And So It Begins: ‘Conservative’ NeverTrumper Praises Radical Talarico As ‘Christian X-Ray’

And out come the NeverTrumpers to support their new favorite person, who apparently disagrees with everything they’ve professed to believe in: Texas state Rep. James Talarico.

Talarico is the Democratic nominee for Senate in the Lone Star State. He’s built a bit of a reputation as a national figure of late by getting favorable play in the kind of softball interviews Democrats of his ilk usually get. Think of him as Beto O’Rourke 2.0. The big upgrade, this time, is his dubious but much-flogged Christian background.

Talarico, as you may have heard, is a “Presbyterian seminarian,” a phrase that gets as much play in profiles of the candidate as “devout Catholic” used to get in Joe Biden’s.

It’s enough to make one ask what’s being taught in Presbyterian seminary these days, but one digresses; suffice it to say, he is prepossessed of a certain kind of passive-aggressive political Christianity which ignores all of the obvious biblical prohibitions against social issues like abortion, homosexuality, and gender issues, brushing those off with reflexive, unthoughtful “ackshully, Jesus came for the poor …”-style rhetoric.

One also understands why Talarico’s performative faith might be a plus this time around: There’s still a decent chance that he’s running against Attorney General Ken Paxton, who — while he may be more than amenable to conservative Christian priorities legislatively — has a reputation (deserved or undeserved) as a man who plays a little too loose with his public and private morals.

The GOP race, since no candidate reached 50 percent in this month’s primary, will go to a runoff on May 26. Paxton is up against incumbent Sen. John Cornyn.

At a retail politics level, one can at least appreciate Talarico’s dim Christianity, while not cosigning any of his prattling as a serious version of faith in action. But leave it to David French over at The New York Times to write a po-faced paean to Mr. Talarico, published Sunday, titled “James Talarico Is a Christian X-Ray.” I’ll allow you a second to stop laughing.

There is, I suspect, a lot of knowing ignorance in the attempt to make James “God is Nonbinary” Talarico an appealing option to voters of faith, but some of it does seem like genuine affinity from one of the Times’ token quasi-conservative Christians.

In particular, far from being disqualifying in French’s eyes, Talarico’s dubious heterodox passive-aggressive progressive faith is actually a bonus, even if he claims not to necessarily agree with him:

For example, in an interview with my colleague Ezra Klein, Talarico criticized the evangelical focus on abortion and homosexuality in politics. “It’s remarkable to me,” Talarico said, “that you have an entire political movement using Christianity to prioritize two issues that Jesus never talked about.”

“And so,” he continued, “I’m not saying they’re not important — I actually think both of those issues are very important. But to focus on those two things instead of feeding the hungry and healing the sick and welcoming the stranger — three things we’re told to do ad nauseam in Scripture — to me, is just mind-blowing.”

When I hear Talarico speak about faith, I alternate between agreement and disagreement. He’s spot on about the dangers of Christian nationalism, and yet I can’t help but respond to his arguments about the relative priority of abortion by asking: “Why can’t we do it all? Provide high-quality health care, welcome immigrants and protect the unborn?”

To a certain extent, it’s not surprising to hear French — seemingly a believer that there’s no such thing as what Gad Saad termed “suicidal empathy” — wonder aloud why we can’t indeed give every illegal immigrant a free car and get all the little children in the world to clap their hands in unison, too.

However, he seems to be quite a bit too ingenuous when he wonders aloud why Talarico’s Christian vision isn’t expansive enough, as if perhaps he hasn’t thought about saving the unborn and keeping the borders as open as a matador waving bulls through. This isn’t a matter of being insufficiently imaginative on the candidate’s part, but about being deliberately narrow regarding who his presuppositions benefit: namely, air-headed progressives.

It’s not as if he didn’t spell it out for us, however:

Texas senate hopeful James Talarico uses the gnostic ‘Gospel of Thomas’ to prove that Jesus was a feminist, offering that men must not be male, but must be female, and vice versa. pic.twitter.com/QjGOMPympG

— Protestia (@Protestia) March 4, 2026

🚨 The Democrat nominee for Senate in Texas says that the story of Mary’s Annunciation justifies abortion:

“The Angel comes down and asks Mary if this is something she wants to do… To me that is an affirmation that creation has to be done with consent.” pic.twitter.com/D0ZOr1RBhi

— Greg Price (@greg_price11) March 4, 2026

Democrat Nominee for U.S. Senate in Texas James Talarico: “God is nonbinary”

pic.twitter.com/NkWDJzsXY6

— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) March 5, 2026

In this way, I suppose Talarico is indeed a “Christian X-ray” — and French is a delusional patient who refuses to believe the diagnosis he’s been given.

Most of these bits of radical heterodoxy — heresy, even — don’t get quoted by French. The longest Talarico quote is this one, which French nods along approvingly with: “I am tired of being pitted against my neighbor. I’m tired of being told to hate my neighbor. It’s been more than 10 years of this kind of politics. Politics as blood sport, politics as trolling and owning, politics as total war. It tears families apart. It ends friendships, and it leaves us all feeling terrible all the time.”

“I know there are people who register those words deeply. They’ve endured the fractured friendships. They’ve seen their own families fall to pieces. And the idea that a politician might actually run a race without rancor and hatred, can feel intoxicating — even if you have theological or ideological disagreements with him,” French responds.

It’s worth mentioning that most of this fracture is in response to NeverTrumpers like French who have spent over a decade whinging about the perfidies of The Donald in the most rebarbative terms, then they wonder why their friends, neighbors, and relatives won’t listen to their lectures about how evil they are. The cheek of these people, the David Frenches of the world say, then wonder aloud again why all those relationships ended up “fractured.”

Later on, French laments that “if Paxton wins, MAGA evangelicals will no doubt claim that he is the only viable candidate for Christians to support.” He then references the worst possible candidate to win conservatives of faith who aren’t “MAGA evangelicals” over to Talarico’s side.

“What if we’re seeing a 21st-century version of the American public’s movement away from the cruelty and corruption of Richard Nixon toward the ethics and integrity of Jimmy Carter — a man who won for all the right reasons in 1976, even if his presidency didn’t live up to his promise?” French writes. “It’s too soon to be that optimistic, but that’s what I see in people’s attitudes toward Talarico.”

Look, I’m not old enough to have lived through the Carter years, but I’ve learned about them through these things called books. David French has not only read some books, but written some, as well. If the better angels of nature couldn’t comprehend just how wrong things had gone when the words “… toward the ethics and integrity of Jimmy Carter” escaped from his MacBook keyboard, it’s time to give it up.

Suffice it to say, there’s a lot more piffle in this “Christian X-ray” nonsense piece, but this is basically what we should expect between now and November: the repetitive canonization of St. James of Austin, the patron of “Coexist” bumper stickers on Subarus, by leftists and NeverTrump pseudo-conservatives alike. This won’t be the dumbest hagiography that gets written, but it’s certainly the David Frenchiest.

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