Michael Wood, a Texas Republican who ran in a special election to the U.S. House to represent Texas’ 6th Congressional District, is admitting that the party has lost its way and is now focused on “grievances” and “owning the libs” instead of policy.
“I think that we are a party of grievance right now. I don’t know what we stand for. Owning the libs. We don’t like baseball or Coke or NASCAR or Hollywood or academia. We don’t like anything,” Wood said. “We won’t win elections that way and not going to put in to place the sort of conservative reforms we want that way and then at the fringes there’s a real risk of political violence which keeps me up at night.”
Wood ran in a special election in Texas to fill the congressional seat left vacant by the death of former Rep. Ron Wright from COVID.
Wood ran on an anti-Trump message and could only manage to finish 9th in the 23- candidate primary, receiving only 3.2% of the vote. Two Republican candidates who ran with Trumpian messages made it to the runoff election, which means Republicans will keep the seat in the US House.
He said on the campaign trail he had “moments of optimism” because he felt that people were responding to his message. But, when the results of the May 1 primary came back, he was disappointed and that was made much worst by the party’s treatment of Liz Cheney.
Still, Wood believes the party can be saved.
“I haven’t yet given up on the party,” he said. “I don’t want us to have to lose for a decade before we sort of get that message sort of the way that the Democrats lost throughout the ’80s and pivoted to a Clintonian party. I don’t want to get there.”
