Late-Term Abortion, Latino Voters, and Texas Progressives' Blind Spot

Our former colleague David Freddoso has an insightful piece at Conservative Intel on how the recent debate over late term abortion plays in various communities:

Liberals are so blind to how far out they are on this late-term abortion issue compared to the average American (and importantly, the average Hispanic voter) that they think it’s a plus. They don’t see how it could possibly bite them in the rear. They’ve talked themselves into the idea that their principled opposition to a bill that splinters their own coalition and receives support from 62 percent of the state’s voters is part of their path to victory. They don’t see the analogy they are creating to rightward Republican drift they are constantly decrying.   - See more at: http://conservativeintel.com/2013/07/16/hb2-and-demographic-change-texas-liberals-dont-see-the-danger/#sthash.sXyLSz4i.dpuf

Liberals are so blind to how far out they are on this late-term abortion issue compared to the average American (and importantly, the average Hispanic voter) that they think it’s a plus. They don’t see how it could possibly bite them in the rear. They’ve talked themselves into the idea that their principled opposition to a bill that splinters their own coalition and receives support from 62 percent of the state’s voters is part of their path to victory

....

They seem quite content choosing abortion after five months of pregnancy as the hill they will die on. They don’t seem to understand how this could frustrate their fantasy that demographic change will automatically make them dominant because Hispanics will always vote the way they expect them to vote.

....

Both the Democrats, with their demographic triumphalism, and the Republicans who talk of immigration as their party’s death-knell, are underestimating Hispanic voters’ intelligence and open-mindedness in how they cast their votes.

Read the whole thing here.

Liberals are so blind to how far out they are on this late-term abortion issue compared to the average American (and importantly, the average Hispanic voter) that they think it’s a plus. They don’t see how it could possibly bite them in the rear. They’ve talked themselves into the idea that their principled opposition to a bill that splinters their own coalition and receives support from 62 percent of the state’s voters is part of their path to victory. They don’t see the analogy they are creating to rightward Republican drift they are constantly decrying.   - See more at: http://conservativeintel.com/2013/07/16/hb2-and-demographic-change-texas-liberals-dont-see-the-danger/#sthash.sXyLSz4i.dpuf

Liberals are so blind to how far out they are on this late-term abortion issue compared to the average American (and importantly, the average Hispanic voter) that they think it’s a plus. They don’t see how it could possibly bite them in the rear. They’ve talked themselves into the idea that their principled opposition to a bill that splinters their own coalition and receives support from 62 percent of the state’s voters is part of their path to victory. They don’t see the analogy they are creating to rightward Republican drift they are constantly decrying.   - See more at: http://conservativeintel.com/2013/07/16/hb2-and-demographic-change-texas-liberals-dont-see-the-danger/#sthash.sXyLSz4i.dpuf

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Freedomworks Talks Battleground Texas

This is a few weeks old, but we didn't see it during the abortion debate:



Highlights:

•  Activists are getting turned off by the GOP's shenaningans.
• Personal Note: DUH 

•  The state GOP has yet to reveal their plan.

• 9.5 million Latinos in Texas but only 2.3 million voted last year

• A clear, consistent message of limited government and economic opportunity appeals to all demographic groups.

• For the Record: Colorado was NEVER a solidly red state

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Alinsky in Austin

"Present arrangements must be disorganized if they are to be displaced by new patterns that provide the opportunities and means for citizen participation.  All change means disorganization of the old and organization of the new....The organizer dedicated to changing the life of a particular community must first rub raw the resentments of the people of the community; fan the latent hostilities of many of the people to the point of overt expression....An organizer must stir up dissatisfaction and discontent; provide a channel into which the people can angrily pour their frustration."

Saul Alinsky, Rules for Radicals, p. 116-7.

(Author's note: We were in the Capitol Tuesday night; this piece is based on our observations but should not be taken as any sort of definitive factual statement.)

Tuesday night, Saul Alinsky showed up in Austin wearing pink sneakers.

