Friends In Low Places

Stop me if you've heard this one before: An intensely disliked political consultant and a disgraced Attorney General head to Texas...

Or maybe you haven't heard that one before! As covered here at The Texas Blue and all across the internet, cable and print media, Texas's population is growing by two notable former Beltway insiders. Karl Rove and Alberto Gonzales are beating their respective retreats back to Texas while hoping that the subpoenas get lost with the forwarded mail.

So what are the two latest returning residents going to see here in Texas in the 2008 cycle? Statewide, we've got The Box Turtle Derby with Rick Noriega, Emil Reichstadt and Mikal Watts vying to do battle with our state's tepid rubber stamp Junior Senator. I think that the winner of The Box Turtle Derby might see some slight benefit in the Senate race from Rove and Gonzales being around. Follow me here...

Senator Cornyn is one of the few Congressional political figures who still has staunch public support for both Rove and Gonzales. In July, Rove spoke at a fundraiser for Cornyn in Harlingen and there are rumors that he'll have more than a passing role in Cornyn's re-election campaign. In what I'd like to think was an ironic moment but was probably more likely a thoroughly unironic moment, Senator Cornyn said of Gonzales' resignation:

I think he was probably just worn down by the criticism. This sort of thing has a Chinese water torture effect of drip drip drip drip. [Source]

I can't really top that one.

Anyhow, with Rick Noriega getting an increasing amount of national love from the netroots, Mikal Watts raising money hand over fist and Emil Reichstadt expanding his visibility, I think that Cornyn's association with Rove and Gonzales is going to be a net gain for whichever of these three fine candidates wins the Democratic nomination. Cornyn's already not well-liked in Texas and the name IDs of both Rove and Gonzales are both strongly negative with Democrats and, to a lesser extent, independents.

Regardless of our candidate, I think that Cornyn's close association with these two polarizing figures will end up helping his opponent more than it will help him. He's got the fundamentalist vote tied up with or without Rove and Gonzales being associated with him, but having their respective millstones hung around his campaign's neck isn't going to help him outside of the Republican base. I expect that Rove and Gonzales will mean more independent votes and possibly even more Democratic turnout for our eventual nominee.