AFS Cinema
Independents Helped Assure Perry's Win
RECEIVED Thu., Nov. 9, 2006
Dear Editor,
As delighted as I am about the way the midterms turned out nationally, statewide I'm ready to strangle the 31.17% of voters who blithely threw their votes away on the likes of über-opportunistic Grandmaw* Strayhorn and half-assed comic and predictably sore loser Kinky Friedman. Thanks largely to them, the people of Texas got what the vast majority of us specifically voted against: “Governor Goodhair,” Rick Perry. Again.
Bell, Strayhorn, and Friedman together spent about $20 million trying to unseat Perry, who had more than $15 million to spend on his campaign alone. You do the math. (Strayhorn and Friedman voters, bless your pointed little heads, you'd better go find a grownup to do the math for you.) I'm assuming that many of Strayhorn's and Friedman's clueless supporters didn't understand before they cast their votes (or just didn't care) that as voters in a plurality state, Texans don't get to have a run-off in a general election, no matter how crowded or silly the field; whoever gets one vote more than the pack wins.
I don't understand why anyone would knowingly throw away his or her vote on a pointless gesture that virtually guarantees the re-election of an increasingly unpopular governor who’s a typical member of a very unpopular party. Don't these people value their votes at all?
Regardless of the pathology involved, I hope you're pleased with yourselves, all you rugged individualist, independent voters. Despite the fact that most of the rest of the nation finally woke up and smelled the BS and expressed it at the polls, you guys made Texas look stupid again by blowing our only chance in years to take the state back for the people.
(I'll bet a lot of you airheads voted for Ralph Nader, too, didn't you? Or Bush. Morons!)
* By the way, before Strayhorn's candidacy, who would have thought that a warm, cuddly, innocuous term like "Grandmaw" would sound more like fingernails raking a blackboard?
As delighted as I am about the way the midterms turned out nationally, statewide I'm ready to strangle the 31.17% of voters who blithely threw their votes away on the likes of über-opportunistic Grandmaw* Strayhorn and half-assed comic and predictably sore loser Kinky Friedman. Thanks largely to them, the people of Texas got what the vast majority of us specifically voted against: “Governor Goodhair,” Rick Perry. Again.
Bell, Strayhorn, and Friedman together spent about $20 million trying to unseat Perry, who had more than $15 million to spend on his campaign alone. You do the math. (Strayhorn and Friedman voters, bless your pointed little heads, you'd better go find a grownup to do the math for you.) I'm assuming that many of Strayhorn's and Friedman's clueless supporters didn't understand before they cast their votes (or just didn't care) that as voters in a plurality state, Texans don't get to have a run-off in a general election, no matter how crowded or silly the field; whoever gets one vote more than the pack wins.
I don't understand why anyone would knowingly throw away his or her vote on a pointless gesture that virtually guarantees the re-election of an increasingly unpopular governor who’s a typical member of a very unpopular party. Don't these people value their votes at all?
Regardless of the pathology involved, I hope you're pleased with yourselves, all you rugged individualist, independent voters. Despite the fact that most of the rest of the nation finally woke up and smelled the BS and expressed it at the polls, you guys made Texas look stupid again by blowing our only chance in years to take the state back for the people.
(I'll bet a lot of you airheads voted for Ralph Nader, too, didn't you? Or Bush. Morons!)
* By the way, before Strayhorn's candidacy, who would have thought that a warm, cuddly, innocuous term like "Grandmaw" would sound more like fingernails raking a blackboard?
Cathey Thomas