Has Beto Already Blown It? Here Are His Three Biggest Blunders

Right after the November elections, I returned to PJ Media with a warning about the future. Beto O’Rourke had just come within a whisker of winning a Senate race in Texas. He still lost, but he’s a Democrat. Democrats have not won any statewide race in Texas this century. Not one. But there were, as of November 2018, three plausible reasons Beto was the Democrat to beat going into 2020. He had certainly set Texas Republicans on edge, both with his fundraising prowess and the effectiveness of his message.

Those yard signs were everywhere.

Four months is now a lifetime in politics. That’s about 16 thousand news cycles, any one of which can change the world as we know it. Since November Beto went from golden boy to the Boy Blunder. Here are his three greatest mistakes that may cost him his shot at glory.

1. He revealed his inner Beto, who turns out to be a dull weirdo.

Have you read Beto’s travelog? After setting a pile of other people’s money on fire to lose to Sen. Ted Cruz, Beto suddenly found himself unemployed. In that situation, most people look for work. Beto is rich, so he wandered off to look for himself. Or per the old Simon and Garfunkel song, to look for America. And he blogs this search on Medium.

Turns out he’s a pretty boring guy and a derivative blogger. Here’s a taste:

I was in Tucumcari yesterday. Trying to learn more about the town that my great-grandparents lived in more than a hundred years ago. James O’Rourke, son of Irish immigrants, and Anna Lloyd who immigrated to the U.S. from Wales.

Wait, Beto’s not Hispanic? Who knew?

I stayed at the Motel Safari, one of these classic Route 66 motels. Mid-century everything. I talked to the owner for a bit. He moved from Tennessee and away from corporate life. Starting over.

It’s all like that, the dull opener followed by the sentence fragment and the strained observation of some detail. Hunter S. Thompson did it so much better a long time ago. You’re boring, Beto. #Sorrynotsorry.

By the way, where’s Beto’s family while he’s wandering about, lamely living out an old Willie Nelson song?

2. He livestreamed his dental hygiene.

Nothing against dentists, but no one likes to go to the dentist. So what’s Beto’s big idea for keeping pace with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on social media? He livestreamed his teeth cleaning. I’m sure you’ve seen the screen shot. It’s ghastly. It’s horrifying. And it’s desperate.

Enough said.

3. He endorsed a policy proposal without actually seeing the proposal first.

This blunder is the most significant of the three. It speaks to his judgement.

This week Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez released her Green New Deal. It’s the policy the New York liberal and titan of Twitter ran and won on, so she’s all in on it. But even while she had not proffered any actual detail or real direction, Beto went ahead and endorsed it anyway.

This was not smart. This is what we call in Texas buying a “pig in a poke,”and you never buy a pig in a poke. You wouldn’t buy a house without seeing it first. You wouldn’t hire a new person without meeting them. Why would you attach your name to a policy proposal when it’s still vaporware?

Smart people wouldn’t. Gullible rubes would. Beto raised his hand and cheerily confessed he’s the latter. Now the policy is out, and it’s a bid to convert the world’s most advanced economy into pre-industrial Venezuela. It would wipe the Texas energy industry out, though as an unintended consequence it would bring new life to the mining industries. They dig big holes in the ground to extract the rare earth and other minerals needed to replace all of our current energy sources with solar power as the Green New Deal demands. So there’s that from the Green New Deal: Let’s replace slender pipes with gigantic craters and caves.

AOC’s GND is DOA. Even Pelosi is having none of it, giving AOC what amounted to a condescending pat on the head and a “Bless your little heart!”

So Beto is jumping the shark. He’s done. Stick a fork in him. For this week, anyway.

Politics being what it is now, he can be down and out, then rise like a phoenix from the ashes of his own mistakes a dozen times between now and the 2020 primaries. He’s still as likely as anyone to end up on the Democrat ticket somehow, assuming he never appeared in blackface anywhere. He almost won — in Texas! And he’s probably one banal blog post away from landing a gig with the New York Times.