Kevin Williamson: The Psychotic State of Texas Politics

Summary

Podcast Summary:

The Gist – "Kevin Williamson: The Psychotic State of Texas Politics"
Host: Mike Pesca (Peach Fish Productions)
Guest: Kevin D. Williamson (The Dispatch)
Date: May 11, 2026

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Episode Overview

This episode dives into the current condition of Texas politics, focusing on the Republican Party’s internal dynamics, the upcoming Senate race, and Texas’s broader cultural identity. Host Mike Pesca welcomes writer Kevin D. Williamson, noted for his sharp prose and insight into American and especially Texan life, to explore why the Texas political climate seems, as Williamson puts it, “just about psychotic.” The discussion traverses candidates, party coalitions, the mythos of Texas distinctiveness, and the interplay between economic realities and populist sentiments.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Texas Political Madness: The State of the GOP (07:17–13:11)

• Increasing Radicalization:
  • Williamson argues Texas GOP radicalism is nothing new but is intensifying due to single-party dominance.
  • Quote (07:17) — Kevin D. Williamson: “The short version is they're crazy, but that's not new necessarily. No, it's getting worse.”
• Historic Perspective:
  • Texas shifted from Democratic to Republican dominance over the past few decades, with in-group radicalization driving politicians to extremes.
  • Puritanical party-line adherence becomes the primary way to stand out.

2. Spotlight on Candidates: Paxton vs. Cornyn vs. Tallarico (08:33–16:54)

• Ken Paxton’s Corruption and Tenacity:
  • Paxton, Texas AG, called “arguably the single most corrupt person holding office in the United States at any significant level” (09:02).
  • Survived impeachment, continues to lead primary polls.
  • Quote (10:44) — Kevin D. Williamson: “Do you know what kind of an asshole you have to be to get impeached as a Republican in Texas? I mean, you really have to embarrass some people. And Paxton managed to get himself impeached, although not, not removed.”
• John Cornyn – The Old Guard:
  • Seen as a very conservative but traditional, scandal-free politician challenged by a more bombastic and scandal-ridden Paxton.
• Democrats’ Gamble—James Tallarico and Jasmine Crockett:
  • Tallarico: Young, moderate in tone, but left-leaning in policy; fits the “safe” choice, described as “the safest white boy in the room” (11:46).
  • Crockett: Social media firebrand, Black woman — Williamson suggests her brash style may have been a better match for Paxton’s incendiary approach, despite potential hurdles with Texas voters regarding gender and race.
  • Questions about whether Tallarico’s liberal Presbyterianism makes him fundamentally more objectionable to conservative evangelicals than a secular liberal would.

3. Race, Identity, and Demography in Texas Politics (13:25–14:58)

• Racial politics in Texas are complex—more about Anglo/Hispanic in much of the state; Black voters represent only a slightly higher share than the national average.
• Williamson notes persistent reluctance among some Texas voters to elect women, possibly weighting more than racial considerations.

4. Economic Foundations and Psychological Drivers of Populism (18:32–23:03)

• Pesca’s Thesis—Populism Beyond Economic Despair:

  • Texas’s economic boom undermines the thesis that populist anger stems solely from economic downturn.

• Williamson’s Counter:

  • Real incomes and living standards have risen, but rapid change, unpredictability, and globalization foster anxiety.
  • The urban/rural divide is more predictive of political orientation than income or even race/religion.

  Quote (22:43) — Kevin D. Williamson:
  “Even though standards of living have gone up a lot, they've come along with certain sources of anxiety that I think are playing themselves out in politics.”

5. The Cult of Texas Exceptionalism (23:00–25:22)

• Paradox: As Texas becomes culturally and economically less unique, the hysteria about “Texanness” surfaces most in the interchangeable, suburban, and exurban communities.
• Quote (24:17) — Kevin D. Williamson:
  “They have this real sense of texanness as a kind of transcendent identity to which they have a kind of quasi religious devotion. And they're the most interchangeable people in the state living in the most interchangeable places.”

6. The Republican Coalition: Business, Populists, and Cultural Loyalty (25:27–33:43)

• Coalition Components:
  • Traditional business-class Republicans, especially independently owned businesses, stay loyal not for naked economic interests but for cultural affinity.
  • Big finance/tech people moving to Texas often retain non-Republican politics, suggesting ideological splits even within the state’s business elite.
  • Rural agricultural producers—despite being hurt by tariffs and high costs—stick with Republican (and especially Trump) politics for reasons of identity over economics.
  • Quote (32:01) — Kevin D. Williamson:
    “There's no free market in farm products in the United States. It's one of the most regulated and subsidized and protected businesses... And so there is a disconnect between how people actually live and what they think about their politics and what their ideology looks like.”
• Negative polarization and collective tribal loyalty keep the coalition functionally intact despite cross-pressures.
• The urban/rural split surpasses income, race, or religion in driving current American political divisions.

7. Populism, Celebrity, and Party Weakness (33:04–34:41)

• Trump’s cult of personality rests on real (non-political) celebrity, a phenomenon unique in modern American politics.
• Celebrities are, potentially, more powerful political forces than parties or ideology.
• Quote (34:39) — Kevin D. Williamson:
  “Celebrity is a more powerful force than political ideology in American life. And that's just something worth keeping in mind as we move toward more and more unmoored populism and the party organs themselves don't really have any power anymore.”

8. Breaking Points for the GOP Coalition (35:03–39:09)

• The “winning coalition” endures so long as it wins—fissures will only truly show if significant losses occur.
• Loss of the Senate race won’t be as severe as losing Texas in a presidential race, but could expose weaknesses.
• Large donors also wield less power in the small-dollar donation era.

9. The Politics of Islamophobia in Texas (40:19–44:20)

• The flashpoint over the East Plano Islamic Center (EPIC), used as a tool by Texas politicians to exploit anti-Muslim sentiment, reflects ongoing legacies from post-9/11 fear and division — and broader needs for politicians to keep fueling “out-group” tensions.
• Quote (41:21) — Kevin D. Williamson:
  “I have a theory that everything in 21st century politics... is at some level a reaction to or playing out of some reaction to the kind of social and psychological trauma from the 9/11 attacks... unleashed a kind of poison in our politics that we've never been able to... get back in the box.”

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Notable Quotes & Moments

• On Texas Republican Radicalization:
  “The Texas Republican Party has been going through that for about 20 years now.” (08:28, Kevin D. Williamson)

• On Ken Paxton's Survival:
  “Do you know what kind of an asshole you have to be to get impeached as a Republican in Texas? I mean, you really have to embarrass some people. And Paxton managed to get himself impeached...” (10:44, Kevin D. Williamson)

• On Identity Over Policy:
  “People tend to vote on matters of cultural affiliation.” (28:49, Kevin D. Williamson)

• On Celebrity in Politics:
  “Celebrity is a more powerful force than political ideology in American life.” (34:39, Kevin D. Williamson)

• On the Enduring Power of Winning:
  "When you win, you win. Nothing wins like winning, as they say." (37:58, Kevin D. Williamson)

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Timestamps for Major Segments

• Gas Prices & Immediate Political Framing: 00:03–06:35
• State of the Texas GOP, Senate Race: 07:17–13:11
• Identity, Demographics, Race: 13:25–16:54
• Economics vs. Populism, Anxieties: 18:32–23:03
• Mythic Texanness & Cultural Insecurity: 23:00–25:22
• Business vs. Populism, Coalition Cohesion: 25:27–33:43
• Celebrity & Power in Modern Politics: 33:04–34:41
• Possible GOP Schisms & What It Would Take: 35:03–39:09
• Islamophobia and Political Out-Groups: 40:19–44:20

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Tone and Language

The conversation is irreverent, sharp, and decidedly unsparing in its critique of political absurdity, especially among Texas Republicans. Both Pesca and Williamson use a mix of dry wit and blunt assessment, balancing high-level analysis with anecdotal color and memorable analogies.

