Brian Birdwell's victory in SD22 is a win for Rick...

Last night, tea party favorite Brian Birdwell beat shady insider lobbyist and former senator and now establishment candidate David Sibley...

This is a win for Rick.

How so?

First, it is a stick in the craw of Kip Averitt who has never been friendly to Rick or the conservative movement in the legislature...

Second it shows that the conventional wisdom is way off base and conservatives are being undervalued by the media and the establishment... yesterday morning everyone in the establishment circles I run in was blustering about a big win for Sibley because of high turnout in the Waco area...

What they didn't understand was that the Waco tea party was turning out for Brian Birdwell... just as they will turn out for Rick Perry...

The Empower Texans are fired up about it (link). Excerpt follows...

Talk about a case of elitist conceit. Outgoing State Sen. Kip Averitt (R-Waco) managed to badly mangle his transition into political retirement, with a ham-handed withdrawal, forcing a series of very costly elections. Now, because a conservative has won the seat to fill his unexpired term, the Waco moderate is considering not withdrawing from the November ballot. And some politicos wonder why so many people have given up on what they see as a corrupt, good-old-boy system.

Averitt's comments in the online news source Texas Tribune came out on Tuesday, curiously coinciding with the special election to fill the unexpired term created when Averitt resigned his seat for vague health reasons.

By way of history, Mr. Averitt announced he wouldn't seek re-election too late for his name to be removed from the 2010 March primary ballot. Through a series of backroom dealings and whisper campaigns, he still managed to win the primary. That means absent other action, he is the GOP nominee for November. So then he resigned his seat so he could give his predecessor (lobbyist David Sibley) a chance to re-take the seat in a special election.

But he has cynically held on to the nomination – apparently as a trump in case the voters got uppity.

As they did. It seems voters weren't interested in having a squishy senator-turned-lobbyist in the seat. After all, he stepped out a decade ago to go take up a lobby practice (representing some taxing entities, by the way) -- even listing his Austin home as his primary residence for tax purposes.

There is a headwind that liberals and "moderate" conservatives are running into...