The Patriot Post® · Paxton Sends Cornyn Packing

In the Age of Trump, our mainstream media has tended toward reticence when making early election calls that favor Donald Trump and his preferred candidates. But what happened yesterday in Texas caused even the Appropriated Press to capitulate in short order.

Less than an hour after the polls closed in Texas, the AP called the Republican primary race for U.S. Senate against four-term incumbent John Cornyn and in favor of challenger Ken Paxton, the state’s attorney general — and this despite Paxton having been outspent by a whopping 9-to-1.

You could practically feel the pain of NBC election guru Steve Kornacki as he conceded the colossal endorsement juice of President Trump and announced the “dreadful news” that Cornyn was getting “absolutely clobbered.”

Let’s be clear: With 99% of the vote counted, Paxton leads Cornyn 63.8% to 36.2%. That’s not a win, not a comfortable win, not a landslide, not a shellacking, not even a clobbering. That’s an annihilation. Of a four-term incumbent senator. It’s the worst primary defeat for a sitting senator in half a century.

By my count, Donald Trump is now eight-for-eight in U.S. Senate endorsements, eight-for-eight in gubernatorial endorsements, and an eye-popping 101-for-101 in U.S. House endorsements. Yes, Trump tends to make sure his guy can win before spending his endorsement capital, but if you think he only endorses candidates who are ahead in the polls, you might want to ask former Ohio Senator JD Vance about that, or maybe current North Carolina Senator Ted Budd, or maybe current Wyoming Congresswoman Harriet Hageman.

Now, there are plenty of Trump-deranged talkingheads out there who’ll try to blunt what happened in Texas as a fait accompli, as a case of the incumbent Cornyn having been toast even before Trump endorsed Paxton. That’s rubbish, and the numbers back it up. Before Trump’s endorsement, the RealClearPolitics Average gave Paxton a narrow 2.3-point lead, with polls often reflecting a high percentage of undecided voters. Two polls in April and another in early May actually had Cornyn leading Paxton. Does that sound like Texas toast to you?

Things started to trend Paxton’s way when Trump began to “unofficially” endorse him in early May — when the president began to cool toward Cornyn and his weak-kneed Thune-ish McConnell-ish Murkowski-ish stance on the wildly popular SAVE America Act, and when the president began to say favorable things about Paxton’s more MAGA policy positions. Texans could intuit this non-endorsement endorsement before Trump made it official.

Regardless: 117-for-117 is a pretty decent record, wouldn’t you say?

Make no mistake: Cornyn, the four-term incumbent, was initially favored by Trump. And why not? Cornyn held a rock-solid Republican seat, and his vote tended to be solidly Republican. Tended to be. Cornyn’s voting history has an unmistakably Beltway bend to it — a bend that saw his American Conservative Union rating go from a perfect 100% in 2004 to a milquetoasty 76% in more recent years.

Cornyn thus joins Louisiana Senator Bill Cassidy and Kentucky Congressman Thomas Massie and a bunch of no-name state senators from Indiana as Republicans who got the gate because they failed to reflect and fight for the will of their voters.

Thus, you can join Senate Majority Leader John Thune and lament the ouster of the “principled conservative” Cornyn. Or you can concede that Cornyn most certainly made his establishment bed when he kept casting go-along get-along votes that weakened the Republican bargaining position during budget negotiations, and when he continually stood with Thune and prattled on about what a tough spot he and his fellow Republican senators are in as it pertained to a piece of voting-integrity legislation that enjoys north of 80% approval from the American people.

Paxton, on the other hand, made clear his support for the SAVE America Act early on. Indeed, Paxton’s boldest move came back in March, when he tweeted that he might exit the race if Cornyn and his fellow GOP senators agreed to do away with the filibuster in order to pass that existentially important legislation:

The Save America Act is the most important bill the U.S. Senate could ever pass, and I’m committed to helping President Trump get it done. I would consider dropping out of this race if Senate Leadership agrees to lift the filibuster and passes the SAVE America Act. John Cornyn is a coward who has refused to support abolishing the filibuster to pass this bill. … The truth is clear: No one has been more loyal to Donald Trump than me — fighting the stolen 2020 election, being in Mar-a-Lago when he announced his 2024 campaign, and standing with him in NY in the face of lawfare.

Between now and November 3, Democrats will rally around their incredibly un-Texan candidate, James Talarico, and they’ll dodge his colossal weirdness and tell us that Ken Paxton is corrupt. Good luck with that.

If the good, God-fearing, patriotic people of Texas choose James Freaking Talarico as their next U.S. senator, I’ll eat an armadillo.