There’s a lot to love in this Todd Gillman update on the Stockman for Senate campaign, starting with the photo (taken at the candidate’s last public event, on Jan. 14), and continuing with the news that Stockman didn’t even vote in any GOP primary since 2004. Stockman’s reluctance to show up in public for an election eight days away is the sort of thing that usually augers a defeat, or a sense that defeat is inevitable.
Not with this campaign. The Stockman effort, which has only ever made sense as a shell game by outside conservative groups, is peaking this week as Republican mailboxes are filled with mailers for the candidate. I didn’t write “candidate mailers” because the largest piece of Stockman mail, “The Conservative News,” is not credited to any campaign, and team Stockman denies it’s from them. It just happens to mirror tactics used in previous Stockman campaigns, and copy word for word the dada prose of Stockman’s attacks on Cornyn. (He’s fond of clipping quotes from the incumbent senator to make them sound like direct insults of conservatives.)
Scott Braddock, who broke this at the Quorum Report, passes on a few of the pages.
Gotta love the verb choices in there. A layman might say that Stockman, one of the laziest and least tactical members of the House, was announcing bills with no chance of passage. Worry not, Texas Republicans: Stockman’s bills “overturn” and “stop” horrors.
