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CounterPunch
October
17, 2002
Karen Hughes
in Texas
Bush Babysitter Orchestrates Nasty and Desperate Campaigns Back
Home
by JACKSON THOREAU
"Regarding the campaigns, I will
be a loud and proud supporter of the Republican ticket and of
Gov. Perry and of John Cornyn for the U.S. Senate, but I do not
expect to be involved in any professional capacity in their campaigns.
They have very capable people managing their campaigns and I've
only got one campaign left in me and as I said I hope it's the
president's re-election in 2004."
Karen Hughes to MSNBC, July
8, 2002
"Karen Hughes spent Wednesday stumping
for Republican Senate hopeful John Cornyn....Hughes, who resigned
in April to go home with her family to Texas but still keeps
in close contact with the president, shrugged off questions about
whether her presence was a sign that Bush is concerned about
the tight race. She said she had offered to campaign with Cornyn
in April because the race is important to her personally."
Associated Press story, Sept.
18, 2002
Earlier this year, when key Bush babysitter and
ghostwriter Karen Hughes left Washington, tearfully saying how
much she missed Texas, I was one of the few columnists in the
country to call Hughes' bluff.
While others were taking Hughes' lies
at face value, I wrote way back in May, "Hughes recently
left the White House amid what some sources tell me were some
key differences with Rove and others, as well as marching orders
from Bush to help his Texas Republican friends. In other words,
don't believe the BS fed us that Hughes just, sniff-sniff, 'missed
Texas.'" [see <http://www.americaheldhostile.com/ed051802.shtml>
or <http://www.buzzflash.com/contributors/2002/05/20_Slacker.ht
ml> or <http://www.smirkingchimp.com/article.php?sid>=6580]
Therefore, I was not surprised to see
how nasty and negative and desperate Republican Gov. Slick Rick
Perry, who was appointed to that seat when Bush took over the
White House, Senate candidate John Cornyn, and Lt. Gov. candidate
David Dewhurst have become in their campaigns lately. I was not
surprised to see Hughes' name actually appearing in mainstream
news articles saying she was campaigning for Cornyn and others,
despite her published comments saying she would not do so when
she left Washington a few months before.
I have come to expect lies uttered from
Republicans not just on occasions, but every time those scumbags
open their freaking mouths. I don't believe one word the Bush-ass-kissing
Republicans say [some like U.S. Rep. Ron Paul of Texas, one of
the few House Republicans to oppose Bush's war resolution, deserve
more respect].
Hughes, in fact, is lying about only
being a campaigner for Cornyn. While the Cornyn, Perry, and Dewhurst
camps declined to comment, my sources say she has pretty much
taken over Cornyn's campaign from those "capable people"
and is heavily involved in advising people running Perry's and
Dewhurst's races. Bush mastermind Karl Rove is also heavily involved
in advising these campaigns - Bush & Co. do not want to lose
a top Texas position to the Democrats, which would be seen as
a huge SLAAAAPPPPP!! to Bush's face. Bush himself has wasted
more public taxpayers' dollars by flying several times recently
on Air Force One to Texas to campaign for Cornyn, Perry, and
Dewhurst, rather than actually work on issues like the economy
and national security.
Recent polls in these races have been
closer than Bush can believe. Democratic Gov. candidate Tony
Sanchez, who has spent millions trying to gain name recognition,
recently trotted out a poll by a national firm he hired, Fairbank,
Maslin, Maullin & Associates, that has him only three points
behind Perry.
Democratic Senate candidate Ron Kirk,
a former Dallas mayor, has been neck-and-neck in polls with his
Republican opponent for months, a seat Republicans have held
for four decades that is seen as a key in the battle to control
the Senate. Kirk has also picked up key endorsements like the
Austin American-Statesman. Democratic Lt. Gov. candidate John
Sharp, a former state comptroller who even Republicans like former
baseball pitcher Nolan Ryan support, has also been very close
in the polls.
A big sticking point with independent
voters in Texas is the state's budget crisis that Bush left in
his wake to steal the White House. Estimates run as high as a
$12 billion shortfall next year. Bush squandered the surpluses
he was fortunate to have as governor of Texas with corporate
tax cuts and increased spending on prisons. Does that sound familiar,
after Bush took our federal budget from having surpluses under
Clinton to deficits again?
That's why you see Perry running negative
attack ad after negative attack ad against Sanchez. Most of the
ads, such as Perry claiming a bank in which Sanchez was a director
was involved in criminal activity, have been blatantly false.
That's the kind of dirty campaigning Bush and Rove learned from
Bush's father's campaign manager, Lee Atwater, who publicly confessed
his sins before he died. Bush and Rove and Hughes, who can engage
in lying and dirty campaigning with the worst of them, have never
confessed such sins and have no plans to do so.
Sanchez has run some negative ads against
Perry - there is so much material here - but also more with a
positive message, telling his ideas. Sanchez has mostly hit Slick
Rick with helping out his campaign contributors at the expense
of average taxpayers, including a horrendous insurance crisis
in which companies that contributed mucho bucks to Perry raked
over ratepayers with large increases that weren't justified.
