The Beto O’Rourke Text Message Hoax Was a Little Too Easy to Believe

There was an interesting story this week about voters in Texas getting a text message from a supposed campaign volunteer for Beto O’Rourke, the Democrat Senate candidate who is giving Ted Cruz a run for his money. The messages, obviously sent by someone who wants to tank O’Rourke’s chances of pulling off the upset of the year, asked supporters of the Democrat to gather all the illegal immigrants they could find and drive them to the polls on election day.

“We are in search of volunteers to help transport undocumented immigrants to polling booths so that they will be able to vote,” read the text. “Would you be able to support this grassroots effort?”

The O’Rourke people were quick to tell the public that neither they nor anyone working for the campaign was actually responsible for the texts.

“This is an actual text a friend in Texas just received. It is NOT from the Beto campaign,” said spokesperson Jerry Ochoa. “Very slick, Ted Cruz & Texas Republicans.”

There are actually two interesting parts to this story: One, that someone would engage in this kind of political trickery on behalf of (presumably) Cruz is fairly remarkable. Maybe it wuz da Russianz!

Two, it’s (even more) interesting that the perpetrator would think that people would actually believe it. From a flat, objective perspective, it should strike any reasonable voter as completely ridiculous that a major Senate candidate would brazenly ask supporters to help him break the law. You wouldn’t buy it if a campaign hoaxer sent out a text saying, “Hey guys, we’re going to throw Molotov cocktails into the Texas Republican Party headquarters – who’s in?” And because it is so stupid and obvious on its face, no one would actually send such a message because it would only hurt Cruz.

So why isn’t it so in this case? We’re talking about the psychology, here. Why would someone think that maybe – just maybe – voters might be primed to believe that the O’Rourke campaign would bus in “undocumented immigrants?”

The way we see it, this is a damning indictment of the Democratic Party. It should, in all respects, be a wakeup call – especially to party leaders already wary of the young progressives coming up through the ranks. Americans have been loud and clear when it comes to our desire to protect the border, so much so that the Big Scandal of the Summer – the separated families at the border – failed to accomplish anything in terms of weakening Trump’s approval numbers.

And in this atmosphere, Democrats are seen as the party of open borders, the party of Abolish ICE…the party that might – just might – be willing to have illegal aliens vote for them in a major election.

Someone seriously needs to save this misbegotten party from its own insanity before they drag the whole country down with them.