The two candidates and their surrogates in the Republican U.S. Senate runoff in Texas are in a fight over which one is too cozy with gays and which is the biggest opponent of abortion. And the hypocrisy meter is pushing higher and higher.
During the Republican primary this spring, candidate Ted Cruz attacked opponent Tom Leppert for appearing in a gay pride parade when he was mayor of Dallas. Now religious-righters are screaming that one of Cruz’s major backers, billionaire PayPal founder Peter Thiel, is gay and supports both same-sex marriage and marijuana legalization.
Kyleen Wright, head of the anti-abortion and anti-gay Texans for Life Coalition, has been one of the loudest screamers. She supports Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst in the July 31 runoff against Cruz. Last week she called Cruz a “Thiel puppet” in a Twitter post. The next day she got into a Twitter spat with a Cruz supporter who was upset that Dewhurst-backer Gary Polland has said nice things about Annise Parker, Houston’s openly gay mayor. Check out the Twitter exchange here:
But while Wright has been arguing about which candidate is a gay-lover, she also has had to defend her support for Texas House Speaker Joe Straus, R-San Antonio. Wright didn’t join other religious-righters in trying to oust Straus from the speaker’s chair after the 2010 elections. His right-wing opponents claim Straus isn’t conservative enough and that he has — horrors! — a connection to Planned Parenthood through his wife. They’re now attacking Wright — and Dewhurst by association — for supporting “pro-Abortion RINOs like Straus.” Wright has defended herself this way:
So Wright says Straus’ wife was only on the advisory board of a Planned Parenthood affiliate that, in any case, “didn’t do abortions.” But Wright has gleefully supported legislation that bars the state from providing funds to Planned Parenthood health clinics that don’t perform abortions either.
We expect the hypocrisy meter to overheat by the time the Senate runoff campaign ends on July 31.
Sounds like the kind of childish behavior that belongs on a playground.
So funny! The “I can hate better than you can hate!” game!
Just more evidence of how morally putrid the R’s have become over the years. As an open gay man and avowed liberal, I would never even consider voting for an R again in my lifetime. That would be like a chicken asking Col. Sanders out on a date.
Homophobic public figures eventually get caught grinding their junk against underage senatorial pages, or hiring their porters from Rentboy.com. The more phobic they are, the more likely they’re on the Larry Craig diet.