Looking at the Republican candidates on the Nov. 3 ballot, voting for some of them feels like being asked to rescue somebody who doesn’t deserve saving. Some of those GOP politicians probably don’t deserve saving, and they deserve to know it, too, but a lot of voters will mark their names on the ballot to save ourselves – not them – on Election Day.
One of those red-state rescues will happen in Texas. That is where polls show a close U.S. Senate race between Ken Paxton, the Republican attorney general, and Democrat state Rep. James Talarico. After crushing mega-RINO Sen. John Cornyn in the GOP primary, Paxton is struggling to break ahead of the mega-liberal Talarico.
A big reason Texans might be holding their nose to vote for Paxton is he cheated on his wife, a state senator. Not only that, but covering up that affair took Paxton down a crooked path that led to his own impeachment trial in 2023 in the Texas Senate.
The alternative to Paxton is Talarico, a former school teacher who is also a walking weirdo. By now Texas voters know about his “God is binary” comment, his hatred of meat and his own white skin, and his love for "trans children," as if gender confusion is good for kids.
Talarico is done, at least for now, talking about white guilt and fossil fuels. On the campaign trail he is quoting the Bible and talking about loving your neighbor. That is a smart strategy, too, since Texans know adultery is listed in the 10 Commandments.
It’s like Texans are forced to choose between The Crook or The Crazy, and having to choose really stinks.
Another undeserved rescue will happen here in my state, red-state Mississippi. Sen. Cindy-Hyde Smith will probably win re-election and defeat her Democrat opponent, an attorney named Scott Colom.
If she wins, it will be because a lot of Republican-leaning Mississippians held their nose to send the Senator back to Washington. That reluctancy comes from a news interview, when she sounded mighty flippant about beef prices and families struggling with grocery prices.
Rather than express any sympathy for struggling Mississippi families, the Senator gave an economic explanation that belongs on CNBC. As a cattle rancher herself, she pointed to higher gas prices, and the “peaks and valleys” of commodities, and then she dropped a let-them-eat-cake comment.
“You know, you have so many proteins to choose from,” she told WLOX in the February interview.
That one foolish comment handed Colom a campaign ad and a campaign slogan: “Pick another senator instead.”
Voting out Senator Pick Another Protein is probably a tempting idea in Mississippi, one of the poorest states, but voters need to be reminded about the other party, the Democratic Party. The other party airing political ads about high beef prices was also guilt-tripping you to eat less meat, or go vegan, to help heal the planet. It despises your gas-powered automobile, too, and cheers for your pain at the gas pump.
It didn’t help Sen. Hyde-Smith’s re-election plans to run a dopey “sitting on a porch swing” ad. The theme of the ad is she is listening to the concerns of Mississippians, including our concerns about the cost of groceries.
“Some of the best conversations I’ve ever had weren’t in Washington, D.C. They happened sitting on a porch swing,” she declares in the ad.
Yeah, sure you believe that. There is a reason comments under the ad are blocked on YouTube.
In the Senator’s defense, all politicians air those feel-good ads during re-election time. They desperately want to seem relatable and normal, so they show smiling cute children, and American flags hanging everywhere, and some worker in a hard hat.
It’s so predictable that voters usually roll our eyes at those ridiculous ads and say “it’s just politics,” and we go on with our lives. But it’s hard to move on when $50 doesn’t go far in the gas tank and when a pound of ground beef hit $6.79 in September.
It’s hard to ignore “find some other protein” when you know Mississippi families have always depended on always-cheap ground beef to put protein on the table.
And now they can’t. And that makes me mad.
Just this morning, however, an aid aired that gave me another reason to choose Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith on the ballot. The super PAC ad talked about those high grocery bills, and it appealed to parents who are struggling to fill the refrigerator and feed their kids.
Oh, so suddenly the party that sent the FBI after school parents, and hides trans ideology from them, is feeling their pain in the grocery store?
Voting against the Republicans, the ad promised, will “stop the madness” in Washington, D.C.
What I see from the Republicans is laziness and apathy, not madness.
What I see from the Democrats is bloodlust. With the U.S. House likely to flip, there is a thirst for vengeance from an unhinged communist base that wants Republican heads on pikes, all in the name of “saving democracy” while hurting their political opponents.
Their motivation to vote, and to win Nov. 3, is like the bumper sticker I saw on a truck in a drive-through. It said, "This Machine Kills Fascists."
The driver, unfortunately, couldn't define "fascist" when I asked.
"I think you know," he told me.
Yes, sir, I sure do. It's me, and millionaire Cindy Hyde-Smith, and wife-cheating Ken Paxton, and 77 million voters who voted for Donald Trump two years ago.
For all her warts, Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith didn’t cheer when Charlie Kirk was murdered. But I bet the fellow with his bumper sticker did, and that is enough for me to bite my lip and choose “Republican" on the midterm ballot.
So, I will do it for Charlie. If he was here, I believe he would do the same.
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