It was a weird night.  We didn't feel comfortable in that crowd, but neither did we feel in danger.  It was a tragically fascinating event to watch.

There's been a lot of speculation about what Wendy Davis hoped to accomplish with her filibuster.  She knew Governor Perry would call  the legislature back into town to pass the legislation.  That's already happened.

We think the Alinksy quote explains Davis' actions.  It's not secret that the left wants to take over Texas and that they need people to give them their contact info to succeed.  Davis' filibuster was designed to make people angry enough to show up and give their e-mail address to Battleground Texas.

This was an interesting opening gambit from Battleground Texas....

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Battleground Texas ILLEGALLY Registers Voters

BUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUSTED:



Highlights:

• We caught Sam, an activist hired by the Democrats & Barack Obama's Battleground Texas at Houston's Emancipation Park during the Juneteenth Parade & Festival illegally registering voters. Texas law states that Deputy Voter Registrars must be a resident of the state of Texas,must be issued a certificate of appointment and given a receipt book, and must be authorized by the county in which they are registering voters. (http://www.sos.state.tx.us/elections/...) The problem is that Sam is from Oregon, isn't a resident of Texas, doesn't have a certificate of appointment, doesn't have a receipt book issued by the county and IS NOT authorized to do what he's doing. That is the definition of Voter and Election Fraud.

 -----

Contact Attorney General Greg Abbott:

Phone: (512) 463-2050
Twitter: @GregAbbott_TX

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Can Obama's Organizing Army Take Texas?!?

New information on Battleground Texas from the American Prospect

• Why Democrats should be extremely cautious:

 Republicans have continued to gain congressional and legislative seats over the past decade, even as Texas’s Latino population has swelled....Bird and Brown cite Colorado, New Mexico, and Nevada as models for turning out Latinos. But none of those states has more than 516,000 Latino citizens total—which is fewer than the number of Latino citizens in Houston’s Harris County alone.

•  Then, we get into nuts and bolts:

The initial focus will be to create a massive network of Democratic organizers and volunteers across the state....A full-scale plan for “getting that started” won’t be rolled out until this summer. But Jeremy Bird offers a few more details. In the next couple of election cycles, Battleground Texas will target “battleground zones”—races that organizers believe could either be winnable or could help Democrats build infrastructure by training new candidates and registering voters. A battleground zone could be a city council race with a promising young Latino candidate in Waco or a state House race in a heavily minority district in Houston. The idea is to seize every viable opportunity to build new Democratic networks around the state, creating new voters along the way.

•  Recent examples of when this sort of thing has worked(*):

The leaders of Battleground Texas say there’s reason for optimism—partly because there is some recent history of grassroots politics working in Texas. During the 2010 midterm elections, Austin Democratic Party Chair Andy Brown selected 21 largely black and Latino precincts where turnout had traditionally been low and pledged to run the type of hardcore turnout campaigns usually reserved for the wealthier, whiter parts of town. With a paid field staff organizing volunteers, the Travis County Democrats knocked on every registered voter’s door in those precincts two or three times and called each one at least twice. The effort paid off: Although 2010 was the worst year in history for Texas Democrats, 18 percent more ballots were cast in Travis County and the number of straight-ticket Democratic voters went up 54 percent. “There was nothing fancy about it,” Brown says. “It was a really well-run field program.”

A similar strategy has also worked wonders in Dallas. In 2006, Democrats in Texas’s oldest Republican stronghold bucked convention by spending as much on phone-banking and door-to-door campaigning as on media ads and mailers. The results were stunning: Democrats swept all 47 local offices, including 40 judgeships that had previously belonged to Republicans.

 (Author's Note: We were lived in Travis County during the 2010 election and it was not clean.)

• The Bottom Line for both parties:

If Democrats can galvanize Houston’s nonvoters, they will [Author's Note: could] be well on their way to turning Texas blue. But all those years of ignoring minorities will make it a formidable task. 

