Yeah, But Texas: Why Red State Republicans (And Even Their Smartest Friends) Don't Get It

So I sent a buddy of mine a clip yesterday.

It was Kamala Harris on a livestream… doing what she literally called a "no bad idea brainstorm" for Democrats heading into 2026 and 2028.

The list?

Pack the Supreme Court. Just keep adding justices until they get the rulings they want.

Statehood for Washington D.C. and Puerto Rico. Four new automatic Democratic senators… overnight.

Abolish or "reform" the Electoral College… because apparently winning the popular vote in California and New York should be enough to run the country.

And to top it off?

"We've got to neutralize these red states from cheating," she said. "We gotta fight fire with fire. These folks are playing to win. We gotta play to win too."

That's not me paraphrasing. That's the quote.

And it's not just Harris saying it. James Carville - one of the most plugged-in Democratic strategists alive - laid out the exact same plan a few months ago.

And then added one more piece…

Reopen the southern border and grant blanket amnesty to every illegal immigrant in the country. Instant Democratic voters.

His advice to his own party?

"Don't run on it. Don't talk about it. Just do it."

So I send this to my buddy expecting some kind of "yeah, that's wild" response.

You know what he wrote back?

"Yeah, but Republicans started it with Texas."

I had to put my phone down for a second.

Now let me be clear about something right up front.

My buddy is not some uninformed rube. He's not the guy at the bar regurgitating whatever cable news pundit he saw last week.

He's one of the most politically savvy people I know.

A student of history. A student of politics. A guy who was a Republican for years and eventually moved over to the libertarian camp because he got tired of the GOP's BS.

He lives in a moderately red Midwestern state. The kind of place where Republican leadership has been pretty stable for a long time… and politics has more or less stayed within the guardrails.

And THAT is the whole point of this article.

Because if a guy this politically savvy can still hit me with "yeah, but Texas" when I show him Kamala Harris openly talking about packing the Supreme Court…

We have a problem.

It's not an intelligence problem.

It's an experience problem.

Yeah, But Texas

If you don't know what "Texas" is referring to… earlier this year, Republicans in Texas pushed through a mid-decade redistricting map that picks up a few additional GOP seats.

Trump asked for it. Texas delivered.

And that map became the symbolic origin story in the minds of a lot of people who don't pay close attention to politics.

In my buddy's mind, Texas is where it started.

Texas is the original sin.

Texas is why Kamala Harris is now talking about packing the court and rigging the Senate and "fighting fire with fire."

And that, right there, is the entire problem with how moderates and Republicans in safe red states see this fight.

Because this didn't start with Texas. It didn't start with Trump in 2016. It didn't start with Trump at all.

This has been going on for decades.

A Quick History Lesson For People Who Need One

Let's actually walk through this.

Illinois Democrats have gerrymandered Illinois into a 14-to-3 Democratic delegation through the most cartoonish maps you've ever seen.

Look up Illinois 4.

It's two unconnected blobs of Chicago joined by a thin strip running along an interstate highway. They drew that on purpose.

There's no apology. There's no debate.

Maryland… same story. Gerrymandered so hard that a federal court tossed one of their maps as unconstitutional back in 2018, they redrew it, and it's STILL a Democratic stronghold by design.

Massachusetts? Nine congressional seats. All nine are Democrats.

In a state where roughly 30 percent of voters consistently vote Republican.

Sound familiar yet?

New York tried to ram through a brutal mid-decade gerrymander in 2022 to flip several House seats blue. Their own state court threw it out as unconstitutional.

So they came back and tried it again recently.

California uses what they call a "nonpartisan" commission that somehow keeps producing maps that crush Republican representation.

Funny how that works.

Colorado. New Mexico. Nevada. Connecticut. Oregon. Washington.

Every single one of these states has been gerrymandered by Democrats… for decades… to lock in permanent one-party rule.

And then, on top of all of that, you have the racially-drawn districts across the South that Democrats fought for and protected for years.

Carve out a district specifically to ensure a particular racial outcome.

Tell me how that's not, by definition, racism.

We're literally drawing lines on a map based on race to engineer who wins.

But sure…

Texas.

What My Buddy Is Actually Saying

This is the part of the conversation that matters.

When my buddy hits me with "yeah, but Texas," he doesn't realize what he's actually telling me.

He's telling me his expectation is that Republicans need to stop.

