Texas Republicans delivered a brutal message on primary night: this is still Donald Trump’s party, and anybody who drifted too far from the center of gravity is expendable. John Cornyn didn’t just lose to Ken Paxton — he got annihilated, taking barely more than a third of the vote and winning only two counties statewide. One of those counties had just eight total votes cast, and he couldn’t even sweep that.
For years, Cornyn was viewed as the more stable and electable Texas senator compared to Ted Cruz, but in today’s Republican Party, institutional credibility means very little if the activist base decides you’re insufficiently aligned with Trump and the movement around him.
