It has to be one of the most consistent, if unwritten, rules of the national media. If Democrats have a PR problem, the story isn't their problem it's the way Republicans are talking about it. It's a handy way to make sure bad news is always framed within a reminder that the bad guys are happy Democrats are having a bad day.
James Talarico is the progressive Presbyterian pastor running for Senate in Texas. And it turns out he has one helluva big PR problem in the form of some really far-left statements on topics ranging from abortion to gender identity to his understanding of the Bible. And so, today, the Washington Post has jumped into the fray with a story titled " GOP, fearing tough fight for Texas Senate seat, paints Democrat as radical."
The issue isn't that Talarico is radical. The issue is that the GOP is painting him that way. In short, Republicans are seizing.
Fearing a tougher-than-expected race for one of Texas’s two Senate seats, Republicans are trying to cast Democratic candidate James Talarico as a radical leftist out of step with voters.
They have resurfaced videos of Talarico’s past comments, including one in which the state representative declares that “God is nonbinary.” His two potential GOP opponents — who are headed to a bitter runoff in May — have shared sound bites of Talarico speaking on border security and attacked him for supporting trans rights.
The story mentions this NRSC ad in which an AI generated Talarico reads some of his actual tweets.
The argument for the ad is pretty simple.
“James Talarico thinks ‘God is nonbinary’ and wants to lay a welcome mat on our southern border,” said Samantha Cantrell, a spokeswoman for Senate Republicans’ campaign arm, which made the AI-generated ad and has shared other video clips. “He is radically out of touch with Texans, and they will not vote for this in November.”
The only way this article would make any sense as a defense of Talarico is if there was something unfair about Republicans presenting his own words to the public. You could imagine some alternative world in which Talarico said these things many years ago but then had a change of heart about these issues. In that case you could try to argue that his old views weren't connected to his present ones. That's sort of what Democrats have been doing with Graham Platner's Nazi tattoo.
Is that case here though? Has Talarico changed? It doesn't seem so. He hasn't denied these are his actual beliefs.
Talarico has not directly addressed his past comments but instead said the attacks are part of a well-worn Republican playbook. In a Thursday appearance on MSNOW, he cast the effort as a way “to distract us with the same old culture wars” and divert attention away from foreign policy issues and the rising cost of living...
“They’re going to throw everything they have at us,” Talarico told the crowd in Austin the day after the primary. “They’re going to call me a radical leftist, they’re going to call me a fake Christian. They’ll call our movement un-Texan, un-American.”
His past comments present a challenge for Talarico, who will have to reconcile some of his more progressive policy stances with his outreach to disaffected moderate voters — without alienating the Democratic base.
Would James Talarico like to talk about something else? Sure. But that's not the same thing as having a change of heart on the issues. It's just a recognition that, as the Post says, "his past comments present a challenge" especially with moderate voters he needs to win over.
What the Post is admitting here is that the problem is real. It's not something invented by Republicans to unfairly smear him. Talarico really said these things and really believes them to this day. His challenge is to get Texas voters to ignore all that and vote for him anyway. The story introduces a Democratic strategist who says almost exactly that:
[Tre'] Easton argued that Talarico, who is relatively unknown to voters, can draw on his strength as a communicator to respond...
“If he comes out tomorrow and says, ‘I disavow the LGBT community,’ that’s going to be a problem. But if he comes out and says, ‘I said it this way, I wouldn’t say it the same way again,’ that’s a different set of considerations.”
In fact, Talarico has already come out and said almost exactly that, i.e. I should have phrased things differently. That's just another way of admitting he hasn't changed his mind at all. He still really believes all the things he's said in those tweets and videos. Therefore it's absolutely a fair hit for Republicans to present those beliefs to the voters and ask them to factor those in when deciding who to vote for.
Republicans aren't seizing, they're telling voters the truth. Republicans also aren't afraid. Talarico's brand of left-wing extremism probably isn't gong to play in Texas. But that's up to Texans to decide and we'll see what they think soon enough.
What's most obnoxious about all of this is the Washington Post using the standard Democratic playbook and trying to rescue Talarico from his own past comments by framing them this way. The media does this every time a Democrat is in trouble and it gets tiresome really quickly.
Talarico: They’re going to call me a radical leftist.
— Western Lensman (@WesternLensman) March 5, 2026
Also Talarico: Trans abortions, God is non-binary, six genders, no prisons.
So, yeah. pic.twitter.com/XlswxR1X5A
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