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Title: Taking a Texas Primary Ever Further to the Right
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URL Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/15/us/15texas.html
Published: Feb 15, 2010
Author: James McKinley
Post Date: 2010-02-15 10:56:13 by christine
Keywords: None
Views: 81
Comments: 5
HOUSTON — Some days it is hard to be a neophyte far-right candidate in a governor’s race, even in Texas, where Republicans vying for the party’s nomination try to outdo one another to prove their conservative credentials. Debra Medina found that out when she appeared on Glenn Beck’s radio show last week and fumbled a question about whether she agreed with conspiracy theorists who think the Bush administration was involved in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. “I think some very good questions have been raised in that regard,” she said. “There’s some very good arguments, and I think the American people have not seen all the evidence there.” Mr. Beck, an admirer of Gov. Rick Perry, ridiculed her right away, saying, “I think I can write her off the list.” Within hours, Mr. Perry and Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, his heavyweight Republican opponent in the primary race, pounced on Ms. Medina’s response. The governor said she had insulted Americans who lost loved ones on that day. The senator called her statement an affront to United States soldiers fighting Al Qaeda. Ms. Medina, 47, spent the day trying to control the damage. In interview after interview, she insisted that she, too, believed that Islamic terrorists had brought down the twin towers and that the United States government had had nothing to do with it. She had been ambushed by Mr. Beck and her opponents, she said. “This is war,” she said, referring to the primary. “They don’t shoot at you until you are over the target. We are over the target.” From the obscurity of rural Wharton County, about 60 miles southwest of Houston, Ms. Medina, a former nurse who owns a medical billing business, has become a wild card in the race for the Republican nomination. She is a factor because the primary usually attracts a low turnout, and historically its outcome is decided by about 600,000 of the most conservative voters in the state. Recent polls have shown that Ms. Medina’s support among likely primary voters is in the double digits, and some surveys have her close to edging out Ms. Hutchison for second place. There is a growing belief among Republican strategists here that if Ms. Medina can control the damage from Thursday’s radio gaffe, she might force a runoff. Her opponents are finding it harder to ignore her. Even her detractors acknowledged that she performed well in two televised debates, mounting fierce attacks on Mr. Perry and staking out positions to his right — no easy feat, because he is widely considered to be among the nation’s most conservative governors. “She has proven to be a more formidable candidate than many thought,” said Cal Jillson, a political scientist at Southern Methodist University. “She showed well in the debates, because Perry and Hutchison were squabbling like schoolchildren.” Ms. Medina comes across as an ideologue, not a political pragmatist. On the stump, she talks a lot about freedom, and she says that to her, freedom rests on private ownership of property and the right to bear arms. “Are we going to elect people that understand freedom, or are they, in their zeal to protect us, going to destroy those very pillars of freedom?” she asks. Ms. Medina has started to attract followers with her campaign promise to abolish property taxes, which she regards as an “assault on liberty,” and replace them with a sales tax. Gun enthusiasts love her opposition to all federal gun laws. She won many over when she lamented in a recent debate that current law did not allow her to take her pistol, which she keeps in a zippered case in her car, into the grocery store. Social conservatives have praised her firm opposition to abortion, an issue on which Ms. Hutchison takes a nuanced stand. People angry about illegal immigration have rallied to her cry to deploy the Texas National Guard along the border with Mexico. Mr. Perry has adopted a less hard-line approach. He opposes building border walls and efforts to cut illegal immigrants off from public education as too divisive. Ms. Medina also appeals to state’s rights advocates who long to shift power from Washington to state legislatures. A leitmotif in her speeches is the idea that the federal government has usurped power from the states and that Texas should be able to nullify federal laws and regulations it deems unconstitutional. Her first target would be the Environmental Protection Agency, she says. “We will tell the E.P.A., ‘You have no authority here,’ ” she told the Fort Bend County Chamber of Commerce on Thursday. Mostly, however, Ms. Medina has been riding a wave of anger among conservatives who feel the federal government is spending too much to bail out banks and jump-start the economy. Like Ross Perot in the 1992 presidential race, Ms. Medina has touched a nerve in an anxious electorate looking for an alternative to the status quo. She has become the right-wing, anti-establishment candidate, calling for term limits and portraying herself in her advertisements as an ordinary Texas resident. “I have not professed to be a polished politician,” she said in an interview. “Polished answers are not necessarily what you are going to get from me.” On the hustings last week, Ms. Medina took great pains to avoid being labeled out of touch, declaring to one audience after her remarks about Sept. 11 were broadcast, “I am not a flake.” While she supports some libertarian ideas and has been a longtime supporter of Representative Ron Paul, the Texas libertarian, she hastens to point out that she is not in favor of legalizing drugs. She is also quick to defend her plan to replace property taxes with a sales tax as a practical one, though it requires sales taxes of up to 15 percent. “I am not a crazy person,” she said. “I know we have to fund government.”
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#1. To: christine (#0)
Far right my ass. She tows the standard Republican neocon line on Hispandering. The difference is, she's sincere!
The only real problem anti-immigration types have with the non-whites already here is that they won't adopt Haitians. They "refuse to assimilate." Their "culture is incompatible." THAT is not our problem. The lady is a neophyte. If she is going to be in politics, never put yourself in a position of having to defend, clarify etc etc. Dont clarify for Gods sake, attack Beck.
Hysterical emotionalism.
"Satan / Cheney in "08" It's time to lump fat boy in with the other neo-con specialists.
Whoever would return government to the "will of the people" must first return the United States to the use of CONSTITUTIONAL COINAGE as a medium of exchange and through it return the Constitution as law in the United States.
Please define "Hispandering".
a neophyte far-right candidate
#2. To: christine (#0)
Ms. Medina, 47, spent the day trying to control the damage.
#3. To: christine (#0)
The governor said she had insulted Americans who lost loved ones on that day. The senator called her statement an affront to United States soldiers fighting Al Qaeda.
#4. To: christine (#0)
Mr. Beck, an admirer of Gov. Rick Perry, ridiculed her right away, saying, “I think I can write her off the list.”
#5. To: Prefrontal Vortex (#1)
he tows the standard Republican neocon line on Hispandering.
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