I am in the blog chair for the last Defector Sunday Shift of the summer, and treated myself by writing about Mark Teixeira's greasy new congressional campaign and Pondering The Void: defector.com/mark-teixeir…
— David_j_roth (@davidjroth.bsky.social) August 31, 2025 at 4:13 PM
A little bon-bon, to ease us into the work week. It’s Teixeira in the title, but I especially appreciate his riff on Chip Roy:
As Texas congressional districts go, the 21st is pretty easy to parse. The outline of it, which dips into Austin and enfolds a vast swath of the San Antonio suburbs, looks like a lumpier-than-average flightless bird, or a small-headed figure wearing a cape in a windstorm. It is rich and Republican by design and has been represented by Rep. Chip Roy since 2019. Roy was born and raised around suburban D.C. and got two degrees from the University of Virginia. After a brief career in investment banking—”nearly three years,” according to his official bio—Roy moved to Texas and into the world of conservative politics for roughly the same reason that an aspiring actor might move to Los Angeles, or that someone looking to make a bunch of money at once might rob a bank instead of a florist. Even in the sinecure-intensive world of conservative politics, where even the most unctuous and otherwise unemployable goober can count on a job even when the party is out of power, you have to go where the opportunities are.
This is not to say that Roy doesn’t really believe the things he says he believes. His refusal to go along or get along as a charter member of the ultra-strident House Freedom Caucus suggests that he is at least sincerely committed to the core libertarian principle of annoying as many people as possible at all times. The nature of Roy’s deep and seemingly authentic personal offense at the existence of LIV Golf—”It just pisses me off,” Roy said in 2022, “I could just put on the Golf Channel, I could watch golf, now it’s fully charged political”—suggests that he is if nothing else in the right political party. But moving to Texas, for someone with ambitions like Chip Roy’s, is also a business decision. He identified that he had the necessary skills, which in Roy’s case were a high motor, stringently punitive politics, and a deeply disagreeable personality, and went where the work is for people who want to make a living in that industry. Roy worked in various high-level assistant roles for Ken Paxton and Ted Cruz and John Cornyn; he ghostwrote Rick Perry’s presidential campaign book, which was entitled Fed Up!
Representing the 21st Congressional District in Texas is a job that someone with Chip Roy’s politics could hold for as long as he wanted, provided he never developed the sort of principles that would get in the way of him doing the job in the way that someone with those politics would do it. That hasn’t been a problem for Roy, exactly. As with most House Freedom Caucus members, the times when Roy has broken with his party have mostly come when he felt there was too much governing going on. That ideological and practical aversion to even the most basic Congressional function made Roy and his cohorts very useful when the party was out of power; “18 more months of chaos and the inability to get stuff done,” he said in July of 2021. “That’s what we want.” He was able to deliver that, and so to create the sort of broken and abstracted political situation necessary for the triumph of Trumpism.
The problem is that this is just how Chip Roy is all the time, which means that he would be left out and unhelpful in a Republican-led House that sees its role as delivering ornate flattery and sweatily gung-ho support re: whatever it is that Donald Trump is on about at any given moment. Roy favored Ted Cruz over Trump and his own gnarled principles over Trumpism’s relentless and servile managing up, and his seemingly quite real distaste for Congress as a concept and Trump as a leader led him to become more and more obviously bored in the job. He and the rest of the Freedom Caucus kept opposing various Trumpian gambits because he believed they could with some time and attention be made even worse, and then caving when it became clear that absolute fidelity to Trump’s vinegary whim was both more important than anything else to their fellow Republicans and absolutely necessary to their own political survival; at some point, Roy grew a moderately distressing goatee.
As is often the case with libertarians, this can almost seem admirable if you can somehow look past every other thing they believe. Chip Roy is just not built to issue fulsome birthday wishes to a blowzy and dimwitted autocrat, and that really is a matter of principle, but also it is more salient that all of his other principles amount to “using the power of the state to make vulnerable people’s lives harder, shorter, and worse” and I guess also “no Saudi money in golf.” Like many members of the Freedom Caucus, Roy is leaving the House to seek a different office that would allow them to keep doing all the awful things they want to do out from under the long shadow cast by Donald Trump’s thumb. There is still a lot of damage to be done out there, and next year Roy will be seeking to do it as Paxton’s successor in the office of Texas Attorney General…
Just some advice: Defector is currently offering a three-month subscription special. Well worth it, to this non-sports reader, just for its political & science coverage!
