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Thanks Paperchunker. I hope he changes his mind because I don't see him winning that race. It is too crowded with very good choices, even if Dewhurst does not run again. But the governor slot is wide open right now.

I don't see Perry running for president again. I think he realized after this run that he can't win on the national stage. Of course, any Republican will have a better chance in 2016 than they did this time, but I really don't see him running (or winning if he does). I do see him trying for a higher federal office, but more as helping the party choice get elected and being rewarded by an appointment, maybe cabinet. His record in Texas would certainly make him look qualified for Commerce, for example.

I also don't see Dewhurst running again. I don't think he is done in politics or running for office, but I think he will take a cycle to figure out what happened between him and Cruz.

Between those two positions, it opens up a lot of specification for 2014. I personally see Patterson running for governor and Abbott for Lt Gov. I am not sure yet about Staples running but my call would be Patterson and Abbott as the winners. I think the party will encourage someone fairly high level but young enough to want more later to run against Debra Medina for Comptroller. The office has a lot more power (especially through publicity) than most people realize. It does control the budget more than a lot of people think because it sets the income estimate for spending.

I don't see the Dems getting a statewide office until after 2016, but there are a few they could go for and win. Judges are especially vulnerable since no one really pays attention to those campaigns. I do see the state going back to the Dems for some things, and going "purple" (as the media likes to call it). But when that happens, it will be because the Democratic party in Texas has distanced itself from the national party somewhat and moved much more conservative than even the state party is now.

Obviously, all of this is just my personal call on what will happen. I am not a political consultant and lost any election I ever participated in so I am not really an expert at this either.

tacticool wrote:I don't understand the GOP obsession with throwing the base under the bus to appease the opposition. The Republican national "leadership" has very nearly made it a tradition in their primaries.

This is an indication that you may not understand politics, especially at the national level. Politics is the art of compromise and to be successful you must understand how politics works. In any normal situation, you ask for much more than you want, then give up things until you get down to what you really want. You may even end up with a little less than you want, and give even more than you want on some other issue. Then, you start all over again with this great wish list.

At the national level, the Republican party has a very unusual situation right now. They have a majority in one house and a minority in the other. They also need to win people's votes in other elections. The state elections coming up in 2014 will be as important as the presidential elections. When any party caters exclusively towards their base, they lose the independents in the middle ground. Gun control issues, which are our primary concern, are one of the issues right now where there is a great fight going on between the two extremes. The public is being convinced that our position is an extreme one (and my personal position is pretty extreme). If the republican party were to push gun rights now, they would lose a lot of the middle ground independents who are not as extreme as me. As long as they do not give up any ground right now, I will be okay with their not pushing too hard for expanding our rights. This is taking the strategic long term look on things.

At the state level, I think Perry has done an excellent job of expanding our gun rights. He has a slightly different situation than the national situation since the Republicans do control both houses. I know he has a conflict during the special election with his base. The Republicans know what the special session costs per day. They do not want to waste money on a legislative special session. They also know they needed to do something with redistricting. So we have a special session called. I think the party miscalculated slightly on how that would go. They probably thought they would be able to just ratify the court ordered maps and get out of town, thus a single issue on the call. The Republicans did not expect this much fight against the maps from the Democrats but they got it. As part of the fight, the House decided on hearings around the state. This gets them out of meeting in Austin. With them out of town, nothing else could be done. A lot of people put pressure on Perry to add a lot of subjects, including us. Perry gave in to the base and added some subjects, notably abortion. One of the additions was also a crime bill to cover a potential loophole in our laws caused by the SCOTUS decision.

I do not blame Perry for not adding guns. I think he has done as much as he could to help us. I don't blame Dewhurst either. I am confident that both have good records on guns. I do blame Strauss for not having our bills passed. I remember Charles saying that if a bill is not passed during the regular session, look at the Speaker as the most powerful person for this.Strauss has killed our bills in the past two sessions. I would guess that Perry knew Strauss would also kill any gun bills during the special session and this is why there was nothing on the call.

So, I hold Strauss responsible for problems with gun freedoms in Texas. I could be wrong, either too harshly on Strauss or too lightly on others, but this is my call on things.

On a side note, remember that the party knows it rarely has to cater to its base. After all, they vote for the party anyway, which is why they are called the base. They need to be careful about alienating the base by going too far towards the center, but they need to move more towards center if they want to win elections. Obviously, this is all the public stuff and doesn't mean much about private back room meetings.