November will be another anti-Obama wave election in Texas. This means that down-ballot open seats and some incumbent Democrats will be available for the GOP to capture. Leaders in the Republican Party have a golden opportunity to feed the anti-Obama fire if they choose to do so.
Unfortunately for conservative Texans, GOP leadership in the past has been passive in GOP wave years.
Take 2010, for example. High-end estimates for the Texas House held that 82 Republicans would be elected. With little support from insider-generated expectations, 99 Republicans won.
If there has been a change in Texas, it is that Obama is more unpopular and feared now than he was then. Plus, ObamaCare is on the ballot for the last time in November.
In spite of these conditions, optimism for November is not the undisputed GOP conventional wisdom.
Why, in years like this, does GOP leadership so often seem to trim its own coattails?
One answer is that national GOP leadership is at best moderate, and therefore doesn’t actually want to decimate the Democratic Party.
This line of thinking says Republican leadership needs a healthy opposition party to explain not moving on the issues the party membership likes but leadership doesn’t.
It is true that without a healthy Democratic Party many clung-to GOP insider myths and assumptions would fall flat. The myth that the social issues are dangerous would fall flat. The relied-on premise that government is relatively efficient would fall flat.
After all, when two-thirds of the officials elected to office are social conservatives and budget hawks, eventually the idea that these things are kryptonite quits resonating, even for status-conscious conservatives.
In this vein, for years rumors have circulated in Austin that George W. Bush wasn’t happy with Rick Perry beating John Sharp for Lieutenant Governor in 1998 because then-Governor Bush wanted more flexibility when campaigning for President.
Paul Burka recently said that then-Governor Bush supported Perry because it would have looked self-serving not to have supported a Republican for Lt. Governor when he was considering a run for President.
It has also been publicly reported that the Bush people forced Perry not to go negative against Sharp, which is risky in politics. Remember, it was less than six months ago when the most recent GOP presidential primary still hotly contested. We saw the favorite GOP establishment candidate, now the GOP nominee, rely heavily on relentless negative ads to carry him to victory in early states.
The “Bush preferred Sharp” concept goes like this: a Democratic Lt. Gov. would have allowed then-Governor Bush to go on the presidential trail with great flexibility. To conservative audiences he could blame liberal outcomes in Texas on the Democratic Lt. Gov. To liberal audiences, he could take some credit for the same outcomes.
True or not, the considerable sense this makes alone accounts for the staying power of this particular rumor.
In fact, the conservative movement in Texas knows how much easier their job is when more Republicans are elected. Many Republicans winning makes it very difficult for moderate Republicans to hide behind Democrats. They begin to have to own their own failure to deliver on campaign promises.
In any event, Romney will win Texas big this year. Debate around that is finally beginning to die even among the perpetually afraid. Obama might as well be Godzilla on the top of the November ticket.
This means Republicans have big down ballot potential. Pretending otherwise is little more than an excuse for not putting in the work called for in an election like this.
–Burka recently on then-Governor Bush and “the Perry dynamic”, circa 1998
–The Atlantic on the 1998 Bush campaign’s restraining of Rick Perry’s Lt. Gov. bid.