A U.S. Senate candidate is already acting as if he doesn't care much about his campaign.

Speaking for the Defiance.org podcast, former Homeland Security chief of staff Miles Taylor said that it's clear Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is running a "terrible campaign."

While in San Antonio, Paxton was shouted down at his own event about being a "cheater." It put him in a situation that made him look unwilling to answer questions from voters. The event had three pre-approved voters allowed to ask questions, but each of his answers got shouted down.

After Paxton tried to attack the Christian faith of James Talarico, who is in a Presbyterian seminary school, a heckler shouted, “You cheated on your wife!”

According to TownHall editor Joe Chalfant, some of the hecklers were removed.

"I will also say that Ken Paxton has been running the most embarrassing campaign I've seen in a long time," said Taylor.

"The guy is running from the press, literally. They keep trying to hide him. They refuse to take questions," continued Taylor. "You don't need to look at the polls in Texas. It's bad for Paxton, right? In deep red Texas, he should be kicking James Tallarico's a—. He's not. A number of polls show Talarico up by as much as four points in some cases. This is a big deal in a red state."

Taylor found it particularly odd that Paxton was running away from microphones because typically political candidates want more exposure not less. "You run to the microphones so that you can tell your story. This guy is so scared to tell his story because his story is one of corruption and perversion and incompetence," he noted.

In the lead-up to Nov. 3, Taylor said that it's one of the things he intends to follow.

"I think he's hoping, you know, people just vote party line there and have no idea who he is. His best bet is if people have no idea who he is and vote party line," said co-host Xander Schultz. "But look, he's up against a potentially, you know, it's early, but potentially generational talent, Talarico, who's really made some incredible inroads with people across the aisle there."

The Republican Party seems poised for disaster in one of its most reliable red-state strongholds, as one former GOP strategist admitted this week that he is "embarrassed" for the party, and worried they might lose big there for the first time in decades amid President Donald Trump's meddling and plummeting popularity.

In addition to his background as a Republican strategist, Joseph Moreno also previously served as a national security prosecutor for the Justice Department and a staffer for the FBI's 9/11 Review Commission. He now makes frequent appearances on major news networks to provide political analysis.

This week, Moreno made an appearance on CNN's The Lead, where he admitted to host Jake Tapper that "this might be the year" when Democrats notch a major statewide win in Texas, which has long been one of the GOP's most reliable red-state strongholds.

“It surprises me, and it worries me a little bit, Jake. Normally, I would say, ‘I’m not worried about this,’ right? It’s been 30 years since a Democrat won statewide office in Texas," Moreno said,

This came in response to a conversation about more polling that recently dropped concerning the Texas Senate race, once again showing Democratic nominee James Talarico with a narrow lead, 47 percent to 45 percent, over his Republican opposition, the state's contentious Attorney General Ken Paxton.

Paxton defeated incumbent Sen. John Cornyn for the party's nomination after Trump defied the pleas of his allies and endorsed the embattled state AG. Republican officials had long advised Trump that Cornyn — a more traditional Republican whom he had butted heads with in the past — was more likely to be able to beat the increasingly popular Talarico than Paxton — a more extreme, MAGA-aligned Republican whose time in office has been mired by controversy.

Paxton was impeached by the Texas State House after an investigation found that he had "used, misused or failed to use his official powers in a manner calculated to subvert the lawful operation of the government." He has also faced charges of misconduct in office and securities fraud in the past, and cheated on his wife, leading her to seek a divorce on "biblical" grounds.

Moreno specifically singled out Paxton's poor reputation as a major factor for his prediction, admitting that the Texas nominee made him feel "embarrassed."

“The problem is, here’s what happens — in 2024, the Republican was up by 2 percent, wins by 8 percent. In 2020, Cornyn was up 10 percent, wins by 10 percent,” Moreno added. “Now, you’ve got Talarico even, or maybe even ahead of Paxton. Paxton is so flawed. I’m embarrassed as a Republican... I hate to say it, this might be the year for Democrats in Texas.”

Douglas MacKinnon, who served in the White House as a writer for Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush and later he served in a joint command at the Pentagon, has been in the coal mine of politics long enough to see when a canary is choking.

And Republicans’ bird is cooked if they don’t open their eyes and ears to voters — quick.

“As we rapidly approach the midterms in November and the 2028 presidential election, history and reality are working against the Republicans,” MacKinnon told the Hill. “History reminds us that in 20 of the last 22 midterm elections, the party not occupying the Oval Office gained ground. That, coupled with the reality of more and more working-class Americans struggling economically, should be a five-alarm warning for Republicans. Yet, so many seem blissfully oblivious to it all.”

So-called election experts — who keep being wrong — remain the go-to people for much of the media, despite many of them living in bubbles far away from Main Street and working-class voting population. MacKinnon, however, grew up in poverty, and he says his “rich friends are getting richer” in Trump’s economy despite the administration claiming “until the cows come home that the stock market is doing great.”