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Memorable Moments

• Williamson’s colorful summary of Ken Paxton, and the complex impeachment drama involving Paxton's then-wife, a state senator, having to vote on his fate. (09:57–10:17)
• Pesca and Williamson riffing on the performative aspects of Texas identity and the irony of suburban transplants being the most performative “Texans.” (24:05–25:25)
• The riff on celebrity in Republican and Democratic politics, ending with the joke “Taylor Swift versus Cliff is the whole thing.” (34:19–34:23, Mike Pesca & Kevin D. Williamson)
• Williamson’s pseudo-praise for the “traditional chamber of commerce” Republican supporter—guys who “own a car dealership... five dry cleaners... ten apartment buildings.” (27:33)

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Conclusion

The episode offers a caustically insightful portrait of Texas’s political landscape, revealing how internal party dynamics, identity, and the era of celebrity have combined to drive politics into ever stranger territory. Williamson’s frame for Texas as “just about psychotic” is not about mere eccentricity but about how an instability in both cultural and party identity is transforming not just Texas, but America more broadly.

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Recommended For:
Anyone interested in American political polarization, the strange alchemy of Texas identity, or the dynamics of modern party politics. Williamson and Pesca’s banter is both biting and illuminating, making the episode engaging even for political outsiders.

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Listen for More

For a deeper dive into the peculiarities of Texas and to hear Williamson’s full argument—plus fun anecdotes about rural and suburban life—check out the full episode.

Transcript

[Kevin D. Williamson]

Foreign

[Mike Pesca]

It's Monday, May 11, 2026, from Peach Fish Productions. It's the gist. I'm Mike Pesca. Energy Secretary Chris Wright was on Meet the Press. And so he was asked obviously about gas prices. That's good. We all want to know about gas prices. We all hope they're headed down. So after a few questions about what a deal over the Strait of Hormuz might look like, answer it'll eventually open the strait and Iran will be rid of its nuclear weapons. When we don't know how, we can't say. So after a couple of those, host Kristen Welker got on to gas prices.

[Kristen Welker]

I do want to talk about the big issue for Americans, gas prices. Of course.

[Mike Pesca]

First thing she does is plays an old tape of right saying it'll be $3 by summer. Comes out of the tape, which was from before the war in March, and asks, do you still think it'll be $3? He says, I can't predict the future of gas prices. I know we have to stick to the war plan and rid Iran of its nuclear weapons. So then Welker asks, just to go

[Kristen Welker]

back to this central question, though, do you anticipate gas prices will drop below $3 a gallon this year?

[Mike Pesca]

And Wright again says, I can't make predictions about that, but goes on to emphasize the importance of defeating Iran so they're rid of their nuclear weapons? Welker then asks, so you're saying that

[Kristen Welker]

ultimately gas prices will start to come down once the Strait is reopened. Here's what analysts are saying about how high gas prices could ultimately go. US gasoline prices, a legitimate chance of rising to $5 a gallon as refiners prioritize jet fuel production at the expense of other products. According to analysts at JPMorgan Chase, should Americans be prepared for the possibility of paying $5 a gallon for gas?

[Mike Pesca]

And Wright says, remember when I couldn't predict three, I also can't predict five. He could have said, well, five is 50 cents more than it is now and three is a dollar fifty down. So I guess it's more likely he wouldn't say that. What he does say is I can't predict gas prices. You won't believe what else he says. He says, we have to beat Iran militarily. We have to rid them of their nukes. Then Welker asks about a subject so totally out of left field that you won't believe it. No, I'm lying. It was, once again, gas prices.

[Kristen Welker]

I know you're saying you can't predict how high gas prices will go, but I don't hear you ruling out the possibility that they could in fact go to $5 a gallon.

[Mike Pesca]

Who is Chris Wright in this situation for him to rule it out? Is Chris Wright opec? Does Chris Wright currently have a quartz pressure gauge standing in the Ghar oil field? He is the Secretary of Energy for an administration that is, I don't know if you heard this, trying to rid Iran of its nuclear weapons like everyone else in the world. He knows, of course, a gallon of gas can go up by 11%. He can't say that, but he knows he can't say that. And so that's, I guess, the point. Gas is high and we don't like it. Here's a half dozen questions trying to make you squirm on that point. Can you imagine with any other war, even the unpopular ones, if the price of goods stateside played such an enormous role? Will our efforts to contain Kim Il Sung's invasion of South Korea affect chicken futures? Sir, here's a fun fact. Crude oil futures immediately fell upon President Barack Obama's announcement that US forces had killed Osama Bin Laden. I don't know that there were a lot of questions before or after about the oil prices connected to bin Laden, but they did fall. But they fell about $0.50 to $114. Futures are now a bit under $100 by comparison. Seems much more dire now than it was then. The Q and A really not Q's and A. One question asked seven times and one and a half answers given every time. Not predicting prices. Got to win the war. The day was only satisfying if you don't care at all about the mission and you just care about gas prices. But also like seven bites of the apple, seven wells into the earth to try to pump some crude answers. I guess most people are there, they care about the gas prices and that's all. But how do. I was just thinking, how do you achieve any kind of communicative connection here? How do you make some meaning out of this dynamic? It's not really a quest for understanding, is it? It's multiple times trying to score and multiple shots at deflection. The audience, I suppose, says, I'm glad she asked. The interviewer says, what else can I do with the answer? We don't go any deeper than surface level on this. It's not exactly the fracking of interviews. And so I can firmly make the prediction that futures in this particular market news will remain unchanged for the time being on the show today, we got a good one. Gas is involved. Oil's involved because Texas is involved. Kevin Williamson is perhaps the greatest prose stylist in magazines today. He writes for the Dispatch, and a fairly recent article is about the Senate race in Texas, but just about Texas, about Texas being a, as per the title of his article, a just about psychotic State of Mind. Kevin Williamson, up next, There are a couple of authors who when they write something, I almost always read it. Sarah Lyle of the New York Times was like that. David Grant and Adam Gopnik in the New Yorker. And Kevin Williamson, Kevin D. Williamson of the Dispatch, he is high on that list. What a pros stylist, what an insightful chronicler of America and especially Texas. He has recently written in the Dispatch. It was a couple of months ago and there's going to be an update about broadly what's going on in Texas politics, what's going on with the Texas Senate race. There are such phrases as the German speaking old country Mennonites who do their part to make measles great again in West Texas, and Attorney General Ken Paxton, a corrupt imbecile and a lowdown scoundrel. So one of those is made high pros. The other one is just a nice shift to the side. But Kevin brings it all to the page. And now to the gist. Welcome to the gist. Kevin.

[Unidentified Male Guest (possibly a political analyst or co-host)]

Hey, thank you.

