By Parker D. | May 31 2023
On May 27, 2023, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton was impeached by the Texas House of Representatives. Paxton faced 20 counts of corrupt practices, including allegations of providing preferential treatment to a political donor who bribed him, misapplication of public resources, making false statements against whistleblowers, obstructing justice in his own security fraud trial, and making false statements regarding his financial interests. Notably, he was never found guilty of these accusations and all that has been brought against him is at best hearsay. The impeachment vote resulted in a 121-23 majority, with all House Democrats and 60 House Republicans voting in favor, making Paxton the third Texan official to be impeached.
In modern America, in the whole world as a matter of fact, it is impossible to get 121 people to agree on the same thing. My point is, Paxton did something that ruffled feathers in the Texan GOP political machine. He decided to question the legitimacy of the 2020 presidential election.
Paxton rose to power as an ally of the Tea Party movement and is known nationally for questioning the legitimacy of the 2020 election, and filing a lawsuit on behalf of Texas against Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Georgia. This makes it safe to say Paxton is an enemy of ,or at least in opposition to, the establishment. It did not help that he called out the Texan House Speaker, Dade Phelan, for being visibly inebriated on the House floor.
But the golden rule of politics is that every politician has a skeleton in their closet if not hundreds. Paxton, who holds very little political clout, has become a sacrificial lamb amidst a sea of red state Republicans who engage in dishonesty, deceit, betrayal, and embezzlement. By contrast, establishment republicans like Senator David Perdue of Georgia, flagrantly use insider information to profit from congressional decisions. Purdue, right before the COVID-19 pandemic, bought around $185,000 of shares in DuPont, a company that makes personal protective equipment. These same patterns are found in others like Senator John Hoeven of North Dakota, and Senator Richard Burr of North Carolina to name a couple.
A similar instance of red state Republicans undermining their ideological equals occurred in the Copper State, Arizona. During a campaign for Phoenix City Council, Sam Stone, a staffer for Kari Lake, should have received support from Karrin Taylor Robson, a wealthy and influential Arizona Republican. However, in spite of her defeat in the Republican primary by Lake, she decided to endorse Stone's opponent, a radical leftist. Although Stone's chances of winning were already slim, Robson's actions demonstrated her disloyalty and betrayal towards Stone and Arizona GOP voters as a whole.
Red state’s have a problem. A uniquely Republican problem where the political machines will throw their fellow party members under the bus for any sort of infraction, whether it be due to affiliations with the wrong campaign, voting against party lines, or even making simple accusations of drunkenness.
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