The lame-duck revenge tour continues. Outgoing Texas ‘GOP’ Sen. John Cornyn spent $100 million trying to defeat the grassroots rejection of his candidacy in the Texas Republican primary. He lost to state Attorney General Ken Paxton, who was backed by President Trump, decisively. And now, in the final months of his Senate tenure, he has decided that his highest priority is ensuring Democrats can vote in Republican primaries.
Cornyn publicly backed the practice Friday, posting that allowing Democrats to vote in GOP primaries is “the law” and asking why Republicans would want to “narrow our base of support leading into general elections.”
The reasoning sounds reasonable on its surface. It falls apart on contact with reality. Open primaries don’t expand the Republican base. They allow the opposing party to install the weakest possible Republican nominee — the candidate least likely to win a general election, or the one most likely to drift toward Democratic positions once in office.
This is the stated strategy of Democratic operatives in multiple states: encourage crossover voting to nominate Republicans who can be beaten or who, once elected, will behave like Democrats on key votes.
The irony of Cornyn making this argument is complete and glorious. The man who lost a $100 million primary is now explaining why it should be easier for Democrats to influence Republican primaries. He lost because Texas Republican primary voters decided he wasn’t conservative enough. His solution is to make it easier for people who don’t share Republican values to determine who Texas Republicans nominate.
The Republican Party of Texas and Attorney General Ken Paxton — the man who beat Cornyn — have sued to require closed primaries, arguing that open primaries allow the opposing party to corrupt the GOP’s own nomination process. The new Texas Secretary of State Robert Howden has said the issue should be solved through the legislature rather than litigation, but has not taken a position on whether primaries should be open or closed.
Cornyn isn’t staying neutral on the substance. He’s actively defending the status quo that allows Democrats to dilute Republican primary results — which is the same status quo that Texas grassroots conservatives spent $100 million in Paxton’s campaign trying to change.
Since losing his primary, Cornyn’s positions have shifted with remarkable consistency against the Trump agenda: he opposed the SAVE America Act, stalled Todd Blanche’s confirmation until the DOJ killed the weaponization fund, dropped an effort to rename a highway after Trump, and now advocates against closed primaries.
There is a pattern here. A man who wanted to be Senate Majority Leader and instead became a lame duck is spending his final months in office settling scores and protecting the political infrastructure that benefits the type of candidate he represented — moderate, establishment, accountable to donors rather than voters.
Texas voters made their decision in the primary. Cornyn is still bitter with them – and Trump – about it. From the exit, no less.
