State secrets

While the state GOP convention going on right now in Houston will surely present plenty of opportunities for snark, I think this is the most noteworthy thing I've seen so far.

Texas GOP Chairwoman Tina Benkiser said Bush still is popular in Texas, but few convention speakers mentioned him by name.

I was all set to make a joke about how Benkiser is as out of touch regarding Bush as Pauline Kael was alleged to be about Richard Nixon, but it turns out to be surprisingly hard to find recent polling data that includes an approval or favorability rating in Texas for George W. Bush. The one result I found was from Rasmussen, which broke down as 40% excellent or good, 59% fair or poor; the "poor" total was 40% on its own. Beyond that, good luck with the Google - the majority of the results I got for "Bush approval Texas" were for national polls, and many of them were old anyway. SurveyUSA quit doing Texas approval rating polls last June, at which time it pegged Bush with 41% approval, 57% disapproval. Archive searches of the Chron and the Morning News came up empty.

So I suppose I should cut Benkiser a little slack here, since nobody seems to be all that interested in polling Texans about President Bush any more. Maybe we've all just moved on and nobody cares to ponder the question any more, I don't know. But if Benkiser and crew want to campaign this fall as if they actually believe Bush is still popular here, I say they should go for it. Mention his name all you like, it's fine by us.

Posted by Charles Kuffner on June 14, 2008 to Show Business for Ugly People