[Mike Pesca]

So I'm very interested in this race because every couple of years they tell us, maybe you could put your finger on who they is, that this is the time, this is the time that a Democrat can have some success in Texas. And it hasn't happened since the 90s. And I remember there was a former Dallas mayor named Kirk who the New York Times was once telling me was with in striking range. And the closest he got was 13 points. And that's when I developed my deep cynicism for any Democrat ever winning in Texas. But before we even get to the Democrats, give us a state of play with what's going on, tearing apart some of the Republicans in your home state.

[Kevin D. Williamson]

Well, the short version is they're crazy,

[Mike Pesca]

but that has that that's not new necessarily.

[Kevin D. Williamson]

No, it's getting worse. It's getting worse, though, I think. So Texas is, you know, it's the Republican Rhode Island.

[Unidentified Male Guest (possibly a political analyst or co-host)]

Right.

[Kevin D. Williamson]

It's been a single party state for a generation or more. And although the Texas I grew up

[Unidentified Male Guest (possibly a political analyst or co-host)]

in was a Democratic state, you know,

[Kevin D. Williamson]

George W. Bush was the first governor,

[Unidentified Male Guest (possibly a political analyst or co-host)]

I think, ever reelected in Texas, and

[Kevin D. Williamson]

I think he was only the third Republican to hold the governorship or this maybe the second I'm trying to remember. But, you know, it was a solidly

[Unidentified Male Guest (possibly a political analyst or co-host)]

Democratic state for years and years, although it was a different kind of Democrat. You know, I grew up not far from the city of New Deal Texas, which tells you something about where the politics of the Texas Panhandle were in the 1930s.

[Kevin D. Williamson]

So when you get these politically and

[Unidentified Male Guest (possibly a political analyst or co-host)]

culturally homogenous groups, including political parties, there's

[Kevin D. Williamson]

something that's sometimes referred to as in

[Unidentified Male Guest (possibly a political analyst or co-host)]

group radicalization, which is the only way to distinguish yourself within the group is to be the most puritanical party line, extreme version of whatever it is the group believes. And the Texas Republican Party has been going through that for about 20 years now.

[Kevin D. Williamson]

And it's part of a broader kind

[Unidentified Male Guest (possibly a political analyst or co-host)]

of weird cultural phenomenon in Texas that maybe we can talk about in a little bit.

[Kevin D. Williamson]

So you've got John Cornyn, who is a very conservative Republican, although an old

[Unidentified Male Guest (possibly a political analyst or co-host)]

fashioned kind of politician in the sense that he hasn't been indicted lately and he doesn't have any enormous scandals and he's not really much of a social

[Kevin D. Williamson]

media bomb thrower and who's been there for a very, very long time.

[Unidentified Male Guest (possibly a political analyst or co-host)]

And he was challenged in the primary by Ken Paxton, who is the Attorney General of Texas and arguably the single

[Kevin D. Williamson]

most corrupt person holding office in the

[Unidentified Male Guest (possibly a political analyst or co-host)]

United States at any significant level.

[Kevin D. Williamson]

Although

[Unidentified Male Guest (possibly a political analyst or co-host)]

we should note for the record, he's not been convicted of anything. And you know, Paxton, I love him in so many ways just because, you know, someone who's a reader of Thackeray and novels like Vanity Fair, he's just such a great literary character. You know, I often say my favorite thing about Boris Johnson was that one of the great scandals of his time in office in the UK was that he was accused of not doing his job because he was taking time off to finish his biography of William Shakespeare because he needed the money to pay for his divorce. That's not an American political scandal that never happens in the United States. Like the guy had to finish his Shakespeare biography. It's just not happening with Paxton.

[Mike Pesca]

He wanted cabinets done for on the cheap. And his wife, at the time, he wasn't divorced.

[Kevin D. Williamson]

Right.

[Mike Pesca]

Got crosswise with it because his mistress was somehow involved in procuring the materials.

[Unidentified Male Guest (possibly a political analyst or co-host)]

Right.

[Kevin D. Williamson]

And so Paxton's wife, now his ex wife, was a state senator who had. Who had to vote on his impeachment.

[Unidentified Male Guest (possibly a political analyst or co-host)]

Yeah.

[Kevin D. Williamson]

And now you talk about a guy who's got some game, though his wife didn't vote to get rid of him. Publicly humiliated the woman.

[Mike Pesca]

The tie of partisan politics in the state.

[Kevin D. Williamson]

Yeah. So really, really quite something. And she prob, probably from the point of view of having a political career, voted the right way on that because

[Unidentified Male Guest (possibly a political analyst or co-host)]

she would have been ostracized if she

[Kevin D. Williamson]

had, if she had gone the other way.

[Mike Pesca]

So.

[Kevin D. Williamson]

And you have to do a. You have to be kind of. How tight is the language policing on this podcast?

[Mike Pesca]

Oh, as loose as can be. As loose as a Texas tumbleweed through New Deal.

[Kevin D. Williamson]

Yeah. Do you know what kind of an asshole you have to be to get impeached as a Republican in Texas? I mean, you really have to embarrass some people. And Paxton managed to get himself impeached,

[Unidentified Male Guest (possibly a political analyst or co-host)]

although not, not removed.

[Kevin D. Williamson]

So, yeah, he's, he's quite a figure. And he's currently the last poll I saw eight points, I want to say, ahead of Cornyn in the upcoming runoff, which I guess is on the 26th of May. So here in a couple of weeks. There was a third candidate in the original primary whose job was to keep Paxton, or keep Cornyn rather, from getting

[Unidentified Male Guest (possibly a political analyst or co-host)]

a majority and thereby avoiding a runoff.

[Mike Pesca]

Right. So it looks just distract some people. I think there's in rodeo. Would that be the clown? Is there rodeo equivalent of the distracting element?

[Kevin D. Williamson]

Yeah. You know, I did work at rodeos

[Unidentified Male Guest (possibly a political analyst or co-host)]

when I was a kid, but I'm

[Kevin D. Williamson]

not ready to call the guy a

[Unidentified Male Guest (possibly a political analyst or co-host)]

rodeo clown just yet.

[Kevin D. Williamson]

But someone who was, who was in Ital heard.

[Unidentified Male Guest (possibly a political analyst or co-host)]

Yeah.

[Kevin D. Williamson]

Who was in it for something other than ultimate victory, I think.

[Mike Pesca]

So.

[Unidentified Male Guest (possibly a political analyst or co-host)]

Yeah.

[Kevin D. Williamson]

It looks like the Texas Republicans may very well nominate Ken Paxton. And the Democrats have nominated this guy named James Tallarico, who is a young, sort of soft spoken. He's literally a Presbyterian seminarian from one of these kind of liberal Presbyterian sects. And he beat out a woman named Jasmine Crockett in the Democratic primary who was a young, very confrontational social media bomb thrower black woman, who I think actually probably would have been the better candidate in some ways. I think that the Democrats were, were trying to do what they thought was the mature and right thing by stepping away from the social media bomb thrower and embracing the. Well, the guy that she described as the safest white boy in the room. But he does seem to be kind of. He's temperamentally moderate, but not moderate as a policy matter. You know, he's pretty much a Bernie Sanders kind of guy, I think if you look where he actually is on the questions. But he is someone who speaks in a kind of conciliatory sort of way and.

[Mike Pesca]

Right. And she's not, she's not a Democratic socialist, but she recently came out with a strong intimation that the Trump would be assassination at the White House correspondents dinner might have been a false flag operation.

