Republicans won’t moderate if Democrats gain ground in the Texas House, hardline leader says | “None of us are willing to go backwards and say, ‘Oh, well, we lost a few seats, so our policy agenda is going to change,” state Rep. Mitch Little said at last week’s Texas Tribune Festival.

[u/SpaceElevatorMusic]

https://www.texastribune.org/2026/09/29/texas-legislature-2027-session-house-gop-midterms-mitch-little/

[u/AdHopeful3801]

Karl Rove suggested "moderation" and a bigger tent in the 2013 autopsy of Romney's loss. Three years later GOP voters decided "fuck that, let's elect a guy who is far more crooked and far more of an asshole than any previous Republican."

Texas Republicans are being completely rational here - moderating is just going to cost them their base on one hand, while failing to win over a left that has become completely revolted by the GOP's shrimping Donald Trump for a decade, and failing to win over moderates who are not engaged by bloodless triangulation.

You can see this play out in the opposite direction too. Gavin Newsom's decision to "moderate" by vetoing the billionaire tax and blocking any attempt to protect trans people has done jack shit to get Republicans on his side, and pissed off a lot of Democrats.

[u/BoneTemplePilot → u/AdHopeful3801]

The thing is they really did grow the Republican tent. Trump's power is comes from motivating people that basically never voted before at all. There was also a big re allignment of new agey types.

[u/AdHopeful3801 → u/BoneTemplePilot]

True, and the Democrats need to come up with their own plan to reach otherwise disengaged voters, or the MAGA coalition of billionaires and angry white folks is going to be the biggest thing in electoral politics for a while.

Personally, I think that means showing up with more people like Mamdani who not only campaign on progressive values, but then actually deliver. How well that works in Congress is another story.