He's not telling Kamala Harris she needs to stop. He's not telling Carville he needs to stop. He's not telling Illinois or Maryland or California or any blue state they need to stop.

He's telling the right that we need to lower the temperature.

So at what point… and I really do want to know this… at what point do we turn to the left and say "y'all need to stop"?

When does that conversation happen?

When the Democrats are talking about packing the Supreme Court so they get the rulings they want?

Apparently not.

When they're talking about making D.C. a state to engineer two permanent Senate seats?

Apparently not.

When they're talking about granting amnesty to millions of illegal immigrants to create new voters?

Apparently not.

When their actual former vice president and likely 2028 frontrunner is on camera saying "we gotta fight fire with fire"?

Apparently not.

The expectation is always one-way.

The right must restrain itself. The left does what the left does.

That is what suicidal empathy looks like.

You give an inch with the expectation that they'll meet you halfway. They never do.

They take the inch. Then they ask for a foot. Then a yard. Then your house. Then your kids' future.

And when you finally push back?

You're the problem.

The Left Is The Bad Guys In This Story

Okay. I'm just gonna say it.

I am tired of dancing around this.

The left, objectively, is the bad guys here. The left is the destabilizing force.

The left is the one violating norms, escalating rhetoric, demanding structural changes to permanently lock in their power, and openly talking about "fighting fire with fire" to neutralize their political opposition.

And the right?

Predominantly, the right is the good guys.

Not perfect. Not flawless. Not above criticism.

But objectively the lesser of the two evils… by a country mile.

I know that's an unpopular thing to say in mixed company. I know it makes me sound partisan. I don't care.

I am calling balls and strikes the way I see them. And anyone who's actually been paying attention to what's happened in this country over the last decade should be able to call them the same way.

If you can't?

That's a you problem.

The Right Has Conserved Nothing

Here's the funny part.

The right… the Republicans… the "conservatives"… they haven't actually conserved much of anything.

The country has been drifting left for decades.

The federal government has gotten bigger under every single Republican president of my lifetime. Spending has gone up. Regulation has gone up. The cultural rot has gotten worse.

So if I'm being honest…

The right isn't the good guys because they're winning some heroic battle against tyranny. They're the good guys because they're the only thing keeping the car from going 100 miles an hour off the cliff.

Right now, the car is going 55.

Still in the same direction. Still toward the cliff. Just slower.

But 55 versus 100 is not a small difference.

55 versus 100 is the difference between you having time to course-correct… and you not having time.

55 versus 100 is the difference between "we have problems we can solve" and "the country is unrecognizable in a generation."

That's why the "both sides" framing breaks down the second you actually look at what each side is doing.

"Yeah, But Trump"

I know what's coming when my buddy reads this.

"Yeah, but Trump did the war in Iran."

Yes. He did. And it was wrong. And I've been openly critical of it.

So has Rand Paul. So has Thomas Massie.

The right has internal critics willing to call out their own team.

Where's the left's equivalent?

"Yeah, but gas prices went up."

Yes. They have. And that's a problem.

Now compare that to four years of Biden producing 40-year-high inflation, a fentanyl crisis at the southern border, and a withdrawal from Afghanistan that killed thirteen American service members.

"Yeah, but Trump is divisive."

Sure.

And the Summer of Love in 2020 was what… unifying?

Cities burning down was unifying? Defunding the police was unifying? The DEI overhaul of every institution in American life was unifying?

This is where my buddy and a lot of really sharp people always get stuck.

They will compare one single Trump policy to the entire historical record of progressive overreach and somehow come out thinking the right is the bigger problem.

It isn't even close.

It's not in the same ballpark. It's not on the same planet.

The 2020 race riots. The COVID lockdowns. The school closures. The mandates. The "Summer of Love." The collapse of prosecutorial standards in major cities. The open border under Biden. The Green New Deal. The expansion of Medicare and Medicaid we can't afford. The DEI bureaucracy that infested every Fortune 500 company. The cultural insanity that started telling parents they were bigots for asking what was being taught to their kids. The LGBTQ ideology that got pushed into kindergarten classrooms.

This all happened. We all lived through it.

And then you compare that to… what…

Trump being mean on Truth Social? Trump raising tariffs? Trump striking Iran?

Pick whichever Trump grievance you want.

Then weigh it against everything I just listed.

Tell me with a straight face it's even close.

So Back To The Maps

Now circle back to where we started.

