Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton didn't just beat Sen. John Cornyn in Tuesday night's GOP Senate primary runoff — he steamrolled him so thoroughly the race was called within one hour of polls closing. Paxton took 62.5% of the vote to Cornyn's pathetic 37.5%, a margin so wide it should qualify as elder abuse.
Somewhere in Washington, Senate Majority Leader John Thune just felt a chill run down his spine. Good.
President Trump endorsed Paxton and made no secret of why, citing "the Senate's inability to pass the SAVE America Act" as the final straw for Cornyn. When the President of the United States tells you your own senator can't get a voter ID bill across the finish line, that's not an endorsement — that's a pink slip delivered by certified mail.
Cornyn had been in the Senate since 2002. Twenty-four years of "reaching across the aisle" and "building coalitions" and whatever other euphemisms establishment Republicans use for accomplishing absolutely nothing while looking very serious doing it. Texas voters took one look at that résumé and said, "We're good, thanks."
Paxton even offered to "drop out if Cornyn commits" to passing voter ID legislation before the runoff. Cornyn couldn't — or wouldn't — make that promise. So Paxton made him irrelevant instead.
The victory speech was pure Texas. Paxton took aim at his future Democratic opponent, James Talarico, whom he cheerfully rechristened "James Talafreako," and vowed to carry Trump's agenda straight into the Senate chamber. The SAVE America Act? That's now a campaign promise with a mandate behind it.
Rep. Wesley Hunt of Texas was among the Trump allies celebrating the result, and the message radiating out of the Lone Star State was unmistakable: the RINO era is over. Cornyn joins a growing list of Republican incumbents who confused seniority with job security and learned the hard way that Trump's base has a longer memory than the D.C. cocktail circuit.
This wasn't just a Texas story. Sens. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, Joni Ernst of Iowa, Steve Daines of Montana, Thom Tillis of North Carolina, and even the ghost of Mitch McConnell's leadership — they're all watching. The old guard thought they could outlast the populist wave. Instead, the wave outlasted them.
As Just The News chief political correspondent Ben Whedon reported, the race was effectively over before most Americans finished dinner. That's not an election result. That's a verdict.
Thune should take notes. When Trump says it's his Senate now, he's not bluffing — and Texas just proved he doesn't have to.
