“Big John” Cornyn. Now that’s a big one, all right. The junior senator from Texas with the ultra-conservative voting record — known to Dubya as “Corn Dog” and to the rest of us as the president’s “lap dog” because he faithfully does his master’s bidding — may be meeting his match when he faces soldier-statesman Democrat Rick Noriega in the general election.
In the meantime, let him think he’s “Big John.” Just hope he doesn’t fall off that horse.
Thorne Dreyer / The Rag Blog
Texas Senator Cornyn Backs Away
From Wild-West Themed Campaign Video
By Jason Linkins / June 16, 2008
“My staff convinced me it was a good idea…Maybe I need a new staff.”
Those words were spoken by Texas Senator John Cornyn after his staff produced the attached video. Intended as an introduction to the Republican Party of Texas state convention, the video, featuring awesomely overwrought voice overs and the most stoned gospel chorus ever assembled, basically depicts Cornyn as a dull-witted rodeo clown who never descends from his horse or stops dressing like Jon Voight in Midnight Cowboy.
The Austin-American Statesman finds Cornyn gamely attempting to defend the terrible video, saying, “It’s actually an attempt to bring a little humor to a subject I take very seriously. We’re going to have to think differently this year, work smarter and harder, and bury the ‘same-ole, same-ole’ politics of the past.” By which he means: do everything in super, super, super, super slow-motion, apparently.
Source. / The Huffington Post.
Holly Shulman, press secretary to Rick Noriega, the Democratic nominee challenging Cornyn in November, responded: “Cornyn’s call for change today is ironic given his long record of serving Washington special interests instead of Texas families. Texas families are demanding real change – and real solutions to their every day problems. Texans need a senator who will take action, not just be a rubber stamp for the Bush administration’s failed policies as this junior senator has been for the entirety of his time in office.”
Judge the cowboy — uh, video — for yourself.
W. Gardner Selby / Austin American-Statesman / June 16, 2008
See the video at The Huffington Post
The Rag Blog
Speaking as someone who also grew up in San Antonio, and who knows Senator Cornyn’s sister, Olivia (a liberal Democrat) well, I’m having trouble keeping a straight face long enough to write this. I have never seen anything sillier. John Cornyn is a preppy, Oxford-shoe wearing, silk-tie-in-a-hurricane kind of Texan, which is to say, not my kind of Texan. He looks positively inane in this video.
This is truly hilarious — the part about “making lesser states squirm” should be played over a loudspeaker on the Senate floor; way to win friends and influence people, Cornster!
I tried to leave a message on Huffington Post — there are a lot of hilarious comments there — directing interested folks to the news coverage of the MDS anti-“Corn Dog” demonstration last spring, but didn’t