Republicans tag Talarico as soft. Do they really think Paxton is manly? | Opinion
To hear some Republicans tell it, the most salient issue in the heated Texas Senate race is barbecue — specifically, how much of it Democrat James Talarico eats.
It’s so important that Republican Ken Paxton challenged Talarico in an online influencer’s June 13 video to “meet at a barbecue restaurant and see how much you love barbecue. Let’s have a real barbecue lunch.”
The attorney general never risks appearing in venues where he might face questions about his political corruption, suspicious business dealings, poor record in office or very public extramarital affairs and divorce. He dodges debates, all but the softest interviews and even court appearances. So, this barbecue thing must be legit.
Constantly mentioning Talarico’s meat intake is part of an extensive GOP campaign to tag Talarico as weak, soft, effeminate, perhaps even gay. (He’s not.) Paxton’s allies are only halfheartedly making the race, an important contest for control of the Senate, about issues. This is a campaign built on values, vibes and virility.
Paxton has poked fun but left the ugliest rhetoric to snarky GOP commenters. At Paxton’s victory party after he handily dispatched Republican Sen. John Cornyn in the runoff, U.S. Rep. Brandon Gill of Flower Mound said Talarico “daydreams about trans kids.” White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller wrote that Talarico was the first “transgender Senate candidate.” (He’s not transgender.) Others say he’s a vegan. (He’s not; he once bragged, however, about running a vegan-friendly campaign for state House.)
The entire effort seems built around throwing rhetorical red meat — if not actual meat because, for all the barbecue talk, beef is crazy expensive right now under President Donald Trump — to online influencers. It’s easier to win the day on X or Fox News, after all, than to do the actually manly thing: Talk to voters, listen to their concerns and tell them how you’ll help.
There’s a problem with their approach, though: Paxton himself.
Republicans think they can make Talarico unacceptable to most Texans primarily by highlighting his progressive views on religion and gender and painting him as unmasculine. But their candidate is hardly a stout representation of manliness — at least the kind that actually matters.
Gill, Miller and others who love to tease Talarico need to tell us: Was it manly when Ken Paxton cheated on his wife and used his political office to try to conceal the affair? Does a real man create such a political mess that his wife, an elected state senator in her own right, has to sit through an impeachment trial and hear the details?
And after all that, does a real man cause his wife of 38 years to tell the public she’s seeking divorce “on biblical grounds”?
Is it manly to draw people who consider you a friend into business deals and fail to tell them you’re getting a taste of the action, as Paxton did in his securities-fraud case? Do strong men duck questions and try to run out the clock, or do they stand up and answer the charges?
Does a real man, even a politician, casually violate his oaths of office and the trust of voters by personally intervening in cases with no state interest for a donor who happens to be helping to conceal the aforementioned affair?
Is the strong, masculine thing to do to get elected on your own merits, or simply to never say no to the biggest political bully on the block and ride in his wake? Is it to stand for the interests of your state and the conservatism you so grandly claim while turning your office into a factory of bullying and lawsuits against universities and businesses with whom you disagree?
Does a real man dart away from process servers just trying to perform their part of the legal process — the one he pledged an oath to, not that oaths seem to matter?
We could go on. Suffice it to say that Paxton might be mannish — the type who can’t shut up about how much he loves barbecue and the Bible — but he is not manly, not in any of the important ways.
What matters is what’s in the Senate candidates’ heads, not their stomachs. Voters can decide whether Talarico meets their threshold of manliness or even if that matters to them.
And they can do the same with Paxton. Manliness is built not on how much brisket you can put away or your strong opinions on gender, as important as that issue is. It’s primarily a matter of how you treat others — especially women — and fulfill your obligations, public and private.
And there, few “men” are softer than Paxton.
