TED NUGENT WILL PLAY AT GREG ABBOTT'S INAUGURAL

I appreciate the sentiment, but this is incredibly naive:

CNN host Wolf Blitzer weighed in on the controversy surrounding Republican Texas gubernatorial candidate Greg Abbott's decision to campaign with inflammatory National Rifle Association board member and Outdoor Channel spokesperson Ted Nugent. Blitzer condemned Nugent for calling President Obama a "subhuman mongrel" and predicted that Abbott will be forced to jettison Nugent from his campaign....

During the February 18 edition of Wolf on CNN, Blitzer [said,] "Nugent's presence hit a sour note with a lot of people. They say Texans deserve better than a candidate who would align himself with someone like Nugent who offered a hate-filled assessment of the president." Blitzer went on to state, "Shockingly, Abbott's campaign brushed aside the criticism, saying they value Nugent's commitment to the Second Amendment."

...Blitzer concluded the segment by stating, "I suspect [Abbott's campaign is] going to be running away from [Nugent] fairly soon, but we'll see, we'll see what happens."

I'm in my fifties, so I don't think I'll live to see it, but I suppose there'll come a day when a sense of common decency will trump tribalism for non-coastal white people -- even Southerners, even Texans -- and it won't be acceptable to race-bait the way Nugent has (or call feminists "fat pigs" or use any of the other slurs Nugent has used). But for now, Nugent can say literally anything he wants and not make himself a liability for any candidate he might choose to back in a solid red state, as long as he doesn't don a sheet and hood, and as long as he doesn't use the N-word. (And he might as well just test the limits by violating those two taboos; it's quite possible that guitar godhood, conservative purism, and gun zealotry place him so far beyond reproach in the eyes of his tribe that he can literally get way with anything.)

Mitt Romney did have to give Nugent a wide berth in 2012, but Blitzer is confusing national politics with red-state local politics. Trust me, Abbott and Nugent will continue to campaign together. And sorry, folks, but Abbott's going to win, probably by a comfortable margin, because this is Texas we're talking about, and no one on our side has found the formula that will make white people who live far from oceans reconsider their loyalty to this sort of testosterone-poisoned conservatism. And yes, Nugent will play at Abbott's inaugural.