 The whole article is worth a read, but it doesn't change anything.  Conservatives across the state of Texas need to build up from the local level.  And we've already had some successes.

-----

Update (6/11/2013): Agendawise calls this a bluff.

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EXCLUSIVE: Colorado Republican Shares Hard Learned Lessons for Texas

(Author's Note: Sean Duffy is in the center of the picture, next to Santorum)

Today, Cahnman's Musings was blessed to speak for 45 minutes with Sean Duffy former deputy Chief of Staff to former Colorado Governor Bill Owens.  Almost a decade ago, Sean Duffy was a source of ours when we worked with Robert Novak.  During that time, the left was in the early stages of its takeover of Colorado.

Since the election of 2012, as the left has announced its intention to use the Colorado model in Texas, Cahnman's Musings thought back to those conversations we had with Sean Duffy in 2004 many times.  In 2004, there was something happening on the ground in Colorado that we did not understand at the time.  Having been on the front-lines of those battles, Sean Duffy shared his thoughts with Cahnman's Musings:



Highlights: 

Education -- Early in their rise to power, the left demagogued Education.

• In the Early 2000's education in Colorado was a mess.  Amendment 23, passed in 2000, created a mandate in the state constitution that required the state to spend at least inflation PLUS 1% on education.  This chaotic policy environment gave the left an opportunity to operate in Colorado in a way that doesn't exist in Texas today.

• In discussing education: "Moms and Dads like substance....There's ways to deal with this [education] in a substantive way where you can get Moms and Dads to focus."
• Author's Note: In Texas, that means School Choice, School Choice, and School Choice.

• "If we fight over dollars we lose, if we fight over substance we win."
•  Author's Note: I think that's the most important line in the whole interview.

Tactics of the Left

• The left likes to "create chaos and drop a piano on someone's head."

• The left systematically took out key Republicans in the state legislature by demogoguing particular votes and spending multiples of what had previously been spent in state legislative races; they knew who to pick off.
• Author's note: In Texas, my educated guess is that Donna Campbell and Giovanni Capriglione are the two most likely candidates.
• In a hilarious and ironic turn of events, this point might be the silver lining of Joe Straus' leadership. If there's one thing members of the Texas House know how to do, it's raise money and campaign.  No vulnerable Republican in the Texas House will ever lack for money.

• The left has "an extraordinary ground game"
• "The Left loves to go door-to-door."
•  Day in, day out, door-to-door organizing.
• Teachers "literally go door-to-door."
•  "We just don't do that"...."[W]e don't cultivate neighborhoods the way the left does."

•  Ken Salazar 2004:
• Ran as a moderate and was well liked.

•  "The spend a lot of time ripping our guys' heads off and we don't do as well in terms of finding the 1 or 2 message points that really unravels somebody in the public mind."

 Differences with Texas:

• Texas conservatives already have the seven capabilities; we can get a LOT better in how we deploy them, but we're building from a solid foundation.
• "This is the bread and butter of the left; they stand up organizations that do each of those things and they fund them."
• Intellectual Ammunition: Texas Public Policy Foundation.
• Mobilize for elections: Anyone who volunteered for Ted Cruz knows how many people were block-walking in 100 degree heat heading into that LATE JULY runoff!
• Pursuing investigations: Who uncovered CSCOPE?!?
• Strategic Litigation: Does the name Greg Abbott ring a bell?!?

•  Colorado was never the Republican stronghold that Texas is today.
• Bill Owens was the first Republican governor in 25 years.
• Ken Salazar was an incumbent state Attorney General before he was elected to the U.S. Senate; in Texas terms that would be like having Joaquin Castro serve alongside Rick Perry.
• In Texas, by contrast, no Democrat has won statewide office since 1994.

•  Entrepreneurs in the Minority communities.
• Texas conservatives have people like Rafael Cruz.

How you beat the left:

• "You've gotta get into the specifics of where the dollars are going and pound the crap out of them!"

