Ted Cruz Wins Big in Texas

Wow — we all knew John Cornyn was going to win last night. He had no significant opposition. His opponents never got tea party or conservative support. His most significant opponent was…well…eccentric to put it politely. Cornyn managed to get 60% in his primary.

Ted Cruz was not on the ballot in Texas last night. After the Cornyn race was called, Brian Walsh, a paid adviser to the NRSC, took to Twitter and, as many including myself interpreted it, obtusely attacked Cruz, who is Deputy Chair of the NRSC.

Cruz did not endorse Cornyn, who himself did not endorse Cruz in 2012. As a friend of mine who saw that tweet noted, “Walsh is like the professional gay lobby. He has Cruz nominally supporting the establishment by sitting in the NRSC post and not causing trouble. He has Cruz staying out of primaries — not picking against the NRSC candidates. That’s not enough though. He wants to have his cake and eat it too, by having Cruz kiss Cornyn’s ring.”

Ted Cruz showed just how powerful he is in his home state last night. Cruz endorsed 5 candidates. Four of the five won outright and the fifth is the heavy favorite going into a runoff. Cruz did not endorse in the Attorney General race in Texas, but he said some pretty glowing stuff about Ken Paxton. Several people tell me Paxton got strong momentum after Cruz’s kind words and now he finds himself in the lead headed into a runoff against a guy who spent $5 million. GET MONEY TO KEN PAXTON NOW. We need him to win. Paxton’s opponent is still heavily funded.

Paxton, by the way, features himself with Ted Cruz on the homepage of his website. Consider the Cruz effect in Texas in other races.

Konnie Burton is headed into a runoff in Wendy Davis’s State Senate District. Konnie was behind, but after Cruz’s support found herself in first place.

Donna Campbell, running against a well funded establishment pick for the State Senate, won without a runoff after getting a positive reference from Ted Cruz.

Wayne Christian, an early support of Cruz in 2012, is leading a race for Texas Rail Road Commissioner now. Christian is also the former head of the Texas Conservative Coalition.

And then there is David Dewhurst, the Texas Lieutenant Governor. He ran against Tex Cruz in 2012 as the establishment pick and front runner until Cruz beat him. He has high statewide name ID. And now he finds himself in a runoff with Dan Patrick to keep his job.

Cruz is showing his ability to not just get himself across the finish line, but get other Republicans through their own primaries. Perhaps if Walsh and Senate GOP staffers and Senators keep attacking Cruz, it’ll finally dawn on Cruz that he needs to collect some scalps on his own side in his own chamber to change things. Ted Cruz needs to stretch his legs in Republican primaries outside Texas.

Cornyn’s opposition didn’t appear to be substantial. But it shouldn’t matter much if McConnell is ousted.

Cornyn appears to me to be a toadie, meaning he will vote the way he is told by the person controlling or enabling his cashflow.

And that means if Tea Party senators can increase in numbers and influence, the Cornyn vote will follow.

Eventually he should be voted out but as it stands now the game is to get Tea Party conservatives in control of the leadership, then the Cornyn types like Hatch and Alexander will fall in line.

Focus on taking over the leadership, all else follows from that point.

I guess we will just disagree then.

I listened to Stovall several times and felt he had the interest of the State at the center of his campaign. Did not get that feeling from any of the others, especially Cornyn and especially from his liberal voting record whitewashed by his conservative letters to the folks back home.

I do not think Cruz would have spoken out for even a *credible, qualified* candidate as you put it during the primary. If Cornyn would have lost the primary, then he would have thrown his weight behind the candidate. Let’s just sit back and see just how vocal he is for Cornyn. May be interesting just how quiet he will be.

Time will tell.....

“I listened to Stovall several times and felt he had the interest of the State at the center of his campaign.”

I have no reason to doubt that Stovall has Texas’s best interests at heart, but that, by itself, is not sufficient to make someone get elected to the U.S. Senate from Texas. Stovall lacked the profile and experience required to complete a very difficult task: convince a majority of Texas Republicans that you would be a good U.S. Senator, which takes more than saying the right things in stump speeches. Ted Cruz had a dream résumé, was Solicitor General under Attorney General Abbott, and was as good as anyone in the state at convincing people that he is correct and that one should trust him; there was no Ted Cruz running against Cornyn—heck, there wasn’t even a Michael Williams running against him.

BTW, yesterday morning I was telling my cousin in Texas that I thought that Cornyn would skate past 50% easily, but that I would cast a protest vote for Stovall because Stockman is a gadfly and a devious politician (I’ll never forgive Stockman for waiting until the last day of filing before switching to the Senate race in order to block state Representative James Harris from seeking the U.S. House seat he was vacating, all in a fruitless effort to throw the nomination to one of his lackeys). My cousin told me that he had early-voted for Stockman because Stovall believed that Congress does not have the constitutional authority to ban (or even restrict) abortion; I told him that I was not aware of that, and that while it did seem curious to me that Stovall did not mention abortion in his campaign website, I had not gotten a “Paulist vibe” from him, and I joked that my “Pauldar” must be off.

(The Paulistinians claim that the Constitution does not permit Congress to legislate concerning abortion because it is not one of Congress’s enumerated powers, and that’s the reason why Ron Paul claimed to be pro-life but voted against every proposed abortion restriction (except for the Partial-Birth Abortion Act, which he didn’t dare vote against despite his “strongly held principles”), and why Paultard Congressman Justin Amash of Michigan (a Palestinian Paulistinian, and Ahmadinejad’s biggest defender in Congress) votes against abortion restrictions today. But such supposedly studious constitutionalists completely ignore the fact that Section 5 of the 14th Amendment expressly empowers Congress to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of the other sections of the 14th Amendment. Since Section 1 of the 14th Amendment provides that no state shall deprive any person of life without due process of law, Congress clearly has the express authority to ban abortion (SCOTUS may disagree, but members of Congress are entitled to interpret the Constitution as well, and dare SCOTUS to strike down the law).)

So if I lived in Texas I wouldn’t have voted for Stovall, either, and likely would have voted for one of the unknown candidates. It wouldn’t matter who I would vote for, since the goal was to keep Cornyn below 50% and force a run-off, which of course didn’t come close to happening thanks to the lackluster candidates running against him.

“I do not think Cruz would have spoken out for even a *credible, qualified* candidate as you put it during the primary.”

You may be right about that. Cruz’s pointed refusal to endorse Cornyn was extremely gutsy for a sitting Senator from the same state (heck, *Rand Paul* endorsed Mitch McConnell’s reelection!), and he probably wouldn’t have openly endorsed a primary opponent for Cornyn. My point is that had Cruz done so, and had such opponent been qualified and credible, he would have defeated Cornyn; of course, even if Cruz didn’t overtly endorse a top-tier conservative challenger for Cornyn, I think that Cornyn would have been in deep trouble.

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