hey, lets give the dem their props. He was behind and now leads by 1 point Kinky "Big Dick" Friedman ("Big Dick" comes from the answering message he had on his phone a couple of years back, my wife was calling for him to donate some itesm for a charity auction and was quite surprised at the answering machine message as its not normal behavior for most of Texas).

The democrat turned republican turned independant has pulled into second place at 18%. And of course, Perry is at 20%.

So what you really have here is someone who couldn't win the republican primary and was old enough not to want to wait to run, a democrat and a 'joke' candidate (and I say that in the kindest way possible Kinky) are in a statistical dead heat covering 4 points, while the GOP candidate has a 20 point lead over second place.

I think the 15% pretty accurately sums up the hard core liberal vote in Texas (you bet we have some of those, and you are welcome to them). Kinky and grandma split the dissaffected democrat, dissaffected republican, dissaffected independent and the 'its not really serious so lets have a good time with it' vote.

I can remember and voted in a time when most offices were decided in the democratic primary. What has happened is 1) The national democratic party has left the Texas democrats by moving ever more to the left, 2) Gov. Clemens spent a lot of his own money and provided the first crack in a republican winning state wide office (Yes Sen. Tower had won for years, but for whatever reason his winning didn't start the process like Clemens did), 3) The state GOP playing a patient ground game to not just win state wide office, but turn gerrymandered after gerrymandered state legislature districts to the GOP. 4) State democrats not slipping quietly into their minority status, but trying the obstructionist tactics when they didn't have a majority of votes.

I think Texas would be an interesting case study for anyone wanting to look at how do you turn a democratic dominated state to a GOP dominated state.

Maybe Kinky can get some mileage out of the page scandal

I think John Connally switching parties had an effect, too, but Texas was bound to move to the GOP as the old Roosevelt coalition dissolved beginning with the 1968 election.