Following last night’s primaries, Texas Democrats have a clear Senate candidate in James Talarico. Texas Republicans have a civil war. Ken Paxton and John Cornyn are headed for a nasty and expensive three-month runoff that will culminate in an election on May 26. Cornyn has made no secret of his disdain for Paxton, deeming him a “dead weight.” Are Texas Republicans facing an Alamo scenario, a last stand as the Democrats swarm over their defenses to reclaim the Lone Star state and the Senate majority? More than 2.4 million Texans cast ballots in the Democratic primary, the highest number in nearly two decades.
The significance of Talarico’s victory over Jasmine Crockett can hardly be overstated. Crockett has latched onto voting problems at precincts in Dallas and Williamson counties to explain her defeat. Many voters were turned away from polling stations, as new rules assigned specific locations where they were required to vote. But her beef seems unlikely to go anywhere.
Crockett, the congressional firebrand who referred to Texas Governor Greg Abbott as “Governor Hot Wheels,” would have faced rough sledding in a general election. By contrast, the 36-year-old State Representative Talarico has become the It Boy of the Democratic party. He is a preternaturally self-possessed Presbyterian seminarian and former public school teacher who is presumed to transcend the parochial divisions over race, class and gender that have preoccupied the Democrats for years.
Now it is the Republicans who are feuding with one another. For Cornyn, the prospect of a renewed slugfest against the scandal-ridden Paxton is unwelcome, to say the least. It is a sign that the Republican base is intent on ousting establishment conservatives in favor of populist upstarts, no matter how questionable their actual records may be. Paxton was a litigious attorney general who repeatedly sued the federal government under Biden and challenged 2020 election results in other states. He is hostile to the party leadership, closely aligned with the Trump movement and happy to run against the Republican establishment as much as against Democrats.
A similar establishment vs insurgents dynamic occurred with former Navy Seal Dan Crenshaw, known colloquially as “Eyepatch McCain.” He lost his seat in Texas’s 2nd District to the MAGA-aligned ordained minister and businessman Steve Toth. Perhaps Crenshaw’s most distinctive move in 2025 was not legislative but hortatorical, when he was caught on a hot mic vowing to “kill” Tucker Carlson. In the event, his constituents have apparently decided to dispose of his political career.
The real question, as the midterm elections loom, is as simple as it is obvious: what effect will Donald Trump have upon them? Now that he has become The Decider in foreign affairs, Trump must choose between regime change, merely denuding Iran of offensive weapons, or dealing with a more tractable Islamic theocracy.
Republicans are fretting over what voters will make of Trump’s crusade. In a poll of Trump’s 2024 voters last year, 53 percent said they opposed US involvement in an Israel-Iran conflict. Just 19 percent said they would support military action. With gas prices rising and Trump mooting the possibility of sending in ground troops, Republican apprehensions are more than warranted.
Republicans are fretting over what voters will make of Trump’s crusade
If the war goes south, then many of the Republican candidates who won this week may wonder whether it was even worth the candle. Democrats, who are pushing for a war powers resolution, are going on the offensive, pointing to the fact that the administration, for all its bluster about remaking the Middle East, does not appear to have a coherent plan for victory in Iran. Instead, the administration has announced a farrago of competing aims, none of which sound even remotely persuasive.
The White House’s latest brainchild is to arm the Kurds, whose leaders Trump called on Sunday, in the hopes that they can lead an insurrection against the regime. At the same time, Trump will likely push for a military supplemental funding bill beyond the $1 trillion that the Pentagon already receives. Before he becomes any more invested in Iran, however, Trump may have to deal with the political insurrection on the home front. Many MAGA supporters feel that, by embracing interventionism and regime change abroad, the President has abandoned America First.
Comments