Indeed, Paxton and Abbott took pains to paint their preferred candidates as further to the right than the incumbents; what matters is that Texas has seen a mass mobilization of resources on the state and local level to move the party in line with the whims of two specific people. And while it’s indisputably true that relationships have always greased the skids of politics, what’s new here is that Texas Republicans are policing their party membership based on the personal animosity of a few soi-disant kingpins. This is the true legacy of Trumpism and a blow to the democratic process as troubling as any specific legislative agenda.
If the GOP is truly becoming something that marches under the banner of a con man with a bevy of criminal charges nipping at his heels—that is to say, a crime cartel—it’s all but inevitable that he’ll be followed not just by those aping his neofascistic policies but would-be kingpins bent on recruiting their own army of “made guys”—all without much thought to ideology beyond the broadest strokes. This new Republican Party seems much less beholden to an absolute fealty to shareholder capitalism, to say nothing of the old purity tests that party machers such as Grover Norquist and the doughty free-market musketeers of the American Enterprise Institute once forced Republicans to pass. This old guard has begun to give way to more uncanny fellows: Christian nationalists, civil rights griefers, and Proud Boys patrolling our racial and gender divisions.
Above all, this party seems less and less concerned with the ideals that have traditionally defined conservatism: a fealty to founders and institutions and a desire to safeguard the hearty foundations upon which the nation was built against the abrasive winds of change. In place of these duties, today’s GOP is seeking out new figures around which personality cults might be built. To the extent there may one day be a Trump-size hole in that firmament, Texans Abbott and Paxton have gotten a head start in this race into the abyss.