Townhall picks up on Kay's income tax "misstatement"

A couple of days ago, the illustrious and industrious Wayne Slater wrote an article largely short circuiting one of Kay's stump speech claims, namely that she was the only person in Texas politics at one point who was against a state income tax.

I blogged about it on Rick vs. Kay (link), and my coverage sparked some controversy. It seems that Kay's supporters thought I was being unfair in my portrayal of the article, so I went back after the fact and added the portions they wanted included (although Wayne Slater or someone pretending to be him did say my portrayal of his article was legit). Just to be doubly deferential to them, I will post the parts they wanted to emphasize here again...

Hutchison made a similar claim in 1993 when she ran for Senate, stirring complaints she was exaggerating. Back then, one ally came to her defense: Rick Perry.

“She led the charge against a state income tax,” Perry told a reporter. “Was I a foot soldier in her army? Yes.”

As I wrote before, I really don't see how that quote is "devastating" to the Rick team. The vast majority of people I have spoken with about Wayne Slater's article seem to think the article undermines Kay's credibility and takes away a big talking point from her stump speech.

Thinking about it, I felt pretty upset that I would allow myself to be baited and goaded into something like editing a blog just to make a couple of anonymous Kay supporters happy. The bottom line is that Kay has been going around claiming credit for brave and singular opposition to a state income tax. It turns out Rick was also against an income tax, and so were most other Democrats and Republicans alike at the time. It was not even really a controversial issue. From Wayne Slater's article, there is a "devastating" line I did not include before. Here it is now...

The two Hutchison op-eds published in The Dallas Morning News, one in June 1991 and the other in February 1992, make scant reference to an income tax.

Scant reference? Can someone from Kay's team send me the op-eds if that's not true? I would gladly post them here in their entirety if Wayne Slater is mischaracterizing the references as "scant."

Suggesting a brand new income tax would be a big problem for any politician of either party, which is why Kay's lone wolf claim didn't really pass the smell test all along.

The right of center Townhall blog has also picked up on this issue (hat tip to The Hill's blog for tuning me in to it-- link), and Townhall is far more hard on Kay than I or Wayne Slater were on Wednesday (link). Excerpts follow:

If her own campaign acknowledges that the Senator is out there using falsehoods during stump speeches, what does that say about her leadership? Volumes -- but not in the way the KBH campaign wants it to…and goes along with her problems convincing conservatives she can be trusted.

Conservatives these days are a cantankerous bunch. They are not happy with almost any politician. They are also typically harder on their own Republicans than on Democrats, because Democrats are supposed to be liberals, whereas a lot of Republicans lost their way over the years because too many conservatives made too many excuses for too many big spending Republicans.

Kay's moves in the past couple of months are not helping her win these skeptical voters over. I should know. I am a cantankerous conservative myself, and I am skeptical of almost all politicians. Some days, I just want to throw all the bums out and start over. Unfortunately all that would happen is new bums without enough experience would take over. See the Obama administration for great evidence of that.

I understand being frustrated when the news doesn't go your candidate's way. I know that in a campaign bubble you might feel like the whole world is speaking some foreign language and everyone else just "doesn't get" what you're trying to put out there, especially the liberal media. I have been there and done that. In the end, however, from a conservative Republican primary voter perspective, Kay has just plain had a tough run over the past couple of months, notwithstanding at least one outstanding Senate amendment yesterday (link).

I am a pretty typical Republican in that I gripe and whine about liberal bias in the mainstream media, but I think at the end of the day if you are getting bad liberal media coverage AND bad stories in the conservative blog-o-sphere, you must be doing something wrong. It's an indication that Kay thinks she has a big lead and can coast in to victory. I don't think that inclination is a winning strategy for her in the Texas Republican primary.