Betomania is sucking the life out of the blue wave
He’s siphoning away dollars and media buzz from more competitive Democrat candidates around the country.
![](https://c2.legalinsurrection.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/Beto-ORourke-Skateboarding-Whataburger-w-border-e1539568667474.jpg)
Not since Wendy Davis have we seen national liberals fall so much in love with a Texan.
You remember Wendy, the wannabe Governor of Texas, who with her pink sneakers became a national sensation and fundraising juggernaut after her very public opposition to pro-life legislation.
We covered Wendy’s campaign extensively.
We covered the pensive Wendy.
And the bullhorn Wendy:
And the awkwardly gun-toting Wendy:
Wendy Davis had everything going for her other than voters.
She was crushed in the general election.
Now comes one Robert “Beto” O’Rourke, that dreamy crush of a guy, who is ready to skateboard his way to the Senate.
.@BetoORourke skateboards onto stage at his Corpus Christi stop. pic.twitter.com/7sydBZyzWP
— Haley Rhiannon (@HaleyRhiannon) October 13, 2018
Beto O’Rourke skateboarding in the Whataburger parking lot https://t.co/PE5fWLddnN pic.twitter.com/OTQUaOaxsE
— Josh Billinson (@jbillinson) August 19, 2018
Jim Geraghty at National Review calls Betomania The Beatification of Beto:
The media’s treatment of Texas Democratic candidate Beto O’Rourke wasn’t the most egregiously unfair coverage of the past year — that would be the treatment of Brett Kavanaugh — but it ranks among 2018’s most annoying. The endless glowing profiles of O’Rourke in every publication from Vanity Fair to Spin to Rolling Stone to Town & Country represent the national media’s worsening challenge in differentiating between what it wants to see happen and what is actually happening….
Give O’Rourke credit for his strengths. He’s handsome and good on the stump, and uses social media in creative ways. He won his past Democratic primaries by outhustling comfortable incumbents. He genuinely doesn’t consult with pollsters when shaping his positions, which is how you end up with a Texas statewide candidate who is running on banning AR-15s, abolishing ICE, and impeaching President Trump.
But what’s fascinating is how the media looked at O’Rourke’s fairly mundane life and standard-issue national Democratic positions and convinced themselves they had found a transformational political talent.
O’Rourke kept getting labeled “Kennedyesque,” but the adjective was never applied where the comparison is most accurate, his driving record. The presence of enthusiastic supporters at O’Rourke rallies kept being cited as some sort of indicator of a sea change in the state’s politics. But attracting a crowd of supporters is not that high a bar to clear. Wendy Davis had plenty of well-attended rallies in 2014. Texas has 15 million registered voters and almost 4 million of them voted for Hillary Clinton.
O’Rourke once played in a rock band and knows how to skateboard. Big deal, a lot of guys in Generation X did that. Media headlines keep leaving the impression he’s Latino — “In Texas, Beto O’Rourke’s rise fuels hope for Latino Democrats” — and he’s not. He gets labeled an “outsider” despite being in elected office since 2005 and Congress since 2013. Even the AP noticed that he’s got an everyman image but a net worth of about $9 million.
The industry of Beto long-form profiles is becoming an internet joke:
Eddie Scarry at The Washington Examiner practically begs, No more news profiles on Beto O’Rourke being ‘cool,’ please.
Like Wendy Davis, Beto has everything except voters, trailing consistently in the polls by high single digits. There was a moment in time when Republicans worried Betomania might overtake Cruz. But Beto has never held a lead in the race, and the gap appears to be widening post-Kavanaugh:
Nonetheless, Beto broke a record in the third quarter of 2018, raising $38 million for his Senate bid.
National Democrats are not happy. Beto is sucking the life out of the potential blue wave. He doesn’t need $38 million to run a first class campaign, and probably can’t even spend that much. Every excess dollar donated to McDreamy is a dollar not donated to someone in a competitive House or Senate race.