Finally, via e-mail, Sean Duffy shares his thoughts on how conservatives, in general, can improve our messaging:

I just think we do so much better when we use emotion, and strong compelling narrative to back up our points.  Whether in charter schools or school choice, folks are moved by the plight of eager mothers who are fighting to get their kids educated.  We are moved by entrepreneurs who succeed despite humble beginnings.  More and more, it’s the narrative that has to be developed to bolster our policy points…particularly in the new media environment.

 Bottom Line: Texas conservatives must always remain vigilant, but we're a LOT better prepared for this fight than the left thinks we are.

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BREAKING NEWS: Rick Perry Caves on Obamacare

Sigh:

Governor Rick Perry reverses position on Medicaid Expansion
by,
Abe Rill Phuelez
April, 1st 2013

Austin, TX -- Citing a need to 'embrace political moderation' and fear of 'being called mean by Democrats,' Texas Governor Rick Perry today reversed his position on expanding Medicaid under the 2010 Federal Health Care Law.

"In 2012, Mitt Romney decisively won independents and the results speak for themselves.  Texans should embrace political moderation to achieve similar results," Perry said.  "As Governor, I fear being called mean by Democrats so much that I would rather expand a bankrupt Medicaid program."

Medicaid expansion will split Texas Republicans.  Representative David Simpson and Senator Donna Campbell issued a joint statement calling the move 'heartbreaking and inexplicable.'  Texas House Speaker Joe Straus, by contrast, hailed Perry's decision as "the best news I've heard all session."

Battleground Texas Reacts

Jeremy Bird, President Obama's handpicked choice to rebuild Texas Democrats, echoed Straus' sentiments.

"Battleground Texas is ecstatic Governor Perry has joined the tradition of former Virginia state senator John Chichester and former Colorado Governor Bill Owens by preemptively expanding government" said Bird. "As we recently made clear, Battleground Texas does not yet posses the resources we need to win.  Medicaid expansion is the taxpayer financed slush fund of Battleground Texas' dreams."

Former George W. Bush speechwriter Mark McKinnon called the move 'a strategic milestone' for Democrats.  "The long-term objective of the Democrat party is subvert traditional American virtues of individual sovereignty and self-reliance and to replace them with a spirit of fear and dependence on Caesar.  Any system that traps another million souls in a substandard health-care system is a slam dunk win for Texas Democrats."

Julian Castro salivates

San Antonio Mayor Julian Castro, the political figure most widely expected to benefit from Medicaid expansion, issued the following statement:

"I am delighted Governor Perry chose to reject common-sense Medicaid reforms like Federal block granting in favor of the mother of all payola schemes for Texas Democrats.  Socialized medicine will allow me to establish a protection racket for a statewide run in a way that felony corporate contributions never could.  Medicaid expansion will be Julian Castro's personal Tammany Hall.

Tea Party activists were too busy fighting among themselves to comment.

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ACTION ALERT: Battleground Texas Launches Statewide Tour

Battleground Texas has announced a statewide recruiting tour.  We humbly suggest conservatives show up to welcome and engage them.  Here's the tour schedule:

Corpus Christi, March 16
Laredo, March 19
McAllen, March 20
El Paso, March 25
Dallas, March 25
Fort Worth, March 26
Lubbock, March 26
Waco, March 28
Austin, April 2
Killeen, April 3
SAVE THE DATE: San Antonio, April 4
Houston, April 6
Brownsville, April 6
Longview, April 7
Not headed your way? SAVE THE DATE for an online meeting on April 3.

Details for each event are also available at their website.

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Julian Castro SCANDAL: This could get interesting!!!

Oh baby, the Texas Democrats' little golden boy might not be so golden afterall:

In an official response to nine Sworn Complaints, the Texas Ethics Commission (TEC) has notified most members of the San Antonio City Council they are being investigated for multiple campaign finance violations.

Mayor Julian Castro, Council members Cris Medina and Diego Bernal had the most alleged violations at over 200 each.