Defector’s strongest sales pitch has always been to simply get people who are considering a subscription to read more of the site. To that end: In honor of our fifth birthday, new subscribers can try three months for just $5. defector.com/products
— Defector (@defector.com) September 1, 2025 at 4:00 PM
eclare
I will never understand who elects these carbon based life forms. Yeah, I can. Racism.
satby
I do love the way David Roth turns
the knifea phrase.SpaceUnit
At some point in the future there will be a whole cottage industry delving into the many bizarre and fascinating pathologies of the 21st century Republican world-view and mindset.
And then at some point everyone will realize it’s all just boring and gross.
satby
This is pure gold:
SpaceUnit
Also I’m disinclined to voting for anyone wearing a golf shirt.
NotMax
Back home again! 17 hours total from stepping out of Mom’s place to walking into mine.
More and more convinced it should be illegal for airport terminals to be designed by any architect under 75 years of age.
Snackage found in NY. Two tastes which do not play well together.
;)
satby
@SpaceUnit: Texas Republicans are pretty interchangeable. It’s a spectrum from “awful” to “banality of evil”, but the outcome is always to screw the citizens of that sad state.
satby
@NotMax: welcome home.
NotMax
Sigh Bad linky above. Fix.
Snackage found in NY. Two tastes which do not play well together.
;)
SpaceUnit
@satby:
And the citizens of that sad state keep voting for them. Christ.
eclare
@NotMax:
Yay! What island are you, I think Maui?
NotMax
@eclare
Yes indeedy.
Flight from LAX to Maui was one-third empty, allowing me to stretch out over all three seats in the row.
eclare
@NotMax:
Wonderful!
But do you think the fires affected tourism, so not as many people going?
NotMax
@eclare
Tourism plummeted post-fire but reportedly has been creeping back up. Foreign tourism, however is in the crapper thanks to you-know who putting the welcome mat into mothballs.
JoyceH
I just can’t understand Texas politics. Seems like every year there’s some mass casualty event (usually climate or gun related) that underscores the inadequacy of Texas infrastructure and legal system and every year the governor calls a special session to address the most recent issue – and every year the special session does doodly-squat about the lethal issue but they have plenty of time to pass legislation that diminishes their constituents’ rights. And they keep getting reelected. If they keep going on this way, it’s going to wind up that only guns are allowed to vote.
eclare
@NotMax:
Gotcha. Thanks. I have only been to Maui once, but it was magical. We stayed in Lahaina. (:
NotMax
@JoyceH
And there’s more guns than there are voters!
satby
@NotMax: eeew.
satby
@NotMax: eeew.
satby
@satby: oh FYWP
satby
@SpaceUnit: I think gerrymandering and voter suppression are as much to blame as actual voters for that. More, probably.
eclare
@satby:
Yes. As a member of TN 9th. I could say a lot.
SpaceUnit
@satby:
Probably.
Shalimar
@NotMax: I thought I loved pickles. Then several fast food restaurants (Sonic and Zaxbys) started having everything pickle-flavored and I have no idea why that would be popular with enough people to make it profitable.
MattF
Amusing to note that Chip Roy was born in Bethesda Maryland— which is pretty much 180 degrees opposite to his politics.
And here is the start of a rabbithole on Kowloon Walled City.
Geminid
I usually check out Middle East news sites first thing. There’s always a lot happening over there, but it’s also not a bad way to see what those Yankees are up to. For instance, Ankara-based Clash Report had this item:
Clash Report posted a screenshot of the White House’s “Daily Guidance and Press Schedule.”
And Tel Aviv-based Times of Israel reported that Congressman Jerry Nadler (NY12) is retiring. That reminded me that this post-Labor Day period is when a number of older House Democrats will announce their plans for next year. I expect we’ll know if Reps like Nancy Pelosi and Steny Hoyer are in or out by Halloween.
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
@MattF: It’s weird how voters in those Western States are so susceptible to sales pitches from East Coast nut jobs. I think Montana has a governor and at least one Senator from back East neither of whom has been in the State all that long. It’s a known fact that Josh Hawley lives in Northern Virginia not Missouri. They can’t even seem to produce their own local flavor of sadistic goober anymore. Sad!
p.a
It’s nice that Dave is doing well this long after vanHalen.
; – )
Ramalama
I might try out a subscription. Just for the articles.
Mike
Somewhere, Molly Ivins is smiling.
Aziz, light!
He’s stepping down to spend more time with his children?
Shalimar
@Aziz, light!: Maybe stepping down to manage his granddaughter’s golf career.
kindness
@Aziz, light!: Trump will announce that the sex change operation he underwent was a complete success and he will now be known as Donette.