You Can't Exterminate an Exterminator (Tom DeLay)

[Regnad Kcin]

Former House Majority Leader (and former bug exterminator) Tom DeLay wins in a 4-way primary.

"I have always placed my faith in the voters, and today's vote shows they have placed their full faith in me," DeLay said in a statement. "Not only did they reject the politics of personal destruction, but they strongly rejected the candidates who used those Democrat tactics as their platform."

Just going to prove for some there is no shame. And that includes voters.

 

[Cain]

Not so fast. Voting for Tom Delay -- from the narrow perspective of self-interest -- might be an entirely rational move. Delay's harm to the entire country is off-set by nice pork projects he brings to his district. It's a perverse incentive structure.

 

[Tricky]

Actually, I'm quite glad to see DeLay win. Had he lost, then it would have been much more likely that a Republican would win in November. Now, in addition to all the Democrats, he'll have pissedoff Republicans voting against him.

 

[Zbu]

Yeah, it's pretty much the Democratic plan to get DeLay elected in the Repub primary in order to defeat him since he has so much going against him. In fact, I bet if you look hard enough you can see that a lot of self-professed Democrats voted for DeLay in order for him to be voted out in November to give the now-heavily Sugar Land (what a stupid name) District over to the Democrats to get another seat in the House.

If that fails, then it was stupid, but considering the whole Culture of Corruption angle the Dems have going for them, it's well worth a shot. I'm still waiting how they're going to milk the South Dakota Abortion issue into their platform.

 

[Tricky]

Yeah, it's pretty much the Democratic plan to get DeLay elected in the Repub primary in order to defeat him since he has so much going against him. In fact, I bet if you look hard enough you can see that a lot of self-professed Democrats voted for DeLay in order for him to be voted out in November to give the now-heavily Sugar Land (what a stupid name) District over to the Democrats to get another seat in the House.

I'm a natural independant who usually votes for Democrats, but I normally vote in the Republican primaries because in recent years in Texas, the winner of the GOP primary is almost certain to be the winner of the final election. This year I didn't vote at all in the primaries because of a bizarre rule that says in order to sign the petition for an independant candidate, you may not have voted in either primary.

Still, it will be hard to unseat DeLay from the Sugarland distict. It is one of the "white flight" suburbs of Houston and is about as conservative as a place can get. (BTW, Sugarland gets its name from the sugar processing plants which were once a major industry in the area. They are still very active.)

If that fails, then it was stupid, but considering the whole Culture of Corruption angle the Dems have going for them, it's well worth a shot. I'm still waiting how they're going to milk the South Dakota Abortion issue into their platform.

Nationally, I'm not sure how that will play out. In Texas, neither the C of C nor the abortion issue will have much traction. Texans don't seem to mind corruption very much. Heck, there are a lot of people here that still say Ken Lay and Jeff Skilling are being railroaded.