A panicky Paul Burka has taken to writing David Dewhurst’s political obituary with some regularity. Why he doesn’t just make it a weekly column on his blog is anyone’s guess.
Burka does it because the Lt. Gov. has signaled conservative intentions for the next session. Paul Burka is a court journalist. Along with nearly every other creature of the big government establishment, Burka is dutifully attacking anything that threatens the continued growth of the bloated and broken system. The preservation of this growth is, at bottom, the real purpose of their labor.
What’s funny is that Burka doesn’t seem to have different ways to attack a Lt. Gov. versus someone he’d consider a grassroots nobody. Anyone who threatens to discipline the Austin machine is painted as a confused, wandering rube. It’s his one play. Maybe he has writer’s block.
Burka burdens his reader’s suspension of disbelief when he paints David Dewhurst as the rube. Dewhurst’s career – first in the energy sector, then as a politician – if compared to Burka’s side-by-side, dwarfs it. To be sure, most people’s careers would fare the same next to Dewhurst’s, but then, other Texans aren’t trying to publicly paint the Lt. Gov. as confused and incompetent. Whatever else Dewhurst may be, he isn’t that.
Burka finishes with an attempt to poison the grassroots well for Dewhurst. Burka says that conservatives will always know Dewhurst is of the establishment, implying that the grassroots can therefore never cooperate with Dewhurst.
Let’s think about Burka’s logic here for a moment, granting Burka’s point that Dewhurst comes from the political establishment. Conservatives know establishment politicians are part of the political furniture. They also know how rare it is for conservative true-bluers to get into positions of power.
Does Burka think conservatives are so un-clever that they will not take conservative cooperation from establishment politicians when those politicians decide they need to play to primary voters for a while? Does Burka think the grassroots are so un-clever that they will destroy the possibility of establishment politicians converting to conservatism after reaching high office by never giving them credit for potent conservative moves they make?
Take this as evidence of Burka’s radical underestimation of the intelligence of the grassroots.
–Burka’s Dewhurst hit piece