TX-GOV: O'Rourke thinking about running

[DaleCooper]

It's incredibly depressing that Beto chose to run for President as a faux-progressive cringe candidate, desperately latching onto whatever unpopular and unelectable positions Twitter was fascinated with in order to grab a headline to hopefully revive his failing campaign. He had a real opportunity to follow Abrams or even Espy's paths after defeat and get back to work trying to build the necessary appeal and infrastructure for future elections in his state. Even Heitkamp and Donnelly did some soul searching and tried to invest in Democratic outreach to rural voters after they lost, which is a lot more helpful even if it seems futile than it is for Beto to inject nonsense into the national platform and make the Party seem more extreme than it is.

I do believe there's a place for losing candidates within the Democratic Party, especially ones that dramatically outperform the partisan lean of their states, but O'Rourke's presidential run completely destroyed his reputation and hurt the credibility of the Texas Democratic Party in the process.

[DaleCooper]

Only feels like 6 months ago when Beto was considered an campaign marvel with a rising future while Stacy Abrams was a laughing stock who wasted her political capital. Pretty remarkable how much things can flip on a dime.

By the way, I'm sick of hearing about the gun comment. I think it's impact has been severely overblown on here. Especially cause he's done/said dumber things (Such as taxxing churches who oppose gay marriage)

All churches should be taxed, point blank.

He specifically referred to churches that oppose gay marriage. If he meant to refer to all churches, he would have done so.

Hot take, but I actually think "tax the churches" would be a lot stronger of a position than one might expect it to be, but only if it's from the perspective of churches getting a free ride from the taxpayers rather than from the perspective of churches being on the wrong side of social issues. 

It's probably not a winning issue in much of the country, but I think a maverick candidate in either party could get a lot of milage out of it in a primary.

[DaleCooper]

Only feels like 6 months ago when Beto was considered an campaign marvel with a rising future while Stacy Abrams was a laughing stock who wasted her political capital. Pretty remarkable how much things can flip on a dime.

By the way, I'm sick of hearing about the gun comment. I think it's impact has been severely overblown on here. Especially cause he's done/said dumber things (Such as taxxing churches who oppose gay marriage)

All churches should be taxed, point blank.

He specifically referred to churches that oppose gay marriage. If he meant to refer to all churches, he would have done so.

Hot take, but I actually think "tax the churches" would be a lot stronger of a position than one might expect it to be, but only if it's from the perspective of churches getting a free ride from the taxpayers rather than from the perspective of churches being on the wrong side of social issues. 

It's probably not a winning issue in much of the country, but I think a maverick candidate in either party could get a lot of milage out of it in a primary.

The GOP would love another tax to run against. "The Democrats want to tax everything - even church!"

That's probably true, but I still think there's a big untapped resentment towards organized religion and specifically the megachurches, even amongst right-leaning people. I suppose the trick would be differentiating between them and small churches, which would be tough to do.

[DaleCooper]

If Beto wants a career as an elected politician then he should find a safe congressional district after redistricting and serve in the House for a decade or two until statewide victory is a realistic possibility for him.