Dumb and dumber, Republican-style
This week, the Republican Party has accomplished something difficult: It made itself stupider. It subtracted from its already shallow reservoir of intelligence by moving to purge two fine senators. And its embodiment authored a novel grift.
If what is probably predictable does happen, the two senators will be replaced on this autumn’s ballots by persons who, if elected (the one in Louisiana almost certainly will be), can be counted on to be exactly what no senator should be: another of the president’s congressional sock puppets, promising, as a high principle, not to think independently.
Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana lost in a primary the rules of which were changed — it was closed to all but Republicans — for the purpose of defeating him. His scarlet sin was to have believed that Donald Trump’s urging a mob to stop Congress from certifying the results of a presidential election constituted an impeachable offense. Cassidy’s departure will subtract most of the Senate membership interested in responding to the approaching crisis of Social Security funding. Cassidy’s genuine sin — casting the decisive vote that put an amateur quack (Robert F. Kennedy Jr.) at the pinnacle of the public health system — probably pleased the yahoos who wanted Cassidy gone.
He will be replaced by a Republican whose identity does not matter: He or she will win because voters are pleased to assume he or she will be a cipher, vigorously subservient to Trump. Certainly Ken Paxton will be such if he is elected senator from Texas.
Boosted by Trump’s endorsement this week, Paxton, the state’s lowlife attorney general, probably will win his May 26 primary runoff challenge to John Cornyn, the incumbent. Cornyn, a former state Supreme Court justice, has consistently supported Trump’s agenda. But Trump surely, and correctly, sees in Paxton a kindred spirit.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2026/05/21/cassidy-cornyn-republican-party-stupidity-under-trump/