The Texas GOP has been pushing maximalist rhetoric and policies for years in ways well out of line with the majority of Texas voters.
The party has been elevating ever more radical candidates in its primaries, pushing out serious and established incumbents in the name of absurd purity tests over who is more MAGA.
From top party leaders to state House wannabes, Texas Republicans have almost totally abandoned any effort to reach anyone beyond their most loyal base of voters.
It caught up with them in Tarrant County on Saturday.
Opinion
Taylor Rehmet, a veteran and everyman who ran on blue-collar issues from union organizing to making housing more affordable, beat Leigh Wambsganss, whose campaign was based on little more than MAGA slogans with no substance behind them.
Her website doesn’t even include an issues page, just a list of single-phrase statements like “Ensure Every Child Has a Good Education.” Well, sure.
We met Rehmet. He was inexperienced in politics. But he came across as a regular guy with a regular job trying to sort through tough issues. He came to sit down with our board to discuss his campaign alongside a more serious Republican than Wambsganss, former Southlake mayor John Huffman.
Wambsganss beat Huffman handily in November in a special election featuring all three candidates, leading to Saturday’s runoff. We weren’t surprised. Huffman is no shrinking violet, but he is the sort of person who recognizes an elected official has to be willing and able to work with people who don’t see the world the way he does. That’s courting failure in a GOP primary these days.
As far as we can tell, Wambsganss did almost nothing to reach anyone beyond the base she needed to defeat Huffman.
Wambsganss did put out a cordial statement congratulating Rehmet. We were surprised. It was one of the few cordial things we’ve seen from her in the land of algorithm-fueled politics we live in.
She also warned that November will be different when she runs against Rehmet again. She’s right. More people will turn out. But every Republican in Texas, and every Democrat, too, knows that a 14-point stomping in Tarrant County means something. It means even conservative Texans, and certainly independents, have had it with the nonsense. They’ve had it with cruelty. They’ve had it with the slogans, the attacks, the policies that push us past the limit of common sense.
Rehmet deserves congratulations. We urge him to be wary of national Democrats who will bring him piles of money and also try to drag him into the party’s endless reliance on identity politics. Stay far away from that type, Mr. Rehmet. Stick to the kitchen-table issues of making sure people can get a job with decent pay and afford a home.
If you do, November may bring another shocker.
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