More proof arrived Friday that Rep. Beto O’Rourke, D-Texas is either an incompetent politician or has decided that he is doomed to lose his quest to take away Ted Cruz’s Senate seat. O’Rourke appeared on Bill Maher’s show, his first bad mistake. Then when the obnoxious political shock jock referred to Cruz, a first-term United States senator and former presidential candidate, as a “giant a-hole” O’Rourke, who is being regarded by national Democrats as the second coming of Bobby Kennedy, agreed. Cruz must be pinching himself, wondering how he had stumbled into such good fortune.

O’Rourke, a flawed candidate

O’Rourke, who despite his use of a childhood nickname, is Irish and not Hispanic (his given name is “Robert), has already developed a solid reputation for saying alarming things on the stump. He tends to lace his speeches with F-bombs. He also suggested that he saw no reason why a civilian should be able to buy an AR-15, a popular semiautomatic rifle that the Florida school shooter used to massacre 17 people last month. O’Rourke said this in Texas, a state where “common sense gun control” refers to taking a steady aim.

Beto the second coming of Wendy Davis

Despite O’Rourke’s apparent flaws as a candidate, national Democrats and liberal donors are pouring money into his campaign, hence the media stories about how he is killing Cruz in fundraising.

Texans, however, have seen this movie before. Two years ago a state senator named Wendy Davis was thought to be the great left hope in her run for governor. Gregg Abbott beat her by 20 points.

The Texas Observer has articulated the problem for Democrats neatly. The left is enraptured by the idea of turning Texas blue and are wasting a lot of money on Beto O’Rourke trying to make it happen.

The recent primaries demonstrated the situation neatly. Even though Democrats doubled their turnout over 2014, more than half a million more Republicans showed up at the polls. The results presage a stomping in November.

Republicans are likely to gain seats in the Senate regardless what happens, due to a number of precarious Democrats in the upper body attempting to fend off defeat.

National Democrats would be well advised to spend money propping up those incumbents rather than chasing the dream of knocking off Ted Cruz, a man they loathe and despise second only to President Donald Trump.

The irony is that Cruz is likely to run up the score, carrying some down-ballot Republicans with him, complicating Democrats’ dreams of retaking the House. Cruz would, therefore, be well positioned to become a power in the Senate and a viable presidential candidate in 2024.
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