Radio Free America: Republicans want to make Texas European again

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What did you do the morning after number-one ranked Ohio State blew a 20-point fourth quarter lead to Texas? If you’re a Horns fan, you were probably trying to read as many game recaps as possible through your Shiner Bock-induced hangover. If you’re a Buckeyes fan, you were looking up Ryan Day’s home address on Twitter again. And if you’re Republican Texas Railroad Commission nominee Bo French, you were finding a picture of eight South Asian-looking UT fans celebrating the victory and declaring it a problem worse than anyone could have imagined.

I’ve covered French before, and this latest racist outburst is in line with his overall Carl Schmitt-inspired Weltanschauung. But his latest dalliance with European-style blood and soil nationalism has broken through to the broader public. Maybe it’s because French is somehow being more racist about college football than college football message boards, which I didn’t think was possible. I mean, this is the politics section of the main Longhorns board, and I don’t see anyone there sticking up for French.Indeed, a post-2024 election survey showed that Americans thought that Democrats prioritized abortion, LGBTQ+ rights and environmental issues instead of their own top issues of the economy, inflation and immigration. But they thought Republicans cared about the economy, inflation and immigration. And, well, that’s the whole shooting match. Regardless of whether voters agreed with Democrats on abortion, LGBTQ+ rights and environmental issues, they felt those issues were prioritized over economic concerns.

Most notably, French has managed to divide Texas Republicans with a number of elected officials denouncing him, others sticking up for him. No less than Karl Rove says he’ll vote for French’s opponent. It’s because French’s view of who an American is would end up killing what has led to Texas’ success off the football field.

So I’m guessing you all read the 1619 Project and know that the country’s ruling class has a history of using racial hierarchies to maintain political and economic power. But the Founders were also Enlightenment liberals who believed in the equality of men. They were the first to set up a creedal nation, one where it didn’t matter who your parents were but whether you agreed to be bound by the same laws as everyone else. One hand (racism) is always fighting the other (freedom).

And for decades, Texas elites have deftly balanced maintaining racial hierarchies while giving people a chance at a good life. The deal they offered everyone is that it would do as little as possible for its working-class residents (its human development index is routinely one of the worst in the country) and segregate, then gerrymander nonwhite residents into irrelevance. But if you make it to the middle class, you’ll get good schools, no income tax and 2,500 square feet in the suburbs.

It’s a deal that was alluring for many, and after the ‘60s, it was open to more than just those eligible for the Sons of Confederate Veterans. It’s why Houston has the best Vietnamese food in the country, why Dallas-Fort Worth had the biggest Black population increase of any metro area and why in the ‘10s, seemingly everyone who worked in tech wondered if they could do their job from Austin. The deal could be changed to be fairer, more effective and kinder, but it’s still a good one for a lot of people.

This openness has led to Texan cultural dominance. The most popular song of the decade has the state in the title. You can now get breakfast tacos and barbecue almost anywhere. And when the Dallas Morning News found two of the students that French attacked, they found they were first- and second-generation Americans, one of whom grew up a soccer fan. Now, they’re donning burnt orange and cheering on the Horns, that’s a Texas victory that doesn’t require Ryan Day to forget how a clock works. 

But you can’t achieve that cultural dominance if you only let people with ancestors who fought for the Confederacy participate in it. And while Donald Trump could use his fame and charisma to elide the white nationalist elements of his agenda, successor politicians can’t. After him, the party belongs to politicians like French and JD Vance, who thinks that your ancestors need to have been here 200 years ago to be a real American. 

This is a far more restrictive and extreme view of what made an American than the Founders envisioned. To them, this was a country where any man could slip the dusty hereditary aristocracy of the old world to try and make a life for himself. No less an arch-conservative than Bert Cooper understood this

So it’s time to stand up for a country where it doesn’t matter who your parents are. In doing so, Democrats have the chance to win over Republicans who really do believe in the promise of America, while blood and soil fascists like Bo French and JD Vance sound like a bunch of goddamn Europeans.

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AROUND AMERICA

• Of course, not every Republican facing a tough election is acting like French. Kansas Senator and OB/GYN Roger Marshall, facing heat for suing his impoverished patients and having them arrested, was actually willing to stand up for Indian immigrants.

• Following up on the Missouri gerrymandering item from last week, proponents of the illegal map (led by Secretary of State Denny Hoskins) failed to convince the U.S. Supreme Court to keep letting them break Missouri law, AND a whistleblower in Hoskins’ office alleged he demanded a local election result be reversed.

• The Montana Senate race is a weird one, as incumbent Republican Steve Daines dropped out at the last second so his friend Kurt Alme could replace him as the Republican nominee, even though he’s never held elected office before. Alme faces independent Seth Bodnar, and Democrat Alani Bankhead, with a recent poll showing Bodnar has the best shot at beating him. Videos like that one should help!

• In 2017, Alex Pareene wrote that the TIki Torch Riot was the future of the Republican Party. In 2027, one of the rioters will likely be serving in the Florida House of Representatives.

• Last week, the chairman of the Sussex County (NJ) Republican Party decried left-wing political violence. Over the weekend, he was arrested for pulling a gun on someone in a road rage incident. Hey, maybe the other driver was a Republican too, so he isn’t a hypocrite.

• I don’t know if cruel tech tyrants got my message on trying to give the public something in return for data centers, but their top pollster certainly has.

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INTERNET STUFF I LIKED THIS WEEK

Image courtesy of Reddit user ipw8530

I try not to drag you too deep into my personal problems, but after the 2002 World Cup, I decided to become a Leeds United fan. This happened immediately before “doing a Leeds” became a cautionary tale. But I stuck with a team that I was basically unable to watch because I’m stubbornly loyal. Also, for most of my 20s I wasn’t waking up before noon on the weekend anyway.

But now they’re good again! Like, shockingly good, could contend for a spot in Europe. Which means roughly 25 years of pent-up optimism is exploding to the surface. After crushing Newcastle 4-1 to go to third in the table (British for standings), the Leeds subreddit is getting its jokes off. I want to welcome you all to a bandwagon that is finally ready to have a good time.

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BOOK CLUB

Image courtesy of HarperCollins Publishers

I had no idea that the man who commissioned the most widely read English translation of the Bible was, by modern understanding, gay. But King James I of England had a succession of male favorites at court that he had intense romantic relationships with. The most prominent one was George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham and subject of Lucy Hughes-Hallett’s “The Scapegoat.” The book is a cautionary tale on the power a favorite can have over a monarch, as Villiers used his position for an array of self-dealing and advanced a series of boneheaded foreign policy maneuvers that set the stage for the English Civil War.

Anyway, I kind of wish the Supreme Court had read it when they were thinking about whether the Framers had any reason to think preventing a personalist executive regime was worth enshrining in the Constitution. Now it’s Natalie Harp’s world, and we just live in it.

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HELP US OUT

Got lots of great ideas for what Christopher Nolan’s next adaptation should be. I particularly liked the idea of “Gulliver’s Travels” — like “The Odyssey,” it features a nonlinear narrative and was a cheesy ‘90s miniseries. 

As for this week, I want to return to a topic I addressed earlier: teams I like that suddenly look good. The Giants resembled a competent football team for the first time in more than a decade against the Cowboys on Sunday night, and now I actually want to follow what happened around the league. But Peter King’s retired, who’s putting out the best Monday/Tuesday morning NFL recaps? Don’t say The Ringer. Email me and tell me what you think!

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