The NY Times reports on the distress, Beto O’Rourke’s War Chest Bothers Some Democrats as He Struggles Against Ted Cruz:
Representative Beto O’Rourke’s blockbuster fund-raising in his race to unseat Senator Ted Cruz of Texas is colliding with a widening deficit in polls, bringing long-simmering tensions into public view between Democrats who believe Mr. O’Rourke should share his bounty with better-positioned candidates and others who say his only obligation is to maximize his own chances.
Mr. O’Rourke announced Friday that he had raised over $38 million in the last three months alone, a staggering sum for a statewide race and the most of any Senate candidate in history. But a new poll completed Thursday night by The New York Times Upshot and Siena College indicated that Mr. Cruz now leads Mr. O’Rourke by eight percentage points, 51 percent to 43 percent, with a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3.6 points….
But Mr. O’Rourke is also emerging as a small-dollar fund-raising force — one whom many supporters hope will run for president, win or lose — at the moment his party is seeing its prospects for retaking the Senate dim in the aftermath of the protracted clash over the Supreme Court nomination of Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh.
It goes beyond siphoning away dollars from other more needy candidates.
Beto also is siphoning away free media attention. There’s only so much buzz and cool the country can handle at one time, and Beto has sucked up a bunch of cool.
Beto turns back into a pumpkin on election day. A very well-financed pumpkin who then will be urged to run for president.
Losing the Texas Senate race will not dampen Beto’s national ambitions. To the contrary, even coming close will be used to build a narrative that he will sweep the blue states and be competitive in red states.
Just like Governor Wendy Davis.
[Featured Image: Beto Skateboarding at Whataburger]
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Comments
“It goes beyond siphoning away dollars…”
I would have said “sucking”. Because that seems Beto New York’s forte. A giant political vacuum.
That is a wonderful description of Beto. A political vacuum.
But, it could lead to a possible defense at his next DUI if he can show he has nothing upstairs to influence but cool looking hair.
A lot of it is going right back out in media buys, but I have to say I appreciate him injecting all of that cash into the Texas economy.
Thrill at him turning gently on a minimal radius!
Wow at the cautious dexterity of a 46-year-old!
Be blown away by his arms, outstretched at almost-maximum length for balance and safety!
Brace yourself for the cyclone of wind in his wake…if he hadn’t been so prudent with his speed.
Never seen a middle-aged doofus on skateboard? Watch the video and it is exactly like you imagined it.
Too much like John Kerry (who, I have it on good authority, served in Vietnam) looking like a doof on his sailboard.
O’Rourke once played in a rock band
What was the band called? For Dems, I’d suspect something like The Deadbeats.
How ’bout The “Blue
swave Breakers” (apologies to John Mayall, Eric Clapton and co…)Was he in the same band as Kara Eastman, Pieces of F-word?
I’ve seen people on the street in Brooklyn NY wear “Beto” T-shirts. Of course they don’t get to vote in Texas, and whatever they paid for the shirts is money they didn’t donate to anyone else.
Given the Democrats penchant for voting fraud, I wouldn’t be so certain they don’t get to vote in the Texas election…
Given Texans’ penchant for not putting up with fraud, however…
As a New Yorker, don’t bet on it.
Those voters can be bought on any street corner in the City and
re-registered in San Antonio or Austin.
We have voter ID. No matter how they cheat in the registration process, they still have to show a legal ID when they line up to vote. It won’t stop all of them, but we prosecute the ones we catch.
A forty-five year old riding a skateboard to look cool? That is truly pathetic. Pathetic is not what I’m looking for in my US Senators. Go away Beta, go away. You’re embarrassing yourself.
Ah, now, now, let’s remember Andrew Breitbart on roller skates, taunting libs. Of course, Beto can’t match that level of kewl.
45 year-old on skateboard is as cool as 45 year-old white dude dancing.
Beto the fake Hispanic has about as much chance against Cruz as my house cat has against a coyote.
I don’t think the comparison with Wendy Davis is fair. As far as I know, Davis couldn’t skateboard.
He seems more dork than cool to me, but the bar is low. Though he could come out with pink sneakers and that would make him dorky cool.
