It’s that awkward moment when a man emasculates your father for months and months and disparages your mother multiple times and then you endorse that man to be president.
We’re talking here about Jeb Bush’s son, George P. Bush, an up-and-comer in Texas politics, who just threw his support behind Donald Trump, just a few months after Trump drummed his “low energy” father out of politics in humiliating fashion, and claimed Jeb’s immigration platform was relatively dovish toward “Mexican illegals” because his wife, Columba, is Mexican.
That’s the juicy Bush family psychodrama angle of this story, but the endorsement is also a preview of an even juicier political drama that’ll begin to play out after the election. George P.’s decision is an inauspicious one for Republicans hoping this election will discredit Trumpism. At least in states like Texas, Trump’s footprint is large enough that young conservatives building political careers feel they can’t be seen opposing him—blowout or no blowout. Even if Trump loses badly, in other words, there will be a price to pay in Texas for those Republicans who resisted Trump’s candidacy. If Liddle George is right about that, then Republican politics will remain a white ethno-nationalist redoubt for a long time to come.
George’s fellow Texan Ted Cruz (among others) is making the opposite bet. Only one of them can be right.