[Kevin D. Williamson]

Yeah, she's a, she's, she's a crazy person, at least for social media purposes. I don't know if she's a crazy

[Unidentified Male Guest (possibly a political analyst or co-host)]

person in real life, but she certainly

[Kevin D. Williamson]

plays that character on, on social media. She's a very Trumpy kind of figure

[Unidentified Male Guest (possibly a political analyst or co-host)]

in a lot of ways. And I, and I think that actually might have been a better recipe for

[Kevin D. Williamson]

winning this time around for the Democrats,

[Unidentified Male Guest (possibly a political analyst or co-host)]

but they, they won't be able to find that out.

[Mike Pesca]

Right. So in black, though I don't know how that would play in Texas. Well,

[Kevin D. Williamson]

Texas has, I guess, a slightly more black electorate than the national average, but not by very much. Maybe by like a point or a point and a half or something like that. I don't. We could, we could talk for the

[Unidentified Male Guest (possibly a political analyst or co-host)]

whole time about race in Texas and what a weird thing that is.

[Kevin D. Williamson]

You know, West Texas, where I grew up, you know, racial questions are really

[Unidentified Male Guest (possibly a political analyst or co-host)]

more of an Anglo Hispanic thing because there just aren't very many black folks around. Although I did go to a majority black elementary school for a while. My local district was under a desegregation order and I was bused there. So I did have that interesting experience. I don't know where they found enough black folks in Lubbock county to make a majority school, but I guess there are. And it's not a real African American kind of place, so that politics gets

[Kevin D. Williamson]

kind of weird there.

[Unidentified Male Guest (possibly a political analyst or co-host)]

But I don't think that her being black would probably be as much a disability for her among some voters as her being a woman would still. And I still think that's just kind of one of those weird, indigestible parts of American politics where there's still a lot of Americans who are hesitant about putting women in leadership positions. And I don't want to psychologize or try to sociologize, whatever the word for making a verb out of sociology is to describe why that would be.

[Kevin D. Williamson]

But no, I think she would have

[Unidentified Male Guest (possibly a political analyst or co-host)]

had a pretty good chance. And I think that Talarico's problem is actually the thing that his admirers think is his strength, which is his kind of liberal evangelical Christianity, which I think is more offensive to kind of religiously orthodox or religiously and culturally conservative evangelicals than him just being like an ordinary, undistinguished, secular type person would be. I think I hurt my friend David French's feelings the other day by referring to him as the left Wing David French. But I don't think David understood maybe what I meant by that. So, David, if you're listening, what I meant was that the things people dislike about Tallarico are actually things that I think ought to be considered virtues. I think his religious sensibility is sincere and his attempts at speaking in a kind of moderate and conciliatory way or well intentioned. And I think that, you know, sincere, well intentioned things are absolutely the way to lose an election in Texas or almost anywhere in the United States these days. So not, not a great sign for him. But against Paxton, I don't know.

[Kevin D. Williamson]

There was a poll that came out

[Unidentified Male Guest (possibly a political analyst or co-host)]

today or yesterday, one poll that has him ahead of either one of those candidates in a general election by. Was it Texas Public Opinion Research or whatever the name of that group is. So that's just one data point. But it is interesting because Texas is such a big prize on the presidential map, Democrats always have to be like, deluding themselves into thinking this is their time around, because it's not really about the Senate race. It's ultimately about presidential races. And if you can take Texas out of the Republican column and either put it into play or put it into the Democratic column, Republicans just don't win a lot of presidential elections ever again until they figure out a way to appeal to constituencies they haven't in a long time. But I still think it's. It just feels to me like it's not quite there yet. Although, you know,

[Kevin D. Williamson]

Beto, who was a

[Unidentified Male Guest (possibly a political analyst or co-host)]

terrible candidate in a lot of ways and just an insufferably smug trust fund kid, basically got pretty close with Ted Cruz. Ted Cruz is a profoundly unlikable person.

[Kevin D. Williamson]

Right.

[Unidentified Male Guest (possibly a political analyst or co-host)]

And he's a terrible politician in a lot of ways. And someone to his credit who understands that about himself, that he's not like a naturally charismatic, likable sort of person. And you can tell by the way he campaigns that he understands that he does that goofy talk like a preacher thing that doesn't come naturally to people who went to Princeton and Harvard Law School usually. But yeah, there's a whole weird Texas thing that I suppose we could talk about at some point.

[Mike Pesca]

Although I think Cornell Wentz west went to Harvard and Princeton. So I did want to say the standard analysis of who the better candidate would be between Crockett and Tell Rico is that it's Talrico. And it mostly rests on, you could add 100 things to this, but in general, people think the more moderate candidate is going to be better in the general election and at least in temperament tell Rico does come across as the more moderate candidate. You might be right, though, for these times for 2026, the very gentle, understated Tal Rico is a very poor match for a Ken Paxton. And you need to go fire with fire. Though I also think maybe you, as someone who likes to chronicle the crazy and those who are barking at the moon, maybe a part of you wants that Senate race, needs that Senate race more than, you know, the contrast that a Tal Rico Paxton would represent.

[Kevin D. Williamson]

I am part of the problem.

[Unidentified Male Guest (possibly a political analyst or co-host)]

Yes.

[Mike Pesca]

So let me also go and talk about where the Republican Party is, because I think Texas could be a very interesting test case to test the theory that one reason why so many Republicans have gone so far off the deep end is a function of economic desperation. So the theory is something like we used to have a manufacturing base, we used to have a middle class. Now we've hollowed out the industrial centers of name your midw state. And a large part of those people then flit onto some QAnon theory or just anger and Donald Trump taps into this and the business community becomes anathema and populism and sometimes in its ugliest forms abound. But my observation is that hollowing out of manufacturing America, the antithesis of that in a Republican state, or really in any state, is Texas. Texas is supposed to be the economic miracle. And I know you talk about soybean farmers and you talk about, a lot of, you know, where we are with oil, which since you wrote it, has changed. But doesn't it somewhat rebut the idea that the enmities and anger of our politics are mostly economic based if these enmities are showing up just as much in the economic powerhouse that is Texas?

[Kevin D. Williamson]

Yeah, I think if you look across the board at Americans, real incomes, real

[Unidentified Male Guest (possibly a political analyst or co-host)]

standard of living, by any useful metric,

[Kevin D. Williamson]

that we've been getting better off year after year after year and we don't feel better off sometimes and we feel,

[Unidentified Male Guest (possibly a political analyst or co-host)]

you know, kind of bitter and anxious and whatnot for various reasons.

[Kevin D. Williamson]

I don't think that economic data, to the extent that we can quantify these things, gives much of an explanation for that.

[Unidentified Male Guest (possibly a political analyst or co-host)]

I think that it has more to do with other kinds of social changes

[Kevin D. Williamson]

that aren't economically related. Although to the extent that it is an economic issue, it's not about incomes and standard of living.

