Dan Patrick Tea Party Caucus Press Release
Heh. Couldn’t even get half the R’s in the House, eh? Bummer, dude, er, Dannie. And only one other Senator, a rookie that doesn’t know Dannie. Don’t worry, you’ll get to know him real well, Sen. Birdwell. Through press releases, no less. And who the heck is Rep. Elect Charles White? Would that be James White?
If you include Rep. Elect Jim Murphy’s previous two years of experience, you’ve got a total of 324 years of insider experience in that there tea party. An average of 8 1/2 years per tea party member. Nothing says change as much as insider trading, now does it?
But ol’ Dannie is slick. He knows that if he just sticks up a sign that says “Dannie’s Insider Tea Party”, he’ll get a bunch of people that can’t help his cause. His cause being promoting Dannie, of course. So he sticks his finger in the wind and says, “hey, I know, I’ll put some watchdogs at the door and make the unclean talk to them. They can filter out the riff-raff and bring me all the good ideas that I can put in a press release as my own!”
Like I said, ol’ Dannie is slick. He put some good people on that watchdog board – it is hard to criticize them or make fun of them, especially the ones that I can vouch for personally: Felicia Cravens, Robert Gonzales, and Robin Lennon. Finer people that care about the direction of this country you won’t be meeting anytime soon.
So’s I have to ask myself, self, why’d those good people sign up to help Dannie promote Dannie? I can think of lots of reasons but because of those three, I’ll have to keep it clean. Maybe they are like Aaron Pena (no tilde) and want a seat at the table. Hard to imagine Robin sitting in a Hooters with Dannie eating fried pickles though. Maybe they just want to promote themselves, sort of a quid pro quo. Nothing wrong with that, that is human nature. They’ll find out soon enough that Dannie is about Dannie and they won’t be getting much promoting in return. Or maybe some of them just want to have a drink or two in the back rooms and pretend that they are going to impact politicians with 324 years under their belts. Whatever their reasons, this too shall pass. It will probably last longer than most of Dannie’s promotions because these people are the real deal, but believe me when I tell you that it will pass.
The good news is that because this is an official part of the Texas Legislature, Dannie is going to have to file ethics reports. And maybe, just maybe, we’ll get a glimpse of how much money is pouring through these groups. Funny that one of the planks of the tea party movement is transparency yet getting financial information about these groups is like pulling teeth on a 200 lb. razorback – it just ain’t gonna happen without a fight. I’m betting that what we find if we ever do get a chance to look under the financial hoods of these machines is that some of them aren’t grassroots at all. Wanna take me up on that?
I put together a little map of where the watchdogs are based:
Texas Tea Party Caucus Advisory Board
Why I declare. You don’t think ol’ Dannie is prepping for a statewide run do you? Or is it just coincidence that the watchdogs are located in the population centers? Where Dannie would have the hardest time convincing folks to vote for a guy whose greatest legislative achievements to date are putting a plaque with “In God We Trust” in the Senate Chamber and “Under God” in our state pledge. Thereby making millions wonder: Under Which God? Nah, he wouldn’t do that. Would he?
It sucks to be you if your rep or senator signed up. I’d suggest that you find your nearest watchdog and camp out on their doorstep. Why? Listen to watchdog Sharon Hall:
“We’ll do the best we can to bring the views of Texas grassroots conservatives to the attention of the Caucus. We appreciate the opportunity to work with Senator Patrick and the Caucus. That’s been our goal for the last two years – to create a direct link between our elected officials and the citizens of our state.”
Get that? If your state rep or senator signed up for Dannie’s Insider Tea Party, you’ll need to go through Ms. Hall or another watchdog to create a direct link to your elected officials. Unlike me. All I have to do is call up Rep. John Davis or Sen. Mike Jackson and tell them what is on my mind because they didn’t hook up with Dannie’s Insider Tea Party. Now, to me, that is a direct link. But I suppose watchdogs have different vocabularies.
You know what I really wonder? I wonder what all those Republican Women’s clubs think about Dannie’s Insider Tea Party. After all, they were the ones that turned Texas red, not some Dannie come lately teapers. And now they have to go through an officially sanctioned insider watchdog to speak to their reps. You know, direct link and all. Hmm. Wonder how that is going to play in his statewide quest?