James Talarico Ain’t Choosin’ Texas

Well, I guess he forgot about the Texas Longhorns
Them old Willie tunes, the Kristofferson we used to sing
He always loved San Francisco Morning
I shoulda taken that as a warning

It doesn’t take a crystal ball to see
A leftist always finds a way to leave
Chuggin’ Lone Star by myself
He ain’t choosin’ Texas, I can tell

– With apologies to Ella Langley

The Democratic state lawmaker who says he wants to represent the Lone Star State in the U.S. Senate might be a Texan by birth, but he’s certainly not one by disposition. If he’s elected this fall, he will legislate more like the third senator from California than a delegate from Texas.

James Talarico is yet another Democrat that the party believes is representative of the American male. Everyone else sees a beta male who could expertly order a soy latte at a feminist-owned Austin coffee shop but has nothing in common with the roughneck grinding through another day of pulling oil and gas from the Permian Basin, a cowboy wrangling cattle in a Panhandle ranch, a calloused-hands farmer in the hill country, or a weary construction worker anywhere in the state.

Talarico appeals to effete college professors and the failed Gen Zers who have attached themselves to socialism, he makes affluent white females of the left swoon, he is the darling of elitists. To the independent-minded, he is a nuisance. To the reasonable and the grounded he is flake.

What he surely is not is Texas:

• Five years ago, he declared that there is a “link between climate change and white supremacy and capitalism in our country,” and said the only way to end “all three of those oppressive systems work together are we going to be able to begin the process of dismantling them.” Few Texans think this way.
• While running for reelection in 2022, he boasted that his “campaign has officially become a non-meat campaign … so we are only buying vegan products from our local vegan businesses.” Texas is, of course, the biggest beef producer in the U.S.
• He thinks of himself “as a Christian who hates Christianity” in a state where two-thirds are Christians. (For comparison purposes, we note that in California, only 55% are Christians, and in New York, only 57%.)
• Talarico argues for gun control from the “well regulated” language of the Second Amendment. This is wrong from both a legal standpoint and Texans’ widespread support for the right to secure their liberty with firearms.
• He lives in a fantasy land in which defunding law enforcement and a “world without prisons” is somehow a better place — because the presence of police and penitentiaries surely forces otherwise law-abiding citizens to commit crimes.
• He has criticized his own “white skin,” which he says “gives me and every white American immunity from the virus” of racism – apparently either unaware or forgetting that white males sacrificed their lives for Texas’ independence.

According to the Texas Tribune, Talarico has amassed almost $32 million in campaign cash compared to the $9.3 million raised by his Republican opponent, Ken Paxton. Nearly half (45%) of Talarico’s haul came from out of state, most of it from California and New York. Only 17% of Paxton’s fundraising is from out of state, the majority of it from Florida and Utah, which are politically and culturally more like Texas than California and New York are.

Should he defeat Paxton, Talarico’s constituents won’t be the red majority in Texas but the progressives, the socialists, the communist-adjacent and the woke in California, New York and other Democratic Party states. We have to hope, for the sake of our republic, that he falls flatter in November than Beto O’Rourke did when he lost to Sen. Ted Cruz in the much-too-close 2018 election. James Talarico in the U.S. Senate would take the country one step closer to the downslope.

— Written by the I&I Editorial Board

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