[Unidentified Male Guest (possibly a political analyst or co-host)]

It's about what we call, for lack

[Kevin D. Williamson]

of a better term, globalization and the integration of global markets and supply chains, which has led Americans to be in

[Unidentified Male Guest (possibly a political analyst or co-host)]

more direct competition both as producers and consumers, with people all over the world

[Kevin D. Williamson]

than we were a generation ago, which causes people a degree of anxiety and things move more quickly. There's more radical change over a shorter

[Unidentified Male Guest (possibly a political analyst or co-host)]

period of time within industries, within firms, within national economies. And that is a real source of anxiety for people. You know, I often, as a parallel case, if you look at the end of the middle ages, really in the beginning of what we call capitalism and

[Kevin D. Williamson]

the end of feudalism in particular, people get a much higher standard of living

[Unidentified Male Guest (possibly a political analyst or co-host)]

and they also get a lot of choices about, like now you can decide where you want to live and what kind of work you want to do and who you want your employer to be and what you want to do with your disposable income.

[Kevin D. Williamson]

And people were liberated and they were much better off.

[Unidentified Male Guest (possibly a political analyst or co-host)]

And they hated it. They really hated the dislocation that came along with it, you know, culturally and in terms of where they were living, they had to make decisions about their lives that they didn't have to make before. And you end up getting, you know, these, you know, nationalist, proto nationalist revolutions, the Protestant Reformation and all the rest of the stuff that comes out of that. So this isn't as radical as that. But the differences in 21st century capitalism versus 20th, 20th century capitalism are that these higher standards of living and better opportunities go along with less predictability and less fixedness in people's lives. And that's great for a certain class of people. You know, for the highly educated, mobile, skilled professionals, we have lots of opportunities that we wouldn't have had before. If you're a really, really smart person from Kansas City graduating from college in 2026 versus 1926 or 1956 or 66, you've got all sorts of opportunities and things that you didn't have in that earlier era.

[Kevin D. Williamson]

But if you are a, you know, kind of of 51st percentile income person and you don't want to move, and

[Unidentified Male Guest (possibly a political analyst or co-host)]

you're not interested in

[Kevin D. Williamson]

learning about AI

[Unidentified Male Guest (possibly a political analyst or co-host)]

or working in a data center or

[Kevin D. Williamson]

something like that, then you've got sources

[Unidentified Male Guest (possibly a political analyst or co-host)]

of change and anxiety and uncertainty in your life that you didn't have before. At least they're more intense. And I think that's really where that comes from.

[Kevin D. Williamson]

So even though standards of living have

[Unidentified Male Guest (possibly a political analyst or co-host)]

gone up a lot, this is a long way of getting around to that. They've come along with certain sources of anxiety that I think are playing themselves out in politics.

[Kevin D. Williamson]

Now in Texas, there's a particularly weird

[Unidentified Male Guest (possibly a political analyst or co-host)]

thing in that Texans. I've been watching this since the 1980s, since I could really remember paying attention

[Kevin D. Williamson]

to It Texans have this weird neurotic

[Unidentified Male Guest (possibly a political analyst or co-host)]

obsession with the distinctiveness of the state of Texas.

[Kevin D. Williamson]

And it's gotten weirder and more aggressive

[Unidentified Male Guest (possibly a political analyst or co-host)]

and more neurotic as Texas has become less distinctive and more like the rest of the country.

[Mike Pesca]

And less accurate. Yes. As less. That's what I was gonna say, as less accurate.

[Unidentified Male Guest (possibly a political analyst or co-host)]

Yeah.

[Kevin D. Williamson]

And it's also the most pronounced in

[Unidentified Male Guest (possibly a political analyst or co-host)]

the parts of Texas that are the most like the rest of the country.

[Kevin D. Williamson]

So like if you go meet like cattle ranchers in west Texas where I'm from, or farmers in muleshoe or things

[Unidentified Male Guest (possibly a political analyst or co-host)]

like that, they're not sitting around saying,

[Kevin D. Williamson]

you know, what brand of beer should

[Unidentified Male Guest (possibly a political analyst or co-host)]

I buy that shows that I'm a real Texan.

[Kevin D. Williamson]

But then you get these guys who are lawyers from the suburbs of Houston,

[Unidentified Male Guest (possibly a political analyst or co-host)]

you know, who have their half acre houses out in the Woodlands or something

[Kevin D. Williamson]

like that, and they're joining, you know,

[Unidentified Male Guest (possibly a political analyst or co-host)]

Texas secessionist groups and things like that.

[Kevin D. Williamson]

And you know, it's really in driving

[Unidentified Male Guest (possibly a political analyst or co-host)]

F350s of course too, as you must. And because you couldn't possib pick up your food from Whole Foods with anything that didn't have a high output diesel engine in it in four wheel drive. I say this as a super duty owner myself.

[Kevin D. Williamson]

I love the trucks, but they are superfluous. But it's, you know, it's the suburbs of Dallas, it's the suburbs of Houston.

[Unidentified Male Guest (possibly a political analyst or co-host)]

It's, you know, people in Austin and

[Kevin D. Williamson]

places like that who have this real sense of, you know, texanness as a

[Unidentified Male Guest (possibly a political analyst or co-host)]

kind of transcendent identity to which they have a kind of quasi religious devotion.

[Kevin D. Williamson]

And they're the most interchangeable people in the state living in the most interchangeable places.

[Unidentified Male Guest (possibly a political analyst or co-host)]

I often say this to my friend Sarah Isger, who's from the Houston area, that she's not really from Texas.

[Kevin D. Williamson]

I mean, that could kind of be Atlanta. You know, you don't really.

[Mike Pesca]

It basically became New Orleans for a little while there after Katrina.

[Kevin D. Williamson]

Well, you know, there are two Cajun

[Unidentified Male Guest (possibly a political analyst or co-host)]

states in the United States and one is Louisiana and the other is Texas.

[Kevin D. Williamson]

And you know, I always kind of say Texas really starts just kind of

[Unidentified Male Guest (possibly a political analyst or co-host)]

west of Fort Worth. But even if you look at voting habits and things like that or incomes or all sorts of social markers, the western part of the state, in the northwestern part of the state, the panhandle, far west Texas really are radically different from the suburbs of Houston and places like that.

[Kevin D. Williamson]

But it's in the suburbs and in

[Unidentified Male Guest (possibly a political analyst or co-host)]

the exurbs that you really find these

[Kevin D. Williamson]

kind of people who are going from costco to Walmart and stopping off in

[Unidentified Male Guest (possibly a political analyst or co-host)]

Texas nationalist meetings, somehow in between, because they've got this delusional thing that Texas

[Kevin D. Williamson]

I go to their meetings.

[Unidentified Male Guest (possibly a political analyst or co-host)]

I've covered the Texas nationalist movement for a while. I go to their conventions and stuff.

[Kevin D. Williamson]

And, and they're all like Denison lawyers

[Unidentified Male Guest (possibly a political analyst or co-host)]

from, you know, Sugarland and places like that. It's very strange.

[Kevin D. Williamson]

And we'll be back in a minute

[Mike Pesca]

with more of Kevin Williamson. And we're back with Kevin Williamson talking about his Dispatch article on Texas. And Kevin, you chronicle the money interest, the finance guys, the tech guys driving things in Texas, which you think might be great for diversify, you know, just away from the oil economy. The finance guys are Republicans for the longstanding reason that money aligns with the party, going back to the Lewis Powell memo, of course, where he urged corporate America to organize itself politically against an assault on free enterprise. So that's going on or is it? Or to what extent will it continue to go on, whether there is a chance to see a fraying of that coalition and if that fraying will show up in Texas, the business wing, the populist separatist wing, they don't really have much in common ideologically or culturally. And you got the old enemy of my enemy glue might not be holding them together. So given your reporting, how tight is the Paxton barking at the moon side really, with the Cornyn business side, no matter who wins?

