Cheerleader vs. Cheerleader

Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison has been on the campaign trail for a while now trading barbs with current governor Rick Perry. But yesterday, she made it official. From her old high school in LaMarque (40 miles SE of Houston), Hutchison announced that she is an official candidate for the office of governor in the 2010 Texas Republican primary.

That means the Republican primary will be between former University of Texas cheerleader Hutchison and former Texas A and M cheerleader Perry. And it's shaping up to be a very expensive and nasty primary campaign. Experts believe that Hutchison and Perry will break all previous records on campaign expenditure by a large margin.

Both candidates have been making accusations aimed at the other, and we are still at least seven months from the primary voting. Some Republicans are even afraid the primary fight will get nasty enough to split the Texas Republican Party. It would not take many of the loser's supporters staying home to throw the general election to the Democrats.

As for the Democrats, so far there is only one announced candidate -- Tom Schieffer, who served as an ambassador to both Australia and Japan during the Bush administration. Humorist, singer and author Kinky Friedman is currently raising funds, and will probably announce his candidacy soon.

Some Democrats are also urging former Travis County District Attorney Ronnie Earle to enter the race. There are two drawbacks to an Earle candidacy -- he may not have enough name recognition to defeat Schieffer or Friedman, and he is the DA who filed charges against Tom Delay, causing his fall from power. An Earle candidacy could bring the two warring factions of the Republican Party back together again.

Some media members have tried to paint the Republican primary as a right-winger (Perry) against a moderate (Hutchison). That simply is not true. Both are hardcore right-wingers. All you have to do to know this is to look at a couple of Hutchison's most high-profile supporters -- Dick Armey and Phil Gramm. You can't get any further to the right in Texas than these two nuts.