Just grifting

Nothing to see, besides that.

Nothing happened. That was the point. Neither Sen. John Cornyn nor Rep. Pete Sessions was ever at risk of losing his primary. The organizations and people that claimed these establishment Republicans were in danger inspired headlines, trend stories, TV buzz—fundraising. They followed that up by expending exactly zero effort.

Tea Partiers and other conservatives did quite well down the ballot. On Wednesday morning, a Texas Tea Party organizer copied me on a memo about the votes in “major races,” like lieutenant governor and attorney general and various state legislative districts. He didn’t mention Cornyn’s campaign against Rep. Steve Stockman, or Sessions’ 2–1 landslide over Katrina Pierson. You could describe the choice for activists as one between the scoreboard and the school board, between “challenging” the leaders of the GOP in a way the press can cover and changing the GOP with unsexy local election wins. Tuesday was an apocalypse for the team scoreboard.

The political press has done us all a great disservice by playing up the "battle for the Republican Party" between corporate patricians and Tea Party insurrectionists when in fact it's all part of one machine running the same program the Republicans have run for decades. Rile up people over racism and Bircher style paranoia. Direct them to the nearest One Percenter to represent them.