(The cartoon above is by Nick Anderson in the Houston Chronicle.)I was taught growing up that a person is judged by the company he/she keeps. If you hang around racists, misogynists, or pedophiles, then you will be tarred with that same brush (regardless of how innocent you may consider yourself to be). Evidently no one has ever let Texas gubernatorial candidate Greg Abbott in on that fact, because he went for the trifecta when he invited Ted Nugent to join his campaign.
And he did that shortly after Nugent had called the President of the United States a "subhuman mongrel". Following such a racist statement by Nugent, Abbott could have quietly asked Nugent to not appear with him -- making it clear that such racist rhetoric would not be tolerated by his campaign. But he didn't -- and that tells me that Abbott either approves of Nugent's racism, or he has some extremely poor judgment. Either one would make him unqualified to be the governor of any state.
Abbott has refused to condemn Nugent for his "beyond the pale" statement, but he did try to back-pedal a bit by saying he was just trying to appeal to the Texans for whom owning a gun is a sacred right. That won't fly. There are many ways to let voters know he supports gun owners without climbing down into the gutter with a know racist and misogynist. Hell, even most gun owners don't want to affiliate themselves with Nugent.
You may have heard that Nugent apologized for calling the president a racist name. But he did NOT. He apologized to Texas Republican leaders like Abbott for using a term that reflected badly on them. But he did not apologize to the president -- the person to whom he owed an apology. In fact, while making his "apology", he made it very clear that he was not apologizing to the president.
It seems the Texas Republican Party is racing to the bottom in its gubernatorial candidates. I didn't think they could find anyone worse than George Bush, but they did when they nominated Rick Perry. Now they have found a candidate (Greg Abbott) that's worse than Perry. It makes me wonder -- just how far down can they go?
NOTE -- Even some right-wingers think Abbott went too far this time, and showed very poor judgment. The Dallas Morning News, a newspaper with a history of supporting right-wing Republicans, wrote an editorial condemning Abbott for campaigning with Nugent. That editorial is well worth reading.
