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Volume V Number 10 - June 16, 2006
A Periodic Newsletter for Committed Texas Conservatives


In This Issue

Is The Texas 22nd Congressional District Nightmare Scenario About To Come True?

Peggy Noonan Has Had It And Why That Should Concern Conservatives

Orlando Sanchez For Harris County Treasurer

A Check With Our Democratic Friends: What's Up With Democratic Leadership Council?

A Possible Idea For Help To Deal With The Immigration Problems By Mike Boylan

Texas GOP Convention Comes And Goes, So Where Are We?

What's Ahead

Hard Hitting
Conservative Commentary
 
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Gary Polland
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Is The Texas 22nd Congressional District
Nightmare Scenario About To Come True?

Tom DeLay's last day in Congress was last week and no sooner did the day come than the Democrats (those crafty operatives) filed suit in Travis County and obtained a temporary restraining order stopping the GOP from selecting a candidate to replace Congressman DeLay on the ballot.

So where does it go from here? TCR believes the Democratic plan is now clear, to take this seat regardless of how the election turns out.

First, they plan to delay and/or prevent the GOP from replacing Tom on the ballot. Since the TRO was granted, they probably will get the judge to grant an injunction in a few weeks. That decision will then have to be appealed which will take us probably to mid to late July. It may even take action in other courts, so we may be picking a candidate in August - under 120 days before the elections. Of course, that presupposes an ultimate court victory which may not happen.

Second, they plan to use Lampson's $2 million plus to overwhelm any GOP late entrant in the race and win outright. Our candidate, with a late start and with many other needy races around the country, could be outgunned.

Third, the Democrats fail-safe plan is to challenge any GOP victory in the House in January. If the Democrats have a majority, they will replay a ploy used a decade or so ago in Indiana that resulted in a GOP winner not being seated using the same argument: That the candidate did not really change his legal residence, so he can't be replaced.

TCR Comment: This nightmare unfortunately could be all too real come next January. Conservatives are wondering why we are reacting to the Democrats and not being the aggressor? We should've filed a declaratory judgment in Houston and beat them to the punch. At least one group of Republicans are doing something. The Harris County Republican Party has made thousands of calls into CD 22 urging people to call Nick Lampson's office. The message to him (and the D's) is "Let The People Vote." Given the fact that Lampson and the D's are trying to win this election in court (instead of at the ballot box), the Harris County Republican Party will do its best to keep R's motivated in the district. The party plans on conducting additional voter contact campaigns. At least the Harris County GOP and Chairman Jared Woodfill are able to meet the challenge.

News Flash: The suit in Austin was removed to Federal Court, which is a positive development.

Peggy Noonan Has Had It And
Why That Should Concern Conservatives

Peggy Noonan, conservative wordsmith deluxe, former speech writer for President's Reagan and Bush and columnist for the Wall Street Journal has had it with both parties (but remember she's a conservative Republican).

Here are a few excerpts from her June 1, 2006 article:

"Partisanship is fine when it's an expression of the high animal spirits produced by real political contention based on true political belief. But the current partisanship seems sour, not joyous. The partisanship has gotten deeper as less separates the governing parties in Washington. It is like what has been said of academic infighting: that it's so vicious because the stakes are so low."

"The problem is not that the two parties are polarized. In many ways they're closer than ever. The problem is that the parties in Washington, and the people on the ground in America, are polarized. There is an increasing and profound distance between the rulers of both parties and the people--between the elites and the grunts, between those in power and those who put them there. On the ground in America, people worry terribly--really, there are people who actually worry about it every day--about endless, weird, gushing government spending. But in Washington, those in power--Republicans and Democrats--stand arm in arm as they spend and spend."

"On the ground in America, regular people worry about the changes wrought by the biggest wave of immigration in our history, much of it illegal and therefore wholly unconnected to the agreed-upon needs of our nation. Americans worry about the myriad implications of the collapse of the American border. But Washington doesn't. Democrat Ted Kennedy and Republican George W. Bush see things pretty much eye to eye. They are going to educate the American people out of their low concerns."

