GOP Guns for EP Young Gun

From The Lion Star Blog by Jaime Abeytia

When he was elected to the state legislature to represent the 78th District of El Paso in Austin, Joe Moody was a young prosecutor.

During his freshman term, the young Moody matured in to an accomplished legislator that would go on to win several accolades from statewide groups for his legislative work, including an award that was once awarded to the current Republican Speaker of the House Joe Strauss.

In a somewhat prophetic post on the conservative blog Refuse the Juice, David K foreshadows Margo’s tactics of negative campaigning. Specifically he writes,

“I think Margo's out-of-town consultant is a huge liability for him. Margo is at the mercy of a Rove era/trained consultant who likes to drop bombs at the last moment in a flurry of public activity so that the opponent can't answer. I'm not sure this works all that well since Rove's tactics have become rather common place in the past 15 years or so. Besides, Margo always seems like the bully when he does this and I think it hurts him with voters who are looking for a way to connect with him.”

So we are now starting to see this tactic seep in to the race. It’s started with the notion that Dee Margo, a man of great wealth is saying Joe Moody was born with a silver spoon in his mouth. Interesting when you consider the now –famous letter sent to El Pasoans by Don Margo, Dee’s son, following his father’s last election loss. I wonder if Margo would characterize his son’s upbringing in a similar manner.

Moody’s father is a prominent El Paso judge and Moody is a graduate of Cathedral High School. He drives a modest pick-up at this point. So his critique isn’t how Moody lives now, its how his parents raise him? Is he really critiquing Judge Moody’s parenting? Or does he have some problem with Catholic education? At any rate, that line of attack doesn’t seem to make sense.

We are now seeing the big-money guys jumping in to the race from out of town. The Texas GOP recently launched a site called the People Vs. Joe Moody. It’s a Photo-shopped image that has been super-imposed in front of an image that is supposed to look like a criminal line-up.

You’d think the GOP had dug up some kind of criminal charges against the former prosecutor!

The only thing missing from the website was the Law and Order sound effect.
So what was the big “case” against Joe Moody? It was similar verbiage in a speech from Governor Perry and a letter from Moody.

Wow!!! What a scandal!!!

So that puts the GOP in a bit of a quandary. Will they build a similar website for Governor Perry? I found this link showing Governor Perry touting some key legislation that was passed in the last session. Perry never mentions who the author of the legislation was, but seems apt to take credit for the legislation.

Oh, yeah, by the way, the author of the legislation? State Representative Joe Moody. Good to see that a conservative Republican Governor is supportive of Moody’s work.