Friday, February 19, 2010

Dallas Morning News endorses Pete Sessions

No big surprise here, but the Dallas Morning News gave Pete Sessions their endorsement in the March GOP primary. Yesterday, when Sharon Grigsby announced on her blog that the endorsement would be in today's paper, one of our Sessions Watch readers posted this snarky note on her blog offering to do it for them:
I'll help write your endorsement of Pete Sessions:

"We wish Pete Sessions weren't so corrupt, we wish he cared more about the constituents he represents, we wish he'd give us a straight answer on questions instead of roundabout non-answers; in fact, we wish he was a totally different person. But we can't give the endorsement to a totally different person, we have to give it to Pete Sessions, 'cause we just like him. Don't ask us why, we just do! We really, really like him!"

C'mon, editorial board. Prove me wrong.
The endorsement wasn't quite as obviously sycophantic as that, just your standard "power of incumbency" nod, saying that Sessions is a better choice because he's been there longer, and the other guy just doesn't have the experience!

But they overlook the fact that he's not much of a leader in Congress. According to GovTrack, "Sessions is a follower according to our statistical analysis of bills in this legislative session. Sessions tends to cosponsors the bills of other Members of Congress who do not cosponsor Sessions’s own bills...Peter Sessions has sponsored 81 bills since Jan 7, 1997 of which 70 haven't made it out of committee and 2 were successfully enacted."

And the Dallas Morning News actually had the nerve to slam challenger David Smith for being partisan--after Pete Sessions said the GOP should use the Taliban as "model for insurgency. The Taliban! Not only is Sessions a hyper-partisan who can't work across party lines--or even with members of his own party--to get bills passed, he can't even find any "good guys" to identify with, he'd rather side with the enemy! Pete Sessions is one of the reasons Washington has turned into such a toxic hyper-partisan cesspool.

At best, we hoped for a "no endorsement" from Dallas Morning News, thinking the paper might follow the lead of all the Republican organizations that have refused to endorse Pete Sessions this time around. But there you have it, another endorsement from Dallas Morning News for Pete Sessions. No surprise there.

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