Today’s entry on the blog is a little different. I will make some observations about a failed Presidential candidate who also failed as a candidate for the U. S. Senate. Included will be some observations about his Democratic Party and the way some elections in Texas were held.
This person is Robert “Beto” O’Rourke, at one time a ‘rising star’ in the party of the donkey, and a media darling of the same. For brevity’s sake, we will just use his name as Beto, seen by some as a self-given name to appeal to Latino voters in his state. Beto served in the U. S. House of Representatives from the area of west Texas around El Paso, and by dint of family and marriage is a millionaire.
During the Presidential primaries when he was still a candidate, Beto promised to come after all the AR-15 rifles in America and confiscate them. This, in spite of this model and copies being the most popular sporting rifle in the nation, was not AR Assault Rifle. Originally, it was named for the ArmaLite company which produced it. Fairly light, portable and reliable, the AR-15 quickly became the rifle many wanted, even though it was not quite suitable for combat, being a semi-automatic weapon.
At one time, the now faux President-elect, Joe Biden, claimed he was going to name Beto his ‘gun czar’ to oversee as draconian a gun law as he could get passed by Congress. But the redoubtable Beto has preempted this by taking a new job, as a teacher at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas. Apparently, he has turned the old adage on its head, the one which claims ‘if you can’t do, teach’, by saying if you can’t get elected, then teach about elections.
Anyway, Beto will be paid 10 grand for teaching 16 students over Zoom for a semester. Given how many swooned over his supposedly good looks, most of the 300 who signed up for the class were probably young women in the grad school at the U. of Texas. In addition, another 10 grand will be his for speaking to at least two seminars, and he will get another teaching gig in the future at the university.
His focus will be on Texas elections, past and present and how they impact the onward march of democracy in the Lone Star State. But the irony (or hypocrisy) of this is that this failed politician will be working under the banner of one of the most corrupt ‘public servants’ ever to serve Texas, one who will be forever known as ‘Landslide Lyndon’, from his win in the 1948 Senate race in that state, and for his future career in national politics. From that tainted victory, Johnson went on to become the youngest Majority Leader of the U. S. Senate, Vice-President for John Kennedy and on JFK’s assassination, President of the United States. During his tenure in the Oval Office, he escalated our minimal involvement in Vietnam into a full-scale war which claimed over 58,000 American lives. Without his election in 1948, none of his subsequent career would have been possible.
With the thousands of alleged instances of voter fraud in the 2020 election, the hundreds of sworn affidavits attesting to such fraud committed by the Democrats, one wonders if Beto will reference Johnson’s somewhat stolen election in 1948. How did that come about?
Johnson had been a U. S. Congressman from East Texas in the early 1940s and served in World War 2. (He actually was given a citation for being in a battle zone; he rode in a plane which was probably not in combat, but it was good for political aspirants to have on a resume.)
In 1948, he ran for the U. S. Senate against a popular Texas Governor, Coke Stevenson in the Democratic Primary, held on September 2, 1948. In those halcyon days of Texas, winning the Democratic Primary meant you had won the seat as the Republicans were mostly in the closet.
When the dust had settled and the election over, Stevenson had won a narrow victory, or so it seemed. He led Johnson by about 115 votes, but a box of ballots was ‘discovered’ in the South Texas town of Alice in Jim Wells County. All 202 of those ballots were for Johnson, a statistical anomaly in itself, and surprisingly they had all voted in alphabetical order, even though some were buried in the local cemetery and others were not in the county during election day. In addition, the same color ink and handwriting were used for those methodical voters.
After Stevenson won a court case to remove Johnson, who had been a protégé of the late President Franklin Roosevelt, from the general election ballot, Johnson turned to Washington, D. C. attorney Abe Fortas for help. Fortas persuaded a Supreme Court Justice, Hugo Black, an appointee of FDR, to overturn the Texas Court decision and return the problem to the Texas Democratic Central Committee. That committee ruled in favor of Johnson.
Although most present Texans hadn’t been born in 1948, those who know something about the sleazy actions of Johnson and his allies in that election will wonder whether Beto will have any information for his adoring students about ‘Landslide Lyndon’, and the antics of the Democratic Party? Will Beto feel any sense of irony or hypocrisy if he ignores the legacy of corruption in his own political breeding ground?
My guess that being associated with Johnson’s namesake, the Public Affairs School at the U. of Texas, will be either glossed over or omitted from the syllabus used by Beto. He will focus on the glory of his party, slam Republicans and lament how red the state is. But given the present state of Democratic politics in this nation, perhaps it is fitting that Beto and Johnson are linked together in this foray into higher education.
Irony or hypocrisy — which is it?