WTF Friday: Vote or Die
Here at WTF Friday, we’re always on the hunt for fresh deposits of political oddities. So we love the Texas primary. This Tuesday’s primary provided our richest vein of bizarro-ore in many months, so let us begin with a special WTF Friday shout-out to: the Texas electorate.
There’s the Democratic side, where state Senators Wendy Davis and Leticia Van de Putte won their nominations. Apart from that, a whole lotta not-much. In the agriculture commissioner race, a pothead troubadour hawking his line of merchandise is set to face Jim Hogan in a runoff. Who’s Jim Hogan? “Most people don’t know who anyone is,” he told the Tribune. We can never truly know each other, it seems. But Jim Hogan knows who Jim Hogan is, and that’s something.
“When I called Democrats and told them I was gonna be on the ticket first thing they said was, ‘How long you been in politics?’ I said, ‘I’m not no politician.’ They said, ‘Let me tell you something: It takes a lot of money to win a state race and you can’t win.’ I said, ‘Let me tell you something, y’all haven’t won since 1994.’”
Hogan spent less than $5,000 on his race, and didn’t campaign. That’s why he won, he says. You can’t actually campaign and expect to win, in this day and age.
“My motto is: My phone and Internet can outrun any jet plane or car across the state of Texas. I don’t have to be there.”
“All you gotta do is Google my name—’jim hogan ag commissioner’—and there’s enough on there.”
Hogan cleaned the clock of both the guy with name recognition (Kinky) and the guy with resources (Fitzsimons.) So maybe he’s on to something. Hogan/Hogan 2016?
In the Senate, the dentist with deep pockets, David Alameel, seems like he’ll win his runoff. But for the next two months, Kesha Rogers, perennial candidate and Lyndon LaRouche cultist, will be nipping at his heels. Here’s what she had to say in her election night statement:
The global monetary system is still hopelessly bankrupt, and in a vain attempt to perpetuate the power structure of “Too Big To Fail/Jail”, is pushing its crony politicians directly into conflicts that pose thermonuclear Armageddon. […] We must revive the Hamiltonian system of federal credit, to launch the next generation of great projects, in space exploration and defense, controlled thermonuclear fusion energy, and the North American Water and Power Alliance XXI.
Then, of course, there’s the Republican slate, where “moderates” once again received a relentless beat-down. Dan Patrick is catapulting over David Dewhurst to high office: He attributed his victory time and time again, in his speech, to God’s will—“I’m never surprised by the will of God, or the will of the people”—then accidentally quoted a Reagan speech talking about the greatness of immigration after running the most anti-immigrant political campaign in recent memory.
There’s the GOP ag commissioner runoff, where Sid Miller, whose campaign treasurer is noted moneyman Ted Nugent, won the plurality of the vote while the farmer placed fifth in an essentially four-way race. And Miller told the Houston Chronicle he’s keeping Nugent on board.
“Nobody seems to talk about the good the man does,” Miller said of the man who brags about statutory rape.
But there’s WTFery far and wide this week—not just in the primaries. Yesterday, U.S. Rep. Ted Poe (R-Humble) tried to a move a bill that would facilitate U.S. natural gas exports to Europe amid the ongoing crisis in the Ukraine. Whenever the idea comes up, Poe reaches into his deep reserve of experience in the region. (He was reported to say this yesterday, but this version comes from a September transcript of a similar hearing.)
“I was in the Ukraine when the Russians cut off the gas in the winter, and they cut it off for political reasons, and I can tell you it was cold.”
Then there’s tea partier Peter Morrison, treasurer of the Hardin County GOP. Morrison runs a newsletter called “The Peter Morrison Report,” and he can’t understand why any of you think this primary cycle was a good one for the tea party (It was.)
After last night’s election results, many of you in the Tea Party or associated movements may be somewhat discouraged.
The movement didn’t get everything it wanted, it seemed. Cornyn is still in office, for example. To an outsider, it may appear as if the tea party has been relentlessly, painstakingly efficient in purging the GOP of moderates and slowly appropriating the institutions of the state to further a political agenda that they would never be able to achieve in the full light of day, with the participation of all voters. Morrison is against that kind of stuff. Well, it’s more that he wishes his movement was better at it.
The Marxists have one thing we can admire: their long-term orientation. The Cultural Marxists who infiltrated the West did not delude themselves with the idea that they would achieve a bloody revolution overnight. They committed themselves to a “long march through the institutions” of our society, determined to undermine the Christian, Anglo-American bedrock of this country from within.
Fight fire with fire, Morrison says: “If we want to take our country back, we must have a 50 to 100 year orientation as well.”
The solution, when faced with mounting “demographic changes”—code for a younger, more Hispanic, and poorer electorate—is simple. Strip voting rights away from non-Republicans.
Structurally, we face an enormous challenge with the demographics that will determine our elections in the years to come, making it virtually impossible for Republicans to win the Presidency, and eventually Congress. There are relatively simple fixes for this problem. If we only allowed people who pay taxes to vote, for example, we would solve our problem.
Let alone the fact that everyone in America pays taxes—if you buy a shirt, you’ve paid taxes—expect to see the idea that fewer people should vote gain more currency with true believers as the Republican Party contends with long-term shifts that it can’t quite seem to come to grips with. That’s not fun or funny, but there it is. WTF.
