Friday’s Forum
Steven L. Taylor
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Friday, March 6, 2026
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24 comments
About Steven L. Taylor
Steven L. Taylor is a Professor Emeritus of Political Science and former College of Arts and Sciences Dean. His main areas of expertise include parties, elections, and the institutional design of democracies. His most recent book is the co-authored
A Different Democracy: American Government in a 31-Country Perspective. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Texas and his BA from the University of California, Irvine. He has been blogging since 2003 (originally at the now defunct Poliblog).
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BlueSky.
Now this is getting fun watching Trump manipulate Texas senators.
Trump pressure mounts as Paxton floats Senate race exit
@Scott:
It would be funny if Cornyn did pledge to support the abolishment of the filibuster and, by some magic the Dems took over the senate.
It wasn’t that long ago that Texas had both the dumbest senator (John Cornyn) and the dumbest rep (Louie Gohmert), but those gents lost their titles long ago to abject clowns like Ron Johnson and Lauren Bohbert, and even those two have to fight to maintain their titles with the likes of Markwayne Mullin* and James Comer knocking on the door.
*Soon to be the dumbest DHS secretary.
Rep. Tony Gonzales drops reelection bid amid pressure over affair scandal
Is it my imagination that Republicans (and maybe Democrats) are highly selective on who they demand resignations?
I actually found Tony Gonzales fairly tolerable for a Republican congressman.
@Charley in Cleveland:
You forgot Tommy Tuberville, hands down the dumbest legislator ever. Anywhere. Anytime.
Well, we successfully managed to make it back home. I really over-estimated my energy levels being away from home for 8 days. 😉
Confirmed to have Stage 4 metastatic pancreatic cancer of the neuroendocrine carcinoma variety by two human doctors. With treatment I might get a few more years, without treatment, 6-12 months. Huntsman’s and OHSU will collaborate on it, I will try a couple treatments out here in Wyoming at Huntsman’s, but speed up my moving plans to get to Oregon. I prefer the doctor out there.
Big thanks to Cracker for meeting me for dinner and a coffee, and phone call from Luddite! I wish traffic hadn’t been so bad you couldn’t make it for coffee, Luddite! We’ll have another chance, I suspect.
@Jax:
Get the treatment, girl. We’re with you all the way.
@Scott:
The prediction markets currently have Cornyn as a huge favorite to win the runoff. Paxton is probably just trying to get something in exchange for saving Cornyn the campaign expenses.
@CSK:..
Thinking of you.
Be well.
@Scott:
You find a congresscritter that boinked his aid and it resulted in her self immolation, tolerable? I’ll grant that the R’s pushing him out are doing so out of cynicism rather than morality, but at least that acknowledges that many voters would view his actions as immoral.
@Jax:
We’re pulling for you.
@Scott:
I’d rather them spend a boatload of money on their primary.
1) Who is supposed to surrender?
2) Do they have sufficient control over their country’s armed forces to ensure compliance?
3) How do we get to that point if we keep killing everyone who asserts leadership?
4) And the italicized section is just a lie. Not only will we devote no resources to rebuilding Iran, Trump is going to take control of their oil production and steal billions.
@Michael Reynolds:
Anybody, foreign or domestic, that still believes in Slick Donnie’s glad handing, pie-in-the-sky sales pitches, is delusional beyond help.
“If you can demand unconditional surrender in what isn’t a war, you have acheived Buddha-nature”
-Unknown (certainly not me. But worth sharing.)
“CNN”
@Jax:
Human doctors? Why not Zoidberg?
I hope the treatment works well and has minimal side effects, and that you can get the Wyoming and Oregon stuff squared away quickly. Say “moo” to the cattle.
@Michael Reynolds:
It’s just words. No one knows what Trump means when he says “unconditional surrender”. My own guess is he’s thinking like Germany and Japan at the end of WWII: we’ll write them a new constitution with whatever we want in it. Probably no religious leaders in the government. Probably huge restrictions on their military. Probably they pay us large “damages”. Trump will also believe that it can be done on the cheap, with no massive occupation forces like what Germany and Japan required.
@Michael Reynolds:
Someone early in Afghanistan wrote that invading Afghanistan to defeat the Taliban was like invading Georgia to defeat the rednecks. First, it’s not an organization, it’s a lifestyle. Second, as you well point out, who signs the binding surrender document?
In Afghanistan it turned out Trump signed the surrender.
@gVOR10:
Incorrect. El Taco signed the greatest surrender ever. No one ever surrendered like that before manypeoplesayhat. It was the first surrender, too. He invented the word surrender.
@Michael Cain:
“Hug the enemy” -get too close for them to use their advantage in air power and/or artillery.
The IRGC would be smart to give him an unconditional surrender, as that would compel us to put boots on the ground, and then turn this into an insurgency. Wouldn’t be surprised, when this is over and everybody writes their books, if the truth is Heggie’s Pentagon and the IDF hope to continue to eliminate anyone who even thinks they are in charge of the government to forestall surrender until Iran is as messed up as Iraq was after we invaded, maybe even as bad as Gaza is now.
Hegseth is one of those people who absolutely worships brutality, it appears he can’t even contain his overwhelming joy for conducting it when speaking publicly. It’s always the “others” who are the monsters, never ever ever that guy in the mirror.
Seems the definition of “surrender” is getting cleared up.
“What the president means is that when we he as commander-in-chief of the U.S. armed forces determines that Iran no longer poses a threat to the United States of America and the goals of Operation Epic Fury has been fully realized, than Iran will essentially be in a place of unconditional surrender whether they say it themselves or not,” Leavitt said Friday
Ken Paxton says he’s not dropping out of the Texas Senate race.
@dazedandconfused:
I must have missed the part where the Taco so-called administration ordered all dictionaries destroyed.
@CSK:
I think this time the chaos works for the good guys.