Anyone gleefully predicting that MAGA was done and dusted is facing the stark reality that Trump’s endorsement still carries a lot of weight. Those Indiana primaries were just the tip of the Iceberg.
Trump’s got a good run going on with his endorsements. Indiana, Thomas Massie, Senator Cassidy (who voted to impeach him). What was less certain was whether Trump’s name and support would be enough to counter the financial juggernaut backing the OTHER name in the Texas Senate primary.
Paxton was a continual pain in Biden’s ass during his tenure as Texas AG, one of the few effective firewalls to that administration’s political overreach when they held all the levers of power, and he managed to survive a failed attempt to impeach him.
Cornyn, on the other hand has spent record amounts on trying to win his PRIMARY race and retain his incumbency. Time cites a figure of $90 Million from Senate GOP alone.
For the longest time, Trump was coy about who he wanted to see in that seat. But in the last few weeks — possibly in response to Paxton’s high-stakes gambit of pledging to drop out of the primary if only Cornyn could help get the SAVE Act passed — Trump threw his support behind Paxton at the 11th hour. Thune was clearly not happy.
Now that Paxton won the run-off, he’s probably even less happy. But in the end, it wasn’t even close. Paxton crushed him with almost a 2:1 margin. Old footage of Cornyn’s support of amnesty probably didn’t help any, either.
But that’s not the only ‘Dub’ Trump managed to stack last night.
Remember that crazy Dem with the cane who was calling for Impeachment since almost before Trump was sworn in the first time? In fact, the Texas Congress critter was the very first Democrat to formally call for Trump’s impeachment as early as MAY of 2017.
It took Trump a long time to get the last laugh on this guy, who loved to make a spectacle of himself with his cane, and sometimes other props, like a sign that got him thrown out of the SOTU less than 2 minutes after it began.
Remember how Trump urged Texas to redraw maps in a way that mirrored Blue-state gerrymandering, and would counter-balance the ‘accidental’ miscount at redistricting that ‘inexplicably’ gave blue states some extra seats at the expense of red states? That kicked off all the drama with maps being revisited in California, Indiana, Virginia, Florida and so on. That’s even BEFORE we account for those SCOTUS rulings that rained on their gerrymandering parades.
That Texas redraw hit Al Green where it hurt.
The redraw of the state’s political map pitted one of the newest members of the House Democratic caucus against one of the longer-serving incumbents in the chamber. Menefee got 46% of the primary vote to Green’s 44% in the first round March 3, pushing the race to a runoff since neither got a majority. — —NBC
Christian Menefee defeated Al Green in the Dem’s primary runoff.
