Mayra Flores Is Already Making All the Right People Mad

Bonchie reporting for RedState 

The story of Rep. Mayra Flores captured the attention of the political sphere in June. The Latina Republican took down her Democrat challenger in a Texas district that had been blue for over a hundred years. In doing so, she didn’t just skate by either. She took a district that was D+14 in 2020 and won it by seven points.

Of course, because Flores is a Republican, that means she must be destroyed, and the media are wasting no time in targeting her. The New York Times released a hit piece on Wednesday, painting the freshman congresswoman as a “MAGA Latina” who (gasp!) doesn’t take the January 6th committee seriously.

We are going to dive into some of the details of the piece in a moment, but first, I’d like to just comment on the idea that Flores is “far-right.” Does that phrase have any meaning anymore? Or is it just thrown around like an epithet against any Republican the press doesn’t like, i.e. anyone to the right of Larry Hogan? If you actually look at Flores’ policy positions, she’s your typical GOP politician, including being pro-legal immigration. To the extent that she’s “far-right,” she’s simply where most of the party is, which would mean she’s just…on the right.

Here’s how the author of the Times pieces tries to rationalize her assertion, though.

But what is most striking is that Ms. Flores won by shunning moderates, embracing the far right and wearing her support for Donald J. Trump on her sleeve — more Marjorie Taylor Greene than Kay Bailey Hutchison.

Her campaign slogan — “God, family, country” — was meant to appeal to what she calls the “traditional values” of her majority-Hispanic district in the border city of Brownsville. She called for President Biden’s impeachment. She tweeted QAnon hashtags. And she called the Democratic Party the “greatest threat America faces.”

Well, except Flores is not Marjorie Taylor Greene, and since when is Kay Bailey Hutchinson an analog for mainstream Republicanism? It’s now “far-right” to stand for God, family, and country? I’d also suggest that President Biden deserves to be impeached, so I’m not seeing the radicalism there. Did this author describe Democrats who called for Trump to be impeached as “far-left?” Heck, the left constantly claims the GOP is a “threat to democracy,” but it’s bad for Flores to make the same claim about the Democrat Party?

When you boil it all down, this is just another example of the liberal press being unable to cope with the fact that some minorities have dared to break out of the boxes the left has created for them. Flores is Hispanic, and that means she’s supposed to be rabidly pro-illegal immigration and care about January 6th. She doesn’t, though, because that’s not what her constituents care about. Rather, as she noted, they care about how they are going to pay their bills.

And as her own oath of office coincided with the hearings by the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack, Ms. Flores largely dismissed the proceedings.

“Honestly, my district doesn’t care about that,” she said of the hearings. “My district is struggling to pay their bills. That’s what we’re supposed to be focusing on.”

As the Times piece laments, Flores is also not anti-Trump, and that’s an unforgivable sin to any beltway journalist. But to make matters worse, she believes in Jesus, and we just can’t have that in Washington.

As she moved into her congressional office across from the Capitol, Ms. Flores, an evangelical Christian, eyed the bare walls. She planned to put up a large photo of the SpaceX launch site in her district as well as images of Jesus.

She had campaigned with the support of evangelical churches; her pastor carried out a “Make America Godly Again” outreach effort and traveled to Washington for her swearing-in. “I do believe that pastors should be getting involved in politics and in guiding their congressmen,” Ms. Flores said. “Our pastors know our people better than we do.”

It’s hilarious to read an excerpt like that, recognizing just how out of touch the Times is with normal Americans. Flores is Hispanic, and most Hispanics are very religious. That’s a good thing, but to hear this Times reporter tell it, the Texas congresswoman is some kind of alien. She has pictures of Jesus! Oh my! She even believes that pastors should be active in their communities. How crazy! Better call her a “far-right” Latina!

Those on the left don’t know what’s about to hit them in November. They have brushed aside Hispanic voters, believing they can be kept in the fold simply by supporting open borders. Those days are gone now, and the subsequent political shift is going to put a lot more people like Flores in office in the future. The coming red wave isn’t just a result of Biden being a terrible president. It’s a rejection of decades of progressivism at large, and no amount of hit pieces will save Democrats from the backlash that’s already happening. So let them cope and seethe. It’s a thing of beauty to witness.