A Texas Primary Update

And with it, an update on the Tea Party in Texas:

And right-wing fervor is far from dead in Texas, as the results further down the ballot showed. Sure, the Tea Party-backed challenge to incumbent Representative Pete Sessions failed by a 2-to-1 margin. But the incumbent lieutenant governor, David Dewhurst, was running a distant second to a conservative talk-show host, Dan Patrick. Poor David Dewhurst: Two years ago, he was the odds-on favorite to be Texas's next U.S. senator. Then he got knocked out by a political newcomer named Ted Cruz, and now he's fighting just to keep his current second-fiddle job. In a recent debate, all four lieutenant-governor candidates opposed legalizing undocumented immigrants, endorsed the teaching of creationism in public schools, and decried a judge's recent decision to take a brain-dead pregnant woman off life support. Since neither candidate got 50 percent of the vote, Patrick and Dewhurst will meet again in a May runoff.
In the Republican primary for agriculture commissioner, the candidate endorsed by the Texas Farm Bureau and baseball legend Nolan Ryan was polling dead last of four candidates, while a former state legislator under ethics investigationwho'd claimed the Tea Party mantle took the top spot. (This is an especially interesting result if you've followed the declining clout of agricultural interests in the GOP, as I have.) That race, too, will be decided in a runoff.
Meanwhile, 90-year-old Representative Ralph Hall, the oldest sitting member in House history, was forced into a runoff by a challenger who argued it was time for new blood but did not call himself a Tea Partier. Hall, a former Democrat, recently declared himself "healthy as a radish" and once told Mitt Romney he liked Mormons because they "give me those airplane bottles of booze when we’re on a flight." George P. Bush, the fourth-generation heir to the Bush political dynasty (he's George W.'s nephew and Jeb's son), is poised to claim his first elected office after decisively winning his primary for the powerful statewide post of land commissioner.

Glad I'm not in Texas.  However, I would definitely vote for Ralph Hall just for making that comment about liking Mormons. George P. Bush?  Seriously?  The article also mentions lunatic Steve Stockman getting retired from Congress by losing mightily to John Cornyn.  I won't miss his idiot tweets.