Texas GOP bets on hard right turn amid changing demographics

Sign up for the daily Inside Washington email for exclusive US coverage and analysis sent to your inbox Get our free Inside Washington email Get our free Inside Washington email SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Faced with increasingly dire demographic threats to their party’s dominance, Texas Republicans have championed a bevy of boundary-pushing conservative policymaking that dramatically expands gun rights, curbs abortions and tightens election laws — steering a state that was already far to the right even more so. “If anyone expected that, their head is way too far up their, uh, philosophy,” Corbin Casteel, the Trump campaign’s Texas director in 2016, joked about any notion that census figures might make the state's Republicans move to the center. “The numbers may be changing, but they may not be trending the way they think that they are.” The move to the right is perhaps best illustrated by Abbott, a former state Supreme Court justice who was once considered to have a more measured and deliberative, business-friendly approach to the job but has lately gone even further right than the Legislature — particularly on immigration. No major Democrat has yet announced a candidacy against Abbott, though former presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke — who came within 3 percentage points of upsetting Texas Sen. Ted Cruz in 2018 — still might.