Meet The Candidate - Matt Mackowiak. Yep, it scares us, too!

Matt Mackowiak is Bill Flores’ Campaign Manager. When you hear Bill Flores speak, see his campaign material or the campaign strategy played out, or experience a tactical response from him or the campaign relative to something Chet Edwards does – you are seeing Matt Mackowiak – NOT Bill Flores.

That is my firm belief: that you are NOT seeing Bill Flores. The Bill Flores who has been described to me by dozens of party leaders and supporters is not the one you see. The one you see is trying to win on national issues and losing on local issues. He’s taking statistically calculated positions that are not in congruence with the Conservatives and Republicans in this District – but mesh perfectly with the national party’s playbook.

The quarterback is Matt Mackowiak, who in essence works for the NRCC, whether they pay him or not, because his future clients will come from the NRCC. He is The Candidate for future jobs…gunning for something important in the 2012 election cycle.

The NRCC has a playbook for national politics that includes recruiting self-financing candidates so they can save money yet still control the outcome by providing that candidate with “support” in the form of “consultants” like Matt whom they say are top-notch.

The self-financed Bill Flores has never done this before. He is smart enough to let people who know what they are doing do it, which is probably one of the keys to his success in business. The Henry Ford rule in practice: I’m not the smartest guy in this industry…so I hire the smartest guy.

However, Matt is 28, has never run a campaign before, and has only cut his teeth in the field of public relations in Washington, better known as the field of “spin.” A field he perfected as Spokesperson for Kay Bailey Hutchison…most likely the connection that got him the position with Bill, who was an ardent supporter of her gubernatorial run.

Bill is a straight shooting Texan. So are (more…)

My apology is for more than Bill. It includes his entire family and campaign, except The Candidate, whom I mentioned in my previous post is not Bill Flores, but somebody completely different in name, body and soul. This is not some trick of words. The Candidate is really some entirely different person than Bill Flores. But I will save that for another post…

First, I am sorry if my blog has degenerated into some pit of nitpicking or anger, or if it even comes across that way. I want to focus on facts, and in my mind that is what I am doing every time I write. But I am now aware that it can come across in ways I do not intend, no matter how hard I try to keep it neutral.

I know that some readers see me as a kook or wing-nut. As my confidant said to me, (more…)

Colin Witt, most recently the Communications Director for the 2010 Rob Curnock For Congress campaign, has launched his long-anticipated blog. You can find it at www.ColinWitt.com.

Colin is a talented and smart young man, wise in his years of Central Texas living and in tune with the politics of Middle America – and Middle Texas. He hails from the Waco area, right smack in the middle of Congressional District 17.

As a member of the media I enjoyed working with Colin while he juggled campaign communications, and Colin was always respectful of my time and my questions…no matter how hard they were. Colin gave me complete (more…)

This post is primarily for people who want clarification from my Follow Friday tweet about JIDF. But if you read it before seeing that #FF tweet, then it still clarifies and the link to follow if you choose is at the bottom of the post.

Here’s the exchange I will refer to throughout this post. I suggest you either read it first or this post first…but don’t try to read them concurrently. Below is the impression I got; it’s no commentary on the person or the organization, just the behavior I encountered.

I caught this conversation quite by accident @JIDF (Jewish Internet Defense Force, Run by founder David Appletree) had with @ConchoQueen (someone I didn’t run across until this exchange). What you see is what I saw. I chimed in when I saw JIDF say he would rather “burn in hell” than “accept Jesus as anything other than a regular guy.”

I saw this as an ad hominem attack on Christians – or at least a rude and unnecessary punch. You don’t need to use that kind of language to say you don’t have any intention of following Christ. In the leadership position David is in, relative to his stated purpose for the JIDF (covered later), it’s probably something you would just want to let pass. Imagine William Bennett saying “I would rather burn in Hell than accept that Moses was (more…)

Recently, there have been some conversations on facebook and comments on this blog that have gotten some attention from various camps. I even tweeted last Friday the following:

Sometimes I just don’t understand the @flores4congress campaign. The latest FB tactic toward me is fascinating. Am I THAT important? #tx17

It’s a rhetorical question…

To be clear, this was an unexpected Friend Request that I was tweeting about. What made it a campaign tactic instead of a request of friendship from one person to another with no ulterior motives, pretense, tactics, or strategies involved was that at the same time, American Herald Scott Kimble and American Write-In Colin Witt received the request from the same person.

