Apparently it escaped Epstein that Texans are among the most WASPish of the WASPs.
"George W. Bush, even though he can claim impeccable WASP lineage and went to the right schools, seems otherwise to have shed all WASPish coloration and become an authentic Texan."
In other words: he went from being a WASP to being a WASP. (Epstein just can't quite comprehend it.)
Nahh. He gets it just fine. He just doesn’t express it well.
Most white southerners are Anglo-Saxon and Protestant, despite the somewhat mythical prominence assigned Scotch-Irish ancestry in recent decades.
But southerners have never been WASPs in the sense of northeast ruling elite. He’s actually referring to a cultural group, assigned ethnicity for purposes of labeling, but with ethnicity not terribly relevant in any other sense.