Texas Republicans' betting on MAGA messaging may soon pay a price

Far-right talking points have proven effective in the recent Texas Republican primaries, handing wins to Trump-backed Senate candidate Ken Paxton, attorney general nominee “MAGA” Mayes Middleton (as he likes to be called), and railroad commissioner nominee Bo French. But while MAGA messaging resonates with Republican voters well enough to come out ahead in a primary, according to Houston Pubic Media political columnist Blaise Gainey, that approach is likely to fall flat in the general election this November.

“What we’re seeing is the consolidation of MAGA power,” explained Jon Taylor, a political scientist at the University of Texas at San Antonio. “You’re seeing essentially the last of the old guard being swept away. Anybody who is not 100 percent MAGA, 100 percent committed to Trump, is viewed as disloyal and therefore must be purged.”

According to Gainey, “One of the most obvious examples is Attorney General Paxton’s win over incumbent Sen. Cornyn. A day into early voting, Trump, the leader of MAGA, endorsed Paxton over Cornyn, who claimed to vote with Trump 99% of the time.”

Cornyn’s loss suggests there has been a dramatic shift within the GOP over the past decade. As Texas Southern University political scientist Michael Adams explained, “It sent a clear signal, I think, to the Republican Party that the [George] Bush or the [Rick] Perry wing of the Republican Party — what we know as the institutional Republican part of the traditional wing — I think that has been put to rest.”

These MAGA candidates gathered support by ignoring some of the top issues of the day, like the war in Iran or skyrocketing prices, instead “focusing on hot-button social topics like gender identity, immigration enforcement and stoking fears over Islam.” French, for example, had party leaders calling for his resignation as chair of the Tarrant County GOP after a series of posts they characterized as “bigoted” against Jewish and Muslim people. Republican leadership may not have liked what they saw, but enough conservative voters did for French to eke out a win by around 1 percent.

But, writes Gainey, “While that strategy worked during a Republican primary where only 1.4 million voters participated, political scientist Jeronimo Cortina isn’t sure it’ll be so successful with the general electorate. ‘I don’t know 97 percent of folks that did not participate in the runoff election, whether they are Democrats or Republicans, support that type of rhetoric or not,’ Cortina said.”

“That’s going to be their challenge,” said Nancy Sims, a political scientist at the University of Houston. “They moved so far to the right to win their nominations, that they’re gonna have to live with the commercials they made side-by-side with Trump. All the MAGA promises they made for the general cycle are not gonna be popular with independent voters, in my opinion.” Polls suggest that she’s right, showing that Democratic Senate nominee James Talarico has a slight edge on Paxton. “It looks like Texas may be competitive for the first time in 30 years,” Sims said.

All of this poses a huge opportunity for Democrats.

“Texas is not truly a red state,” explained Taylor. “It’s a low-turnout state in which you’ve got Democrats who, if they would ever get off their butts and actually mobilize, could actually win elections.”

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