Democrats are salivating over Friday’s indictment of Texas Governor Rick Perry, and for good reason. Their one bright hope for the cycle, Texas State Senator and gubernatorial candidate Wendy Davis, has already done an early dive into the gutter, and their slate for the remaining up-ballot races is mediocre at best.
They’re last shot might be a long shot, but that doesn’t mean they’re not going to try.
Progressive grassroots juggernaut Battleground Texas is already fundraising off of the indictment. PJ Media has a copy of the e-mail sent by Battleground Texas almost immediately after the indictment was handed down:
Excellent timing for a detailed fundraising e-mail, Battleground. It’s almost as if you knew what was coming.
Speculation is growing—especially amongst Texas-based news sources and blogs like Quorum Report—that this indictment will lay waste to any attempts by Perry’s camp to fundraise for a presidential campaign, and damage him in the eyes of undecided and independent voters who don’t spend 24 hours a day locked inside the political news cycle.
Although I agree that it’s likely that Governor Perry’s run for 2016 may have hit its final pothole, I don’t agree that this indictment alone—or even progressives’ best efforts to paint him as a power-hungry despot—will spell doom for Perry’s reputation and chances at a political career after 2014.
Remember that we’re dealing with the same District Attorney’s office that sought a spurious indictment against former House Majority Leader Tom Delay. The Travis County DA’s office’s jurisprudential legacy is firmly cemented in a foundation of liberal nonsense, and their latest figurehead pled guilty to and was convicted of being the drunkest DA to ever get behind the wheel.
This is political payback at either its worst or its finest, depending on how long you’ve been in the business. After Lehmberg was convicted, Governor Perry demanded her resignation from office, and threatened to veto funding for the DA-run Public Integrity Unit if she refused; she called his bluff, and remains in office to this day. Perry vetoed the funding and thus sealed the fate on the reputations of both Lehmberg and the PIU. Lehmberg’s only possible redemption lies in Perry’s eventual conviction, but, as is normally the case with very public witch hunts, the facts—and the narrative—remain overwhelmingly in Perry’s favor.
At the end of the day, Texas democrats have a questionable indictment, and this guy:
Rick Perry and Texas Republicans, on the other hand, have a video of the “embattled” DA and head of the Public Integrity Unit belligerently wasted and strapped to a chair, demanding special treatment from a sheriff named Greg:
At least for now, I think it’s obvious who’s winning the narrative in red Texas.
Travis County itself is notoriously liberal, but you have to wonder just how bad it must be for Battleground Texas and their democrat friends statewide, if they’re forced to bank all expectations on a political play that’s almost certain to fail.
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