John Cornyn had a chance to go out with a bang like fellow Republican Senators Bill Cassidy of Louisiana and Thom Tillis of North Carolina, who also had their reelection campaigns sandbagged by the president.
Instead, Texas’ senior GOP senator appears determined to leave Washington with a whimper.
Cornyn suffered the political humiliation of his career last month, losing the Republican primary to Ken Paxton after spending years bending himself into increasingly awkward shapes to accommodate Trump’s demands. With the president’s political shiv protruding from his ribs, it seems like now would be the prime time for Cornyn to rediscover an independent streak.
The political press even gave the phenomenon a name: the “YOLO Caucus,” a loose collection of Republicans who have either retired, lost primaries or otherwise escaped Trump’s electoral leash. Freed from the ire of angry primary voters, some have started voting their consciences, challenging the president on his most egregious nominations, spending demands and policy proposals.
Not Cornyn.
Nope. Cornyn sided with Senate Republican leadership on every major vote during last week’s immigration funding fight, according to the Texas Tribune — even as other Republicans pushed back on controversial provisions tied to the Trump agenda.
That’s what makes Cornyn such an unusually pathetic political figure. He spent years pandering for Trump’s approval, only to watch the object of his sycophancy endorse Paxton anyway.
The senator who once styled himself as a sensible, pro-business institutionalist embraced the president’s most extreme rhetoric and even flip-flopped on his support of the filibuster after the Great Orange Leader decided it was an obstacle to his rule.
Yet when the moment came, loyalty proved to be a one-way street.
After being kicked squarely in the nuts by the wannabe dictator he groveled so desperately to appease, Cornyn still seems unwilling to grow a spine. The result is a political career ending not in redemption, righteousness or even revenge but irrelevance.
Maybe that’s a fitting end. Cornyn kept himself in office for decades by proving himself to be a malleable establishment figure. Never out loud and out front, but always willing to get in line. That approach didn’t leave much behind.
It remains to be seen whether political observers will remember scandal-ridden Paxton’s victory as an audacious political move or a moment of hubris that cost the GOP an otherwise winnable seat in the general election.
But it increasingly looks as though they’ll view assclown Cornyn’s legacy as that of a cowardly, irrelevant and ultimately broken Trump lackey.
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