James Talaricos bid to present himself as the electable Democrat in Texas U.S. Senate race is rapidly colliding with his own record of radical rhetoric on immigration and national identity.
According to The Western Journal, the state representative and former public school teacher, who also styles himself as a Presbyterian seminarian, has seen a series of past statements resurface in recent weeks that cast doubt on just how moderate or mainstream he really is. These remarks may have helped him stand out against far-left U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett in a Democratic primary, but they are likely to be political dynamite in a conservative-leaning border state already battered by the consequences of President Joe Bidens lax border policies.
The latest controversy centers on comments Talarico made during a podcast interview in which he praised his illegal immigrant students as more authentically American than native-born citizens. Before I was a politician, I was a public school teacher in San Antonio, Texas, on the west side of the city, and I taught a lot of undocumented students, and those students tended to be my most patriotic students, Talarico said in an interview last week.
He went further, suggesting that these students possessed a deeper understanding of the nations promise than those actually born here. They understood something about this country that a lot of us who are native-born forget: that this is supposed to be the land of opportunity, he continued.
The venue for these remarks was telling in itself: Talarico appeared on a podcast produced by The Bulwark, a NeverTrump outlet that has made a business model out of attacking conservatives while claiming the mantle of principled Republicanism. For many Texas voters who still value border security, national sovereignty, and the rule of law, the combination of a progressive Democrat and a NeverTrump platform will only underscore how out of touch this message is with everyday concerns.
At the heart of the controversy is Talaricos use of the word patriotic to describe people who are, by definition, in the country illegally. Standard definitions are not ambiguous: patriotic (adjective): inspired by patriotism; befitting or characteristic of a patriot and patriot (noun): one who loves and supports their country.
Illegal immigrants, by contrast, are neither in their own country nor respecting the laws of the nation they have entered without authorization. To celebrate them as more patriotic than Americans is to invert the basic understanding that love of country includes respect for its borders, its laws, and its sovereignty.
This leaves Talarico in an unflattering light for a man who once held responsibility for educating Texas children. Either, as critics argue, he is a poor teacher who does not grasp the meaning of the words he uses, or he is a politician who harbors such disdain for his own country that he believes non-Americans who came to this country criminally are better than the Americans he wants to represent, or the American students he taught and went on to insult.
For a candidate seeking to represent not just any state, but a red, heavily impacted border state that has borne the brunt of his partys border crisis, either interpretation is politically toxic. Texans have watched as record illegal crossings, cartel activity, and strained local resources have turned border security from an abstract policy debate into a daily reality, and they are unlikely to embrace a Senate hopeful who romanticizes illegal immigration while diminishing native-born citizens.
Many of Talaricos controversial statements have been circulating on social media for some time, but Democrats appeared to hope they could be quietly forgotten in a year when Texas is again being targeted as potentially in play. The strategy seemed to be to repackage Talarico as a conventional, normie Democrat who would remain safely within the Overton Window of Texas politics and avoid the kind of hard-left rhetoric that alarms swing voters.
That illusion evaporated with last weeks podcast appearance. This was from Thursday. So much for that.
If this is the message Talarico intends to carry into the general election that illegal immigrants are more patriotic than the citizens whose votes he is seeking Democrats may be in for a bruising campaign. There is, of course, a darker possibility: that the progressive base has become so enamored with identity politics and open-borders ideology that such rhetoric is now seen as a virtue rather than a liability, signaling a return to peak woke politics that voters in Texas and beyond have repeatedly rejected.
Should that be the case, the stakes extend far beyond one Senate race. A party that elevates candidates who openly blur the line between citizen and non-citizen, and who appear more eager to flatter those who break the law than to defend those who follow it, is a party that has lost touch with the foundational principles of nationhood, accountability, and ordered liberty and if that trajectory continues, as the original piece warned, God help us all.
Login