The Senate Fight in Texas is the GOP Civil War Writ Small

I’m not a native of my home state of Texas, but a New York transplant. Eleven years after moving to Dallas, I’m still uncomfortable driving on Texas’s ruthless Darwinian highways, crammed with exiles from California and uninsured illegal immigrants. But as a longtime member of the now-defunct New York Right to Life Party, I’m much more comfortable with Texas politics—at least as practiced in public.

A state that turned deep red as the national Democrats dragged the state’s party far to the left on social issues and immigration, Texas is still a place where it pays for Republicans to talk tough, show deference to Christian ministers, and show pride in our distinctive local history.

In New York, few white candidates would bother getting endorsements from evangelical pastors, for instance, but they definitely still matter down here. Gun rights are still considered sacrosanct, and outlaw immigration is broadly unpopular, even among many Hispanics whose recent ancestors might have arrived that way. (My theory is that second-generation Mexican-Americans don’t want their wives’ cousins showing up and living in their basements, but there’s no way to empirically test it.)

Republicans here mostly, or at least pretend to be, pro-life and supportive of “traditional values,” however amorphously defined. By contrast, even the barn-burning populist GOP candidate in the New York City mayoral contest, Curtis Sliwa, had to tout his advocacy of LGBTQ issues in order to come in third behind nursing home COVID genocide architect Andrew Cuomo, and jihadi race communist Zohran Kwame Mamdani.

While blue state mayors and governors yawned or cheered at the George Floyd riots, the Texas National Guard was ordered to swiftly suppress attempts by Antifa and Black Lives Matter to trash most Texas sites. Confederate monuments have fallen all across the South, but the almost equally “offensive” Alamo remains standing and honored—for now.

Conservatives pay a price for their apparent dominance, however, and it’s a high one: The Republican Party of Texas is riddled with opportunists and hypocrites—people who in any other state would run and win as Democrats, but in Texas, where winning as a Democrat is much more difficult, they brand themselves as “sensible” or “mainstream” Republicans. They dominate the party’s institutions, soak up the support of inattentive voters and donors, and basically act as squatters in our family home—eating out of the fridge in their tighty-whiteys and crawling into bed with the wife.

A close friend of mine is a local Republican precinct chairman, who spends most of his time battling against entrenched Bush faction apparatchiks intent on subverting the will of conservative voters. These Republicans in Name Only (RINOs) work for open primaries that let Democrats swing close elections, support giving powerful committee slots in the Texas legislature to liberal Democrats, oppose basic election security measures (paper ballots and voter ID), and then tar as “extremists” loyal supporters of MAGA policies. Indeed, the smarmy, Bible-thumping leftist, James Talarico, who won the Democratic primary over hilariously ghetto Rep. Jasmine Crockett, only rose to prominence thanks to the plum committee vice-chairmanships that the RINO leadership of the Texas House handed to him.

Put another way, for a politician in most parts of Texas, claiming to be a Republican is a bit like insisting (contrary to appearances) that you’re a straight man in the early 1960s: it’s mighty convenient, and there are plenty of closet cases whose real beliefs are lived strictly on the “down-low,” inside of a kind of “closet.”

Texas Senator John Cornyn is one of these closet cases, and right now the national Republican establishment is pulling out every stop to hand him the nomination for the 2026 midterms—which is contested by conservative hero, Ken Paxton. It boggles the mind to realize that with close U.S. Senate races across the country, Republicans prioritized spending some $100 million into that primary race just so it could help a two-term incumbent cling to that office against an eminently electable, highly effective attorney general.

As Texas attorney general, Paxton led successful efforts to fight off a dozen lawsuits filed in 2020 and aimed at gutting election security and turning Texas blue through vote fraud. Paxton was the lead AG to sue over the highly dubious 2020 presidential race. He has championed border security, fought for pro-life laws, and defended religious liberty. For his efforts, Paxton has been repaid with comprehensive persecution by the GOP’s “down-low” faction—culminating in a manufactured impeachment effort that grassroots activists managed to defeat in the Texas Senate in 2023.

