So Where Did Talarico Go?

Where the heck is little Jimmy Talarico, the blasphemous imp who the regime media are trying to tell us is the anti-gun, anti-meat, anti-fossil fuel, anti-America, anti-Christian communist who’s going to be the guy who finally turns Texas blue? He should be out on the campaign trail nailing down what the elite has decreed is his inevitable victory, but he’s not. He’s been missing in action since the end of September — time to send out a search party. Maybe we can help, but looking for him is like playing Where’s Waldo, except easier, because you can safely avoid barbecue joints, gun ranges, or churches that actually believe in Jesus.

You know, places where normal people are. People who don’t think that Texas’s biggest problem is white people. People who don’t think that capitalism is a system of oppression that must be dismantled, or that the police are something that must be defunded. People who don’t think that God isn’t a he/him, or even a she/her, but a they/them. People who, when asked what they love, immediately answer “Trans kids.”

None of that’s normal. None of that’s Texan.

Now, his campaign has an excuse. It claims that Talarico has had the flu for about two weeks (!), that he unselfishly wants to spare those around him the risk of catching a glorified cold, and that he’ll be hitting the trail again soon, no doubt in another rented pickup truck, with a borrowed Stetson and a beef rib in his hand that seems like it is about to make him cry. He’s supposedly winning this race, which is why he’s begging for a debate — something candidates who think they have their race sewn up always do — yet he drops out for half a month in the middle of things? Most politicians would be out there stumping even with a burgeoning outbreak of ringworm, herpes, and leprosy. We’re expected to believe that this guy was KO’d for two weeks by the crud? Seems sketchy, but even if true, should he really be risking his health running for the Senate and not dealing with what is obviously a compromised immune system? 

Of course, there’s no reason any Texan should believe a word of what his campaign says. All the guy and his minions do is lie to them. He’s there, on archived video, supporting every freakish lefty thing, from carving up kids to wanting to close down the fossil fuel state’s fossil fuel industry. But being on tape saying it doesn’t stop him from lying about it, even to the point of waving off the record as AI — which he is also against. Hey, who are you going to believe, the guy who looks like Pete Buttigieg’s mini-me, or your own lying eyes?

No, the flu excuse just doesn’t add up. His bizarre disappearance comes right at a time when all the smart people of smartness who’ve never set foot in the Lone Star State have decreed that he’s an inevitable juggernaut who is going to smash a Republican Party that hasn’t lost a statewide office since Talarico was five years old. Now, there are some other possibilities. Maybe his mom grounded him — after all, doesn’t he live with her and, well, her roof, her rules? Or maybe he’s off on a romantic idyll with one of the many young women who I totally believe he has had enduring, passionate romantic relationships with. Maybe we should just hate the game, not the player.

There are other possibilities. Maybe he’s out circulating among his people, you know, the donors in California and New York who he actually cares about. Before he fell off the map, he did a fundraiser with Robert De Niro, another tiny leftist and one who gives off the same level of Texas vibes — none. You get the idea watching him that Talarico can’t wait to wipe the dust of this flyover Red State off his Crocs for the next six years should he win the election. It seems clear he doesn’t really think he’d ever be reelected. He and those around him are all remarkably candid when they don’t think anybody is filming them, that all the fake normalness he’s pantomiming is out the window the minute he gets sworn in and that it will be six years of him fulfilling every AOC/DSA fantasy for his real constituents in Brooklyn, Hollywood, and America’s faculty lounges.

Now, there are rumors about why he’s disappeared. One is that he’s gone nuts, but I am not sure I believe that. In any case, how would we be able to tell? The DSA ideology he embraces is functionally indistinguishable from insanity. But he does give off a disconcerting vibe — he comes off like an ironic normal kid you might find on the cover art of an Oingo Boingo album.

Here in Texas, I think Texans are coming around on this little mutant. When I got back about a month ago, a lot of the normie Republicans didn’t really understand who this guy is. Oh, they thought he was a little weird, but they didn’t really understand the full depths of his strangeness. The roughly $150 million being spent to support Ken Paxton is helping with that. Today, I went off to one of those pleasant, clean, and comfortable suburbs where people who used to live in the big cities retreated to escape the kind of social pathologies that James Talarico’s political ideology nurtures. I was on the road for about two hours, and after I left the little liberal outpost where I live north of Houston, I saw no James Talarico signs. I don’t mean a few. I mean zero, and that’s quite a change from what happened under Beto. There was legitimately Betomania. For whatever reason — or in Beto’s case, for whatever reason, since he is a well-known furry — there was excitement about him. I hear a lot from outsiders about Talarico Fever infecting Texans, but I don’t see it on the ground. Maybe the polls are right. But then again, when have the polls ever been right?

I spent the day with a normie Republican, a guy who likes God, guns, and the flag. He’s not particularly thrilled by Ken Paxton — insiders tell me a lot of the corruption accusations are a total fraud — but he likes what Paxton did as attorney general. He is certainly going to vote, and he’s certainly not going to vote for the pinko homunculus. 

And here’s another thing. While we were together, his phone rang about seven or eight times. He glanced at it and muttered, “Ugh, spam,” and put it down without answering. No pollster is ever going to talk to my guy. And I drove miles and miles through a neighborhood full of guys just like him. Every single one of them is going to vote, and they’re going to vote as they always do — for the Republican.

Hey, maybe I’m huffing copium like a Cornell coed blasting rails of ketamine off a frat boy, but I’m just not seeing a majority of Texans deciding to spend the next half dozen years being represented in the Senate by the Milk Carton Marxist. I touched base with other folks who are deep in the know in Lone Star politics over the last few days and none of them — I mean literally zero of them — believe that Talarico is going to win this.I don’t think they’d lie to me — some are good friends and have never hesitated to tell me things I don’t want to hear before. They are here on the ground, experienced in how the state’s politics work, and they are unanimous that they don’t think Paxton will lose. Oh, it’s not that he can’t lose, and it’s not that it won’t take a lot of work to nail down a victory. Ken Paxton, fairly or not, comes into this with a lot of baggage, and it doesn’t help that the loathsome John Cornyn and his band of banal Bush Boys from the country clubs are demonstrating the kind of loyalty and character we’ve come to expect from them by effectively supporting Talarico to teach the peasants a lesson for daring to defy them.

Whatever the real story is behind James Talarico’s sudden disappearance, he’s never gonna tell us the truth. Ken Paxton is making the most of his opponent going AWOL, and now he’s got the money behind him to make his message break through. That’s good news. This is the first time he’s been inside his Democrat opponent’s decision cycle this election cycle, and hopefully he can stay there. As for Talarico himself, his awkward absence is coming a little early. After all, Beto O’Rourke waited until after he lost to finally just go away.

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