THE MORNING RANT: Some Other Election News Out of Texas; plus, A Great Summary from Real Clear Investigations of the EV Debacle’s Cost

Paxton’s Chances in the Texas Republican Senate Runoff

There has been a lot of talk about the two Senate primaries in Texas earlier this week, in which James Talarico beat Jasmine Crockett in the Democrat primary, while Ken Paxton forced John Cornyn into a runoff in the Republican primary. I’ve heard about all of the horse-trading going on behind the scenes, as President Trump aims to get one of the Republicans to withdraw. If neither withdraws, I am very hopeful that Paxton wins the runoff.

There has also been much hand-wringing among Republicans and euphoria among Democrats because there were more Democrat votes cast than Republican votes in Texas. While I am frustrated that so many Republican voters skipped the primary, voter turnout in March is almost unrelated to turnout in November’s general election.

In the senate primaries this week, there were 2.07 million Republican ballots cast and 2.22 million Democrat ballots cast. By contrast, four years ago in the mid-term Texas gubernatorial election there were 1.95 million Republican primary ballots and just 1.07 million Democrat primary ballots. But in the November 2022 general election, Greg Abbot received 4.4 million votes and “Beto” O’Rourke received 3.5 million votes. Again, primary turnout is not reflective of the general election.

Beyond that, Texas is infested with so many RINOs because there have been so few contested Democrat primaries in recent decades. Therefore, Democrats often crossed over to the Republican primary to elect left wing, false-flag “Republicans” such as John Cornyn.

Here’s the good news – because there were so many Democrats voting in their own primary this year, John Cornyn cannot count on them bailing him out in the Republican runoff. Anyone who voted in the Democrat primary is now ineligible to vote in the Republican runoff.

Conservatives Sweep Texas State Board of Education Primaries

Elections involving school boards aren’t very sexy, but they are probably more important in the current culture war than the more prominent governor and senate races.

Ryan James Girdusky’s 1776 Project has done an outstanding job pouring resources and training into local school board races and state board of education races. It supported four hard-core conservative candidates in Republican primaries against RINOs and other establishment candidates. All four conservatives won, and if they win their general election races against their Democrat opponents in November, Texas will finally have conservatives in charge of state textbooks and curriculum. Because of Texas’ size and impact, this also affects other states that follow Texas’ lead.

What were these candidates running on? These were the common issues in their campaigns:

• Combatting the woke agenda and leftist indoctrination in schools.

• Defending parental rights in education decisions.

• Promoting conservative values in schools, specifically faith, family, patriotism, liberty, and moral character.

• Supporting high academic standards and expectation.

Much gratitude to Mr. Girdusky and the 1776 Project.

“One Riot, One Ranger” Statue Stands Proud Again

In the great national convulsion following the death of George Floyd in 2020, there was widespread toppling of patriotic statues across the land. One of those toppled statues was the “One Riot, One Ranger” statue at Dallas Love Field airport. The statue was in tribute to the legendary Texas law enforcement agency, The Texas Rangers.

There is some good news from the least-woke team* in Major League Baseball - the Texas Rangers baseball team has just prominently installed that same Ranger statue at their ballpark (Globe Life Field) in Arlington, TX. (* “Texas Rangers Frustrate LGBTQ Advocates As Only MLB Team Without a Pride Night”)

“Statue removed from Dallas Love Field installed at Texas Rangers’ ballpark; The statue of a Texas Rangers law enforcement figure disappeared under a shroud of controversy nearly six years ago” [Dallas Morning News – 3/02/2026]

On Monday morning, the club accepted and installed the 12-foot bronze One Riot, One Ranger statue depicting a member of the Texas Rangers law enforcement agency that had previously stood at Dallas Love Field until it was removed during the racially-charged summer of 2020.

Below is a picture of the despicable desecration in 2020. The header picture at the top of this post is the ranger at his new home.

Real Clear Investigations’ Summary of the Costly EV Debacle

James Varney at Real Clear Investigations is a friend of the blog and a heck of a writer. He has written an outstanding piece summarizing the obscene waste of taxpayer money involved in the failed “EV transition.” I’ve extracted some of it, but there is much more, and I encourage you to go read the entire piece.

“Bad Bets: Massive EV Subsidies Not Paying Off” [Real Clear Investigations – 02/26/2026]

The future was supposed to have arrived this year in a cluster of counties just east of Atlanta in the form of a state-of-the-art factory that would churn out 400,000 electric vehicles a year. But when JoEllen Artz looks about her lifetime neighborhood, all she sees are holes.

“Those shovel holes they made in the ground? That’s it,” she said of the planned site of a Rivian manufacturing plant. “It’s awful, awful.”

The problem is not a lack of funds. On the promise of thousands of jobs, elected officials in Washington, D.C., and Atlanta have pledged some $8 billion to the project, including a $6.5 billion loan the Biden administration green-lit in its final hours.

Those loans are just two of the huge public bets, or investments, that state capitals and Washington, D.C., have made on EVs. While no one has calculated exactly how many federal and state dollars both Republican and Democratic elected officials have sent to that green sector, experts RealClearInvestigations consulted fixed the total north of $100 billion.

Public spending on green energy projects, including EVs, began in earnest in May 2009 when President Obama, flanked in the Rose Garden by Detroit and United Auto Workers executives, unveiled his National Fuel Efficiency Policy. It was, the crowd insisted, “good for consumers, good for the economy, and good for the country.”

There has been bipartisan support for many EV initiatives, and the sector got a huge boost during the Biden administration when funding linked to a NetZero future spread throughout the federal government. The bill goes well beyond the billions of dollars in tax credits the federal government provided to EV buyers until that program was ended last September, and includes school buses, postal delivery vehicles, charging stations, and the big manufacturing loans.

The Energy Department, for example, has spent more than $30 billion. That chunk comes from the Advanced Technology Vehicle Manufacturing division. Prior to 2019, the ATVM, as it is known, had issued around $8 billion in loans to five different companies. Of those, Nissan repaid its $1.4 billion loan, while Tesla repaid its $465 million loan years ahead of schedule. A $5 billion loan to Ford remains active, but taxpayers lost nearly $210 million on loans to Fisker Automotive and Vehicle Production Group, both of which defaulted, according to the department.

Some states have labored to force EVs into the market. More than a dozen of them have followed California’s lead, requiring at least 35% of cars offered for sale there annually be “ZEVs,” or “zero emission vehicles,” with all cars being ZEVs by 2035. This complicated, opaque system has made all cars more expensive, according to economists. Congress voted last year to kill California’s plan, but President Trump has not acted on that, and state officials have vowed to sue if he signs it.

On top of the costs of those market manipulations, which can be difficult to compute, are billions in direct state spending on EVs and EV-related projects. Both Republican and Democratic elected officials supporting these moves have done so on the grounds that it would provide an economic boost and be good for the environment.

Rivian, whose corporate communications did not respond to RCI’s request for comment, hasn’t only benefited from the Biden administration’s last-minute loan. In 2022, the state’s Republican leadership in Atlanta pledged up to another $1.5 billion – one of the largest incentive packages in Georgia history – including tax incentives, abatements, support programs, and more than $175 million for land acquisition and improvements. There has been an estimated $25 million in local incentives provided, too.

Thanks to Mr. CBD for inviting me to join him on this week’s Cut Jib News Podcast. If you’d like to give it a listen, here is a link: Cut Jib Newsletter Speaks: Season 12, Episode 9.

[buck.throckmorton at protonmail dot com]

posted by Buck Throckmorton at 11:00 AM

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