It's Outrage or Joke Du Jour Campaign Time

Golly, you can tell it's crunch time. That period when it gets so close to an election that any utterance is meat for someone's ire if they think they can spin it right.

For example, Brandon Herrera is the Republican candidate for disgraced and vanquished Tony Gonzales's seat in Texas.

He is admittedly a rough character, but that's by design, and a firmly established persona. Herrera has built a livelihood online out of being a rollicking bad boy manly-man, bro-smack-talkin' weapons guy.

His YouTube channel, The AK Guy, has, like, 4.7 million subscribers as well as hundreds of thousands of followers on X.

He's running against Democrat Katy Padilla Stout, whom Herrera has already embarrassed pretty thoroughly by catching her in flat-out fabrication or embarrassing '51 state' moments that highlight her ignorance of the district she wants to represent.

In case you didn’t see the Big Bend video: https://t.co/anpweQpY2P

— Brandon Herrera (@TheAKGuy) October 21, 2026

No one will ever confuse him for, say, the effete, perfectly mannered Richard Blumenthal. The New York Times was horrified, and Republican leaders had their hearts in their throats when Herrera won.

...A self-described gun-rights absolutist and YouTuber known for his inflammatory humor, Mr. Herrera, 30, was initially opposed this year by both Mr. Johnson and President Trump as he challenged the district’s Republican incumbent, Tony Gonzales, for a second straight time. Mr. Gonzales and his allies spent millions painting Mr. Herrera as extreme, highlighting old videos in which he made wildly offensive jokes like saying that a Nazi-era submachine gun was “the original ghetto blaster” and “Hitler’s street sweeper.”

But after a sexual misconduct scandal forced Mr. Gonzales out of the race and then out of Congress this year, top Republicans quickly closed ranks around Mr. Herrera.

In an era where candidates’ online pasts are etched into the public record, Mr. Herrera’s rise is testing voters’ tolerance for comments, even those made in jest, that are beyond the pale of public acceptability.

It also underscores the anti-establishment energy coursing through both parties. As they wrestle for control of Congress, national leaders have jumped into shotgun marriages with outsider candidates — and those candidates, in turn, are welcoming help from an establishment they once attacked.

“After a brutal primary on all sides,” Mr. Herrera told reporters in San Antonio late last month, “the focus has to be bringing the party together.”

Herrera is leading Ms. Stout by about seven points, so Democrats feel pressure to find something in what should be a decades-long treasure trove of podcast appearances to hang this guy with.

They tried beating him about the neck and shoulder with rude comments he made about Shannon Watts, the founder of the anti-Second Amendment group Moms Demand Action. (And make no mistake - they were rude.) 

But in Texas, where Padilla Stout uses Herrera's slur against Watts in her living room presentations to fellow AWFLs...

...Ms. Padilla Stout has sought to highlight the remarks. At a recent gathering of left-leaning women in the northern hills of San Antonio, she paused to ask if children were out of earshot before recounting what he had said.

“That is not the type of person you want making decisions for you and your children,” she said.

...what Stout doesn't realize is that many of the husbands of women in the room with her love their guns. I would venture that a good portion of the men in the district she's running for have had something uncomplimentary to say about Watts and her group at some point in their lives. Sure, maybe just wishing her to perdition, but despising that vile woman to the core regardless. No one guy - no man - is going to turn on Herrera over that.

But surely there has to be better targets for Stout than someone who is an anathema to the majority of American males who believe in the right to bear arms.

And instead of putting their candidate through a last-minute bootcamp on the district itself to help her seem more intelligent and worthy of votes, the Democratic campaign brain trust has now sprung an October surprise from their vast research against Herrera. I don't know how he recovers.

It's nearly as bad as telling the world Lindsey Graham was gay.

One of those 'Who knew' moments.

This is the headline from all the possible things they could nail Herrera for:

Texas GOP House Candidate Brandon Herrera Says Kittens Should Be Sent to Chinese Restaurants

— NewsWire (@NewsWire_US) October 21, 2026

That's it. Seriously.

It's all over the news wires, from Yahoo to PBS to the Texas papers.

And is getting both a Community Note fest and comments ratio that should embarrass the 'news' organization that sent it out.

A joke on a podcast over a year ago becomes 'Herrera is a racist who wants kittens to be cooked.'

That's it.

That's all they got.

It must be tough down there.

Here's my idea of a joke.

BOSTON — California Gov. Gavin Newsom turned up in a video on Gov. Maura Healey's Instagram with a pitch for Massachusetts voters: open your wallets. "All right, it's Gavin Newsom here in Massachusetts with the great Maura Healey," he says. In the video, he says Healey's fellow Democratic governors "love her," and tells her, "You're going to win this election, but we need you." Then came the ask: "Get out there, not only vote, but if you can contribute, 5, 10, whatever you can afford to contribute to this remarkable leader." Healey closed it out: "Get out and vote, everybody." Newsom also headlined a closed-door fundraiser for Healey in Boston's South End over the weekend. The address was only given out to people who RSVP'd, as Mass Daily News reported. Election Day is Nov. 3. Video: @maura_healey via Instagram.

— Mass Daily News (@MassDailyNews) October 23, 2026

Man, you KNOW I got a good laugh out of that one, and it's FOR REAL!

There are signs the Democrats might just be out of gas in a lot of places.

I hope so.

That'd be funny, too.

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