The Texas Tea Party Didn't Win, But It Got The GOP To Move To The Right

[DonViejo]

ED KILGORE – MARCH 5, 2014, 8:32 AM EST

Overshadowed by both international and domestic developments and beset by terrible weather, Texas held the first major state primaries of the 2014 cycle yesterday. In the absence of a lot of red-hot congressional contests, the Lone Star event will mostly be interpreted as a barometer of this or that national trend, with varying degrees of accuracy.

In the one much-watched Democratic primary, progressive freshman U.S. Rep. Marc Veasey of Ft. Worth easily defeated self-funder Tom Sanchez in a contest that was expected to be decided more by ethnic voting patterns (Veasey is African-American, Sanchez is Hispanic) and geography (Veasey’s base is in Ft. Worth but a lot of voters are in Dallas) than ideology. President Obama recently endorsed Veasey, so his win will be greeted happily at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue. Democrats are less pleased with a runoff in the U.S. Senate race that will include LaRouche candidate Kesha Rogers, though she finished a poor second to regular Democrat Dan Alameel. Perhaps worse yet, the high-profile Agriculture Commissioner contest will pit a total unknown, farmer Jim Hogan, against comedian-musician-novelist-gadfly Kinky Friedman, hardly a regular Democrat, who is running on a quasi-libertarian pot legalization platform.

Among Republicans, the story we are hearing from most national observers (such as this headline from the New York Times today: “Texas GOP Beats Back Challengers From Right”) was about the dog that did not bark: tea party challengers to Sen. John Cornyn and Rep. Pete Sessions failed miserably, a result that will undoubtedly be used to reinforce an ongoing national meme that the Tea Party is dead or dying and the GOP establishment is riding high.

But if you look beyond the congressional races, that’s not necessarily the right conclusion to derive from the Texas GOP primary results.

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http://talkingpointsmemo.com/cafe/the-texas-tea-party-didn-t-win-but-it-got-the-gop-to-move-to-the-right

[Zen Democrat]

1. The creepy teabagger Dan Patrick is in a run-off with Dewhurst.

Dewhurst sucks, but he's not in the suckiest of all time league with Patrick. The problem is that run-offs bring out the tea-crazies, which is how Tea Cruz beat Dewhurst for the Senate seat.

[Paladin]

2. I agree: Patrick makes Dewhurst look benign by comparison. (nt)

[serqet]

3. Alameel is NOT a regular Democrat...

he has given $1.6 million to Repubs.. incl Greg Abbott....

I think he won cuz of Wendy's misguided endorsement...

Maxey Scherr actually got more endorsements, but she is a fighter and it seems to me there is a small but powerful group of status quo people running the Dem Party in TX... insanely, I might add... you know, doing the SAME lame-ass shit that hasn't worked in 20 years they've been trying.

[Avalux]

4. Well, it got Cornyn to air an idiotic Benghazi ad. Peer pressure!1!!

Election year in Texas = hell.

There is a glimmer of hope this time around though.

[Buzzardbait]

5. We are doomed

The pundits are saying that the Tea Party didn't do too well down here in Texas last night.

What they don't realize is that the TP and the establishment GOP are the same animal. The TP won big last night, it was the absolute crazies who lost.

We are about to see what a pure laboratory of TP philosophy looks like and it will make the high jinks in North Carolina look like Amateur Hour.