[Kevin D. Williamson]

Yeah, I might push back against your premises just a little bit in the sense that the business interests that really tend to be very strongly Republican in Texas, I don't think so much of

[Unidentified Male Guest (possibly a political analyst or co-host)]

the tech guys and the finance guys,

[Kevin D. Williamson]

a lot of whom are from, you

[Unidentified Male Guest (possibly a political analyst or co-host)]

know, other places who've relocated to Texas for various reasons.

[Kevin D. Williamson]

And, you know, your finance bros walking around in fleece blests in Highland park

[Unidentified Male Guest (possibly a political analyst or co-host)]

in Dallas, eating those $29 bagels at

[Kevin D. Williamson]

Sedell's that I wrote about, their politics are about the same as their counterparts

[Unidentified Male Guest (possibly a political analyst or co-host)]

in, you know, Connecticut and New York City and places like that.

[Kevin D. Williamson]

You know, some of them are they're probably more Republican than your average New

[Unidentified Male Guest (possibly a political analyst or co-host)]

Yorker or your average Fairfield county person, but not much more so.

[Kevin D. Williamson]

And the tech guys are, I mean, some of the tech guys are very

[Unidentified Male Guest (possibly a political analyst or co-host)]

Republican and very tied to Trump, like Musk and those folks.

[Kevin D. Williamson]

But, you know, mostly the tech guys

[Unidentified Male Guest (possibly a political analyst or co-host)]

are in places like Austin mainly, and they tend to have Austin type politics.

[Kevin D. Williamson]

The business interests that are really very pro Republican in Texas are the ones

[Unidentified Male Guest (possibly a political analyst or co-host)]

that have been typically stuck with the Republican Party for a long time now,

[Kevin D. Williamson]

which tend to be Independently owned businesses and things like that. You know, guys who own a car dealership, they own entrepreneurs who own five, you know, dry cleaners or they're commercial real estate developers who have 10 apartment

[Unidentified Male Guest (possibly a political analyst or co-host)]

buildings or something like that.

[Kevin D. Williamson]

They're rich guys, but they're not rich

[Unidentified Male Guest (possibly a political analyst or co-host)]

guys who work for big organizations.

[Kevin D. Williamson]

People who work for big organizations.

[Unidentified Male Guest (possibly a political analyst or co-host)]

These McKinsey types and Goldman Sachs types

[Kevin D. Williamson]

tend to be more progressive than conservative for I think sort of of obvious sociological reasons. But Texas has enough of these traditional chamber of commerce types that everyone's got the Ford dealer in this town, the

[Unidentified Male Guest (possibly a political analyst or co-host)]

Ford dealer in that town, the Ford dealer in that town, these kind of mid to smallish businesses that are very, very Republican. And.

[Kevin D. Williamson]

I'm not sure that they vote on business interests to the extent that people

[Unidentified Male Guest (possibly a political analyst or co-host)]

think that they do.

[Kevin D. Williamson]

You know, there's been a lot of kind of psychological studies of this over the years. And the notion that people vote in

[Unidentified Male Guest (possibly a political analyst or co-host)]

a way that is identifiably in line with their, their financial interests or their short term economic interests doesn't really have very much support.

[Kevin D. Williamson]

People tend to vote on matters of cultural affiliation. And so a lot of these, you know, these, these business leaders are, you know, they're wealthy, educated people who in a lot of the rest of the

[Unidentified Male Guest (possibly a political analyst or co-host)]

country might look like Democrats, but, but

[Kevin D. Williamson]

they've lived in and around the same place most of their life. They've got kind of traditional views of who their friends are and who their enemies are. And they tend to be more aligned

[Unidentified Male Guest (possibly a political analyst or co-host)]

with the kind of Houston suburban populists and would be radical populists and would be separatists and things like that.

[Kevin D. Williamson]

I think that there are things that

[Unidentified Male Guest (possibly a political analyst or co-host)]

can obviously put stress on a coalition like that. And 575 for diesel is one of those things. You know, I mentioned the F350s these guys drive earlier.

[Kevin D. Williamson]

It's, it's, it's 200 bucks to fill one of those things up now. Yeah, and that's certainly got people's attention. But you know, I talk to these, I pick soybean farmers because I've written about soybean farmers a lot.

[Unidentified Male Guest (possibly a political analyst or co-host)]

Soybean farming is actually not that big a thing in Texas compared to like cotton farming and grain farming and stuff.

[Kevin D. Williamson]

But you know, these soybean farmers and other kinds of farmers who've been absolutely

[Unidentified Male Guest (possibly a political analyst or co-host)]

just screwed by the Trump administration twice now with this trade war stuff because

[Kevin D. Williamson]

they're very dependent on exports and they're

[Unidentified Male Guest (possibly a political analyst or co-host)]

also very dependent on imported, you know, fertilizer and chemicals and things like that which have gotten, you know, Two, three, four, five times more expensive. You got little farms going out of business all over the country right now, dairies especially, getting pounded in some ways.

[Kevin D. Williamson]

And. But, you know, if you're a.

[Unidentified Male Guest (possibly a political analyst or co-host)]

If you're an irrigated cotton farmer in West Texas and you've seen your irrigation energy bill go from $20,000 a month to $35,000 a month, you know, you notice that. These are things that you really notice.

[Kevin D. Williamson]

And is it enough to get them

[Unidentified Male Guest (possibly a political analyst or co-host)]

to say, well, I wish I'd voted for Kamala Harris last time around?

[Kevin D. Williamson]

Well, probably not. Is it enough to get them to say, I'm going to vote for Talarico to send the Republicans a message?

[Unidentified Male Guest (possibly a political analyst or co-host)]

Maybe.

[Mike Pesca]

I think thus far, people have surmised that farmers, agriculture were going to rebuke the tariff policies or many policies of the Trump administration. Trump keeps this in mind, and he always makes big pronouncements and actually does give some, buys them off to some extent. And there the farmers have held they, like Trump, as you say, for cultural reasons. Is that gonna. Is that gonna sustain generally?

[Unidentified Male Guest (possibly a political analyst or co-host)]

Yes, I think so.

[Kevin D. Williamson]

I think they'll be the. The last of the diehards. You know, if you look at the. The big splits in American politics, it's less about income than you would think it would be and less about even things like race and religion than you would think it would be. But the urban rural split is very, very real. If you, you know, if you live in a designated, you know, census designated rural area, your politics and your.

[Unidentified Male Guest (possibly a political analyst or co-host)]

And your life in a lot of ways look very different from the do

[Kevin D. Williamson]

if you live in a big American city, including a big Texas city. And I think that they feel in particular under siege in a lot of ways. And although it's really very funny, you know, they've got this very libertarian kind of rhetoric and a libertarian ethos, but their lives, particularly their business lives as they actually live, are pure corporatism.

[Unidentified Male Guest (possibly a political analyst or co-host)]

Right? I mean, there's no free market in

[Kevin D. Williamson]

farm products, in agriculture in the United States. It's one of the most regulated and subsidized and protected businesses in the country. You know, where I come from in Lubbock, Texas, all we really have out

[Unidentified Male Guest (possibly a political analyst or co-host)]

there is cotton farming and Texas Tech University, which means that basically the entire economy is to some degree dependent on some kind of government enterprise one way or the other. And it's either a big state university or a big farm program.

