“Circus-tent con-men and southern belle bunnies
milk your emotions then they steal your money.” – Dead Kennedys, “Moral Majority”
Is there a less amusing reality show in existence today than the GOP runoff race for the Senate seat pairing one useless incumbent against the state’s corrupt top cop?
In one corner we have corruption and chaos incarnate, Warren Kenneth Paxton, Jr. In the other corner, standing stiff as a statue is the embodiment of beige wallpaper, John Cornyn.
Call it two flavors of political exhaustion: you’ve got one man whose career has become so entangled with scandals, indictments, investigations and impeachment headlines that it feels like his campaign slogan should be “Still Under Review.”
With the runoff election date looming in two weeks, Texans will decide which of these two candidates will face James Talarico in the November general election. Talarico, who, of course, is being made out to be some sort of radical left-wing spawn of Satan by supporters of both of the GOPers in the running, has been polling higher than both of them, and it has a lot of folks scared.
I can remember, from the ‘90s, a T-shirt that broadcast the slogan “If God wanted us to vote, he would’ve given us candidates.” That relic of the Reagan-Bush, then Clinton, years is now more salient than ever.
Cornyn, who has the talent for inspiring absolutely no emotional response whatsoever to his utterances, is akin to watching mold develop on a loaf of Mrs. Baird’s; sort of an old-guard Republican. Useless as he might be, Cornyn isn’t really made for the Jerry Springer era of politics we now inhabit, but his opponent, a self-serving walking ethics violation, is a different story.
While Paxton is well-entrenched in the modern-day ethos of perpetual outrage in politics, his supporters see him as a warrior against the establishment – “the swamp,” but it’s all hogwash. Paxton, whose virtue-signaling lawsuits against a myriad of organizations and companies attempt to set him up as some sort of conservative voice raging against the machine, is just another actor on the stage of partisan theater, attempting to court that all-important Trump endorsement. It’s a culture where big dumb displays of partisanship outweigh actual ethics, competence or doing right by constituents.
It was said of the late, great Harlan Ellison that, aside from his mind-blowingly great writing, he had a remarkable talent for thriving in hot water and controversy. No disrespect to the legacy and reputation of one of our literary greats, but Warren Kenneth Paxton, Jr. runs laps around him in that department. Controversy has become Paxton’s natural habitat.
Every few months, Texans seem to wake up to another story involving allegations of personal impropriety, lawsuits, whistleblowers or accusations of outright corruption, only for the political machine to grind onward as if all this is perfectly normal.
On the other hand, with Cornyn, who has inhabited his seat in the upper chamber since 2002, I can only describe his political identity as being akin to room-temperature tap water. He functions as a steady-eddie institutional Republican, which is a dying breed in the age of MAGA, in which “steady” often translates to “invisible.”
I would need the advanced computational capabilities of NASA to count the number of mailers I’ve received during this primary season from Cornyn’s camp, touting how he has voted 99% of the time with President Trump. My question, of course, is always this: what percentage of the time do you vote with Texans in mind?
Recently, in his videos and campaign rhetoric, he has begun to bare his teeth and claimed that his opponent is unfit for office, citing his personal trainwreck of a life, with his marital infidelities, as well as that whole bit of securities fraud. He is absolutely correct in that statement.
The real absurdity of this runoff is that Republican voters are essentially being asked whether they would prefer scandal fatigue or boredom fatigue. It’s really a choice between a headline-grabbing MAGA loyalist, who is drawing attention not for the right reasons against a candidate who rarely generates headlines at all; Paxton’s endless drama against the overwhelming urge to whip out your phone and play solitaire during a Cornyn speech.
There’s something larger and more disturbing to read about the current state of politics, not just with this runoff, but nationally. We have arrived at a time in our history where we expect our leaders to be depraved and covered in dirt. Elections aren’t so much about vision, policy, or actually promising to serve constituents these days, but about branding and grievance theatre.
Voters are left scratching their heads and trying to figure out who is more tolerable. Has the bar for public service sunk so low that “not actively under indictment” is a meaningful qualification?
The back-and-forth mudslinging between Paxton and Cornyn at this stage of the race is exhausting because to the reasonable voter, the message is all about cutting the other candidate down as well as trumpeting their MAGA bona fides.
Instead of taking Trump’s example and only doing what is in the candidate’s best interest, and what is self-serving toward the aim of more power, the focus should be on doing right by the taxpayer/constituent. It’s a huge problem, and while this GOP runoff race resembles one strange reality show, I’m part of that audience waiting for a reasonable third option to walk onto the stage, but I’m reminded that the producers cancelled that character several seasons ago.
Chris Edwards is editor of the Tyler County Booster, a sister newspaper in the Polk County Publishing Group. He can be reached at cedwards@polkcountypublishing.com.
