{"id":117018,"date":"2026-05-27T02:41:28","date_gmt":"2026-05-27T07:41:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=117018"},"modified":"2026-05-27T02:41:28","modified_gmt":"2026-05-27T07:41:28","slug":"117018","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=117018","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/esrtweet\/status\/2059458837464183082\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Eric S. Raymond<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Ken Paxton&#8217;s victory in Texas has, I think, interesting implications for the national political scene.<\/p>\n<p>Coming on top of a string of similar events, this is very bad news for anybody who wants to think MAGA is declining in influence or Trump is a spent force.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m not MAGA &#8211; I&#8217;m too libertarian and insufficiently populist to fit &#8211; so I can analyze this without my wishes interfering with my vision.<\/p>\n<p>There have been a lot of very determined attempts to fragment the MAGA base and attempt to drive a wedge between them and the Trumpster. I see this on X and other social media &#8211; lots of indignant blithering about Israel and the Iran war that seems very light on substance and very heavy on attempting to fracture the Republican coalition.<\/p>\n<p>I don&#8217;t think it&#8217;s working. Tonight is evidence that Trump&#8217;s endorsement matters, and the base is not kindly disposed towards any Republican pol who&#8217;s perceived as not being on his team.<\/p>\n<p>Perform your strategic calculations accordingly.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Eric S. Raymond Ken Paxton&#8217;s victory in Texas has, I think, interesting implications for the national political scene. Coming on top of a string of similar events, this is very bad news for anybody who wants to think MAGA is declining in influence or Trump is a spent force. I&#8217;m not MAGA &#8211; I&#8217;m too &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=117018\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14,69,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-117018","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-editorial-o-the-day","category-elections","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117018","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=117018"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117018\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":117019,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117018\/revisions\/117019"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=117018"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=117018"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=117018"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}