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RG Ryan Girdusky Ryan Girdusky runs the National Populist Newsletter on Substack. https://natpop.substack.com/?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=web&utm_campaign=profile_page

“You cannot govern by ideology alone. You cannot be crazier than all your voters. And this is a state that's dealing with multiple different issues of a growing state that's growing faster than at the pace of which people can keep up with. A good politician should have recognized that. And Greg Abbott, if he was this unbelievable campaigner in the suburbs that people kind of assigned it to him. He would not only be three points ahead by a woman who he's outraised hundreds of millions of dollars more. That is a failure on the part of Abbott.”

The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show · US Politics · October 2026

“You cannot govern by ideology alone. You cannot be crazier than all your voters. And this is a state that's dealing with multiple different issues of a growing state that's growing faster than at the pace of which people can keep up with. A good politician should have recognized that. And Greg Abbott, if he was this unbelievable campaigner in the suburbs that people kind of assigned it to him. He would not only be three points ahead by a woman who he's outraised hundreds of millions of dollars more. That is a failure on the part of Abbott.” — Ryan Girdusky on Greg Abbott, The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show

Context

Ryan Girdusky, a Republican-aligned commentator, assessing Gov. Greg Abbott's narrow lead in his reelection race against Democrat Gina Hinojosa, a few days before the November 2026 election.

Transcript

The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show Around 00:00 into the episode
Ryan Girdusky

…to show up after Republicans poured almost $ 400 million into that state to ask them to show up. But if they became the party that looked at quality of life issues and improving the overall quality of life issues, not just the bottom line, they wouldn't be in the situation to have to spend that, even with Donald Trump's negatives being as high as they are. I mean, that's just the truth of it. You cannot govern by ideology alone. You cannot be crazier than all your voters. And this is a state that's dealing with multiple different issues of a growing state that's growing faster than at the pace of which people can keep up with. A good politician should have recognized that. And Greg Abbott, if he was this unbelievable campaigner in the suburbs that people kind of assigned it to him. He would not only be three points ahead by a woman who he's outraised hundreds of millions of dollars more. That is a failure on the part of Abbott. And he has avoided all blame thus far. I think I mean, I'm hoping that Republicans pull out every statewide race in Texas and I can say, oh, Ryan, your fears were were they were overstated. They were overstated. Don't worry. Every Republican showed up and they ended up landing 10 point victories. But if that doesn't happen, we know the shortcomings of Donald Trump's presidency. We know the…

Speaker names come from our own diarization. The position is estimated from where the line sits in the episode.

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