"Karen Hughes spent Wednesday stumping for Republican Senate hopeful John Cornyn.... Hughes, who resigned in April to go home with her family to Texas but still keeps in close contact with the president, shrugged off questions about whether her presence was a sign that Bush is concerned about the tight race. She said she had offered to campaign with Cornyn in April because the race is important to her personally."
-- Associated Press story, Sept. 18, 2002

Karen Hughes is leading nasty, desperate Republican campaigns in Texas. Earlier this year, when Bush babysitter and ghostwriter Hughes left Washington, tearfully saying she missed Texas, I
was one of the few columnists in the country to call her bluff.

While others
were taking Hughes' lies at face value, I wrote way back in May, "Hughes recently
left the White House amid what some sources tell me were some key differences
with Rove and others, as well as marching orders from Bush to help his Texas
Republican friends. In other words, don't believe the BS fed us that Hughes
just, sniff-sniff, 'missed Texas.'"

[see http://www.americaheldhostile.com/ed051802.shtml or http://www.buzzflash.com/contributors/2002/05/20_Slacker.html or http://www.smirkingchimp.com/article.php?sid=6580 ]

Therefore, I was not surprised to see how
nasty and negative and desperate Republican Gov. Slick Rick Perry, who was appointed
to that seat when Bush took over the White House, Senate candidate John Cornyn,
and Lt. Gov. candidate David Dewhurst have become in their campaigns lately.

I have come to expect lies uttered from Republicans not just on occasions,
but every time those scumbags open their freaking mouths. I don't believe one
word the Bush-ass-kissing Republicans say [some like U.S. Rep. Ron Paul of Texas,
one of the few House Republicans to oppose Bush's war resolution, deserve more
respect].

Hughes, in fact, is lying about only being a campaigner for Cornyn. My sources
say she has pretty much taken over Cornyn's campaign from those "capable
people" and is heavily involved in advising people running Perry's and
Dewhurst's races.

Bush mastermind Karl Rove is also heavily involved in advising these campaigns
-- Bush & Co. do not want to lose a top Texas position to the Democrats,
which would be seen as a huge SLAAAAPPPPP!! to Bush's face.

Bush himself has wasted more public taxpayers' dollars by flying several times
recently on Air Force One to Texas to campaign for Cornyn, Perry, and Dewhurst,
rather than actually work on issues like the economy and national security.

Recent polls in these races have been closer than Bush can believe. Democratic
Gov. candidate Tony Sanchez, who has spent $millions trying to gain name recognition,
recently trotted out a poll by Fairbank, Maslin, Maullin & Associates, a
national firm he hired, that has him only three points behind Perry.

Democratic Senate candidate Ron Kirk, a former Dallas mayor, has been neck-and-neck
in polls with his Republican opponent for months, a seat Republicans have held
for four decades that is seen as a key in the battle to control the Senate.
Kirk has also picked up key endorsements like the Austin American-Statesman.

Democratic Lt. Gov. candidate John Sharp, a former state comptroller who even
Republicans like former baseball pitcher Nolan Ryan support, has also been very
close in the polls.

A big sticking point with independent voters in Texas is the state's budget
crisis that Bush left in his wake to steal the White House. Estimates run as
high as a $12 billion shortfall next year. Bush squandered the surpluses he
was fortunate to have as governor of Texas with corporate tax cuts and increased
spending on prisons. Does that sound familiar, after Bush took our federal budget
from having surpluses under Clinton to deficits again?

That's why you see Perry running negative attack ad after negative attack ad
against Sanchez. Most of the ads, such as Perry claiming a bank in which Sanchez
was a director was involved in criminal activity, have been blatantly false.

That's the kind of dirty campaigning Bush and Rove learned from Bush's father's
campaign manager, Lee Atwater, who publicly confessed his sins before he died.
Bush and Rove and Hughes, who can engage in lying and dirty campaigning with
the worst of them, have never confessed such sins and have no plans to do so.

Sanchez has run some negative ads against Perry -- there is so much material
here - but also more with a positive message, telling his ideas. Sanchez has
mostly hit Slick Rick with helping out his campaign contributors at the expense
of average taxpayers, including a horrendous insurance crisis in which companies
that contributed mucho bucks to Perry raked over ratepayers with large increases
that weren't justified.

Sanchez has also rightly questioned Slick Rick becoming a multimillionaire
during his political career by helping out right-wing business yahoos like James
Leininger, a key contributor to Perry's campaigns.

