The Geezer Is NOT A Maverick!

The Geezer wouldn't know a Maverick if one came up and kicked him in the ass. The Geezer has been McNasty all his life. That means he was a wise-cracking smartass who thought the rules did not apply to him. It is no coincidence that The Geezer voted with The Dubster 90%+ of the time. Smartasses of a feather flock together. The Geezer can call himself a Maverick until the cows come home and he will NEVER be a Maverick. If this is (fair & balanced) male bovine excrement, so be it.

[x Daily Kos Blog]
True History: Real Mavericks Were Democrats And Progressives
by Andy Ternay

Conservatives are thieves; if you visit this site, you know that. You also know that conservatives and authoritarians know that progressive concepts hold great appeal and great power and that is why they steal and pervert the meanings of those words.

They linked compassionate, a progressive word if there ever is one, with conservatism to steal its power for their own use.

Did you know that they have also done stolen to to the word maverick? It's true — the word maverick used to be the proud property of progressives. Most modern Democrats have not a clue why calling McCain a "maverick" should offend them to the core. I'm here to tell you why, as Democrats and as progressives, you should be offended every time you hear John McCain referred to as a maverick.

Conservative authoritarians stole that word from us.

I know about this history because I married into the Maverick family — and as a true Maverick, my wife kept her maiden name.

The Texas Mavericks have a long and proud progressive and Democratic heritage. It is the heritage of fighting for equality for all Texans and all Americans. As Democrats, this is our heritage and you should know what the media and the Republicans have taken.

The first Maverick to enter Democratic history was Samuel Augustus Maverick (July 23, 1803–September 2, 1870) a Texas revolutionary, lawyer, and politician.

He fought in the Texas Revolution against Mexico helping capture of San Antonio. The citizens of San Antonio elected him to Texas' Congress (remember, Texas was it's own country then. It kinda still is now).

Shamefully, he owned slaves and supported the Confederacy. Still, the seeds of the progressive philosophy were there as shown by Sam Maverick's choice to champion the rights of Hispanics, fighting for them to be treated as equals — not a popular move in that day and age.

The term maverick originated because Sam Maverick refused to brand his cattle. So unbranded cattle became mavericks and then over time, independent, "unbranded" people - those driven by personal principles, not party platform — became known as mavericks. I can vouch that this is a Maverick family trait that has not diminished with over the generations.

The Mavericks who were and are much closer to the Democratic progressive principles we fight for today were Congressman Maury Maverick, Sr. and his son, Maury Maverick, Jr. In 1934, Hispanic voters helped put Maury Maverick, a World War I veteran, into Congress.

A huge fan of the New Deal, Maury Maverick fought like hell to help FDR bring relief to Americans hit hard by the Great Depression:

As a New Deal congressman he attracted national attention as the organizer of a group of "maverick" congressmen who tried to "out-New Deal" the New Deal. He was influential in... the defeat of bills that threatened civil liberties.

Maury Maverick consistently enraged the conservative Texas Democrats who finally defeated him in a primary. Maury Maverick then ran for mayor of San Antonio — and won. A contemporary article from 1939 describes Maverick's victory:

"Maverick, in a record-shattering vote, was swept into office, defeating the very machine that last summer prevented his reelection to Congress. His election came just one hundred years after his grandfather, the late Samuel Maverick, was named mayor of San Antonio."

Of most immediate significance to Texas is the fact that for the first time in twenty years the power of one of America's mightiest old political machines is broken... People on the streets on May 10 told each other over and over, "The machine is dead" — as though only by repeating it could they come to believe it.

Maury Maverick (called simply "Maury" by all San Antonians) not only overthrew the machine that defeated him last August, but he brought the New Deal to San Antonio. The historic old city has usually been very conservative; and when Maverick was sent to Congress it was because of his pioneer stock and his tremendous personal popularity, not because of his outspoken progressive views. Striking evidence of a quickened liberalism in the South is the fact that he now holds the most potent position in Texas local politics, less than a year after his defeat in the congressional primaries and in the face of the same virulent opposition which branded him a communist, a rabble-rouser and a CIO-lover.

Sounds just like the tactics of conservatives today, doesn't it? After allowing the Communist Party to hold a rally on behalf of Hispanic women who were paid a pittance to gather pecans, San Antonio voters turned him out of office. Maury Maverick went on to serve on FDR's Smaller War Plants Corporation board in World War II.

His son, Maury Maverick Jr. was a tireless warrior for progressive causes.

Like his father and great grandfather, he too served — in World War II. A well known activist, newspaper columnist and member of the Texas House of Representatives, Maury Maverick Jr. may well have done more to thwart the schemes of Texas conservatives than anybody else until Ann Richards. You get a feel for the man when you read the headline of his New York Time Obituary: "Maury Maverick Jr., 82, Champion of the Unpopular." From the obituary:

"Maury Maverick Jr., a cantankerous Texas liberal who regarded his passionate public pursuit of unpopular causes -- as a civil liberties lawyer, a legislator and a newspaper columnist -- to be his proud birthright, died Tuesday in his native San Antonio...."

Mr. Maverick, whom the editor Willie Morris once termed "the last angry man in America," contested Jim Crow laws, supported labor unions and derailed an effort by the Texas Legislature to extend the death penalty to Communist Party members. He defended draft resisters, represented atheists and won a Supreme Court case against the F.B.I.'s seizure of publications from a Texas bookstore on charges that they were seditious.

A more personal remembrance of Maury Maverick, Jr. details the causes that were close to his heart:

Maury was a people’s hero. He’d stand up for you if you were ordinary folk whose rights were beat to shreds. He’d take on the toughest fights. He fought for civil rights and civil liberties in the days of Jim Crow and Joe McCarthy. He fought the Red Scare as a member of the Texas Legislature. He successfully defended Texas Communist Party Secretary John Stanford’s rights against search and seizure. He showed the U.S. Supreme Court, including Justice Hugo Black, that among the items seized were the writings of Pope John XXIII and those of Justice Black. You know he enjoyed that. He talked about the wounds from those battles like they were old war wounds. But you also knew they took their toll. Maury probably represented more conscientious objectors during the Vietnam War than anyone in the country. And most of them were farm boys or boys from the inner city who’d only begun to think about war once they were already in the service. Maury worked to get them out. That was a hard row to hoe.

Maury Maverick Jr.'s last newspaper column, written in January 2003, right before his death, condemned the imminent Iraq War as unjust.

I wish Maury Maverick could have seen Barack Obama accept the nomination. He would have been so proud of his Democratic party and his country.

If I had the chance to say just one thing to John McCain, I know exactly what I would say:

"Senator, I married a Maverick. I know the Maverick family. Maury Maverick, Jr. is a hero of mine. Senator, you are no Maverick."

[Andy Ternay is a Garland (TX) Precinct Chair in Dallas County. He is a self-described Progressive activist for over twenty five years and Texas Democrat since Ann Richards was elected Governor in 1990. Ternay subscribes to Will Rogers' aphorism: "I don't belong to an organized party — I'm a Democrat."]

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