The Sworn Complaints allege 41 instances of accepting donations from corporations. Corporate donations are, if done knowingly, a 3rd degree felony offense. All nine complaints alleged these offenses. Well known names include MacDonalds, Inc., Holiday Inns, Inc. and Texas Associaton of Realtors.

 Ouch; read the whole thing here.

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How to Kick the Left's Ass in Travis County

With the emergence of Battleground Texas, a lot of ink has been spilled about the left's efforts to flip Texas.  The threat is real, but we can beat it.  One key is to make the left play defense on territory it thinks it owns.

Cahnman's Musings has been a resident of Travis County for five and a half years.  We've always found the reports of it's liberalism, much like Mark Twain's demise, to be greatly exaggerated.  Before living in Travis County, we grew up in NYC and spend half a decade in and around Los Angeles.  Cahnman's Musings has seen places hopelessly up their ass with progressivism.  Travis county ain't it.

One thing we've always observed is that there are a lot of people in Travis County who are liberty minded in a general sense, but don't follow politics closely and don't vote.  Those folks are the key.  One example is the fraternities and sororities at U.T.  The Greek system is under assault from the permanent U.T. bureaucracy, and kids in the Greek system don't buy into progressivism in the same way other U.T. students do.  If you take 20 to 100 active members per house and multiply it by 20 houses, all of a sudden you're talking about meaningful vote totals.

And that's just one example.

In that spirit, Cahnman's Musings offers the following outline to put the left on defense in Travis County:

• Online Video -- This is an inexpensive way to push information.  Online video allows us to go around media gatekeepers.  The key is to use humor to capture attention.

• Identify, Register, and Turnout New Texans -- What do Glenn Beck, Chuck DeVore, and myself have in common?!?  We're all economic refugees from blue states, and we're all conservatives.  Economic refugees to Texas are a self-selected group.  The people moving to Texas aren't liberals.  As Governor Perry told Glenn Beck last week, "if they're takers who want government to take care of them from cradle to grave, they're going to stay in California."

• Follow the Money -- Big government inevitably begets boondoggles.  Nobody likes boondoggles.  On a related note, there could be a major scandal breaking in San Antonio.

• Make the Villains Household Names -- There are plenty of potential villains in Travis County.  In the spirit of Alinsky's thirteenth rule, Cahnman's Musings suggests raising these people's profile.  Personally, we'd start with this guy.

• Education -- We need to increase the economic literacy of average citizens.

Any effort to protect Texas from the left must include Travis County.  There are a lot of potential voters here.  In the short term, we can put the left on defense; over the longer haul, we can kick their ass.

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Texas Tribune: Battleground Texas Reveals Their Weaknesses

The Texas Tribune had an interview yesterday with Jeremy Bird, the director of Battleground Texas.  In the interview, Bird tips his hand on strategy.  Some highlights:

Dems plan to boost turnout (and, even though they don't say it out loud, fraud):

Bird contends that Republicans' confidence is based on elections in which only about half of the state has turned out to vote. “We’ll see what happens when we start to get 60 or 65 or 70 percent turnout. It’s going to look very different,”

 This is a point conservatives would do well to heed.  The Obama campaign made it a priority to register marginal voters and get them to the polls.  There's no reason to believe they couldn't make headway with a similar effort in Texas.  The caution to Democrats, however, is that this is a double-edged sword.  There are dozens (if not hundreds) of people who don't vote in every Church across this state.

Bird reveals their timetable:

Part of the reason that [the Obama campaign] won Florida in 2012 is that we had had a grassroots program running for six years with all the components — digital, communications, field, data, analytics — all of them put together into a 21st century modern campaign that worked for people's votes.

Six years from today would mean that Democrats intend to compete statewide around 2018.  That's not impossible, but it does mean there's plenty of time between now and then for events to intervene.  Personally, we think the global economy will collapse before Battleground Texas has time to execute this plan; when that happens, it will reshuffle the deck of domestic politics in a way Battleground Texas doesn't anticipate.

