Thank you for approving the post and the link. I met this young man and then reviewed Mr. Smith’s record. Consequently, I would vote for Mr. Schoppe for several reasons:
1. Mr. Schoppe supports term limits.
2. Agrees that the government should not bail out private industry – no car co’s, no banks, no private businesses.
3. Agrees with founding, constitutional principles.

I would not vote for Mr. Smith for the following reasons:
1. Mr. Smith used taxpayer dollars to mail campaign literature………
2. Mr. Smith is against term limits (in his office).
3. Has voted for bailouts and socialist leaning items.
4. Mr. Smith is a career politician – isn’t it almost 30 years? Things have only gotten worse in the last 30 years and I think it’s time for him to move on.

Thank you for your inquiry.

I would like to respond to the 4 negative points listed above:
1. The “campaign literature” listed above was a fairly standard congressional franking letter. Our congressmen should report to us what they are doing. All franked letters are reviewed for political content, and this message was no exception.
2. Term limits, applied unilaterally, in an environment where seniority is significant, is self disarming. Until the entire nation is ready for term limits, it would be silly for Texas to apply term limits to ourselves and ensure that we have no committee chairs or ranking members.
3. The vote for TARP, which Representative Smith greatly regrets now, was made because his constituents and his president asked him to vote that way. He may not be as much a maverick at Representative McCaul, but one vote should not impinge on an exceptional 30-year voting record.
4. This point is the same term limits argument as number 2, and needs no further elaboration.

Representative Smith is not my congressman, so I don’t follow him as closely as I do McCaul, but he has a great record. He has voted consistently for Texas values. We don’t have to wonder how he would vote on border issues, or national defense, or abortion, or highway funding – we can look at his overall record and see. Mr. Schoppe has no such record, has not offered any sort of detailed platform, has not demonstrated that he understands the art of compromise, has not shown that he knows how to write a meaningful bill. To trust a man with such responsibility with no record to back him up is difficult for me.

By the way I agree completely with your endorsement of Ken Mercer as our Texas textbooks read more like fiction that history (and the science textbooks teach global warming as fact.)