“Real Men” and Texas Republicans

When I saw a headline reading, “New World screwworm discovered in Texas,” my first reaction was, “Not another Ken Paxton story.” But it seems I was misinformed – Paxton’s victory in the Texas Republican Party primary did not directly involve an invasion of meat-eating parasites. In truth, Paxton might well approve of the gastronomic habits of screwworms – one of his immediate accusations against his fall Democratic opponent is suspicion of being a vegan.

As it turns out, Democratic nominee James Talarico does in fact eat meat – the entire vegan “controversy” saying more about our current political culture than it does about the candidate. In his response, Talarico laughed, praised Texas barbecue, and suggested that if the Republican campaign consists of lying about his favorite foods, they were indeed grasping at straws.

We’ll return to that. First, we should recall why sane Texans should be aghast that Republican voters have nominated the flamboyantly corrupt state Attorney General to be the next U.S. Senator for Texas. Nevertheless, the political logic is unassailable: The national GOP has amply confirmed that elevating to public office a thief, felon, fraudster, con man, adulterer, racist, and misogynist can in fact be a winning strategy.

Talarico describes Paxton as “the most corrupt politician in America.” Amidst a field that includes Donald Trump, that’s undoubtedly an overstatement, but not for lack of trying by Paxton. You don’t have to go far for a list of Paxton’s confirmed and alleged crimes: Just consult the defeated primary campaign of John Cornyn. His ads recounted the litany of variously confirmed allegations: securities fraud, abuse of office, bribery, firing whistleblowers, aggressive self-enrichment, multiple adulteries, miscellaneous grifting … I don’t recall any mention of Paxton swiping an expensive pen from a fellow attorney while going through a security checkpoint (caught on video), but I guess only so much perfidy fits into a TV ad.

It is undoubtedly a record that would impress a Mafia Don – or a presidential one, which is why it was no surprise that Trump eventually endorsed Paxton over Cornyn, after he saw the Texas GOP poll numbers. The endorsement undoubtedly helped Paxton among wavering party loyalists; but the final election results (64% to 36%) suggest that even without Trump’s rubber stamp, Paxton would have easily defeated Cornyn. In an earlier political era, Cornyn had been a figure of righteous Republicanism, but like all his fellows, he had been forced to prostrate himself before the graven MAGA Idol.

All in vain. Thanks to Trump and the currently endemic GOP virus, there is now a hard core of Republican voters who consider flagrant criminal conduct no bar to public office, as long as the candidate is loyally and enthusiastically devoted to their Great Leader, and most especially, hates the same people they do. 

Among the despised are most prominently Black and brown people, of course, but for rage-baiting headline purposes the list always includes gay and transgender folks. Paxton and his surrogates immediately began attacking Talarico for alleged “veganism” (or in Trump’s illiterate pronunciation, “he’s a VAY-gun”), religious tolerance (“he thinks God is non-binary”), spurious designs to “mutilate children,” and suspicion of unmanliness. (They leave to their online trolls the task of manufacturing even more explicit slanders.)

Talarico understandably responded that manliness, properly understood, includes virtues entirely foreign to Ken Paxton: courage, empathy, service, and honesty: “Real men serve others. Weak men serve themselves.”

Good for Talarico. However, the current GOP hardcore base is largely comprised of voters who explicitly consider such “woke” sentiments disqualifying, and that “manhood,” political or otherwise, is tyranny in miniature: domineering, overbearing, judgmental, willfully ignorant, and at intervals, reflexively violent. Their champion in the White House checks all those boxes.

Most of this absurd dick-measuring paradigm – as we enter a long summer of the Senate campaign – has already been addressed in the early coverage. Less often noted is the underlying and hypocritical alliance represented by the Paxton candidacy. His entire political career (in common with the rest of the current state leadership) has been underwritten by floods of right-wing money, most notably from West Texas oil and gas billionaires Tim Dunn and Farris Wilks, who also lead weird fanatical religious sects supposedly devoted to puritanical “Christianity.” If those funders’ most prominently hired politicians (Gov. Greg Abbott, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, and Paxton, among many others) perform politically as they are paid to do, their “private” behaviors and self-enrichment are considered beneath notice.

Are there enough enlightened Texas voters who will come to their senses, produce a political earthquake, and elect Talarico over Paxton? Will they turn out in sufficient numbers to accomplish what heretofore has been an impossible task? Early polls suggest that’s at least a real possibility, one unthinkable in Texas for decades. It does require acknowledging that no campaign consultant ever went broke underestimating the intelligence, or overestimating the venality, of the American electorate. But even those guys, while counting their money, sometimes get beat.

The state and national GOP will do everything they can to poison the public discourse, by making this Texas Senate election about sexual and gender suspicion, religious uneasiness, and cultural “weirdness.” They are in fact the weird ones, completely out of touch with the expansive and generous American culture on which they’ve declared war. Thus far, Talarico’s response – of simple competence, honesty, and decency – have served him well. It remains a long shot, but just maybe Texas voters will elect the guy brandishing a résumé instead of a rap sheet.

From 2005-2020, now-retired Austin Chronicle News Editor Michael King wrote about city and state politics from a progressive perspective in his weekly column, “Point Austin.” We’re pleased to bring back his column whenever he’s inspired to tackle the state we’re in.

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