“Politics, like much of life, is cyclical. Democrats used to be really good at addressing bread and butter issues. Then Republicans cleverly hijacked that winning formula. And now, it seems to be swinging back toward the Democrats,” he said.

But it’s not just bread and butter issues, he added. The party is putting up some very flawed candidates this year.

“Republicans are wasting time and money attacking [Democratic senate candidate James] Talarico’s personal life,” he said while voters are not missing the horrible flaws in Republican candidate Ken Paxton. That, and “working-class Texas feels shunned by Republicans promoting what is supposed to be a great economy based on 401(k) performances.”

And things are no better in the Florida governor’s race, said MacKinnon, with many voters feeling Ron DeSantis’ wife Casey to have been a shoe in to replace the term-limited governor.

“But we will never know,” complained MacKinnon. “President Trump … endorsed Rep. Byron Donalds (R-Fla.) before the Republican primary for governor had even begun. The primary is still coming up, but Donalds will be the Republican nominee.”

Meanwhile Donalds is already “getting pounded by negative attack ads” that will be used against him by eventual Democratic nominee David Jolly — formerly a Republican but now a Democrat.

“Florida Republicans I know are nervous,” said MacKinnon.

“I am no expert, but if I were the Republican leadership, I might be trying to figure out how to get some emergency oxygen to these canaries before it is too late,” he concluded.

While President Donald Trump and his MAGA supporters might be celebrating Ken Paxton's dominant win in Tuesday's Senate primary, according to one of the leading election forecasters, the result has tipped the general election odds in the direction that the Texas GOP most feared.

Paxton, whose time as Texas attorney general has been plagued by scandal and corruption, trounced incumbent Sen. John Cornyn in a primary runoff this week, spelling the end of one of the most powerful Republicans in the Senate. This came after Trump, at the last minute, issued an endorsement of Paxton, calling him a staunch MAGA ally, despite the warnings of his party. Given his history, Paxton has a lot of toxic political baggage, prompting considerable alarm that voters might turn their noses up at him and open a path to victory for Democrats.

The blue opposition is also fielding one of its strongest Texas Senate nominees in years in the form of state Rep. James Talarico, who has built a strong campaign with a focus on economic issues voters are most worried about, as well as his devout Christianity. Numerous polls have shown that Cornyn might have been able to fend off Talarico, Paxton's chances were much closer, with some even giving the Democrat the edge.

These worries were reflected by the latest update from the Cook Political Report, a firm that issues predictions for every major political race in the country based on evolving circumstances. In the wake of Paxton's win, per The Hill, the report moved its prediction for the Texas Senate race to be more in favor of a Talarico win.

Cook still, overall, gives the Republican Party the edge in the race, but now, it is more slight. Whereas the rating used to be "likely Republican," Paxton's win saw it changed to a "lean Republican" rating, the sort of momentum shift that the Texas GOP does not want to see. It also noted that the Texas AG has no shortage of weaknesses for Democrats to exploit, potentially helping them move the race more in their favor through November.

"Paxton has a litany of ethical lapses for Democrats to exploit — from allegations of bribery and misuse of his office to marital infidelity, which led his wife to divorce him on ‘biblical grounds,’” Jessica Taylor, Senate and governors editor for the Cook Political Report, explained. “Given the national environment, this is a race that certainly may have become competitive even if Cornyn had won, but Paxton’s flaws warrant an immediate move to the Lean column."

A political analyst argued on Thursday that President Donald Trump is acting like a strongman dictator, but in so doing he is strangling his own failing Republican Party.

“If you looked just at the percentages of last night’s Senate runoff in Starr County, you would say Trump is still dominating,” wrote MS NOW’s Chris Hayes on Thursday. “His candidate beat Cornyn there by nearly 50 points. But what’s that percentage based on? How many Republicans actually voted in that runoff? The answer: virtually none.”

Hayes continued, “Only 90 votes were cast out of more than 36,000 registered voters in the county, according to the Texas secretary of state’s office. In that same county, in a single Democratic primary for a local judge back in March, more than 13,000 Democrats turned out to vote.”

For these reasons, Hayes observed, Democrats are optimistic both about flipping the Texas Senate seat currently held by Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) but currently contested by Trump-picked Republican nominee Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and Democratic nominee James Talarico.

“If you look at a map of Senate races being held this November, Democrats need to hold all their seats and flip four Republican-held seats to take the chamber,” Hayes explained. “That feat looked nearly impossible before Trump endorsed Paxton, the atrociously fraught candidate Democrats hoped they would get. It’s just clearer every day that Trump’s strategy for power has a tighter and tighter hold on fewer and fewer people. You see it in the polls where the president’s approval has plunged to new lows, as Democrats widen their lead on the generic congressional ballot. You see it in the increasing sycophancy of the Republicans who have so far survived Trump’s whims, as demonstrated by the coterie of kiss-ups who dominated Wednesday’s Cabinet meeting.”