The specifics of how they plan to boost turnout:

We have to do that here. And it can’t just happen in one part of the state; it has to happen across the state. We need to touch places where we’re getting 25 percent of the vote and get 32 percent of the vote. It’s not necessarily about winning all those places, but we have to compete there. And then we have to have higher turnout in places that have already gone blue.

The point about going from 25 percent to 32 percent in hostile territory is an interesting one Cahnman's Musings had not thought about.  That's a good strategy in a vacuum.  However, like we said earlier, it's a strategy that cuts both ways.  We live in Austin, and there is an untapped pool of potential conservative voters right here.  Both sides are going to work overtime to boost turnout.

Then, almost as an afterthought, Bird lets the cat out of the bag:

In order to do this right, we’re going to have to raise the money, the grassroots money to do it and then ultimately transition that into a 21st century campaign with real organizers in neighborhoods working for every single vote.

If you only take one point away from this post, make it this one: the left doesn't (yet) have the money to pull this off.  The ONLY WAY they will get the money they need is if Republicans expand state government for them.  That's how the left took over Colorado.  That's why School Choice and Medicaid are such important fights.  The left will only acquire the resources necessary to swing Texas if Republicans give them a bigger government from which to siphon money.

Finally, Bird closes out with a cryptic (and bizarre) statement:

There are millions of kids in this state who are currently being denied access to health insurance because of the current governor.

We have no idea what Bird's talking about, but our educated guess is that he's talking about Rick Perry's refusal to expand Medicaid under Obamacare. That's bizarre; Medicaid is a failed program that exploits the vulnerable.  If Battleground Texas wants to make expanding substandard Health Care their central argument, go for it!

Bottom line: The Left intends to get more of their people to the polls than they have in the past (which will also make fraud easier).  Cahnman's Musings expects them to pull that off.  What the left cannot control, however, is turnout on our side.  There are plenty of untapped potential Conservative voters in this state; Cahnman's Musings goes to Church with hundreds of them.  The challenge for conservatives in Texas will be to increase engagement among folks who already agree with us but don't necessarily vote.

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Push Junction: Carpetbagging Hipster Leads Battleground Texas

The San Antonio Express News reports on an early meeting of Battleground Texas:

Jeremy Bird, the former national field director for President Barack Obama and the driving force of Battleground Texas, could have picked anywhere in the state to begin the group's launch tour. He chose San Antonio not because it's the “best city in Texas,” as Julián Castro proclaimed, but because — as Medina noted — this is where the political firepower is located.

Like many successful political organizers, Bird is a hipster nerd: a skinny, bespectacled, coolly analytical veteran of the game who also sees that game as an inspiring civics lesson. The product of a suburban St. Louis trailer park, he has no roots in Texas, but tried to make up for lost time by twice expressing his enthusiasm for tacos.

Above all, Bird might be the best representation of the strategic revolution that Obama (via Howard Dean) has wrought in American politics. While the GOP has made great sport of Obama's background as a community organizer (and it's certainly debatable how valuable that background has been in the White House), that experience made Obama unusually receptive to the concept of grassroots political organizing — and unusually aware of the modern-day limits of TV advertising.

....

Bird and Jenn Brown, executive director of Battleground Texas, said the campaign will be relentless. It will center on local, precinct-by-precinct drives to tap into the large number of unregistered Latino and African American voters, and the use of state-of-the-art data collection and analytics to get those voters to the polls. And it'll rely on plenty of money.

It all sounded strikingly similar to the ethos that drove the Obama campaigns of 2008 and 2012. Obama campaign leaders generally paid little attention to polls. They believed turnout was everything — that they had the votes to win; they just had to go out and get them.

(h/t Push Junction)

 There isn't a lot of new information in this article.  That Battleground Texas intends to win through aggressive micro-targeting isn't exactly news.  That being said, when they say: 'that they had the votes to win; they just had to go out and get them,' Cahnman's Musings considers that statement interesting, considering that Julian Castro is up for re-election in two months.

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