It’s tough to pick the most wrong thing from John Cornyn’s Q&A with the Statesman, but it’s easy enough to pick the most poignant:
Q. Will you ask the president to appear with you on the campaign trail?
A. I will probably ask the president to help me do some fundraising, but probably not on the campaign trail. … We’ve talked about his poll numbers. And the fact of the matter is he’s not going to be on the ballot anymore.
Could you have imagined that there would come a time when a Texas Republican, facing a strong challenge for re-election, would not want to grab hold of George W. Bush with both hands and cling to him for dear life on the campaign trail? To say “How the mighty have fallen” almost seems inadequate. Bush has been the foundation of just about every Republican campaign in this state since he won election as Governor in 1994. (On this count, I strongly agree with Burka regarding Karl Rove’s legacy in Texas.) I’m not sure if some of these guys are going to know how to run for office without leaning on Bush.
Well, okay, we do know from the rest of the piece that if they’re like Cornyn they’re still going to agree with Bush on every matter of substance that comes up. They’re just not going to be seen with him in public. And they’ll still take his money, again as long as it’s done out of sight of the public. Good luck with that.
There’s a four-word cure for this sort of silliness: Rick Noriega for Senate. Noriega just had himself a pretty good week on ActBlue. Let’s see if we can make this week as good as that one was.