What $100,000,000 Buys : The Other McCain

Posted on | May 30, 2026 | No Comments

Do I want to pick a fight with Erick Erickson? No, I do not. Erick has done yeoman’s work for the conservative cause for more than 20 years, and 99 days out of 100, I have no problem with him. But his reaction to Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s victory in Tuesday’s GOP primary runoff against John Cornyn is a reminder of something most people never think about — there are professional campaign operatives who earn a lucrative living from politics. Erick Erickson is close friends with a lot of Republican operatives and, it seems obvious to me, some of Erick’s friends were getting paid by Team Cornyn. It’s estimated that the Cornyn campaign (including allied super PACs, etc.) spent upwards of $100 million on his doomed reelection bid, and no doubt many of the people who got paid by Cornyn are very bitter over their defeat.

Because the regular readership here shares my own populist sentiment, I assume that you view the Texas primary the same way I do: Cornyn is a useless RINO who should have retired long ago, and we are all therefore overjoyed that Paxton won the Republican nomination. You are probably miffed at Erick Erickson for badmouthing Paxton, and wondering if Erick is turning into a RINO. No, that’s just Erick being Erick, echoing the arguments against Paxton that the Cornyn campaign spent $100 million promoting, arguments that some of Erick’s consultant buddies got paid to promote, and which they may also sincerely believe. That’s the thing about campaign consultants — who can tell where their personal opinion end and their financial interests begin? They’re political mercenaries.

You cannot survive a career in politics if you take everything personally. As someone who writes for a living, and whose usual subject matter is politics, I’ve had to deal with this reality for many decades. There are people who hate me in ways that strike me as starkly irrational, even though I’m just a commentator on this game, and all of us have witnessed how politically motivated hatred has spiraled out of control during the long pandemic of Trump Derangement Syndrome.

These comments are a gold mine. White women in LA, Chicago and New York City are going to give this guy $100 million and then be stunned when he loses in Texas by ten points despite outspending Ken Paxton by over $100 million. https://t.co/8YiglJuo8J

— Clay Travis (@ClayTravis) May 28, 2026

What about the substance of the anti-Paxton arguments? Even many of those defending Paxton feel the need to stipulate that he is “a sleazy politician,” in David Harsanyi’s words, but my thought is: Why should we do Democrats’ work for them? The facts regarding Paxton can be researched, and people can make up their own minds. Caveat emptor.

After five terms in the Texas House and another as a state senator, Paxton was the Tea Party favorite in the 2014 Republican primary for state Attorney General, where he defeated the establishment favorite, before winning the general election by a 20-point margin. In 2018, a “high tide” year for Democrats, Paxton squeaked to reelection by a 51% to 47% margin, and won reelection again in 2022 by nearly a 10-point margin. After his 2014 election, Paxton faced charges of, uh, ethical impropriety. He survived that and, in 2023, Paxton also survived impeachment proceedings in the Texas legislature, which he blamed on “the RINOs in the Texas Legislature,” accusing them of being “on the same side as Joe Biden” and attempting to “sabotage [Texas’s] legal challenges to Biden’s extremist agenda.” You can view all that however you like, just the same as you can view Paxton’s marital problems however you like. But is it true, as Erick Erickson says, that Paxton is an example of “the GOP offering up awful candidates”?

No, it’s not “the GOP” which is “offering up” Paxton, rather it is Texas voters who picked Paxton over the choice “offered up” by the Republican establishment. Paxton has won three consecutive statewide elections despite all the scandals, and the dissatisfaction of Republican primary voters with Cornyn was sufficient that Paxton beat him by 27 points, even after Republican donors poured $100 million into Cornyn’s campaign.

There can’t be any new “dirt” on Paxton that Cornyn’s campaign didn’t already reveal and even if 2026 turns out to be another “high tide” year for Democrats, it is unlikely that Paxton will lose to the “Beto 2.0” Democratic candidate James Talarico. Erick Erickson may lament that Christian conservatives are compelled to support Paxton, and I may even sympathize with Erick’s lamentations, but it doesn’t change the fact we are now in the general election campaign and it’s “game faces” time, as Ace of Spades sometimes says. Erick’s Republican consultant buddies have lost a valuable client, and I’m sure they feel bad about that, but it’s not like they didn’t cash some fat paychecks along the way.

Speaking of fat paychecks, did I mention that my wife and I are now visiting our Army son in Alaska? And that the Five Most Important Words in the English Language are Hit the Freaking Tip Jar?

View from my son’s backyard deck in Alaska. Someone once defined a redneck as a man who would never want to live anywhere he couldn’t take a leak off his own back porch. Proud to see the tradition carry on. pic.twitter.com/e5jaVEaJnV

— The Patriarch Tree (@PatriarchTree) May 30, 2026

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