Wednesday Roundup: Edwards In Austin, McCain In Trouble

John Edwards was in Austin yesterday, and available accounts show that the event at Scholz Garten went well. There were some additional endorsements for Edwards coming from Representative Garnet Coleman, Representative Trey Martinez-Fischer, and Representative Jim Dunnam (and Dallas mayor Laura Miller, and Hank Gilbert). As if that weren't enough, how about Jim Hightower giving the intro? If you like films of political events, The Statesman has you covered.

There's actually a good chunk of presidential news to cover today, starting with a little bit of backpedaling by Senator Obama on coal power. He relented on his initial support of coal as a petroleum alternative, letting some environmental groups know about his change of heart with the ever-engaging official email blast. I doubt you'll hear much about it unless someone brings it up in a public forum, but this might do a thing or two to shore up some of the damage to his environmental credentials.

In case you've been under a rock, there's a new Number Two in GOP town, and his name is Fred Thompson. I normally don't like talking much about people that aren't actually in the race yet, but Thompson's surge is illustrative of something larger: McCain's struggling. Though they are currently relegated to the realm of rumor and anecdote, reports that McCain's fundraising is floundering (from NewsMax, no less) do not bode well for the Straight Talk Express.

While McCain's support for the immigration compromise is hurting him badly among conservatives, the strident arguments against the legislation are finally starting to erode Hispanic support for the GOP. I knew it couldn't last forever. Republicans made the broad assumption that they would enjoy the support of the Hispanic bloc forever thanks to the social conservative streak among evangelical Protestant Hispanics. Now, a socially conservative evangelical Protestant Hispanic minister tells the Huffington Post that, essentially, Cornyn and Hutchison "can kiss the Hispanic vote goodbye" due to their positions on immigration. Someone might want to put together an after-action report on this one.

From several sources comes other Texas campaign news: Galveston District Court Judge Susan Criss is going to run for the Texas Supreme Court, Place 8. Susan happens to be the daughter of Lloyd Criss, SDEC Committeeman from SD 11 and a friend of the show. You can get to know Judge Criss at her blog.

From a newspaper in Midland comes a report in which several people say that the wave of negative public opinion about the Trans-Texas Corridor may end up causing the project's demise. I don't know about that. An overall Texas Public Opinion Poll saying "DO NOT WANT" does not always stop something from happen, especially when there's money involved.

Usually, when someone gets convicted in a high-profile perjury case, the sentencing process takes a great deal of time to carry out. In cases involving high-profile individuals that work in the current White House, the gap between sentencing and incarceration often takes so long that they may get pardoned instead and never go to jail. Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald would be really unhappy if that happens with Scooter Libby, and he is in fact imploring the judge to put Scooter away now.

Lastly, Matt Angle at the Lone Star Project has some interesting news for those of you following the DOJ/Gonzales fiasco. A guy named Hans von Spakovsky will have a Senate Rules Committee hearing on his nomination by Bush for a job at the FEC. Hans von Spakovsky played a pivotal role in the DeLay redistricting shenanigans, and LSP (along with some other notables) suggests some questions for the Rules Committee to ask Hans, and mentions some of his career accomplishments — like how he was a Bush campaign operative during the 2000 Florida recount.