The establishment’s Paxton impeachment sham undermines the will of Texas voters

Texas politics have long been rancorous, unscrupulous, and, in recent years, marred by bitter lawfare — weaponizing the legal system to circumvent election results.

(Article by Mark Puliam republished from TheFederalist.com)

Consider LBJ’s theft of the 1948 Democratic primary for the U.S. Senate, which his Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer, Robert Caro, confirmed was due to ballot box stuffing in south Texas’ corrupt Jim Wells County. Other examples abound. More recently, Democratic prosecutors in Austin, the seat of ultra-liberal Travis County, have filed baseless criminal charges against a series of Republican elected officials, including then-state Treasurer (and later U.S. Sen.) Kay Bailey Hutchison, House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, and even sitting Gov. Rick Perry.

Not all of the attempts to kneecap political opponents involve Democrats attacking Republicans. Some of the nastiest donnybrooks were initiated by “establishment” or “moderate” Republicans against conservatives. The vindictive — and unsuccessful — impeachment proceedings brought against reform-minded University of Texas Regent Wallace Hall (who was appointed by Perry) in retaliation for his exposure of an influence-peddling scheme at crony-ridden UT is one example. Another is the ongoing campaign to remove from office conservative Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, whom Texas voters overwhelmingly elected in 2014, and enthusiastically reelected in 2018 and 2022.

Paxton’s real “crime” is that he threw his hat into the GOP primary for the AG race in 2014 after the anointed establishment candidate, moderate Dan Branch, thought he had the Republican field to himself. In Texas, the AG position has often been used as a stepping stone to higher office — a path previously trod by both Sen. John Cornyn and current Texas Gov. Greg Abbott. When Tea Party firebrand Paxton upset establishment-favorite Branch in the 2014 GOP primary — and went on to win in the lopsided general election, as all Republican candidates for statewide office in Texas have since 1996 — the powerful establishment was furious. Branch had been endorsed by George W. Bush and other moderates. In Texas, as elsewhere, the moderate (or “RINO”) faction of the Republican Party loathes grassroots conservatives.

In retaliation for Paxton’s temerity, Branch’s establishment backers, who are supported by the state’s business community and control the Texas House of Representatives (where in 2010 then-House member Paxton unsuccessfully challenged establishment leader Joe Straus for speaker), unleashed a series of frivolous criminal charges against Paxton, which have been pending for eight years. Anti-Paxton forces orchestrated a flimsy fraud indictment from a paperwork violation unrelated to Paxton’s work as a legislator. I have written about these bogus charges for City Journal and The American Spectator (in a four-part series), describing them as a “witch hunt” and “a political vendetta.”

The establishment fumed when Texas voters elected Paxton in 2014 despite extensive news coverage of the bogus fraud charges, and the consternation increased when he was reelected in 2018 and again in 2022 while the phony charges were still pending! Grassroots conservatives gave short shrift to the unproven allegations against Paxton, looking instead to his stellar record as Texas’ top prosecutor. Paxton’s resounding GOP primary victory in 2022, against a crowded field that included George P. Bush (Jeb’s son and GWB’s nephew) and heavily-bankrolled former Texas Supreme Court Justice Eva Guzman, made the establishment apoplectic. In the primary runoff, Paxton beat Bush by more than a 2-to-1 margin. In the general election, Paxton outpolled his Democrat challenger 53.4 to 43.7 percent.

Read more at: TheFederalist.com