“Those are my principles, and if you don’t like them … well, I have others,” the late Groucho Marx once quipped.
By now, it should be clear U.S. Senator John Cornyn possesses a similar moral compass. Only stripped of Marx’s satire.
In the latest proof of his spinelessness, Texas’ senior Republican senator wrote a Wednesday op-ed for the New York Post urging fellow party members to end the filibuster so the SAVE America Act — a measure designed to greatly restrict voting access — can pass the upper chamber.
Cornyn’s take is a complete 180 from his longtime support for the filibuster, a procedural quirk of the Senate that requires a 60-vote majority to end floor debate. The Republicans’ slim majority in the Senate prevents it from getting the votes needed to pass the controversial proposal, considered a top priority for President Trump as he stares down punishing midterm elections.
“After careful consideration, I support whatever changes to Senate rules that may prove necessary for us to get the SAVE America Act and homeland security funding past the Democrats’ obstruction, through the Senate, and on the president’s desk for his signature,” Cornyn wrote in his op-ed.
So, why the reversal?
Simply this: Cowardly Cornyn is groveling for Trump’s endorsement, and apparently, he can’t grovel low enough.
After the ever-malleable senator ended up in a runoff with Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, Trump promised he would endorse one of the two rivals. Speculation swirled that the president would back Cornyn because he has a better chance of winning in the general election than scandal-tarred Paxton.
Even so, there’s not yet been an endorsement. Which is where the SAVE America Act comes in.
Trump has pushed the GOP to kill the filibuster so the proposal can pass, even threatening not to sign any other legislation until that happens. The act would institute a near-total ban on mail-in voting while forcing people to show proof of citizenship to register and a photo ID to cast a ballot — something civil-rights groups argue would block millions from the polls.
“It will guarantee the midterms,” Trump said. “If you don’t get it, big trouble, my opinion.”
Man of a Thousand About Faces
By now, voters shouldn’t be surprised Cornyn’s willing to disenfranchise millions of voters on Trump’s behalf, much less ditch his long-held support of the filibuster. To be sure, he’s repeatedly shown that his sole North Star as a lawmaker is his own political survival.
After all, this is the guy who started out as a Chamber of Commerce big-business advocate before retooling his image to become a Tea Party lackey. Remember when he duded himself out in fake cowboy duds and laughably christened himself “Big Bad John?”
And despite Cornyn’s earlier efforts to work across the aisle on immigration reform and common-sense gun laws, Cornyn has reinvented himself yet again, showing a willingness to engage in Trump’s brand of partisan sewer brawling, so long as it gets him MAGA support.
From his homophobic doddering during Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson’s confirmation hearing to his TV ads slathered with images of himself standing in front of Trump’s border wall — a project he once called “naive” — it’s clear Cornyn is now all MAGA, all the time.
But for all his willingness to play Man of a Thousand About Faces, Cornyn can’t convince voters in his own party that he’s even marginally authentic. How else can one explain that even after spending some $70 million to fight off a challenge from a turd of a candidate like Paxton, the best he could do was capture 41.9% of the vote.
Cornyn has never been so much a statesman as a political contortionist, willing to twist himself into uncomfortable positions — such as fully immersing his face between Trump’s bronzer-slathered ass cheeks.
Perhaps Cornyn’s real problem isn’t that he keeps changing his principles. It’s that after all these years of political shape-shifting, Texans have finally noticed there were never any principles there to begin with.
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