It's all over, and only two Republicans in the Texas Senate voted to convict Ken Paxton on any of the charges against him. The other 17 Republicans all voted to acquit on every charge.
The evidence against Paxton was open-and-shut, and the charges were clearly serious enough to be impeachable. But tribal loyalty and intense pressure from conservatives carried the day. What an embarrassment.
Shocked! SHOCKED I am!
More evidence that Texas is turning into an awful place to live. The Republican party is truly just the cult of Trump. And completely anti-democratic. Anyone who can needs to get out now. And people who live a Austin, thinking they can survive as a blue island in the sea of red are deluding themselves.
Or maybe they should fight back, especially given the tipping point demographers keep saying Texas will hit any day now.
Nobody would’ve argued pre 1865 that any black person who somehow escaped slavery should stay down south and fight for freedom/equality for other slaves. If they did, they would be at risk of being re-enslaved or lynched.
It’s ridiculous to expect women of childbearing age or younger to remain in Texas to fight for freedom/equality of other women if they have the means to get the fuck out.
This is a really sad and accurate analogy. We are in our own "pre-1865" moment right now. I have no idea how this ends. Will we have another actual war about this? Will people simply move to states that agree with their political/religious beliefs? What ever it is, it won't be pretty.
Paxton and his defenders didn’t even bother denying that he was corrupt.
Their sole “defense” was to attack the 15 witnesses who testified under oath—and the Republican House members who voted to impeach—as RINOs.
They then enlisted Paxton’s billionaire sugar daddy to threaten to smear and primary any Republican senator who voted to convict.
All so that Paxton could continue in office (under indictment for fraud) as Trump’s faithful lickspittle.
And this, friends, is what makes Texas a third world shithole.
Why the fuck did they impeach if they weren't willing to convict?
Lower house impeaches, upper house votes on conviction. I read elsewhere that 70% of Republicans in the lower house voted to impeach, but then a combination of wealthy donors and flying-monkey constituents got into the action, and the Senators caved.
I don’t get the strategy of the Texas Republicans, if you’re going to be partisan hacks and vote to acquit no matter what seems like you’d want to call as little attention to that as possible, just quietly say nothing to see here and don’t impeach. By holding the trial they got all the evidence on the record and then pointedly said, but we don’t care.
The billionaires weren’t willing to spend what it took to primary all those House members. This way, they only had to scare off a dozen or so senators.
With the added benefit of being able to very clearly say, “Fuck you, Texas. If we want a corrupt AG, we will damn well extort the Senate into giving us one—and there’s nothing you can do about it. We own Texas, not you.”
Republicans are telling us that we can rant all we want, but they do not and will not give a flying fuck whether their people behave or not. We didn't get that, after hitting Trump twice with it to the same end. So they showed us, again.
I'm wondering, was this a headfake all along, just to pwn libs? Cause >gasp< how amazing that Paxton is so awful that Republicans impeached him! Libs were thrilled, admit it... and now, he walks on 16 counts. Not innocent, maybe, but close enough for them.
"I'm wondering, was this a headfake all along, just to pwn libs?"
Sounds plausible.
But it is possible that they didn't realize how much support he has from outside of Texas.
They don’t bother pwning libs in Texas.
No, this was to prove that billionaires still own the Senate, that they can brazenly spool out day after day of undeniable (and undenied) evidence of Paxton’s corruption and then force the Senate to publicly humiliate themselves by gagging down a vile, corrupt AG who has been under indictment for fraud for eight years.
This is what Lyndon Johnson meant when he said: “I want real loyalty. I want someone who will kiss my ass in Macy's window, and say it smells like roses.”
The billionaires of Texas are now smugly having their asses kissed by virtually every Republican State Senator.
Doesn't seem very shrewd of the billionaires. This is Texas, after all: wouldn't be remotely difficult to find a hard-core right winger to replace Paxton. It's pretty likely that significant numbers of normie voters are turned off by absurdly brazen corruption. Not sure if you're a billionaire in Dallas why you'd want the party that serves as your valuable lap dog weighed down next year by the stench of the Attorney General. Just get rid of him and find someone equally right wing but less toxic. It's not as if Republicans always win going away in Texas: margins have been getting uncomfortably tight in recent cycles.