Make “Abortion Bobbie” spend it all Ted!
Robert just needs to grow up and stop pretending he is a Hispanic and a skateboarder. However, it is nice seeing him siphon of all that Hollywood and NYC cash for a losing cause. Maybe after November he can reform his punk rock band.
I love how the leftist media makes him out to be small dollar donor driven, when he didn’t get those millions from them, he got the bulk of his money from California with his numerous fund raisers there.
I don’t understand, well actually I do, but rather I find it odd that his fund raisers are outside his own state. He is trying to put together his Presidential run is my guess. Working on wrapping up the Hollywood crowd to have support for his 2020 bid at the White House.
Yet, I am sure his dorky looking skateboarding beats Warren’s lame jogging and fist in the air (head in the sand) “cool”.
“He’s siphoning away dollars and media buzz from more competitive Democrat candidates around the country.”
‘Applause’
So we’re all going to ignore the fact that he’s a dead ringer for a grown-up Butthead (from Beavis and Butthead) by looks and deed.
I see him more as Napoleon Dynamite, and we all know everyone was voting for Pedro. Heh.
Hopefully, in 3 weeks Beto will become Beato after his defeato.
The swamp is getting resentful, and telling the useful idiots to knock it off. Let’s see what happens.
Meanwhile, the giddy kiddies over at Reddit are cleaning up Twitter in their own inimitable fashion, by pointing and laughing at formulaic, fake tweets from bots and troll farms.
I see no problems with this story at all.
Fantastic news“Beto” and his deadbeats steeling the thunder from the Commiecrats.
I have no problems with the democrats throwing away their money on a lost cause.
SHUSH !
Be quiet about their M P A !
( money pissed away )
Also, I just love it when they KEEP DIGGING !
I’m all for the democrats pulling another Wendy Davis by letting Beta suck all the money up, and all of the oxygen out of the room for a losing cause.
Beto rides “goofy foot”, meaning right foot forward and facing left. A very unnatural pose, facing left that is.
They say this clown is “Kennedyesque.”
Okay.
Kennedy captained PT-109 – and stood and fought.
O’Rourke commanded PT-DUI – and cut and run:
“State and local police reports obtained by the Chronicle and Express-News show that O’Rourke was driving drunk at what a witness called “a high rate of speed” in a 75 mph zone on Interstate 10 about a mile from the New Mexico border. He lost control and hit a truck, sending his car careening across the center median into oncoming lanes. The witness, who stopped at the scene, later told police that O’Rourke had tried to drive away from the scene.
O’Rourke recorded a 0.136 and 0.134 on police breathalyzers, well above the legal limit of 0.08 in Texas. He was arrested at the scene and charged with DWI, but completed a court-approved diversion program and had the charges dismissed.”
https://twitchy.com/sarahd-313035/2018/08/31/holy-sht-beto-orourkes-dwi-was-much-worse-than-we-thought-but-will-msm-firefighters-care/
“He won his past Democratic primaries by outhustling comfortable incumbents.”
Now that’s a hoot…. if you’re from El Paso, you understand that it’s 100% controlled by the Dems with 78% straight ticket votes. Both his City Council seat and his Representative seats were handed to him via the local patriarchy who decides who gets which seats and for how long. His father in law’s money was the only thing being hustled on that deal.
I forgot where I saw this term, but seems spot on: someone has described this guy as a ‘white Obama’…
makes sense, eh
The ultimate insult;
https://gunfreezone.net/somebody-does-not-like-texas-bernie-sanders/
He’s got the upper-middle class liberal vote locked up. I flew down to TX last weekend for my nephew’s wedding: my parents had a BETO sign on their front yard. “Its going to be a long weekend”, I told myself.
Of course, they were all going to vote D anyway, no matter who ran against Cruz.
But, they’re having a major enthusiasm problem with minorities – who are benefiting tremendously from Republican policies, both federal and state. Beto offers them nothing. Worse than nothing really: Open Borders – which means high crime and lower wages for their communities.