Thread by @TexasObserver

1/ Texas Democrats have slapped a big target on Senator John Cornyn's back.

Several candidates have jumped into his 2020 reelection race, convinced they can build on the party’s historic inroads in 2018 and win statewide.

It likely won’t be that simple.
texasobserver.org/john-cornyn-pr…

2/ Cornyn, who was first elected to the U.S. Senate in 2002, has mastered the art of political subservience to the prevailing winds of his party and its leaders.

Just look at his relationship with Mitch McConnell.
texasobserver.org/john-cornyn-pr…

3/ In 2012, after he became McConnell’s minority whip, Cornyn quickly made it known that he came in peace.

Shortly into their new relationship, he gave his boss a gift: a framed photo of McConnell with Cornyn and another top lieutenant behind him.
texasobserver.org/john-cornyn-pr…

4/ There are thousands of photographs to this effect.

All of them illustrate a central tenet of the Cornyn approach: He’s ambitious—but also knows his place.
texasobserver.org/john-cornyn-pr…

5/ If Karl Rove was the architect of the modern GOP, Cornyn is a perfectly distilled product of that project.

Cornyn got in on Rove’s Republican revolution in the 1980s and rose to state Supreme Court justice and then state attorney general in the 1990s.
texasobserver.org/john-cornyn-pr…

6/ In 1999, he helped launch the Republican Attorneys General Association. One of their goals was stopping consumer protection and corporate malfeasance lawsuits.

@JohnOliverMP explains:

texasobserver.org/john-cornyn-pr…

@JohnOliverMP 7/ Then, with George W. Bush in the White House, Cornyn had nowhere to go but up—in this case, the Senate.

He earned a reputation as one of the body’s most hard-line conservatives, but wielded the role of conservative ideologue with trademark restraint.
texasobserver.org/john-cornyn-pr…

@JohnOliverMP 8/ His ability to serve as the soft face of the hard right was seen as an asset by Republican leadership and helped him quickly rise through the party ranks.

It didn’t hurt that Cornyn is a skilled fundraiser.
texasobserver.org/john-cornyn-pr…

@JohnOliverMP 9/ Enter Donald Trump.

Trump’s presidency was an indictment not only of the Democratic leadership of Obama, but of the Karl Roves, the Mitch McConnells, and all the loyal torchbearers of Chamber of Commerce conservatism who thrive in the swamp.
texasobserver.org/john-cornyn-pr…

@JohnOliverMP 10/ In other words, Trump’s presidency posed a direct threat to the party that Cornyn had worked so hard for.

But then Republicans did what they always do when powerful populist groups come knocking: welcome them inside.
texasobserver.org/john-cornyn-pr…

@JohnOliverMP 11/ The calculations of Cornyn's career—and his embrace of Trumpism—have always been made with ambition in mind.

But have the political sins of that endeavor finally put his future in jeopardy?
texasobserver.org/john-cornyn-pr…

@JohnOliverMP 12/ Read @byjmiller’s latest feature, co-published with @theintercept: texasobserver.org/john-cornyn-pr…