2020年经济学人 列克星顿专栏--搅乱德克萨斯州(3)（在线收听）

Mr Abbott’s pandemic management has followed a similar pattern. Having covered his right flank, he has ended up in a pretty reasonable place—as indicated by the fact that he is now being criticised most harshly by the crazy right. By permitting local authorities to force companies to use masks, the governor showed “who he is, a traitor to liberty and our constitution,” tweeted a Republican state representative named Jonathan Stickland last week. Someone should tell Mr Stickland how that sort of nonsense is working out for Mr Trump: the president is currently in a tie for Texas with Joe Biden, which raises a possibility of Texas’s state house going Democratic for the first time since 2001.

雅培的疫情管理也遵循了类似的模式。在掩护了他的右翼之后，他最终在一个相当合理的位置上结束了管理，正如他现在正受到疯狂右翼最严厉的谴责所表明的那样。上周，一位名叫乔纳森·斯蒂克兰的共和党州代表在推特上写道，这位州长通过允许地方当局强迫企业使用口罩，展现了“他是谁，是自由和我们宪法的叛徒”有人应该告诉斯蒂克兰，这种谬论对特朗普来说意味着什么的：总统目前与乔·拜登在德克萨斯州处于平局，这增加了德克萨斯州众议院自2001年以来首次走向民主的可能性。

Mr Abbott’s judiciously disguised pragmatism looks like his party’s best hope of avoiding that fate. It has made him popular in a divided state. His approval rating is 63%, 12 points higher than the president's. It has also won him the confidence of the conservative donors who may need to spend unprecedented sums in November to shore up the Republican ballot in Texas.

雅培谨慎伪装的实用主义看起来是共和党避免这种命运的最大希望。这使他在一个分歧的州很受欢迎。他的支持率为63%，比总统高出12个百分点。这也为他赢得了保守派捐赠者的信心，他们可能需要在11月花费前所未有的资金来支持德克萨斯州的共和党选票。

His qualified success also offers his party pointers for the post- Trump future that may be looming over it. In a rapidly diversifying society—nationally as well as in Texas—the Republicans will have to expand their appeal to keep winning elections. Yet it may well take a fire-breathing conservative (or ostensibly one, at least) to effect the shift. Who knows? Perhaps Mr Abbott could even be that fire-breather: defeat for Mr Trump would arguably make him the Republicans’ foremost leader. But that feels like a remote possibility at most. For now the governor has a real-life catastrophe to worry about

他合格的成功也为他的政党指出了特朗普时代之后即将来临的未来。在一个快速多样化的国家以及德克萨斯州中，共和党人必须扩大他们的吸引力，以继续赢得选举。然而，要实现这一转变，很可能需要一个具有攻击性的保守派（至少表面上是这样）。谁知道呢？或许雅培甚至可以成为那个呼火者：特朗普的失败可以说将使他成为共和党最重要的领导人。但这感觉最多是一个遥远的可能性。目前，州长要担心现实生活中的灾难