Laura Hollis started her May 29 WorldNetDaily column this way:
Now that Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has roundly defeated incumbent Sen. John Cornyn in the Republican runoff primary for Cornyn’s U.S. Senate seat (Paxton won by 25 percentage points), the real battle begins.
Paxton’s opponent on the Democrat Party [sic] ticket is James Talarico, a former teacher and member of the Texas House of Representatives who holds a master of divinity from the Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary. Right on cue, leftists who ordinarily despise Republicans and Christians are singing the praises of Cornyn and Talarico.
We shouldn’t be surprised. Democrats wax rhapsodic about Republicans when they defect to the Democrat Party [sic], lose an election or die. As for Talarico, he is the Left’s idea of a perfect Christian: one who assures them that their every political and personal impulse is A-OK with the Big Guy Upstairs.
Yes, Hollis deliberately gets the name of the Democratic Party wrong twice in three paragraphs. She continued by telling Paxton to take on Talarico’s non-right-wing interpretations of the Bible:
What’s vital to understand is that Paxton must start by challenging Talarico’s deeply flawed biblical exegesis. This is perhaps counter to the advice of the typical campaign consultant, which is to steer clear of attacking an opponent’s religious views. But we’re no longer in the realm of typical political campaigns. Talarico’s butchered Christianity is his campaign. If Paxton avoids addressing Talarico’s biblical views, he’ll lose, and badly.
Talarico is holding himself out as a deep thinker and a moderate Democrat, deliberately clothing himself in misstated teachings of Jesus Christ in such a way as to render his policy preferences impervious to political attacks because they are – by his lights – grounded in Christian theology. To leave those distorted interpretations unaddressed is to play by Talarico’s rules and concede territory with constituents Paxton cannot afford to lose. There are plenty of people – even in Texas – too ill-informed or too swayed by appeals to emotion, sympathy and “compassion” to question Talarico’s theological claims.
In Paxton’s favor, this is a good time to challenge the Left’s exploitation of words like “compassion” (under the guise of religion or anything else), as the public is finally waking up to the ways they’ve been manipulated by it.
[…]Paxton doesn’t have to attempt to be holier than thou or a theological expert to challenge Talarico’s misstatements about Jesus Christ and Christianity. In fact, the best approach would be for Paxton to say something like, “I’m not standing here telling you that I’m a man without flaws. The Lord knows better than anyone my shortcomings. But neither will I stand before the people of Texas and tell them that Jesus had nothing to say about killing babies in the womb, or that He would agree that a man can become a woman or vice versa, or that He would say it’s ‘love’ to chemically castrate and surgically mutilate children who are suffering from various emotional and psychological disorders and are far too young to fully comprehend the future implications of what’s being done to them. Or that allowing hundreds and thousands of criminals to pour into America from other countries is ‘Christian.’ If James Talarico cannot be trusted to tell you the truth about what the Bible says, he cannot be trusted to tell you the truth about the policies he supports. But I will tell you that. And here’s what they are …”
At that point, Paxton will not only have the public’s attention about Talarico’s political positions; he will have undermined the moral authority Talarico is confecting to prevent any legitimate scrutiny of those positions.
Mr. Paxton, have at it.
Unmentioned by Hollis: Paxton has violated biblical principles by committing adultery, or how that might disqualify him from judging the morality of others.