"Right now the Republicans and Democrats in Washington seem, from the outside, to be an elite colluding against the voter. They're in agreement: immigration should not be controlled but increased, spending will increase, etc. Are there some dramatic differences? Yes. But both parties act as if they see them not as important questions (gay marriage, for instance) but as wedge issues. Which is, actually, abusive of people on both sides of the question. If it's a serious issue, face it. Don't play with it. I don't see any potential party, or potential candidate, on the scene right now who can harness the disaffection of growing portions of the electorate."

She capsulizes citizen discontent. TCR believes our voters are fed up and aren't going to take it anymore. The problem the GOP faces as the party in power, they get most of the blame and an unhappy base stays home. Ask the Democrats what happened in 1994.

Orlando Sanchez For Harris County Treasurer

There is a vacancy in the Harris County Treasurer's office and the GOP has a chance to nominate a proven conservative officeholder who has fought the good fight over and over again with us.

A brief list:

  • Orlando was part of the team which the Harris County Republican Party honored with the Political Courage Award for helping lead the fight to cut property taxes for the first time in decades in Houston.

  • Orlando fought Bob Lanier's race based Affirmative Action Program which the city recently lost in Federal Court.

  • As a freshman member of the Houston City Council, Orlando, along with Dan Patrick, debated Ken Lay and attorney Bob Collie, arguing that we should not use public money to build sports arenas.

  • It was Orlando and his conservative allies on the city council who successfully fought Lee Brown's efforts to use your tax dollars to grant same-sex health benefits to gay couples.

  • It was Orlando who worked with conservative activist, Norman Adams, to defeat Lee Brown's effort to give one contractor, without formal bids, a controversial contract for construction bonding know as (ROCIP) Rolling Owner Controlled Insurance Program.

  • It was Orlando and Norman Adams, along with other members of Houston City Council, who fought the ridiculous "Rain Tax".

  • It was Orlando who helped Paul Bettencourt and Bruce Hotze fight the City of Houston's effort to kill Prop 2 spending limits initiative.

  • Orlando was the only mayoral candidate with the "backbone" to fight the Shirley DeLibrio/Lee Brown six mile $650 billion dollar rail line.

  • On social issues, it's been Orlando leading the charge against bi-lingual education in public schools.

  • It was Orlando, who in 1990 declared that our Federal Immigration enforcement was "broken", saying, "The Federal Government has abdicated its responsibility by not enforcing immigration laws."

  • It was Orlando who took on the City of Houston's Health Director when she tried to use tax dollars to issue Depo-Provera to minors for "birth control."

  • It was Orlando who took on Lee Brown when he wanted to use our tax dollars to help fund a lawsuit against the Federal Census Bureau for undercounting minorities in other US cities.

  • Orlando was the only conservative who challenged Lee Brown's out of control administration by running for mayor and giving us the largest and most historic turn-out of Hispanic voters, of which 75% voted for the conservative, Orlando Sanchez.

For his efforts, Orlando has incurred the wrath of the Houston Chronicle and Houston Press, that's good. Orlando has fought the tough fights, he's taken on the challenges of the tax and spend liberals. Sure it hasn't been easy, but he was willing to run on conservative principles in a liberal city. Now, some of our county officials are afraid of adding another conservative who'll join Paul Bettencourt's fight for lower property taxes, appraisal caps and a leaner county government.

TCR supported Paul Bettencourt to be Tax Assessor-Collector in Harris County and he's been terrific and now we support Orlando Sanchez, a "battle hardened" proven conservative who'll fight the good fight.

A Check With Our Democratic Friends:
What's Up With Democratic Leadership Council?

In Blueprint Magazine May 2006, Democratic intellectual Bruce Reed wonders why the GOP is now running on NO ideas and instead on a "all politics is local theory." The Democrats now are looking to run on a new reform agenda for America yet to be revealed.

TCR Comment: Interesting the positions of the parties could be reversing. In 1994, we ran with a Contract with America and today we have no ideas to run on. It's time to go back to our principles and run on a revitalized Contract with America and once we win, govern based on them.