You’ll recall these two gentlemen were top officials in the Rob Curnock campaign. Me, I’m just a (more…)

Envy. One of the seven deadly sins.

Envy is the driving force in liberal politics, and fuels the engine of liberal support, organized labor.

Unions.

I’m not anti-union. One of my dearest, best friends is a hard working union member who fights for the safe conditions of his colleagues everyday. I’ve worked in union shops before, and several friends continue to this day to belong to unions. Unions have their usefulness, but it’s not in gaining fair pay.

I’m anti-anti-Capitalist. Honest pay for honest work. You get what you earn by the market deciding what it will pay and you deciding what you will accept. If you don’t like it, you go sell your wares somewhere else or lower your price.

That’s what I do every day in my business. Despite my friend telling me that the Union got us week (more…)

Memorial Day weekend.  8 hour drive to the Davis Mountains underway, listening to the radio, bouncing along in the Jeep, thinking of beautiful scenery, good food, hunting some wild pigs, just about anything except politics.  I have been so wrapped up in the CD 17 and State Senate 22 races I had forgotten what it was like not to think about the sorry state our Nation and State are in.

We arrived in Fort Davis after the day’s festivities at the U Up U Down Ranch – fifth and sixth grade classes experiencing ranching.  Fathers, mothers, grandparents, uncles and aunts demonstrating ranch life, shoeing a horse, fixing the windmill, roping and branding the steers, listening to songs around the campfire.  The purpose:  teaching children the heritage of ranching and overcoming the daily bombardment of political correctness and socialistic indoctrination against it.  Strike 1! (more…)

Tomorrow American Writes will be publishing the first blog post from someone other than me, The American Writer.

Scott Kimble will be our first American Herald. You can read all about him and what an American Herald is by clicking on the new category at the very top of the page – American Heralds.

I am very glad to welcome Scott. He brings a conservative perspective with a “boots on the ground” experience within the Central Texas political environment, and has been intimately involved for the last year with the Rob Curnock campaign. If his first submission is any indication – you will enjoy Scott’s missives and musings quite a bit!

Scott comes out of the gate on his first post pulling no punches and heading straight between the eyes of (more…)

Constitutional and Conservative Bill Randall is in the runoff on June 22 in North Carolina 13. He’s against a Country Club Republican who is attempting to hide his anti-Tea Party and Pro-Choice leanings.

Constitutional and Conservative Jaynee Germond is running in Oregon 4 against a late-comer rich guy picked by the NRCC, after running for a year against another relatively regular guy in the race. The rich dude just got in and dropped a quarter million into the race. Sound familiar? The primary is tomorrow.

Constitutional and Conservative Jake Towne is in Pennsylvania. Jake is an Independent Constitutional Candidate who wants to represent District 15 – the Lehigh Valley – where my own now-liberal Dad went to school.

Constitutional and Conservative John Dennis is in California 8, the seat Nancy Pelosi holds.

Constitutional and Conservative Donald Strong is in Tennessee; Alex Snitker is in Florida; RJ Harris is in Oklahoma, as is Howard Houchen. And Tony Gentile is in Louisiana.

And these are just a few. US House and Senate Candidates.

I have been spinning my wheels on Constitution-Sovereignty-denying and recent convert to Republican Party Pro-Choicer Bill Flores and I accept now that it’s a futile effort were I to continue writing alone. All it does is take me away from the obligations I have to these people above and their genuinely Constitution-based ideologies. So I won’t be writing alone… (more…)

My mother died the week before Easter.

Her body was discovered by my step-sister the Wednesday before, and nobody had been able to reach her since Sunday prior. She died alone sometime between Palm Sunday and the moment before my step-sister broke down the door. (more…)