Three Texas-Sized Takeways from Paxton’s Dominant Runoff Victory

The rules are simple - get Trump’s agenda passed or find a new career

I predicted yesterday’s outcome long ago:

It took longer to get there than I had originally thought, and it turned out Ken Paxton’s long-awaited Trump endorsement was, in fact, the catalyst for the landslide victory - but it happened nonetheless. The results are brutal, telling, and decisive:

Unless something flips with the remaining 2% left to be counted, incumbent four-term Senator John Cornyn will have won just two counties over Texas’s Attorney General. The first is Texas’s freak show, Travis County, which contains the state capital of Austin. The second is Kenedy County, buried deep in South Texas and won by Cornyn by a margin of six votes to Paxton’s two. X is filled with concern trolls, Cornyn supporters, and Talarico diehards all questioning the basic decency of their neighbors a full 11 years into the Trump era. The map above makes it clear to me:

Pass the agenda or find a new career.

It doesn’t matter if you’re nice, or if you have never gone through a divorce, or if you went to seminary. We don’t vote because you’re nice. We vote because you’ll get stuff done (or you didn’t when you had 24 years to do it). I understand some reading this newsletter will say, “But what about this!?” or bring up something Paxton has going on - but the proper question is, “What have you done for me lately?”

Had the Senate hulked up and pushed the SAVE America Act across the finish line come hell or high water, Cornyn would have likely received Trump’s endorsement, and this would have been over with a long time ago. Now, it is indeed over, and in the manner I predicted last April.

I see three giant takeaways that must be understood as we move from a primary environment to the big show, when Paxton will take on the latest Democrat freak, James Talarico, who appears to have been created by some sort of Austin-owned Artificial Intelligence application.

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I. Trump is Still the Boss

Trump’s endorsements are made of gold. Everyone reading this article today has been frustrated when their grassroots candidate didn’t get that endorsement because it is understood what will inevitably happen. These are nearly 100% effective in getting the nomination of Trump’s choice, and I can’t recall off the top of my head when the last time was that Trump’s pick didn’t win in a primary (Georgia and Nebraska gubernatorial races come to mind).

There are picks that disappoint, picks that are expected and unspectacular, and then there are the “Oh damn, he went there” picks that show he’s tired of status quo. Ask Bill Cassidy and Cornyn, or wait and see how it works with Lisa Murkowski on the chopping block in two years. What is most clear about recent results is that not only do GOP voters clearly want Trump’s agenda passed, so do the unaffiliated voters. Texas has an open primary, which allows for Democrat voters to vote in GOP races so long as they didn’t vote in the Democrat primary in the first round. Dade Phelan, the awful former Texas Speaker of the House, survived his primary challenge this way by gaming the runoff (and so did Thad Cochran in Mississippi’s 2014 Senate Primary):

I think Trump’s biggest test for his endorsement strength looms in next month’s hotly contested runoff between Rick Jackson and Lieutenant Governor Burt Jones for the GOP gubernatorial nomination. Both men likely have a floor of at least 46% and will be duking it out for soft GOP support in the Atlanta metro. Math aside, I wouldn’t want to be the man going against Trump’s endorsement, and the Paxton-Cornyn result, with the Attorney General holding a lead greater than 27%, informs a rational mind that the approval ratings for President Trump are blatant fabrications meant to disrupt his agenda and throw his administration into chaos.

No informed mind could believe Trump’s approval rating is hovering in the 30s.

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II. Latinos Doom Democrat Hopes