A Possible Idea For Help To Deal
With The Immigration Problems

By Mike Boylan

As we all know there is a green card, which confers resident alien status, making the holder employable, without any time limit. It is silent on citizenship, so a sizeable number, though not all, of green card holders have gotten in line for citizenship.

What if there were a Red Card, a high tech card that has a randomly assigned character ID number including letters to minimize the chances of falsification, has the holder's photo and personal data displayed, and accesses a federal database that contains his fingerprints and maybe later a retina scan. Illegals who have been in the U.S. for a period of time - three years, five years, whatever - could apply for a red card and would be granted one, if they had no criminal record.

  • The Red Card confers legal, employable resident alien status for a term (in the law, the term should be fairly short so we can keep track of them).

  • The holder is expressly denied citizenship forever (the price for entering illegally), unless he leaves the country and re-enters legally.

  • The card is renewable for successive equal terms if the holder has no criminal record (in the law, criminal could include some or all felonies, some or all misdemeanors, federal, state, whatever). Thus, the holder can remain in the U.S. as a resident alien and be legally employable for the rest of his life, during good behavior.

  • Employers wishing to hire red cards would have a terminal/fingerprint reader, a notch above the terminal that every Circle K on Padre Island that sells fishing licenses has to connect with Parks and Wildlife. The federal database, terminal system and software are expensive infrastructure, but they address an expensive problem.

  • Perhaps the bill should address federal issues such as citizenship for the holder's children and social security, but other issues - access to education benefits, health care should be left to the states.

The Red Card accomplishes four things:

  1. Brings most conservatives on board.

  2. Brings or keeps the business community on board. They get a legally employable pool of resident aliens.

  3. Employers will hire Red Cards preferentially over illegals to avoid federal jeopardy, reducing the job opportunities for illegals. When that word gets back to Mexico, which will be pretty quick because the Mexican government will scream about it, the flood of illegals across the border will diminish, perhaps to where it can be handled with an affordable strengthening of our border effort.

  4. Republicans will have shown they can govern.


Mike Boylan, Guest Columnist, is a long time GOP activist, businessman and former head of Associated Republicans of Texas.

Texas GOP Convention Comes And Goes,
So Where Are We?

So the convention came and was relatively peaceful. The focus was mainly illegal immigration. Of course, the big debate was on the platform language on the recently passed state gross receipts tax, where it took a herculean effort by Governor Perry's supporters to avoid defeat. The winning margin of 55% to 45% came about as many voted for the modified platform language out of loyalty to Governor Perry.

It is unfortunate the Platform Committee members were pressured to remove signatures from the minority report, which had already been signed by enough members to submit the report supporting the Hotze Resolution on new state taxes and as a result there was no minority report. The matter was brought to the floor of the convention, and Roger O'Dell, Convention Chair, to his credit allowed a vote, which revealed that 45%, or over 3800 delegates were unhappy with HB3.

No Compact with Texas was adopted despite TCR's urging. The party seems frozen in its role as cheerleader for our elected officials, as opposed to being a group that influences the direction of Texas.


COMING - (Friday, June 30 at 8 pm) to Channel 8 PBS in Houston, Texas - the connection - Red, White & Blue featuring TCR Editor Gary Polland and liberal commentator David Jones with Harris County Judge Robert Eckels.

COMING SOON - Former Congressman Nick Lampson, Comptroller Carole Strayhorn and former Homeland Security Official Clark Kent Ervin.

About Your Editor

Gary Polland is a long-time conservative and Republican spokesman, fund-raiser, and leader who recently completed three terms as the Harris County Republican Chairman. During his three terms, Gary was described as the most successful county Chairman in America by Human Events - The National Conservative Weekly. He is in his ninth year of editing a newsletter dealing with key conservative and Republican issues. The last four years he has edited Texas Conservative Review. Gary is a practicing attorney and strategic consultant and can be reached at (713) 621-6335.

© 2006 Texas Conservative Review

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