Texas Republicans Get What They Deserve
What did John Cornyn think was going to happen?
William Kristol,
Andrew Egger, and
Jim Swift
May 27, 2026
Lori Kritman (center) takes a selfie at a watch party for Attorney General Ken Paxton at the Dallas/Plano Marriott at Legacy Towncenter on May 26, 2026 in Plano, Texas. (Photo by Stewart F. House/Getty Images)
Big John Deflated
If Donald Trump’s base is a cult, we’re rapidly approaching the
Comet Hale–Bopp phase. Outside his party, he’s already a lame duck with catastrophically low approval and a stalled agenda. But as he weakens outside the building, his remarkable influence inside seems only to grow over a party eager to drink the Kool-Aid at his request.
Yesterday’s Republican Senate primary runoff in Texas was the clearest sign of this yet. It pitted a formidable, well-funded establishment incumbent, Sen. John Cornyn, against a sad-sack rabble-rouser MAGA type in Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton.
Paxton is damaged goods in fifteen different ways—uncharismatic and dull, loathed by those who have worked with him in state government, beset by serial adultery scandals, impeached by his own party over his extraordinary corruption and self-dealing. Paxton had exactly two strengths: The perverse intuition of the MAGA base that his run of bad behavior and scandal meant he was actually a strong conservative fighter, and his obsequious, servile loyalty to Trump, for which the president rewarded him with a late endorsement.
Which turns out, of course, to be all you need. In the end it wasn’t even close. Paxton walloped Cornyn by
more than 27 points.
This result came as a heavy blow to anyone still carrying a hopeful torch for some unsullied original-flavor Republican party to reemerge from the ashes of Trumpism. Believe it or not, these people are still out there; some of them are even senators themselves. For a decade now, these senators have clung frantically to the idea that, if they just stick with Trump for now, eventually he’ll ride off into the sunset and leave them in control of their own party again. And in the meantime, sticking with Trump had its direct benefits: It seemed for a while like a bulletproof shield against grassroots-insurgent primary challenges.
You couldn’t find a better poster child for the accommodationist approach that the GOP Senate old guard took than Big John. For years, he was the consummate grin-and-bear-it Trump ally, steadfastly supporting his agenda from his post in Senate leadership. But as it turns out, that posture wasn’t as bulletproof as guys like Cornyn thought. It kept him in Trump’s good books as long as the president had bigger, more openly mutinous fish to fry. But once he had rid himself of the Mitt Romneys and Liz Cheneys of the world, Trump found himself at his leisure to start punishing smaller and smaller crimes: an unwillingness to abandon the legislative filibuster, a curiosity toward other candidates early in the 2024 presidential primary, the inescapable scent of belonging to a pre-Trump establishment at all.
In another world, I would lament Cornyn’s ignominious defeat. It seems impossible to deny he is a better man than Paxton, and a better and more reasonable negotiator of the sort the Senate needs to function.
But in this world, it’s hard to respond to last night’s outcome with anything but grim, bleak pleasure. What, in the end, did Cornyn’s decade of Trump accommodation get him? Nothing but the futile hope that he might outlast the era—a hope that finally brought him to the greatest humiliation of all, a yearlong fruitless effort to woo Trump into blessing him with his endorsement by posting pictures of himself reading
The Art of the Deal and introducing bills to rename Texas highways after the president. He made himself a dog for Trump, and Trump put him down like a dog.
At the same time, Cornyn’s loss can only diminish Trump’s actual political power. Trump has now robbed yet another Republican senator of his political future, meaning he has unencumbered yet another Republican senator of his biggest reason for ignoring or indulging Trump’s perpetual outrages. And that’s not all: The
rest of the Senate GOP can’t help but notice that their former accommodationist arrangement seems to be falling apart before their eyes. What’s the point of giving the president America increasingly hates so much of your blood and sweat when he may just turn around and sic his base on you anyway?
And then there’s the little matter of the Texas seat itself. We’ve known all along that Democratic nominee James Talarico polls much better against Paxton than he does against Cornyn. That gap will shrink in the months ahead as “normie” Republicans—now a minority in their own base—perform their now-familiar humiliation ritual and try to rationalize away their distaste for Paxton. But there’s no question that Republicans can no longer count on Texas; they will be forced to spend heavily in the (very expensive) state just to feel good about a race they by rights shouldn’t have to think about at all.
So enjoy your nominee, Mr. President—and try not to choke on him.
bsky.app
