Another day, another damaging leak for Texas Republican Senate candidate Ken Paxton.
In the latest episode of what Paxton told GOP donors at a closed-door fundraiser, Paxton said Sen. John Cornyn — the longtime incumbent whom Paxton beat in a May primary runoff — wanted Paxton to lose and therefore wasn’t helping his campaign.
In the audio, leaked to CNN by a donor who does not support Paxton’s candidacy, Paxton says an unnamed friend of his ran into Cornyn at a restaurant. When the friend thanked Cornyn for “supporting the ticket,” the friend told Paxton that Cornyn had become angry.
“Cornyn’s face turned red. He backed away,” Paxton told donors about what his friend told him. “He said, ‘Paxton is going to lose. We have to teach these Republicans a lesson. It’s going to be hard to learn, but they have to know that their decisions have consequences.'”
Cornyn’s team denied the meeting.
However, Cornyn has publicly stated that Republican voters’ decision to support Paxton was a mistake.
“If we nominate flawed candidates in November, we risk losing, and we haven’t elected a statewide Democrat in Texas since before 1994,” Cornyn told CNN’s Manu Raju in September. “And this is how majority parties become minority parties, by nominating candidates who are far from attracting the general election electorate. »
This certainly sounds like Cornyn telling Republican voters that they must learn the hard way that their bad choices have consequences.
Of course, you’d have to be wrong to think that GOP voters will learn from their mistakes.
Since 2010 – the birth date of the far-right Tea Party movement – Republican voters have nominated freakazoid candidates who lost what should have been eminently winnable elections for their party.
In 2010, Republicans chose Sharron Angle, a gaffe machine, to take on the late Sen. Harry Reid in Nevada. Angle’s conspiratorial beliefs and offensive comments caused him to lose handily to Reid in a year where Republicans elsewhere on the map struggled to victory.
And who can forget Christine O’Donnell, who said “I’m not a witch,” which cost the Republicans a possible victory in the Delaware Senate in 2010.
Or “legitimate rape” Todd Akin, who cost Republicans a Senate seat in Missouri in 2012. Same with Richard Mourdock the same year in Indiana, who lost after making similarly crude and idiotic comments about rape victims being impregnated by their attackers.
Related | Trump has already cost Republicans a Senate seat in 2026
The list is long.
How about Alabama Republicans nominating accused pedophile Roy Moore in 2017, costing Republicans a Senate seat in the otherwise deep red state.
We also highlighted the five Senate seats Democrats hold because President Donald Trump helped crazy people become the GOP nominees.
It’s not just the Senate elections that Republicans missed because they were appointing stupid jobs.
Republicans lost the 2024 North Carolina gubernatorial election because they chose bigoted pervert Mark Robinson, who called himself a “black Nazi” and wrote about staring at women in showers in public, among other unhealthy things.
This cycle, in Colorado, Republicans nominated Victor Marx, a snake oil salesman who claims to perform exorcisms and says he killed a man in his past.
Ultimately, if Republicans lose the Texas Senate race, GOP voters will find all sorts of ways to blame everyone but themselves for the predicament they’ve put themselves in.
Many will cry fraud – their favorite excuse when an election doesn’t go the way they want. Others will blame Cornyn. But they won’t look in the mirror.
Ultimately, this problem will persist as long as Republicans continue to cater to the worst instincts of their base.
Let’s cut to the chase: The financial challenges Daily Kos is facing this year are difficult.
We continue to be paywall-free. We continue to be supported by our readers, not billionaires or corporations. But we need to generate more revenue. We are relying on our community more than ever to help us make ends meet.
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