Not enough for a weekend update….

• If Bill Maher is against you, you’re probably doing something right.

His last coherent, well reasoned argument was when?

• My biggest problem with Dan Patrick is that he has no other ideas than to throw money at the problem.

He manages to keep his conservative bonafides by offering offsets, but his ideas are straight out of the statist/progressive playbook. A government solution to every problem.

• If Biden’s coming to Texas you can pretty much guess the guest list.

IF, that is, you’ve been paying attention to the Colorado Model rumblings that are taking shape in Texas. (After Matt Angle managed to bungle his shot at it.)

• Three words: About Damn Time.

I can honestly say that I’ve never felt animosity from any President in my lifetime. Sure, Nixon and Carter had their issues, and Bill Clinton was moderate/progressive, but none of them displayed the obvious animosity for a State or region as Obama does for Texas.

• The question no one is asking: What IF voters aren’t as ignorant of Social Security’s funding woes as the media elites seem to think they are?

The common thought is that Perry’s SS comments have him in deep trouble, yet his polling leads continue to increase. Occam’s Razor seems to say things aren’t as they’re being reported.

Have a great weekend y’all. Unless your team is Notre Dame (Go Blue!) I hope your team is a winner.

One is pretty much useless without the other.

Keep that in mind when reading another one of those “it’s complicated” news pieces attempting to frame the Texas economy as a negative rather than a positive. For example…..

Miracle or Mirage, What Kinds of Jobs Has Texas Created? Becca Aaronson, Texas Tribune

According to statistics from the Texas Workforce Commission, the annual median wage in 2010 for all occupations in Texas was $31,500, or 7 percent less than the national median.

There’s no reason to doubt those numbers. However, when you take into consideration Texas’ cost of living rankings:

The cost of living in texas is much lower than almost every state in the nation. The same job that would generally only cover the cost of apartment living is the same cost ratio as the cost of home living. Whether you are looking to live in Austin, Houston, Dallas or San Antonio, Finding an affordable home to living in is not a stretch of the old imagination

It’s easy to see where the raw number comparison falls flat.

So, next time you see an article dismissing the Texas economy, make sure to see if it’s telling you the entire story, or just cherry-picking the pieces OF the story the news outlet in question wants you to see. Given Texas’ relatively inexpensive housing costs and low tax burdens, that 7% salary gap can be eaten away fairly quickly.

At today’s RedState annual Conservative blogger confab in South Carolina Gov. Rick Perry made official his intent to seek the office of the President of the United States of America.

He’s decided to do this by following Evan’s elevator pitch advice, adopting “Get America back to work” as his one-line campaign slogan.

Predictably, the Progs* are in full throat pointing out Perry’s negatives….

Actually, no, they’re not. They’re busy quoting platitudes by the late Molly Ivins (whose contributions to the State’s political debate were “Governor Goodhair” and Shrub”) because, well, that’s what Texas Progs do.

My early guess is that Perry will breeze through the GOP Primary with little difficulty and will continue to hone his anti-Obama message across the country. When the Texas primaries are held we’ll really see just how wrong the polls are when they suggest Perry won’t do well here. That’s just the liberal polling shop PPP HOPING things don’t go Perry’s way.

EARLY THINGS TO WATCH FOR:

1. The anti-Perry Texas Media. They’ve never forgiven him for snubbing them in the last election. Already Texas Monthly has given Perry’s vanquished opponents an unchallenged venue to downplay his drubbing of them and it’s only going to get more comedic as the State’s wheezing, past their expiration date editorial boards weigh in. (We won’t even talk about PolitiFarceTX and other “fact checking” sites.) That Paul Burka is being held up by the National media as the premier Perry expert in Texas tells you just how myopic this group has become.

2. Endorsements. My guess is Sarah Palin will be the first, followed by Giuliani and then a host of other Republican big-wigs. Again, I don’t think the GOP nomination battle is going to be all that close now. Perry is, by far, the strongest candidate with the strongest conservative record. Romney vs. Perry is all that’s left and I expect Romney’s support to start melting away.

3. Texas Dems. It’s going to be a rough political season for Texas’ least relevant political party. They’re going to have to attack Rick Perry without looking like they’re attacking Texas at the same time. Political history tells us they’ll fail at this miserably. Were I a down-ballot GOP nominee I’d tie my Democratic opponent to the Texas-hating Democratic establishment so fast it would make their heads spin.

I’m sure that Evan will have a LOT more to say on this (and will have a lot better insight than I as well) in the coming days so I’m going to leave it here. Look for Evan soon on this blog and enjoy the show.

*Progs = Progressives. And yes, I’m poking fun at them by rhyming Prog with frog, the English put-down of the French.

Everything else is flat.

The Addison campaign went to Twitter on Sunday to , this time in Austin, where (reportedly) Dewhurst skipped and Leppert continued to under-perform.

Unfortunately, for Addison, these showings are not translating into either campaign followers (at least on Twitter, where his campaign only has 20 followers as of this writing) or campaign donations From the FEC Website:

I. RECEIPTS
Itemized Individual Contributions $25,353
Unitemized Individual Contributions $74
Party Committees Contributions $0
Other Committees Contributions $0
Candidate Contributions $0
TOTAL CONTRIBUTIONS $25,427
Transfers from Authorized Committees $0
Candidate Loans $6,000
Other Loans $0
TOTAL LOANS $6,877
Operating Expenditures Offsets $0
Other Receipts $0
TOTAL RECEIPTS $32,304

Compare that to Ted Cruz who reported raising $1.8MM in the first half-year and Tom Leppert who also reported raising the same amount (not counting a $2MM loan he gave himself). Elizabeth Ames-Jones reported raising somewhere in the 450K range. Even worse for Addison, he was out-raised by Ricardo “Boilerplate” Sanchez, who’s done almost nothing on the campaign trail to date and is almost certainly relying on Steve Mostyn’s early money.

