The ongoing demise of the establishment.

Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, center right, speaks alongside, from left, daughter Danley Cornyn, wife Sandy Cornyn and daughter Haley Cornyn, during a primary runoff election night event after losing the Republican party’s nomination Tuesday, May 26, 2026, in Austin. (AP Photo/Ashley Landis)

Texas Republicans have sent a clear signal. They want results.

In earlier times, the senior Republican senator from Texas could have held his seat for as long as he wanted. But John Cornyn, first elected to the Senate in 2002 after having garnered 77 percent in the Republican primary that year, just lost to Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton by a staggering 25 points.

Unthinkable as recently as 2020, when Cornyn enjoyed an approval rating of 62 percent according to a UT Tyler/Dallas Morning News poll.

And further hard to imagine considering that Ken Paxton has more personal and political baggage than an airport bag claim carousel. You can be certain that Democrats will do all they can to exploit that fact in the November general election against James Talarico, who is going to have a mountain of out of state, big donor cash supporting him and against whom victory by Ken Paxton is by no means certain. The attack ads against Paxton are going to be vicious.

I may be wrong but here’s my back of the envelope analysis. When the history of this election is eventually written, the fact that GOP senators failed to pass President Trump’s SAVE America Act – the bill that would require proof of citizenship and a government-issued ID in order to vote – may emerge as the decisive event that doomed John Cornyn’s reelection. The SAVE Act is a prime example of an 80/20 issue (as in 80 percent of voters in favor of passage) that Senate Republicans can’t seem to get done. (You’ll recall that they promised to repeal Obamacare if we would only vote them into the majority, which we did. Yet Obamacare lives on.)

Trump-supporting Republicans, now the majority of the party, have had it.

The SAVE Act failure was primarily because Senate Majority Leader John Thune, along with other Republican senators (but notably not John Cornyn), were unwilling to kill the filibuster so that the SAVE Act might pass on a simple majority vote.

I understand that reluctance. The filibuster has endured for as long as it has because both parties at one time appreciated its role in putting the brakes on heat-of-the-moment legislation.

But I also understand that if today’s far more radical Democrats ever retake control of the Senate, they will kill the filibuster about ten seconds after the swearing-in ceremony concludes. If that takeover ever happens to coincide with Democrats regaining control of the House of Representatives – and please note the thin GOP majorities in both chambers – statehood for Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia, accompanied by an expansion of the Supreme Court to 13 justices, will quickly follow.

One shudders.

John Cornyn was a largely very reliable vote for Trump’s agenda. But he suffers from being seen as an establishment Republican in a time when Republican voters are sick to here with the establishment standing in the way of getting the things voters want done.

That may not be fair to Cornyn. But no one ever said that politics is fair.