The billionaires who promulgate stochastic terror aren’t focused on the rationality of the voters. Their intent, as with January 6, is to strike fear into anyone that might dare to oppose their power.
A naked display of raw power keeps the entire Republican Senate in line.
Cutting loose a loyal lapdog like Paxton doesn’t strengthen the hand of the billionaires, it just tempts those who might stray again.
And the deliciousness of flaunting Paxton’s affair in front of his wife and forcing her to suck it up with a smile must have been irresistible.
This was a raw display of power to castrate both Paxton and the Republicans in the Senate.
(And Paxton’s sugar daddy is in Midland, not Dallas. Big difference.)
Cutting loose a loyal lapdog like Paxton doesn’t strengthen the hand of the billionaires, it just tempts those who might stray again.
It strengthens their hand if it turns a 49.6% GOP defeat into a 50.9% GOP victory. Again, margins for the GOP in Texas have often been thin in recent cycles. It's entirely conceivable that party could lose ground in the legislature next year, in addition to statewide contests, including the presidential election. I get the "intimidation" factor, but I think sometimes discretion is the better part of valor, even for right wing plutocrats. Even by GOP standards this dude is brazenly corrupt in a way that might be noticed by otherwise apolitical people.
(Ted Cruz in particular looks vulnerable: he only took 50.9% of the vote in 2018, and in the last five years Texas has likely grown bluer, and Dobbs hadn't occurred yet.)
Nothing embarrassing about it. They're sending exactly the message they want to send: we are powerful enough to do what we want, no matter how corrupt, and get by with it.
The more I see stuff like this the more I’m convinced Madison Cawthorn was telling the truth.
Madison was totally telling the truth. He just surprised everyone by feigning outrage at the drug and orgy parties. Most republicans get into republicanism for the depravity.
This is the problem! When only 2 out of 19 Republicans will do the right thing when it is painfully obvious with minimal political cost (he would be replaced by another Republican until a special election next year) there's nothing to do but try to push that party into oblivion.
Once again we see IOIYAR.
See also the video in this Tweet: https://twitter.com/TristanSnell/status/1702811967184851260?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
Lauren Bobert was aghast at how drag story-hour in libraries "sexualized public spaces." But IOIYAR.
Doesn't explain why he was impeached in the first place.
Wow! Great link! Now we know why Annie Oakley owns that bar..... Nice pair on the Congresswoman. Maybe we should call her Lauren Boobert?
Red states have spent almost two centuries deeply committed to proving they're incapable of self-governance, when do we take them at their word?
It's the elephant in the womb,
https://politicalpunchline.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/talk-elephant-in-womb.jpg
I watched a little bit of the trial, and I would suggest that the prosecution wasn't made up of the best lawyers available. I mean, I have no idea who those people were, but they were routinely knocked off their rhythm by objections. They sure didn't seem like experienced trial lawyers.
Nonetheless, the Texas House vote was 121-23 to impeach, which gave the impression that a good number of Republicans were fed up with Ken Paxton. So I don't quite understand why only two Republican senators voted to convict.
I don't know much about Texas politics, but it gives the impression that something else is going on in Texas politics and it might get really nasty in the 2024 cycle.
Thanks for those observations. I never had the time to follow this closely, though I thought the House vote to impeach was so lopsided that he'd get convicted in the Senate.
I've despised Paxton since his 2020 suit to deny four states their Electoral votes.
my guess was that whoever was backing paxton found it easier to bribe, blackmail or otherwise coerce 17 gop senators than deal with a much larger number of house members.
Texas has been an awful place to live since the Tejanos stole it from Mexico to continue keeping Blacks enslaved. No justice for minorities, but jingoistic blather about the Alamo. My parents knew that when my father was stationed there, & they were glad to leave Bastrop & Waco.
The only question is whether or not his wife will still support him, as she has throughout this immoral mess. If so, she must be made of the same determination that Lady Bird Johnson exemplified.
The greater embarrassment will occur when the Texas Senate retains its Republican majority after the next election.
Wilhoit's Law.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_M._Wilhoit
"This quotation is often incorrectly attributed to Francis M. Wilhoit:
Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.[10]
However, it was actually a 2018 blog response by 59-year-old Ohio composer Frank Wilhoit, years after the political scientist's death[11]."