Evan has surmised that there could be a schism between the on-line and off-line Tea Parties in Texas. That could be (and probably is) true. More importantly, I think, is that these numbers reveal just how silly these straw polls really are. Come primary time this election is going to come down to two candidates: Ted Cruz and David Dewhurst. The Tea Party would be wise to coalesce behind Cruz lest they get angered about having a “RINO” in DC representing them for the next six years.

Addison (and Pettinger) are no doubt having a good time at these forums, but they would be much better served starting small (say City Council or the Texas House) and working their way up. The Republican Party bench is too deep for any candidate to pull a Radnofsky.

According to David Catanese of Politico he’s in:

Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst is planning to formalize his candidacy for U.S. Senate in Texas on July 18 and could accelerate that time frame if advisers see fit, a GOP source with knowledge of his plans tells POLITICO.

So the money is now in the race. Some interesting questions arise from this now that it appears Dewhurst has officially made up his mind:

What is Sen. Dan Patrick going to do? At the recent Senate forum, I was certain he was in. Now that Dewhurst (and his money) is in the race you have to wonder if the Dan thinks he can run against Dewhurst sucessfully? Since he attacked Dewhurst pretty hard in the forum I have to think that answer is yes.

What is the Tea Party going to do? Dewhurst will NOT be a Tea Party favorite. He can’t run as a Conservative activist with any credibility. He’s a moderate in the vein of KBH, and many think that Hutchison didn’t run again because she didn’t think she could survive a primary having been type-cast as a RINO by Perry’s campaign team.

How does this affect Ted Cruz? In the early parts of the race, Cruz looked like the clear favorite. Dewhurst changes that dynamic and places Cruz firmly in second place. Dewhurst will also give the State’s lackluster political media a “moderate” candidate to cheer for, before they turn on Dewhurst and support Ric Sanchez that is.

And the winner is…

Ted Cruz….

Results from the Straw Poll:

Cruz 47%
Addison 43%
Pittenger 5%
Jones 3%
Leppert 2%

129 votes counted
1 vote undecided
1 vote Patrick
1 vote Sanchez
132 total votes
Vote tally was witnessed and confirmed by all five campaign officials

Addison has to be happy, he went from nothing (9 followers on Twitter) to 43%, 2nd behind Ted Cruz. Leppert, despite what I thought was a good performance in the forum, finished dead last in a vote that illustrates the problem this moderate mayor of Dallas is going to have in an environment where everyone who doesn’t toe the ultra-conservative line is deemed a RINO.

If anything, this straw poll illustrates the power of Ted Cruz. I thought he had a sub-par performance in this forum, but he still came out on top by a comfortable margin. So far Dan Patrick’s pre-announcement strategy seems to be striking early and often against David Dewhurst, he might want to consider striking out at Ted Cruz. Still, I have no doubt that, had his supporters been allowed to vote for him, Mr. Patrick would have won on his home turf. Outside of Houston is going to be his bugaboo.

On a side note: We know that at least on Democrat was there, which is probably going to be similar to the results in an actual Cruz/Sanchez stand-off. We also know that at least one Dan Patrick supporter is incapable of following simple instructions.

One final thought: Last night Sen. Patrick made a big deal about having not made up his mind whether to enter the race or not. By the time he gets around too it, we could be witnessing Cruz’ victory lap.

One of the problems with a media whose members all self-identify with one ideology is that they frequently miss the point of legislation by the opposing party. Case in point:

(Critics raise “doubts” over sanctuary cities bill. Peggy Fikac & Susan Carroll, Chron.com)

Cesar Espinosa, a Houston-based immigrant advocate who led a caravan of protestors to the rally, said the bill already has sparked fear in Houston-area immigrant communities, where one in five residents is foreign-born, according to census data.

“People are just generally afraid,” he said. “And a good amount of people are actually saying they’re considering leaving the state.”

Emphasis mine.

The bolded is framed as a negative, but the sponsor of the bill would certainly classify that as an intended outcome. Also missing from this story (and, let’s be honest, all of Kilday-Hart’s writing this session) is any sense of balance. Say for instance the fact that many officer’s unions (whose members form the front line against these crimes) support the issue.

The bigger question is not one of anti-sanctuary city policy support, but whether they can be up for discussion. In most cases the answer of the state’s political media is, for issues with which they identify, no. This leads to demagogery and dubious arguments more often than not which, to be fair, is often the default behavior of many on both sides of the political aisle. It just finds its way into print more on the port side.

UPDATE: Welcome Fark readers! We aggregate the best links daily in Texas politics (click for today’s links). Check out recent posts on Dan Patrick and the Texas Senate race, Texas’ Higher Ed Reform, or 10 Best/Worst Legislators lists.

Today I took a day trip with my wife without internet. It was peaceful, although while I was gone the Texas political gossip scene was out in full force.

On Wednesday night, I wrote Kevin and Cory an email, before the news today broke that Gingrich’s staff had resigned (one of my points that needed clarification before Perry 2012 could be taken as a serious idea). Here’s the  email:

I’m actually thinking about writing a post speculating on how Perry could run for president. He’s not putting the kibosh on it anymore. I’m not convinced that he’ll go for it, but for the first time he appears to be considering it. And why the heck shouldn’t he? He is leading the anti-Obama charge, he could definitely get the nomination and make the general election a referendum on jobs and spending. He won’t promise to bring the country together with bipartisanship ala W in 2000 or Obama 08, but that probably doesn’t matter in what will be a very polarized electorate. He can very credibly make the case that he is Obama’s polar opposite on spending and jobs.

I’m going to try to write about this tomorrow.