A rift inside the Texas Republican Party has widened after veteran GOP strategist Karl Rove, a former senior adviser in President George W. Bush's White House, condemned a racist social media post by Bo French, the Trump-backed Republican nominee for state railroad commissioner, and announced that he would instead vote for the Democratic nominee, Jon Rosenthal, as reported by ABC News 4. Despite its 19th-century name, the Railroad Commission is Texas's primary regulator of the oil and gas industry, and its three commissioners are elected statewide. President Donald Trump responded by branding Rove a RINO — "Republican In Name Only" — and accusing him of suffering from "Trump derangement syndrome." Now the conservative National Review, the magazine William F. Buckley Jr. founded in 1955, has joined the criticism, arguing in a blistering editorial that French deserves to be called out.

The dispute began after a Texas college football victory over the weekend, when French posted photos of non-white Texas fans and wrote, "The problem is now obviously far worse than anyone imagined."

"While other Texas Republicans criticized French — some vigorously, some tepidly — a retinue of online defenders ventured creative interpretations of what the problem was," the National Review argues in its editorial. "The university catered too much to foreigners. Never mind that the picture did not disclose the citizenship or nationality of its subjects, and the law mandates that 90 percent of students be Texans. Its admissions standards are unfair to white Texans. French himself retreated to this position, but the university has no preferential standards for Indian-Americans."

The editorial's writers also highlight what they see as a contradiction in the defense. "In fact, French, in the past, joined the near-uniform chorus of Texas Republicans in supporting the university's admissions system, which was designed to eliminate consideration of race and was defended for years by foes of racial preferences," the magazine notes.

The Review went on to dismantle other arguments advanced by MAGA defenders of French. "So, the rationalizers had to go farther afield," the writers explain. "Too many Indian-Americans are Hindu: another trait not discoverable from the photo, and also one that appears to pose no practical difficulties for America's republican institutions. They're not assimilating. But the photo bears every possible visible sign of assimilation. College football is one of the most uniquely American of institutions and is unknown in India. Indian-Americans are participating fully in U.S. life, generally know English, and have high intermarriage rates. Unless the test of assimilation is being white, they're doing it."

The magazine concluded that French's apologists, offended by the presence of Indian-American fans in the photograph, need to "get over it."

"Most Americans, of all races, find their repulsion itself repulsive," the editorial says. " white Americans, by and large, have too much sense to believe that greater racial consciousness is the answer to any problems they have. The commenters who object to the picture are wrong about many things, but they are right to feel that their side is losing. Those harmlessly happy young people have found their perfect counterpoint in the toxically miserable."

The dispute has now pulled in voices from across the Republican spectrum, and whether any of French's Republican critics follow Rove in breaking with the nominee ahead of the general election will be closely watched.