[Kevin D. Williamson]

And so there is a disconnect between

[Unidentified Male Guest (possibly a political analyst or co-host)]

how people actually live and what they think about their politics and what they. What their ideology looks like, and given that.

[Kevin D. Williamson]

Yeah, I think that their, their sense of loyalty to, particularly to Trump more so than the Republican Party. You know, they've got a people. Trump voters have a particular bond with Donald Trump, which is stronger than their bond with the Republican Party. And it's always worth keeping in mind that, you know, Donald Trump defeated the

[Unidentified Male Guest (possibly a political analyst or co-host)]

Republican Party before he defeated the Democratic Party.

[Kevin D. Williamson]

You know, he got into politics because of the support of people who were mad at Republicans, people on the right

[Unidentified Male Guest (possibly a political analyst or co-host)]

who were mad at Republicans before he won the ultimate general election on. On the support of. Of the same Republicans.

[Kevin D. Williamson]

You know, the 2016 was about people who were upset with the Republican apparatus

[Unidentified Male Guest (possibly a political analyst or co-host)]

more than it was about people who were upset with the Democratic Party.

[Kevin D. Williamson]

And I don't think that's really gone away. And they do have a very strong, you know, kind.

[Unidentified Male Guest (possibly a political analyst or co-host)]

Well, it's cult certainly is. Is one way to put it.

[Kevin D. Williamson]

And partly it's about him being a celebrity, like a real celebrity, not a political celebrity.

[Unidentified Male Guest (possibly a political analyst or co-host)]

He's not someone that you know from Fox News. He's someone you know from being a real celebrity. He's been a celebrity for a long time.

[Kevin D. Williamson]

And Democrats have had a good time laughing about that. Look at these dumb Republicans and their hero worship stuff. But they're vulnerable to that sort of thing, too. Not as vulnerable as Republicans because they're more used to having celebrities in their politics than Republicans are.

[Unidentified Male Guest (possibly a political analyst or co-host)]

Republican celebrities are like Scott Baio and Ted Nugent, Kid Rock and Pat Sajak.

[Mike Pesca]

Yeah, Cliff from Cheers.

[Kevin D. Williamson]

No, I will not hear a bad word said about him.

[Unidentified Male Guest (possibly a political analyst or co-host)]

He's a decent guy, great voice, work

[Mike Pesca]

in all the toy Stories.

[Kevin D. Williamson]

He also runs, at least he used to run a great program for kids

[Unidentified Male Guest (possibly a political analyst or co-host)]

who were interested in becoming carpenters and doing sort of jobs like that. Traditional kinds of.

[Mike Pesca]

Yeah, listen, great guy. We're just saying that if we had to list two Democratic celebrities, we'd get to George Clooney as the eighth biggest one. And we're a cliff with the Republicans.

[Unidentified Male Guest (possibly a political analyst or co-host)]

Yes, yes. Taylor Swift versus cliff is the whole thing.

[Kevin D. Williamson]

But your Democrats are still vulnerable to

[Unidentified Male Guest (possibly a political analyst or co-host)]

that kind of thing, too.

[Kevin D. Williamson]

If they ever got a real celebrity in their politics the way Republicans did

[Unidentified Male Guest (possibly a political analyst or co-host)]

with Trump, I think that Taylor Swift could take over the Democratic Party as easily as Donald Trump took over the Republican Party if she wanted to. And Lord knows what that would look like. And I think she's too smart to do something like that.

[Kevin D. Williamson]

But celebrity is a more powerful force

[Unidentified Male Guest (possibly a political analyst or co-host)]

than political ideology in American life. Life. And that's just something worth keeping in mind in the background as we move toward more and more unmoored populism and the party organs themselves don't really have any power anymore. Celebrity is a very good independent power base to have to run a political movement from.

[Mike Pesca]

Yeah, but to go back to my question about a possible schism over populism and capitalism or even corporatism, first of all, I don't think it's going to happen. I think that negative polarization is much bigger force. So if there are two parties in the United States and if there were a schism, who's going to go with the Democrats as, as presently constituted? That's a tough one. Will it be the reasonable people who want capitalism? Doesn't seem like the Democrats are so open to them even though the people want capitalism. Also like a rules based order, will it be the populists? It doesn't seem that, you know, the science based, as they would say, the rational based parts of the Democratic Party are going to welcome in many aspects of the anti vaccine and probably much less educated parts of that coalition. So I'll just say that. I'll also say that the reason why it may seem true in Texas is that there's so much of everyone, you know, there are millions of people who might defect. But my question is more if Cornyn represents. Okay, sure, not typically his. The typical finance person in Texas isn't exactly who the Cornyn voter is.

[Kevin D. Williamson]

The traditional Republican.

[Mike Pesca]

Yes, yes. And it might be, you know, the person has the small business and is a boat owner and goes to Lake Travis, the boat owning Texan. But the Cornyn, the person with the Cornyn appeal, won't they eventually give less money to Paxson or the Republican Party won't? Isn't there a disparate impact between the kind of person who is behind Cornyn and the kind of person who is inclined to vote for Paxson in everything from donation to actually showing up on election day to all other aspects of who actually votes.

[Kevin D. Williamson]

Well, as a lot of my very wealthy friends in Texas who wisely decided

[Unidentified Male Guest (possibly a political analyst or co-host)]

not to become journalists in life have

[Kevin D. Williamson]

discovered over recent years, is that being a big donor doesn't really matter very

[Unidentified Male Guest (possibly a political analyst or co-host)]

much anymore because it's so easy to

[Kevin D. Williamson]

raise tons of money from small dollar donations. Big donors don't really have the kind of clout they used to. You'll find out how strong the coalition is when they lose. Right. So you look at 1992. Democrats are really torqued up after eight years of Reagan and four years of George H.W. bush. They think they're never going to win another election. They're very upset. And there's this ugly split in the party between the kind of, you know,

[Unidentified Male Guest (possibly a political analyst or co-host)]

moderate corporate Clinton types, the people we now, you know, come to know as the New Democrats from that era and your more traditional Teddy Kennedy, union guy, welfare state, left ear Democrats.

[Kevin D. Williamson]

And they hated the Clinton people and

[Unidentified Male Guest (possibly a political analyst or co-host)]

they thought that they were sellouts and they were evil.

[Kevin D. Williamson]

And when Clinton won that election, he

[Unidentified Male Guest (possibly a political analyst or co-host)]

could do no wrong, because winning is what really matters to these people ultimately.

[Kevin D. Williamson]

And, you know, if Trump had lost this most recent election, the whole Trump

[Unidentified Male Guest (possibly a political analyst or co-host)]

movement, I think, would have fallen into disrepute and it would have, it would have been subjected to a degree of ridicule and rejection that would have been, I think, surprising to people. But they didn't lose. They won. And when you win, you win. And nothing wins like winning, as they say. And as long as Republicans continue to win with this formula, it's going, the

[Kevin D. Williamson]

winning itself will be enough to keep that coalition together if they lose. And that's what will be interesting about what if they lose the Senate race in Texas, which will not be as traumatic to them as losing a presidential

[Unidentified Male Guest (possibly a political analyst or co-host)]

election or losing Texas in a presidential

[Kevin D. Williamson]

election, but losing that, that lock, that,

[Unidentified Male Guest (possibly a political analyst or co-host)]

that sense of entitlement to both of those Senate seats in Texas will put some stress on that coalition in a way that maybe will reveal where the fissures actually are and how deep they are and how strong they are.

