TX SEN: Standing By Our Candidate

Evidently, the folks over at Camp Watts thought they could make some serious political hay by playing tit-for-tat politics with the mainstream media with a quote that, when taken out of context, wasn’t exactly something the netroots would like to hear.

Charles perhaps sums up best the feelings of the Texas Netroots on this one:

The bottom line is that my colleagues and I who have been supporting Rick Noriega continue to do so. We’ve talked to him, and we know this was not a true reflection of his opinions. It was a screwup - a screwup by the campaign to include that bit in the speech in a misguided attempt at “balance”, and a screwup on Rick’s part by reading it as was instead of pushing back, since he knows full well that isn’t what he believes. Rick is a supporter of blogs - no surprise, since the blogosphere has been a big supporter of him - and I know he has no intention of triangulating against, well, folks like me. I know he’s going to address this himself directly very soon, and I know that we’ll never hear him say that sort of thing again. He made a mistake, but being the standup guy that he is, he’s owning it and he’ll make it right.

And, what Charles says is 100 percent correct. McBlogger offers more:

While Mr. Aldrete may not have defined the ‘blogs’ closely enough in the speech, we do know that was the intent, to talk about Cornyn’s divisiveness and poor leadership. We honestly can’t believe any reporter in the MSM would have been foolish enough to run with a story being pimped by a simple political operative who pretends that there’ s nothing to see in the story of the overwhelming silence of the pro-Watts online support.

Within those last few words lies the paradox: there is little pro-Watts support evident online. Which brings up another important point.

It doesn’t take a PhD in political science to realize that Watts’ camp, while they probably could have no doubt found some other dirty trick to pimp around for a month, picked this one. Why? Because they wanted to drive a wedge between Rick Noriega and his strong, early supporters: the Texas Netroots.

Watts and his campaign seriously underestimated the Texas Netroots’ potential for impact–financial and otherwise–in this race from day one. There were little or no overtures from the Watts camp to the netroots. Evidently Watts believed that with three million dollars to dump on the primary, he could buy the necessary name recognition and good publicity that the Netroots can help provide.

When things started to get a little contentious, when Watts’ campaign realized they had missed the boat and the groundswell of Netroots support wasn’t in their favor, and when Draft Rick and Rick Noriega took off in the blogosphere, Camp Watts decided to see if we’d throw our candidate under a bus and come running in their direction.

Well, we didn’t. And, we’re not. It’s a dimension of this dirty trick you won’t often hear talked about and probably won’t see addressed by the Mainstream media, but Watts’ attack on Rick Noriega was a not-so-thinly veiled assault on the Texas netroots. And, for Watts, it was a major mistake to make. Any chance he may have had with even those who are undecided is probably gone. And, on the off chance he should win the nomination, I am sure there are other races around Texas the netroots would care to focus on rather than offer him assistance.

You can buy a hell of a lot of things in a campaign with unlimited millions. But you can’t buy a blogosphere.

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