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“When I was a kid in Texas,” Lawrence Wright says on this week’s Political Scene podcast, “Texas was a one-party state. It was all Democrats.” Karl Rove turned the state red, Wright continues, “but now I think we’re finally becoming a two-party state—only the Democrats are not one of the parties.”

Wright sees Texas as divided into Republicans and Tea Partiers, with Rick Perry representing the latter. “Were he to get the nomination and we would actually have a Tea Party advocate at the head of the Republican Party, I think it could well take the party off the cliff,” he says.

Fearing that a face-off between Perry and Mitt Romney won’t yield a contender able to take down Obama, some Republicans are pushing for Chris Christie or Paul Ryan to enter the race. Ryan Lizza, who joins Wright on the podcast, is skeptical. “Frankly, to argue that Paul Ryan is more electable than Rick Perry seems crazy to me. He’s a congressman, and what he’s most known for is a budget—the Ryan budget—which would just be a gift from God to the Obama campaign if they could run against that,” he says. “You always look better when you’re sitting on the sidelines.”

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