[Kevin D. Williamson]

But I don't think there's really any

[Unidentified Male Guest (possibly a political analyst or co-host)]

way of ever finding out until they lose a big one.

[Mike Pesca]

What are the factors that, that could get Corny in the nomination, trailing as he is out there is a Trump endorsement. I don't see that coming. Right. Worse economic news, I don't know. Paxton seems impervious to scandal. What do you think?

[Kevin D. Williamson]

So I don't think Trump would endorse

[Unidentified Male Guest (possibly a political analyst or co-host)]

Cornyn unless Cornyn were in the lead. And Cornyn's not going to be in the lead. Right, because Trump's afraid of putting his himself in with a loser and looking like a loser by contamination.

[Kevin D. Williamson]

So, I mean, there are things that could draw a corner over just because

[Unidentified Male Guest (possibly a political analyst or co-host)]

elections are unpredictable and sometimes, you know, turnout isn't what people expected and the people who turn out aren't exactly the ones you expected to. And sometimes your polling isn't as accurate as you, you think it is, but I would be surprised, but I can't

[Kevin D. Williamson]

think of any, you know, political factors

[Unidentified Male Guest (possibly a political analyst or co-host)]

per se that would be likely to save his bacon right now. I think his, his only hopes really are in Kind of, you know, randomness

[Kevin D. Williamson]

and good luck, which is right there

[Mike Pesca]

on the slogans of the placards he's putting up all over the state.

[Unidentified Male Guest (possibly a political analyst or co-host)]

Right.

[Kevin D. Williamson]

Randomness and good luck.

[Unidentified Male Guest (possibly a political analyst or co-host)]

Welcome to six.

[Kevin D. Williamson]

Yeah.

[Unidentified Male Guest (possibly a political analyst or co-host)]

Yes.

[Mike Pesca]

And the last thing I want to get to before I ask you a couple specific questions that I've always wanted to ask someone from Lubbock is you wrote about. You wrote about epic, which is the El Paso Islamic Center, East Plano. Oh, sorry, East Plano. Oh, two episodes piece. East Plano Islamic Center.

[Unidentified Male Guest (possibly a political analyst or co-host)]

You're only off by about 700 miles, I know.

[Mike Pesca]

Which in Texas is like two exits.

[Unidentified Male Guest (possibly a political analyst or co-host)]

Right.

[Mike Pesca]

This is the flashpoint. This is. People in Texas have been ginned up to be quite worried about the imposition of Sharia law, as you make clear in your article that it's just about as offensive as would be a Mennonite or a Presbyterian center, even if you take issue with some of the precepts of the founder of the movement. If it wasn't this, would it be something else? Or is this one of those news stories that is just such an unfortunate. An unfortunate occurrence for the more moderate candidate?

[Kevin D. Williamson]

So I have a theory that everything in 21st century politics up to this point point is at some level a reaction to or playing out of some reaction to the kind of social and psychological trauma from the 911 attacks. I think that that event and the immediate aftermath and the context in which it happened following Bush v. Gore and

[Unidentified Male Guest (possibly a political analyst or co-host)]

the Florida dispute and all that stuff

[Kevin D. Williamson]

unleashed a kind of poison in our politics that we've never been able to kind of get back in the box. And now we've got a whole generation of people who have been raised in a political environment that's always been like that, and they don't know anything different. And Trump seems sort of normal to them. Trumpism seems sort of normal to them.

[Unidentified Male Guest (possibly a political analyst or co-host)]

This has coincided, of course, also with the rise of social media as a dominating force in American political discourse.

[Kevin D. Williamson]

And so I think that latching onto

[Unidentified Male Guest (possibly a political analyst or co-host)]

an item that touches on Islam and on Muslim immigrants, immigrants and in Muslim communities in the United States is more likely than not to be a thing that would be a sort of anchor for this kind of movement, particularly as you see less emphasis on things like sexual minorities and things like that. People just aren't as excited about the gays as they used to be. And although the trans step, I guess, has been sort of shoehorned into that box a little bit as well,

[Kevin D. Williamson]

this crazy notion that we are somehow on the. The verge of being put under some kind of ayatollah style sharia boot heel in Texas, because some folks from East Plano who belong to a mosque who come from an immigrant community that has a lot of money and at least

[Unidentified Male Guest (possibly a political analyst or co-host)]

some people with a lot of money

[Kevin D. Williamson]

in it and they want to build a real estate development, it's just nuts. I mean, it's just crazy. It's not a real thing. And I mean, you know, I was at Waco for those unpleasant events back in the 90s. So, you know, religious compounds kind of press some buttons for me, you know, every now and then. They don't always work out the way you like them to. You don't always like them. And they use the word compound talking

[Unidentified Male Guest (possibly a political analyst or co-host)]

about this, too, always.

[Mike Pesca]

Unlike most magazine writers, when you hear compound, you don't think verb, you think fracture.

[Kevin D. Williamson]

Yeah, something like that.

[Unidentified Male Guest (possibly a political analyst or co-host)]

So,

[Mike Pesca]

yeah, it's just,

[Kevin D. Williamson]

I suppose that there's a certain brand of politics that needs an easily identifiable and hateable minority out group to use as a foil. And. And Muslims certainly played that role for some people in American politics, unfortunately. But, yeah, I think it's just. It's a profoundly silly thing, but. Of course, but Paxton and Cornyn and the governor of Texas and everyone else

[Unidentified Male Guest (possibly a political analyst or co-host)]

are fighting this with everything they can

[Kevin D. Williamson]

think of and, you know, including some means that don't seem to me altogether above board.

[Unidentified Male Guest (possibly a political analyst or co-host)]

The Epic people just won a lawsuit in Texas having to do with claims.

[Mike Pesca]

People. Are these, like the chosen people. Oh, yes.

[Kevin D. Williamson]

The people whose Islamic center.

[Mike Pesca]

Yes, yes.

[Unidentified Male Guest (possibly a political analyst or co-host)]

Sorry. Yes, they are the epic people.

[Mike Pesca]

Yes.

[Unidentified Male Guest (possibly a political analyst or co-host)]

Just won a lawsuit a couple of days ago. That's going to probably advance their cause a little bit, but I suspect that even in a fairly free enterprise.

[Mike Pesca]

But, but the governor has announced he's.

[Unidentified Male Guest (possibly a political analyst or co-host)]

He's essentially. Yeah, I think it's just going to be, as a practical matter impossible to build something like that if you've got the whole government apparatus of the state of Texas against you because, hey, who cares about property rights and free enterprise and that kind of stuff when you've got. When you've got cheap political points that could be scored.

[Mike Pesca]

Kevin D. Williamson is the national correspondent for the Dispatch. His article in March, which has an update which I hope we've provided here, is called Texas is a just about psychotic state of mind. And Kevin, stay with us, because once I have the opportunity to ask three or four questions about Lubbock in West Texas and how you grew up, I can't give it up. I can't pass it up. So will you stay with us?

[Kevin D. Williamson]

Ready to go. Go.

[Mike Pesca]

And that's it for today's show. Corey War produces the Gist. Kathleen Sykes runs the Gist List, Ben Astaire is our booking producer, and Jeff Craig runs our Socials. Michelle Pesca oversees it all benevolently. And thanks for listening.