Sanchez has also rightly questioned Slick
Rick becoming a multimillionaire during his political career
by helping out right-wing business yahoos like James Leininger,
a key contributor to Perry's campaigns. Perry said it was mere
coincidence that he purchased 2,800 shares of stock in a hospital
equipment company controlled by Leininger, Kinetic Concepts,
in 1996 on the same day a California investment group started
buying 2.2 million shares of the company, boosting the stock's
value. Sure, it was a coincidence that Perry made $38,000 on
that stock deal alone.
Slick Rick also claimed coincidence that
a property he bought in 1996 was sold for a $235,000 profit in
1999 just six days after Bush signed a bill that raised the value
of the land by allowing more development.
In probably Slick Rick's boldest move,
he appointed former Enron Chairman Max Yzaguirre as chairman
of the Public Utility Commission in June 2001, a few months before
the Enron scandal broke. The day after Slick Rick appointed Yzaguirre,
he accepted a $25,000 campaign contribution from Enron CEO Kenneth
Lay. Yzaguirre presided over some 30 cases involving his former
company in a clear conflict of interest before he was finally
forced to resign from the PUC.
Sanchez has also rightly pointed out
how under Perry, the number of low-performing schools has risen
and classroom sizes have become more overcrowded. In 1999, Slick
Rick even supported slashing $250 million from early childhood
and ninth-grade dropout prevention programs to pay for a sales
tax cut.
Sanchez is not the only candidate to
criticize Slick Rick. Green candidate Rahul Mahajan, who at least
admits there are differences between Democrats and Republicans,
has hammered Perry on his inability to stop industrial plants
from polluting, support of the death penalty, and poor healthcare
record. Earl O'Neil, an independent running for Texas governor
and owner of a small oil business in Abilene, has also soundly
criticized Perry and Bush. On his Internet site, O'Neil says,
"Under the last two Republican governors, we have witnessed
a subtle move to eliminate smaller oil and gas producers and
with good success. In 1990, there were 16,000 Texas oil and gas
producers, today there are approximately 7,000 and losing more
each day."
Besides Perry's and Bush's favoritism
to Big Oil, O'Neil opposes free-trade agreements like NAFTA they
support. "I do not believe NAFTA has helped the Texas farmer....Under
the Republican farm bill, most subsidies are shared by 10 percent
of the farmers.....Agriculture today is a classic example of
Republican corporate theory."
In response, all Slick Rick and Conniving
Karen and Cancerous Karl can do is attack the messenger, which
is usually aimed at some lying ad about Sanchez. It's amazing
they get away with this.
Moving to the Senate race, Democrat Kirk
has pretty much taken the high road, while being called one of
the worst labels Republithugs can throw, a "liberal,"
in almost every ad Cornyn-Hughes-Rove does. [Sharp is called
the same label in ads.] The Republithugs have also tried to call
Kirk a high-priced corporate attorney, which he was at one point,
but Kirk also balanced that by being a supporter of civil rights
and the ACLU. Kirk once spoke at a Dallas ACLU banquet I co-chaired,
something Cornyn would never dream of doing. Kirk is nowhere
near a liberal - his Green opponent Roy Williams is more so -
Kirk is a moderate who tries to find a balance. He'll make a
terrific senator - that body desperately needs at least ONE African-American.
Meanwhile, Cornyn has made race an issue,
as his press spokesman at one point called the top of the Democratic
dream ticket, which features a Hispanic, African-American, and
Anglo, while the top three Republicans are all white, a "racial
quota system." Cornyn also refused to return large contributions
made to him from Enron and Worldcom executives, made decisions
favorable to keeping certain Worldcom and Enron records closed,
and declined to release public records that would show who is
contributing to Cornyn's own political slush fund.
While Kirk has campaigned on issues like
saving Social Security, reducing the price of prescription drugs,
and working on bipartisan measures to create jobs, Cornyn's main
answer is to say he will do whatever Bush-Cheney want him to
do, such as support a blood-for-oil war in Iraq, put oil wells
in national parks, and invest Social Security funds in the stock
market. As attorney general, Cornyn mostly focused on local matters
like child support and consumer complaints, which are not exactly
federal issues a U.S. senator confronts. He has little background
in national affairs, while Kirk headed one of the country's largest
cities and has been involved in federal committees like the Census
one.
The BS is flying in political campaigns
across the country. The White House is running scared at the
thought of Jeb Bush losing the Florida governor's race and is
heavily involved in that campaign, to mention one other. But
as they say in Texas, the BS is bigger - and more apparent -
here.
Jackson Thoreau
is co-author of We Will Not Get Over It: Restoring a Legitimate
White House. The 110,000-word electronic book can be downloaded
at http://www.geocities.com/jacksonthor/ebook.html
or at http://www.legitgov.org/we_will_not_get_over_it.html.
Thoreau can be emailed at jacksonthor@justice.com.
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October 14,
2002
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