Perry said it was mere coincidence that he purchased 2,800 shares of stock
in a hospital equipment company controlled by Leininger, Kinetic Concepts, in
1996 on the same day a California investment group started buying 2.2 million
shares of the company, boosting the stock's value. Sure, it was a coincidence
that Perry made $38,000 on that stock deal alone.

Slick Rick also claimed coincidence that a property he bought in 1996 was sold
for a $235,000 profit in 1999 just six days after Bush signed a bill that raised
the value of the land by allowing more development.

In probably Slick Rick's boldest move, he appointed former Enron Chairman Max
Yzaguirre as chairman of the Public Utility Commission in June 2001, a few months
before the Enron scandal broke. The day after Slick Rick appointed Yzaguirre,
he accepted a $25,000 campaign contribution from Enron CEO Kenneth Lay. Yzaguirre
presided over some 30 cases involving his former company in a clear conflict
of interest before he was finally forced to resign from the PUC.

Sanchez has also rightly pointed out how under Perry, the number of low-performing
schools has risen and classroom sizes have become more overcrowded. In 1999,
Slick Rick even supported slashing $250 million from early childhood and ninth-grade
dropout prevention programs to pay for a sales tax cut.

Sanchez is not the only candidate to criticize Slick Rick. Green candidate
Rahul Mahajan, who at least admits there are differences between Democrats and
Republicans, has hammered Perry on his inability to stop industrial plants from
polluting, support of the death penalty, and poor healthcare record.

Earl O'Neil, an independent running for Texas governor and owner of a small
oil business in Abilene, has also soundly criticized Perry and Bush. On his
Internet site, O'Neil says, "Under the last two Republican governors, we
have witnessed a subtle move to eliminate smaller oil and gas producers and
with good success. In 1990, there were 16,000 Texas oil and gas producers, today
there are approximately 7,000 and losing more each day."

Besides Perry's and Bush's favoritism to Big Oil, O'Neil opposes free-trade
agreements like NAFTA they support. "I do not believe NAFTA has helped
the Texas farmer….Under the Republican farm bill, most subsidies are shared
by 10 percent of the farmers...Agriculture today is a classic example of Republican
corporate theory."

In response, all Slick Rick and Conniving Karen and Cancerous Karl can do is
attack the messenger, which is usually aimed at some lying ad about Sanchez.
It's amazing they get away with this.

Moving to the Senate race, Democrat Kirk has pretty much taken the high road,
while being called one of the worst labels Republithugs can throw, a "liberal,"
in almost every ad Cornyn-Hughes-Rove does. [Sharp is called the same label
in ads.]

The Republithugs have also tried to call Kirk a high-priced corporate attorney,
which he was at one point, but Kirk also balanced that by being a supporter
of civil rights and the ACLU. Kirk once spoke at a Dallas ACLU banquet I co-chaired,
something Cornyn would never dream of doing. Kirk is nowhere near a liberal
-- his Green opponent Roy Williams is more so. Kirk is a moderate who tries
to find a balance. He'll make a terrific senator -- that body desperately needs
at least ONE African-American.

Meanwhile, Cornyn has made race an issue. His press spokesman snear that the
Democratic Dream Ticket is a "racial quota system." This because the Democratic
nominee for Governor is Hispanic, and their Senate candidate is an African-American.
The top three Republican candidates are all white.

Cornyn also refused to return large contributions made to him from Enron and
Worldcom executives, made decisions favorable to keeping certain Worldcom and
Enron records closed, and declined to release public records that would show
who is contributing to Cornyn's own political slush fund.

While Kirk has campaigned on issues like saving Social Security, reducing the
price of prescription drugs, and working on bipartisan measures to create jobs,
Cornyn's main answer is to say he will do whatever Bush-Cheney want him to do,
such as support a blood-for-oil war in Iraq, put oil wells in national parks,
and invest Social Security funds in the stock market.

As attorney general, Cornyn mostly focused on local matters like child support
and consumer complaints, which are not exactly federal issues a U.S. senator
confronts. He has little background in national affairs, while Kirk headed one
of the country's largest cities and has been involved in federal committees
like the Census one.

The BS is flying in political campaigns across the country. The White House
is running scared at the thought of Jeb Bush losing the Florida governor's race
and is heavily involved in that campaign, to mention one other. But as they
say in Texas, the BS is bigger -- and more apparent -- here.