Texas Governor’s Race

Bill White

I’m just old enough to remember a Texas Governor named White. He was a soft on crime, liberal tax and spender who was defeated after just four years in office. Well, there’s another White running for Texas Governor, and he shares more than just a last name with the former Governor. Bill White, the one- time Houston Mayor, is making his rounds through Texas this fall. He’s desperately trying to avoid being seen with or generally connected to President Obama, all the while supporting nearly all his initiatives, including Obamacare, Cap and Trade etc. Bill White claims that our state is not leading our nation to the degree that it should. Tell that to out of state Americans who are moving here in huge numbers due to the Obama recession.

Now I’ll be the first to admit that I have often disagreed with Governor Perry, however it is his largely pro-business positions that have allowed our state to sit out this depression, relative to the experiences of the other states. Bill White is playing the very same anti- business anti- insurance tune the President has been playing the last few years, hoping against hope we won’t place the melody. The real question however is this, in an election year when the American people are poised to send severance checks to more than half of congress, and having a “D” by one’s name is a political death sentence, how can the most conservative state in the Union even consider voting a liberal trial lawyer turned politician into the governor’s office?

In 1983 Texas elected a Liberal Democrat followed by a not exactly conservative Republican. In 1990 we tried electing another Liberal Democrat, and again after four years we decided it wasn’t for us. Since then we’ve had two middle of the road Republican Governors in the forms of George W. Bush and Rick Perry. And while they’ve not been as conservative as some of us would have preferred, our state does in fact lead the nation in economic stability. The fact is this is not the year to experiment with another one term Liberal Dem. In an election year when Nancy Pelosi’s state of California is on the cusp of electing an actual conservative as governor, voting for White amounts to plucking economic and political defeat from the jaws of victory.  This more liberal socialist road the country is traveling is not where most Texans what to go. So what does this mean for Tylerites and East Texans?

Rick Perry

It means that as a more conservative bastion, we’re going to have to put our feet down, and continue to wrestle against the more liberal urban centers in our own state. Even Texas cities like Houston and Austin can drag an otherwise conservative state into the blue. And let me assure the reader that I love those cities, and I gladly visit them regularly. I even spend money there. But it’s bad enough that the city of Sam Houston was once led by a man who governed more like Mirabeau Lamar, (at least in terms of fiscal policy). And that’s probably unfair to Lamar. It would be a shame to have Sam’s entire republic governed by him too.