Texas’ race for railroad commissioner led to a major scandal when racist social media posts by GOP nominee Bo French captured national headlines and veteran GOP strategist Karl Rove said he would be voting for the Democratic nominee, Jon Rosenthal. President Donald Trump responded by attacking Rove as “RINO” (Republican In Name Only). And according to conservative New York Times columnist David French, this scandal is a prime example of the Republican Party spinning out of control.
Although Bo French had been posting racist comments on social media for a long time, the current scandal erupted over the weekend — when he responded to a Texas victory in a college football game by lamenting the fact that many of the fans were non-white. On X, Bo French posted a photo of fans and wrote, “I heard UT graduation this year looked like this. I didn’t believe it. The problem is now obviously far worse than anyone imagined.”
David French, in his Times column, writes, “(Bo) French’s ‘problem’ was obvious. He wasn’t an Ohio State fan angry that Texas won; he was a Texas fan angry that those students were who they were. Before I go any further, you need to know that this is nothing unusual from Bo French. He’s one of a seemingly endless number of vicious bigots lurking within the modern right, but he stands out from the rest, even so. As Robert Downen wrote in Texas Monthly, French has ‘called for the rounding up of all Muslims.’ French has also posted, ‘OK boys, it’s time to go round up all the Chinese and send them packing!’ and has called for America to be like Rhodesia, an African nation every bit as gross, violent and racially repressive as apartheid South Africa. So, no, Bo French does not merit the benefit of the doubt.”
David French emphasizes that the Bo French scandal underscores a problem that goes way beyond Bo French himself: MAGA Republicans flaunting, not trying to hide, their racism.
“Andrew Kolvet, a spokesman for Turning Point USA, the organization Charlie Kirk co-founded, and the executive producer of ‘the Charlie Kirk Show,’ wrote: ‘America was ~80% white 40 years ago. Now it’s ~50%. The demographic replacement of America is happening at a historic, truly insane pace. It’s not racist to notice,'” David French observes. “Jack Posobiec, a MAGA influencer with an immense following, posted, ‘Defend @bofrench like the Alamo’ … And if you want to know why South Asians can’t assimilate, then Steve Deace, a Christian talk show host, can tell you: ‘Why is it a bad idea to import so many people from India? Just 2.3 percent of India is Christian.'”
David French points out that some Republicans are vehemently condemning Bo French, including Rove and Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas).
“The battle lines of the post-Trump Republican Party are being drawn,” David French argues. “There will be a renewed push to return the party to a degree of normalcy and integrity. There will be a fight against the racists and bigots of the populist right. But 10 years of Trump have changed the party, from the grass roots to its think tanks to the White House itself. As Jeremy Carl, a senior fellow at the Claremont Institute, wrote on X, Republicans who condemned French ‘weren’t prepared for the ferocious and justified pushback they got, because the New Right is not willing to assume the supine beautiful losers posture that characterized the American right for decades on questions of immigration and national identity.'”