So DOJ public corruption unit took notes?
So someone on the internet saw someone with that name post that in a blog comment section (Crooked Timber, specifically -- you can Google a link for the post, or visit the blog from Kevin's bloglist). It's a cool quote so someone reading the blog reposts it somewhere else. No date for the quote, just the quote and the author's name. Someone else reads that and assumes it was the political scientist Francis M. Wilhoit, and so mis-attributes it. (The political scientist was fairly well known -- much better-known in political circles than the composer, at least.) Then it gets re-posted, and then again and again.
It's neither the first nor will it be the last time this sort of thing has happened. It's nothing sinister, and has nothing to do with the DOJ or this blog post.
On the other hand, there is a lot of truth in that quote, and would be even if it were anonymous.
Using the word "conservatism", when really mean something like "Republicanism" or "right-wingism", makes it a very bad quote to use.
Taking meaningful words and destroying them is always bad. An example which was just discussed here is "liberal".
Conservatives have always adhered to sorting humanity based on their self-defined moral principles. The quote acknowledges this.
You are doing the mistake that I pointed to. You use "conservatives" to mean something else (an in this case not obvious what).
The Texas Democrats had better use this as a campaign issue, on all fronts. Question: will Paxton now get his day in court? That is, the actual legal system, versus the pay to play Texas political scene?
Paxton is currently being investigated by the DOJ for corruption. So yes, it is likely he will have a day in court in spite of this farce.
Also, the disciplinary board of the State Bar of Texas is currently debating whether to revoke his law license. Whether he could remain AG of Texas without a law license in unclear to me.
There is no requirement that the Texas AG needs a law license.
And yeah, the 8 year old securities charges should finally get their day in court next month, with the federal investigation about the things that caused the impeachment also moving forward...in a much different venue than the super friendly (and bought off) Texas Senate.
Forgive me for being so ignorant. Paxton got by with all of this stuff, for years, with out even a slap on the hand. Why on earth should he be found guilty now.
That is the actual mystery. The house impeached him by a alrge margin, with a large majority of the Republicans members voting to impeach. Why? Apparently something happened, which was not standard Republican corruption, but it is not clear what.
The House was pissed that Paxton wanted taxpayers to pay his $3M settlement with the whistleblowers.
So why the Senate wasn't?
The difference between the large majority to impeach in the house as opposed to the large majority in the Senate to acquit is the mystsery.
The Texas chambers really are two different animals. The House still has some awareness of their duties to the people while the Senate is Dan Patrick's fiefdom. And he got 3 million reasons before the trial started to deliver a Paxton acquittal.
You have to wonder what the average Joe Texan on the street makes of this. I mean what do they gain?
Maybe it will help Texas Democrats next year. Statewide margins have gotten very close there. No, it won't make any difference to hardcore partisans right or left. But if this (latest) outrage pisses off enough persuadable normies...
At some point the last straw will arrive.
yeah. i wonder how prominent this is in local news coverage in texas. at the national level it's barely a blip as far as i've seen.
I would love it if people who believe that abortion should be legal for any reason past the first 15 weeks of pregnancy, that it is healthy to confirm gender confusion in children, that life-altering medical procedures such as puberty blockers and double mastectomies are healthcare for gender confusion, and that critical race theory should be part of any curriculum left Texas.
Sounds great. Texas doesn’t need any doctors, do they? Cause about 90+% of them support the first 3 of those. Have fun living with 1923-era medical care, once you’ve chased away all the best medical staff.
I certainly hope for the sake of harming the least amount of people that you're mistaken about the 90%. Remember that 100% of doctors once thought bleeding was a suitable treatment. Just because medicine has advanced doesn't mean it cannot be corrupted.
Squirrel!
From the right-wing reactions I've seen on Twitter/X this was a fight between the Bush Republicans (semi-sane) and the Trump/MAGA Republicans. We know who won (and who is vowing all out revenge on the "RINOS").
"Twitter/X" proper name is Xitter.
Expecting MAGA Republicans to impeach and convict another MAGA Republican? About as likely as the Nazi’s convicting one of their own on war crimes.