Thanks to the massive cash dump and a spoiler candidate’s presence in the race, the Senate primary went very narrowly for Cornyn, thrusting him into a runoff against Paxton that will be decided on May 26. Cornyn did his best to render Paxton radioactive in a series of staggeringly vicious campaign ads, which focused on Paxton’s lamentable married life (adulteries) and the bizarre claim that 15 years ago, Paxton (I’m not making this up) allegedly … lifted a pricey Montblanc pen from a public lost and found. A Wall Street Journal reporter tracked down a friend of mine (a major U.S. evangelical leader who supports Paxton) to breathlessly share the story about the pen.

Now a battle is raging over which candidate Trump will endorse in the runoff.

If Cornyn gets the nod, many conservatives may simply refuse to turn out to vote for him and other Republicans in November, given the senator’s loud approval of the Russia Collusion hoax, his praise for lawfare architect Jack Smith, his support for gun-grabbing “red flag” laws, and his backing of immigration amnesty. My own plan, in that case, is to write in “Jasmine Crockett,” who, at least, is good for a laugh.

In the immediate aftermath of Cornyn’s recent narrow win, many assumed the worst because Trump’s social media account warned that he would make an endorsement in the Texas Senate runoff, and that he expected the other candidate to obediently fall on his sword. But Trump has held firm, and no endorsement has been announced yet.

Paxton then announced, in a move that illuminates why he’s such an effective attorney general, that he would “consider” dropping out of the race if (and only if) the Senate tears up the fake, non-talking filibuster and passes the SAVE America Act requiring voter ID in national elections. In other words, he would leave the race if it advanced the president’s and the MAGA agenda. Via Don, Jr.’s social media account, Trump made it clear he welcomed Paxton’s offer.

Voter security is a deal-killer for the RINOs in the U.S. Senate, and it’s worth wondering why. Is it that Democrats depend on voter fraud in general elections, but RINOs rely on it in the primaries?

That’s the case made by former prosecutor and election integrity activist David Clements, whose documentary Let My People Go ought to be required viewing for every American. Apart from naked political self-interest, it’s hard to understand why sitting senators would oppose the most basic element of election security—flashing some form of ID, as one must do to board an airplane.

Sen. Majority Leader John Thune is unwilling to sacrifice his own political future, and that of his fellow closet cases, just to save John Cornyn’s skin. So Thune has set up a doomed vote this week on the SAVE America Act to placate the president. Unfortunately, this is a bit of political theater. He has not demanded implementation of the talking filibuster, for example, which is the only way the bill has a chance of passing. After the measure fails, Thune hopes that Trump will dutifully shoot himself in the foot and stab Paxton in the back.

I don’t expect Trump to accept a moldy half-loaf of a symbolic Senate vote that leaves our elections unsecured, in return for endorsing an enemy. And if, for some unforeseen reason, Trump did go along with Thune and Cornyn after this half-hearted attempt, I doubt Paxton would drop out. (In fact, Texas law provides that Paxton’s name will remain on the ballot, regardless.) Nor will Texas primary voters be moved by such a reluctant, late-coming gesture.

Meanwhile, Cornyn must campaign from his political closet on the narrow question of Paxton’s marital problems, summoning aging Texas pastors to prop up his credibility. As The National Pulse reported:

[T]he Cornyn campaign rolled out a Faith Advisory Council to boost the incumbent Texas Senator’s standing among evangelical Christian voters. However, several members of the group are well-known boosters of refugee resettlement and mass amnesty policies, with ties to the George Soros-backed Evangelical Immigration Table (EIT).

Voters aren’t biting, and Paxton has a wide lead now in the polls. He’d likely win even despite a self-defeating Trump nod to Cornyn. Down here we’re pretty fed up with closeted Democrats like Cornyn who illicitly screw our state.

https://chroniclesmagazine.org/web/the-senate-fight-in-texas-is-the-gop-civil-war-writ-small