Always Late To The Party Dept.

I went to McAllen to understand what's driving the improved performance for Republicans in South Texas. One answer: Hispanic women https://t.co/bpjh3HcOI2

— Jennifer Medina (@jennymedina) May 2, 2021

a) the Democrats left them, they didn't leave the Democrats. b) the Democrats became too liberal, South Texans have always been conservative.

That's what the intrepid New York Times reporter found out by, apparently, talking only to South Texas women active in the Republican Party, all of whom gave pretty much the same response, which came down to those two points above.

Basically, the new generation in South Texas finally caught up with the rest of Texas who figured out in the '80's that Democrats were "too liberal" and that the GOP was now the party of a younger generation of conservative Texans.  Not surprisingly, South Texas is about 40 years behind the rest of the state.

I don't even live down there and I could have saved the NYT the airfare and hotel costs.  Besides, being so late to catchup, they'll be turning red as the rest of the state trends blue.  It's practically a tail-and-dog story, except this tail is never gonna wag the Texas political dog.

Again:  old news.  NYT parachutes in, misses the entire context and issue in favor of talking to people in positions familiar to the Beltway and BosWash residents and pontificators, and sends out a missive that sounds like a discovery of an exotic foreign land, but is really just a misunderstanding.  Kinda like the people who came to Austin and were surprised Molly Ivins served them French cuisine rather than chili dogs and Fritos.

Nothing has changed at the NYT since Molly Ivins was there.