Early voting began today.  Go rummage around in your drawers until you find your voter registration and get yourself to the polls. 

Want to know the best reason to early vote?  Well, other than the obvious one that you might drop dead before you can make it to the polls - the irritating robo calls may stop.  That’s right.  Candidates can find out who’s early voted - just not who they voted for - and quit robocalling you.  Here at Wilco Wise, we know our readers are going to vote - we’re republicans and we know it’s our duty to do so.  We’ll just keep hounding you for the heck of it. 

We’ve got some interesting votes to cast.  Hmmm….where to begin….

How about we start with Precinct One?  The Constable’s race has most of the action.  Will former Austin cop Robert Chody be able to bitchslap the Crybaby Constable, Gary Griffin?   Chody has garnered the endorsement of all the peace officer groups in his precinct, both the County and District Attorney, and two of the three remaining Constables.  Since Griffin didn’t bother to put up a campaign website, rumors notwithstanding, we can only guess that Pct 4 Marty Ruble is trying to keep his powder dry.  We’d sure hate to lose our number one source of blog fodder, but we’re pretty sure his lawsuits, tantrums, and antics won’t be much missed by his constituents if they bounce him out of his office. 

The Commissioner’s race pits incumbent Lisa Birkman against challenger Steve Laukhuf.  Birkman’s sponsorship of the notorious Commissioner’s Court new dress code and speech might cost her a few votes.  One thing we know for sure - she’s definitely against flip flops.  Which is a good stance for politicians with feet of clay.

House District 52 is a run for Mike Krusee’s former seat in the House of Representatives.  After the dust settled on January 2nd, only four filed for the seat.  In ballot order, we have Dee Hobbs, Bryan Daniel, Viv Sullivan, and John Gordon.  We understand Daniel is expecting free ride - what with the major bucks he’s pulled in with a little help from his friends.  However, our crystal ball is predicting a run off for the hand-picked apprentice ayatollah. We might be wrong, but could be Craddick’s little carpet bagger might not make it.  As we’ve said before, this race is ALL about Craddick and, so far, Dee Hobbs is the only candidate who hasn’t left any lip prints on the speaker’s hindquarters.  

Moving up the ticket, we pause at Place 4, Court of Criminal Appeals.  That’s the one with incumbent Paul Womack facing Robert Francis.  Criminy!  The turgid prose Francis spews forth in his campaign material is enough to make a buzzard barf. We heart Womack because he’s one of Wilco World’s very own.  We sure do love the spin he’s put on his ethics violations and lousy work performance – variously blaming ADD, his meds, his doctors, a misdiagnosis.  Whatever.  Hey Professor, what part of personal responsibility and accountability are you missing here?  Do you just skip over those chapters in your UT law classes?  Mea Culpa might have worked the first time you forgot to file the required campaign reports, but not the next six.  After that, it’s your own damn fault.  The winner of this race gets to beat up on Ft Worth dimocrat JR Molina.

While some of us might have to hold our noses to vote for our republican candidates, November’s gonna be like shooting fish in a barrel.

Early Voting starts tomorrow - that’s Tuesday, February 19th for those of you that are date-challenged.  That means there are only 15 days until we know who some of our local red and blue candidates will be.   More about them later.

We say local because it looks like the dimocrats are going to slug it out until sometime in late August when they head into their national convention in Denver.  Some of you may be old enough to remember when ALL presidential candidates were actually *chosen* at national conventions by *cough,cough* actual, living, breathing, delegates - in smoke-filled rooms.  The rest of us heard about this bizarre ritual from our high school government teachers or our parents.   We’re not saying one way is better than another - we just want the dimocrats to continue to slug it out. 

That’s right.  We hope the dimocrat race stays tighter than a tick’s, ahem, well, you catch our drift.  Every dollar Her Royal Clintoness and Borat Obama spend trying to best each other is one less dollar they have to spend fighting our side.  On the down side, we are bombarded with their ferret faces and whiney voices on the TeeVee and radio.  Thank goodness for DVDs, books, and satellite radio - otherwise, there would be no escape from their madness during the next 15 days.

Based on delegate counts so far, it appears McCain is going to be our nominee.  Of the 1,191 delegates required for the nomination, McCain’s has 908, Romney’s (who “suspended” his campaign) has 253, Huckkkabee’s has 245, and Ron Paul has 14.  Huckkkabee says he’s gonna keep on keeping on.  Let’s see - McCain needs 283 to win but the Huckkkster needs 946 to win.  Dude, like that’s gonna happen?   Either you can’t count, you’re just plain stupid, or you have some sort of weird need to make an a$$ out of yourself.  Bottom line?  The Huckkkster’s doing the dimocrats a really big favor.  By continuing his futile race, he’s needlessly using up resources we should be marshalling against the dimocrats.

In a little over two weeks, it might all be over.  Then again, maybe not.  No thanks to the Huckkkster.

Super Tuesday, my a$$.  With just over 20 primaries inflicted upon us, we still haven’t got nominees.  You know what that means…

Keep your hand on your wallets, lock up the little ones and women folk.  Yep, like a swarm of locusts, we’re about to be overrun by presidential hopefuls and their smarmy advance teams.  Not that there are so many of them left.  The Fred Heads died young.  The Giuliani 9-11 ghoul groopies are but ghosts of primaries past.  Mitt Romney is sort of stuck in limbo - or maybe primary purgatory - btw, wtf is a “suspended” campaign?

With any luck we might not see much of McCain or Huckkkabee here in Texas.  They’ve managed to ignore us so far.  Let’s hope our luck holds. 

However, we can sit back and watch the dimocrats go at each other.  It’s gonna be better than Jerry Springer.  Will “Obama Girl” finally get to meet the man of her dreams and film another silly little love song in the capitol and post it on You Tube?  What Will Her Royal Clintoness Do?  Will she shed a tear or flash us some cleavage?

We can hardly wait.  We’ve got Rolaids.