Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. It includes a chapter on congressional and state elections. For the rest of the 119th Congress, Trump's victories in Senate primaries will lead to defeats in Senate roll call votes.
The group of senators willing to break with Trump in his second term started with moderates Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, as well as former party leader Mitch McConnell and libertarian Rand Paul, both of Kentucky. It has expanded to what some senators call the “wounded bear caucus” of colleagues forced into retirement by the president: Cornyn and Cassidy, plus Thom Tillis of North Carolina, who decided to step aside after Trump made clear he wouldn’t support him.
Cornyn is the newest member. Trump endorsed Cornyn’s primary runoff opponent, scandal-plagued state Attorney General Ken Paxton, stunning colleagues and helping fuel a rout in the contest on Tuesday—the incumbent lost by more than 25 percentage points. Cornyn said he would back the nominee, and party leaders fell in line, saying they would support Paxton to preserve the party’s 53-47 majority in the Senate. But the ill will isn’t going away.
In a post on social media Friday, Cornyn related the tale of the frog and the scorpion, calling it an “old, but apt fable” and presumably a jab at Trump. (Cornyn’s office declined to comment.) The scorpion asks the frog to carry it across the river, then stings the frog and they both drown—despite the scorpion knowing that would happen. “I am sorry, but I couldn’t help myself. It’s my character,” Cornyn recounts the scorpion saying.
Cassidy, in the interview, had his own thoughts on the Texas race. Paxton, he said, “is someone who Trump probably relates to in terms of all those ethical challenges—Cornyn is not.”
