The Republican Party has reached its nadir by standing by and letting Donald Trump oust incumbent GOP senators during the primaries and put in their place what a leading conservative columnist charitably called “sock puppets” who bring nothing to the table.
In a blunt column on Thursday, longtime Washington Post columnist George Will didn’t hold back, leading off by writing, “This week, the Republican Party has accomplished something difficult: It made itself stupider. It subtracted from its already shallow reservoir of intelligence by moving to purge two fine senators.”
Will targeted the ousting of Sens. Bill Cassidy (R-LA) and John Cornyn (R-TX) from their respective primary races — with scandal-plagued Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton threatening to flip Cornyn's seat to Democrats.
"The two senators will be replaced on this autumn's ballots by persons who, if elected (the one in Louisiana almost certainly will be), can be counted on to be exactly what no senator should be: another of the president's congressional sock puppets, promising, as a high principle, not to think independently," Will wrote.
Cornyn, a former state Supreme Court justice, has consistently supported Trump's agenda. However, Will argues Trump sees in Paxton a "kindred spirit" — and that distinction matters little to a president demanding absolute obedience.
Will offered a withering assessment of Paxton, who Trump endorsed this week for the May 26 primary runoff. "Eleven months ago, this column imprecisely said Paxton has 'a checkered past.' Actually, his past is as unrelievedly dark as pitch," Will wrote.
Will characterized the broader pattern as deeply cynical: Trump purges senators while simultaneously complaining about "lawfare," canceling federal contracts for law firms he dislikes, revoking lawyers' security clearances, and barring them from federal buildings.
"Sophists devoted to obfuscating the obvious will insist that Trump, not the Republican Party, is doing all this. But sentient people know it is a distinction without a difference," Will wrote.
Will condemned the entire Republican apparatus for abandoning its principles and historical mission. "The party was founded in 1854. For a decade now, it has been a passive emanation of the current president. The obedience to him by almost the entirety of the party's elected officials is either canine devotion, or toadyism in the service of careerism. It hardly matters which," he concluded.