Daily News Roundup, 12/17/07: Weird Tales, GOP Edition

Ron Paul picks up $6 million in one day and John McCain picks up Joe Lieberman. It is all strange but true.

With re-enactments of the Boston Tea Party in Boston (and, from what I can tell, Austin), Ron Paul went on another online fundraising blitz on Sunday and managed to finagle another $6 million for the quarter. Now that my expectations for the kind of money Paul can raise have been totally destroyed by his numbers, my main curiosity concerns how he will spend it. Will it be to mobilize an army of youngsters? Will it be on blanket media buys that batter New Hampshire voters into submission? Only time will tell.

As for McCain and Lieberman, well... John McCain is not usually in the market for cross-over votes. He isn't crazily to the right, but he is undoubtedly a Republican. Largely, what you see is what you get. It will gain McCain some attention on the crest of his wave of big endorsements over the weekend, but I'm not sure it will paint McCain as much of the moderate candidate as his people might like. I think the shift in perception will be more about Lieberman than McCain.

What should shake up the Republican field, though, and make a few people nervous, is that this is not a move by a campaign desperate to keep the doors open. This is a move by a Republican primary campaign that looks toward the general election, and does so with calculating confidence. If I were Giuliani or Romney (or, let's not deny it, Huckabee), I would look to this string of developments as a terrifying change in political fortunes.

Travis County District Attorney Ronnie Earle, famous for indicting the powerful (and most recently, Tom DeLay) is retiring. The Statesman editorial board reflects a bit on his somewhat unconventional career and determines that the race to replace him will be wide-open.

Judge Sharon Keller, the Court of Criminal Appeals judge who locked the doors of her court promptly at 5 PM rather than field a last-minute appeal of a death row inmate, would like the lawsuit that resulted from that action dropped. I guess I would, too, if I were her. I can't imagine it will be, with the high profile of the circumstances surrounding it, but I am not a lawyer and the legal system is sometimes full of surprises. We'll see how it goes.

Dan Barrett and Mark Shelton will face off in the special election for the State Representative seat in District 97 tomorrow, and the Dallas Morning News thinks the results will indicate how powerful (or not) House Speaker Tom Craddick remains. The article implies quite heavily that Bob Leonard, who was presumed to be the Republican leader going into the special election, was excised due to his lack of support for Craddick. Shelton has, since making the runoff, signed a pledge card for Craddick, getting into the swing of things early. And Dan Barrett has been running a hell of a campaign, subverting the thinking that the district is Republican and difficult, unassailable ground for a Democrat.

Lastly today, Wayne Slater has an anecdotal piece about the Clintons and their ties to Texas — specifically, in their various operations here for George McGovern and the Democratic Party in 1972. If you don't know the story, it is worth reading.