The Discerning Texan
All that is necessary for evil to triumph, is for good men to do nothing.
-- Edmund Burke
-- Edmund Burke
Tuesday, November 27, 2007
Another Hillary "Funny Money" Man Pops up in Texas
A money bundler for Hillary Clinton in South Texas named Alonzo Cantu has, according to the Washington Post, raised some $640,000 in Hidalgo County, Texas--an area along the Mexican border in which one would be being very kind in describing as 'not exactly the Hamptons'. In the same area, over the same timeframe. Barack Obama has raised $2,086.
Lee Cary looks closely at the Cantu story, and recalls that it evokes the ghosts of LBJ's 1947 stolen election in Duval County, also in South Texas:
It is dizzying how quickly the bad news has piled up against Hillary's candidacy. Is it just me that senses Hillary gasping for air against Obama, yet is tempted to throw her a life line because she is more beatable in a General Election? As blatantly false and dishonest she is, Hillary seems to me to be an opponent who would be much easier for Republicans to defeat than would be Obama, despite his hard-left agenda. Obama would motivate his own "anti" demographic, and not one which I nor most other Republicans would wish to be associated with. But Hillary's negatives seem to run much deeper among Conservatives and even non-Conservative Republicans. She seems to be almost universally despised by non-Democrats. On the other hand it is hard to find many Republicans who dislike Obama personally. He is charismatic and very telegenic. Oprah is about to go on a crusade for him. And Hillary is obviously fighting for her political life.
Don't get me wrong: I agree with almost nothing Obama says he stands for, and his election could usher in one of the the most catastrophic chapters in American history. But he has all of the charisma and character that Hillary lacks. And that is scary in an electorate which seems to care more about how the candidate says something than it does what they are saying.
It makes one wonder who is behind all of these leaks of Hillary's corrupt contributors. The fact that it is the Washington Post publishing this particular story is interesting in itself. Could it be that the sources are coming from within the Democrat party itself? It's not out of the question.
Lee Cary looks closely at the Cantu story, and recalls that it evokes the ghosts of LBJ's 1947 stolen election in Duval County, also in South Texas:
Meanwhile, this story reminds those of us who live in Texas of another political campaign here back in 1947. The Senatorial election that year was between a legend in Texas politics and a young congressman from Austin. The legend, Coke Stevenson, had been the Speaker of the Texas House, Lieutenant Governor, and twice elected Governor. The congressman was Lyndon Johnson.Good point, that. Read the whole thing.
When the Texas Election Bureau closed on Election Day, Stevenson led by 854 votes. But the counting wasn't done, and neither was the voting. Resolution of the contested results would be a precursor of the 2000 Presidential Election drama in Florida, except more crudely complicated. Johnson eventually won by 87 votes in an election where 988,295 votes were allegedly cast. "Allegedly" is the operative word.
[...]
Johnson's big vote bundler was George Berham Parr, who solely controlled the Democratic Party machine in Duvall and Jim Hogg Counties, just north of Hidalgo County. Parr also exercised significant influence in other Southeast Texas border counties including Webb, Cameron, Nueces, and Hidalgo. Caro quotes the description of Parr, El Patron, written by a Corpus Christi Caller-Times reporter named James M. Rowe, who knew Rio Grande Valley politics well:It is not easy for the average person to imagine what it was like...to oppose Boss Parr in his own county. A word from him was sufficient to get a man fired from his job or denied welfare payments or surplus commodities distributed to the needy. Merchants who opposed him faced the sudden loss of most of their trade. Little farmer and ranchers were intimated by the pistoleros. (p.185)Parr's most ominous pistolero was his six-gun totting enforcer, Luis Salas. Days after the polls closed, Salas added 200 votes for Johnson to Ballot Box 13 in Jim Webb County. The fact that all the votes were recorded in the same handwriting was a clue. But the box was never examined by those who adjudicated the election results; it had disappeared by then.
Revised returns gave Johnson a 3,000 vote margin of victory in Hidalgo County. In the six Southeast Texas border-area counties most heavily influenced by the Boss Parr machine, Johnson tallied 10,323 votes to Stevenson's 1,329. In Parr's home county of Duvall, it was Johnson 2,908 - Stevenson 38. It all makes the chads and dimples show of South Florida look like child's play.
So what does this have to do with Hillary's McAllen bundler?
In 60 years, Election Day practices have changed considerably in Texas. Today, it's not easy anymore to use patronage and intimidation to stuff ballot boxes. But, when that kind of money, $640,000, comes from that many donors in what a Washington Post writer describes as a "border town of stucco bungalows and weed-covered farm lots," it does raise eyebrows from those who know the Democrat political history of Southeast Texas, and who remember the stealth donors from NYC's Chinatown.
It is dizzying how quickly the bad news has piled up against Hillary's candidacy. Is it just me that senses Hillary gasping for air against Obama, yet is tempted to throw her a life line because she is more beatable in a General Election? As blatantly false and dishonest she is, Hillary seems to me to be an opponent who would be much easier for Republicans to defeat than would be Obama, despite his hard-left agenda. Obama would motivate his own "anti" demographic, and not one which I nor most other Republicans would wish to be associated with. But Hillary's negatives seem to run much deeper among Conservatives and even non-Conservative Republicans. She seems to be almost universally despised by non-Democrats. On the other hand it is hard to find many Republicans who dislike Obama personally. He is charismatic and very telegenic. Oprah is about to go on a crusade for him. And Hillary is obviously fighting for her political life.
Don't get me wrong: I agree with almost nothing Obama says he stands for, and his election could usher in one of the the most catastrophic chapters in American history. But he has all of the charisma and character that Hillary lacks. And that is scary in an electorate which seems to care more about how the candidate says something than it does what they are saying.
It makes one wonder who is behind all of these leaks of Hillary's corrupt contributors. The fact that it is the Washington Post publishing this particular story is interesting in itself. Could it be that the sources are coming from within the Democrat party itself? It's not out of the question.
