John Cornyn probably never had a chance to keep his seat. The senior Republican senator from Texas has repugnant, far-right politics. He even used the confirmation hearing for Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson to float legal theories for ending same-sex marriage. But he is mild-mannered — a flaw in today’s GOP — and he doesn’t have a history of flashy corruption scandals and adultery, unlike Ken Paxton, the state attorney general who handily defeated him in the Republican primary on Tuesday night.
Paxton is just a bigger scoundrel than Cornyn, so of course he drew a last-minute endorsement from Donald Trump, who took credit for Paxton’s victory, gloating on Truth Social with a meme declaring “Ken Paxton wins! Endorsed by Trump!” over a photo of the president glowering in a face he believes looks “tough.”
