Texas GOP narrowly avoided 'nightmare scenario' — but still faces disaster: reporter

Semafor reporter Dave Weigel summarized the state of play on MS NOW's "Morning Joe" after the high-profile Texas primaries on Tuesday, and flagged that Republicans are facing what they had most feared going into this week, as state Rep. James Talarico wins the Democratic Senate primary and the Republican Senate primary advances to a runoff between incumbent Sen. John Cornyn and Attorney General Ken Paxton.

"Trump's advisers are saying Cornyn is the safest pick, Dave Weigel, because they believe he has a better shot to win in the general election there," said anchor Jonathan Lemire. "I have been talking to advisers in the last couple of days, who say there's some momentum for Trump to do that. And I think ... that if Cornyn had lost even by any number, maybe Trump can't, but because he's more or less pulled even he could justify it and say, I'll put you over the top. But I'm not 100 percent sure he will ... and Democrats are salivating at the possibility of taking on Paxton."

Weigel agreed.

"They're happy enough that there's going to be a very long runoff, that the nightmare scenario for Republicans was what was being described before, which was Cornyn being far down. It was not — it's not ideal for them. The Democrats have settled their primary. Talarico is going to go on a media tour, make a ton of money and talk about the chaos in the Republican side."

Moreover, he continued, "The Talarico argument, which I think lost a little bit as the race became more combative, is actually very populist. It's very combative. It's that Republicans and corporations and the corporate capture, the Trump administration are trying to take away people's democracy, people's rights ... Republicans have already kind of been using the material they were holding off when they were hoping Crockett would win, but the ability he had to turn people out over, over Crockett."

"The final point I make about this is this is comparable to the turnout Democrats had in their 2022 Super Tuesday Texas primary," said Weigel. "If Crockett was running for president in 2020, she would have won that primary. She got more than a million votes ... both of them increased turnout, but Talarico has blown away every projection Democrats have for turnout in the suburbs of Houston, the suburbs of Dallas, and in the Greater Austin area, it was hard to poll for that reason. Are those voters going to look at a ten-week Republican primary and say, 'I love that party. I really can't wait to send more of those guys back to help Donald Trump out?' Democrats think less so than they would have 4 or 5 years ago."

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