Column By John Young
Ken Paxton. What can you say?
To start out, say he can lie with the best.
And by “best,” you know who that is.
That would be the World’s Biggest Liar — WBL — he who commanded a stage on Jan. 6, 2021, shared by Paxton and select smarmy GOP conspirators.
There, the good ‘ol Texas boy basked in the glorious torrent of made-up, riot-inciting claims about a presidential election lawfully lost.
Paxton put the weight of Texas’ legal apparatus behind every crooked MAGA scheme to overturn the vote.
Paxton is the WBL’s Mini Me. If you say they have everything in common, you have to add, “and then some.”
Paxton was impeached, too.
Imagine what a well-funded Republican attorney general has to do to get a sizable Republican majority in the Texas House to tell him to find another occupation?
Ken Paxton did it.
For one, felony stock fraud. He said he didn’t do it. But why rustle up $271,000 for an out-of-court settlement if you didn’t do it? Ken Paxton did that.
For a man reportedly owning 10 pieces of real estate that he doesn’t want to talk about, $271,000 is boiled peanuts.
So much for Paxton’s acts as a private individual. What did he do as Texas’ leading lawman?
Sixteen impeachable acts — articles with which 121 Texas House members agreed: 60 Republicans voting “yes,” 23 voting, “Tain’t no thang.”
The charges included bribery and the illegal use of state labor on one of his residences.
The charges included acts to conceal an extramarital affair. Sound familiar?
Yep. All told, and in every way, Ken Paxton is MAGA’s kind of man.
Ah, but after the Texas House voted overwhelmingly to end Paxton’s political future, the serial adulterer in the White House called MAGA devotee Dan Patrick, the lieutenant governor.
Texas rules give Patrick near-dictatorial powers in the state Senate. He kiboshed Paxton’s conviction.
Impeached, then off the hook. Sound familiar? Sounds like Paxton’s twice-impeached Sugar Daddy.
“To call Paxton ethically challenged is to call Jeffrey Dahmer suffering from an eating disorder.”
The quote above isn’t from some bleating Dem. That’s North Carolina Republican Sen. Thom Tillis.
Republicans in the U.S. Senate spent millions from their election fund to support fellow incumbent John Cornyn in the primary against Paxton.
Too bad for them. Good for the Dems: The president with the meringue mane twerped out an 11th-hour endorsement of little boy Paxton, and MAGA voters obeyed, nominating a much more beatable candidate than the incumbent.
Now the GOP establishment has the man it didn’t want on its side of the November ballot as it tries to hold onto control of the U.S. Senate.
The bigger problem for MAGA is that on the “D” side of the ballot is the stunningly appealing James Talarico — state representative, seminarian, onetime school teacher.
It’s no stretch at all to say Talarico has Obama magic. He is one of the most eloquent newcomers to the American political scene.
He wows any audience he addresses.
He is among the best people around to articulate why the most important issue in this race is the power of moneyed interests.
Paxton has thrived politically by hitching his career to big Texas money men like Midland oil tycoon Tim Dunn.
More importantly, since the ascent of the corrupt-to-the-bone man occupying the White House, Paxton has seen his star rise.
So, you’re the GOP nominee for Senate, Ken. Bravo.
The only problem is that the guy who handed you this opportunity has become the least popular president since the dawn of opinion polls.
Other problems: Talarico is going to ask voters to ponder where you got the stash for all that real estate.
Talarico’s going to remind the voters that you’d be out selling drilling mud for a living if not for two acts of presidential intervention.
Talarico’s going to be smart, eloquent, and solution-oriented. Paxton will be racist, deceitful, and distraction-oriented.
Saying, “men on the girls’ volleyball team” every third sentence won’t work the same this election when “affordability” is the last thing Republicans want voters to think about.
So much like the man Ken resembles most.
Longtime newspaperman John Young lives in Colorado. Email him at jyoungcolumn@gmail.com.
The opinions expressed in this editorial are those of the author.
