OPINION:
Lame-duck Sen. John Cornyn regrettably reminds us of the petulant little boy who, not allowed to play his preferred position, takes his bat and ball and goes home.
In the context of which party will control the U.S. Senate in the 120th Congress next year, the Texas Republican’s disdain for — and apparent unwillingness to work to help elect — Ken Paxton, who upset him in the GOP primary, is deeply disconcerting.
That’s because the alternative, Texas state Rep. James Talarico, the Democratic nominee, is a radical leftist who should not be allowed within 100 yards of the Senate floor, to mix sports metaphors.
“Paxton’s a poor campaigner,” Mr. Cornyn groused to The Texas Tribune in remarks published Aug. 28. “He’s lazy and doesn’t raise money. And he basically is not offering a very compelling case for his election. He’s making this harder than it needs to be. But so be it. We are where we are.”
No politician — particularly a longtime incumbent like the four-term Mr. Cornyn — likes losing, of course, but his remarks were gratuitous, not gracious, and petty.
Mr. Paxton, Texas’s state attorney general, crushed Mr. Cornyn in the state’s May 26 Senate GOP primary runoff with 63.8% of the vote, in a resounding repudiation of the establishment wing of the party.
Revenge may be a dish best served cold, but it’s imperative that Republicans hold the Texas seat if they hope to maintain control of the Senate and continue to be able to advance President Trump’s conservative legislative agenda.
A liberal Democrat takeover of the Senate, with Mr. Talarico as part of its majority, would effectively render Mr. Trump’s final two years in the White House pro forma.
Just how radical and far left I s Mr. Talarico? It’s not limited to his widely publicized remarks about God being “nonbinary” and his insistence that there are six (not two) sexes, or to his full-throated support of transgenderism (including men invading women’s sports) and abortion.
CNN reported Sept. 1 on a video from 2020 that had resurfaced in which Mr. Talarico linked the supposed disproportionate adverse impact of climate change on minority communities to “oppressive systems” of white supremacy and capitalism — and the need “to begin the process of dismantling them.”
According to an Aug. 31 report in The Tribune, Mr. Talarico has raised a whopping $72 million in campaign cash to date, more than four times as much as Mr. Paxton.
Much of the Democrats’ funding presumably is coming from the same uber-wealthy, left-wing Hollywood-Silicon Valley axis that thought it could buy a Senate seat for Texas Democrats’ previous “Great White Hope,” Robert “Beto” O’Rourke, in 2018.
Mr. O’Rourke raised and spent about $80 million in his failed bid to unseat Republican Sen. Ted Cruz. Democrats haven’t won statewide in Texas since 1994. The last time they won the governorship was in 1990, and the last time they won a U.S. Senate seat was in 1988.
Yet the RealClearPolitics.com average of polls published between July 23 and Aug. 26 has Mr. Talarico up by 2.4 percentage points. That’s well within the margin of error, but given Mr. Talarico’s radical views, the race shouldn’t even be close in a state as red as Texas.
“This is unfortunately shaping up to be a close, and I hope not disastrous, election,” Mr. Cornyn told The Tribune. “But it ain’t looking good right now.”
Rather than opining ominously about polls, however, he needs to come to terms with his loss and rise above his obvious bitterness.
If Mr. Cornyn really hopes to avoid a “disastrous election” on Nov. 3, he could — and should — be directing his criticism at Mr. Talarico, not Mr. Paxton.
The outgoing senator should also go all in and deploy what The Tribune described as “his considerable fundraising prowess” to help Mr. Paxton significantly reduce the campaign cash gap.
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