Indiana, December 2025. South Carolina, May 2026.

Two red-state Republican supermajorities killed mid-decade redistricting maps that would have helped the GOP hold the House.

They did it for "principle." They did it because they wanted "vibrant parties" and a "clash of ideas."

Meanwhile…

Kamala Harris is on a livestream telling the Democratic base she wants to pack the Supreme Court and engineer two new states to lock in permanent power.

That's the asymmetry. That's the entire game right there.

The naivete of red-state Republicans isn't that they want to be principled. Principles are fine.

The naivete is in thinking the other side will ever be principled in return.

They won't.

They've told us. In plain English. They won't.

And the longer the right keeps unilaterally disarming while the left openly says "fight fire with fire," the closer we get to a country where the right doesn't win another national election… ever.

I Lived The Alternative

This is where I want to bring it home.

I lived in New York state for almost twenty years. I spent nearly a decade in Philadelphia. And I've been in Indiana for the last four years.

I have seen the polar opposite up close.

Not the cartoon version.

The lived version.

Let me give you a concrete example.

I grew up in the New York 23rd Congressional District. Or, more accurately, in whatever Democrats decided to call the 23rd Congressional District in any given redistricting cycle.

Because every cycle, they redrew the lines.

They'd peel off rural conservative counties and bolt them onto Democratic-leaning urban areas. They'd stretch district boundaries hundreds of miles across upstate New York to dilute Republican votes. They'd carve up communities of interest because the math worked out better for the party in power.

I watched my home district get redrawn so many times I stopped recognizing it.

And the kicker?

Almost nobody outside of upstate New York noticed.

It just happened. Quietly. Cycle after cycle. Because that's how Democrats operate when they control the pen.

Then I moved to Philadelphia for nearly a decade.

Philadelphia is a one-party city in a one-party region of a state that JUST barely swings enough to occasionally feel like there's competition.

As a Republican living in Philly?

You don't have a representative. You have a placeholder.

You don't have a voice. You have a tax bill.

You don't have a city government. You have a machine.

I came out of those nearly thirty combined years with no illusions left about what one-party Democratic control actually looks like in practice.

The taxes that go up every year. The services that go down. The schools that get worse while the bureaucracy gets bigger. The DA who won't prosecute. The encampments on the sidewalks. The cultural rot that just gets… normalized.

And then I moved to Indiana.

Culture shock hit immediately.

And I'm here to tell you…

The Republicans I've met in red states like Indiana mostly have no concept of what it actually looks like when the other side has unchecked power.

That's not because they're dumb. They aren't.

That's not because they're uninformed. Many of them are sharper than 90 percent of the people you'll meet in a blue city.

It's because they haven't lived it.

They think this is a normal political disagreement.

They think both sides have valid points and we should try to find common ground.

They think a "clash of ideas" is healthy and a vibrant Democratic minority makes the state stronger.

And I want to grab them by the shoulders and tell them…

You have no idea what you're inviting in.

You have no idea how fast it moves once it gets a foothold.

So What Do We Actually Do About This

Here's where I land.

I'm going to be the loud one in the room.

I'm going to be the guy at the local GOP breakfast asking the uncomfortable questions.

I'm going to be the guy reminding people that California wasn't always California. That Colorado wasn't always Colorado. That Virginia flipped in less than a decade.

That every state Democrats now consider safe was once a state where Republicans took the high road.

I'm going to be the guy citing Kamala Harris's own words back to people who want to pretend the left isn't telling us exactly what they're going to do.

I'm going to be the blue-state transplant who tells my red-state neighbors what's actually coming if they keep playing checkers while the other team plays chess.

And to my buddy who hit me with "yeah, but Texas"…

I love you, man. I do.

You're one of the smartest political minds I know. And I mean that.

But the fact that even YOU can look at what's happening right now and reach for "yeah, but Texas" tells me how big the experience gap is between people who've lived under the other side and people who haven't.

You have to wake up.

Because if you keep telling our side to stop responding… while the other side openly says they're going to pack the court, abolish the Electoral College, engineer new states, grant blanket amnesty, and fight fire with fire?

You aren't being a moderate.

You aren't being thoughtful.

You aren't being "the adult in the room."

You're the guy holding the door open while the house burns down behind you, telling your neighbors to please be more civil with their water buckets.

And by the time you figure out which way the wind is blowing…

There won't be a house left to save.