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“MAGA Needs To Be Dead”: Dade Phelan on the Republican Wipeout
The former Texas House Speaker dishes on the GOP’s “complete extinction-level election.”"Extinction level collapse echoing major MAGAphile Ron Desantis
Former Texas House Speaker Dade Phelan saw it coming—at least in part. Three weeks ago, when he and I sat down for an extended interview about the upcoming election, he told me the mood among Republicans was grim. “People are freaking out,” he said, exaggerating those last two words in his East Texas drawl for maximum effect. “You see it in their faces. There’s serious concern like I’ve never seen before.” Phelan could see the scenario in which a bad night for Republicans turned into a seismic shift in the state. If Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico won his race by six or seven percentage points, he predicted, it would be “a bloodbath downballot. I don’t know how people survive.”
Talarico than that. As of this morning, with more than 95 percent of the votes counted, the Austin Democrat is leading his Republican opponent, Ken Paxton, by twelve points. And the is total. Texas’s partisan politics skipped the purple phase all together, flipping from bright red to an unmistakable . As the enormity of Democratic gains was becoming clear last night, I called up Phelan to see how he was taking stock of the Republican wreckage he had warned about.
Texas Monthly: I was just looking back at nearly a month ago, where you predicted that if Talarico won by a big margin, it would be a rout downballot.