Hayes predicted that trend will culminate in the Republican Party alienating everyone except the most sycophantic elements of Trump’s base.

“It is the defining political dynamic right now in the country, and one that really can only be broken through mass mobilization and democratic election, which is why threats to upend democracy will only grow more intense as Trump’s faction of MAGA diehards keeps shrinking,” Hayes argued.

Political experts share Hayes’ view that, at the very least, Paxton is not going to be as strong a nominee against Talarico as Cornyn would have been.

"Paxton has a litany of ethical lapses for Democrats to exploit — from allegations of bribery and misuse of his office to marital infidelity, which led his wife to divorce him on ‘biblical grounds,’” Jessica Taylor, Senate and governors editor for the Cook Political Report, wrote. “Given the national environment, this is a race that certainly may have become competitive even if Cornyn had won, but Paxton’s flaws warrant an immediate move to the Lean column."

President Donald Trump’s preferred candidate in the Texas Senate race, Attorney General Ken Paxton, defeated incumbent Sen. John Cornyn in Tuesday’s Republican primary. Yet according to a recent report, Paxton’s victory over Cornyn may hurt Trump among a constituency he relied upon to win in the 2024 election — Hispanic voters.

“One in five Latino Texans who voted for President Donald Trump in 2024 would not support him again if given a redo, according to a new poll released Wednesday,” The Texas Tribune's Alejandro Serrano wrote on Wednesday.

“In a survey of 500 registered Latino voters, the Latino civil rights organization UnidosUS found that two-thirds disapprove of Trump's job performance, the same share that said they did not feel Trump and congressional Republicans were ‘focusing enough on improving the economy for people like you,’” Serrano added. “Nearly half of voters cited cost of living and inflation as a top issue shaping their view of Trump — more than any other issue, with immigration enforcement in cities also ranking high in the list.”

Quoting the vice president of a group that specializes on Latino voters, Serrano cited Clarissa Martínez De Castro as saying that “the economic priorities dominate. Some people call it ‘buyer's remorse,' other people ‘do over.'"

Serrano noted that Trump won 55 percent of the Latino bloc in the 2024 election, and that in turn helped Republicans in Texas perform better among Latino voters than they ever had before. Yet of the 300 out of 500 voters surveyed by UnidosUS who also lived in Texas swing districts, “a slight majority of respondents — 54 percent — said they planned to vote for the Democratic candidate for Congress; 27 percent said they'd support the Republican, while the rest were undecided,” Serrano reported. Meanwhile Paxton’s Democratic opponent in the upcoming election, James Talarico, has a “more than 2-to-1 margin among Latino voters, as did Democratic gubernatorial nominee Gina Hinojosa over Gov. Greg Abbott. Election after election, Texas Democrats won the Latino vote by wide margins.”

He added, “Former President Barack Obama and Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton each won Latino voters by nearly 30 points in 2008 and 2016, respectively, according to exit polls. But the domination began to erode by 2020, when former President Joe Biden won the bloc by 17 points — foreshadowing Trump's striking gains four years later.”

Trump’s floundering fate in Texas is not limited to Hispanic voters. According to the political predictions firm Cook Political Report, Democrats’ chance of winning in Texas has moved from “likely Republican” to “lean Republican,” with its experts saying things could get worse for Trump in that state.

"Paxton has a litany of ethical lapses for Democrats to exploit — from allegations of bribery and misuse of his office to marital infidelity, which led his wife to divorce him on ‘biblical grounds,’” Jessica Taylor, Senate and governors editor for the Cook Political Report, said in a statement. “Given the national environment, this is a race that certainly may have become competitive even if Cornyn had won, but Paxton’s flaws warrant an immediate move to the Lean column."

Speaking to AlterNet on Tuesday, the managing editor of a different political predictions firm, Sabato’s Crystal Ball, made a similar observation about the House of Representatives.

"We think Democrats are still favored to win the House, even though Republicans have helped themselves through redistricting," Kondik told AlterNet. "The national environment just seems like it'll be enough to push Democrats to the majority."

President Donald Trump has so transformed the Republican Party that it is beyond saving, at least according to one prominent conservative.

Writing for The Dispatch, conservative commentator Kevin D. Williamson compared Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) to one of the state’s political heroes, Sam Houston. Like Cornyn, Houston was punished by Texas voters for an unpopular position: In Houston’s case, opposing the extension of slavery, and in Cornyn’s case the simple fact that Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is perceived as more popular with the party base.

“Donald Trump routinely denounces his critics as ‘disloyal to the Republican Party’ (his verbatim description of Rep. Thomas Massie, the Kentucky libertarian who has sometimes chided Trump over his weakness for profligate spending), but Trump is, in all things, first and foremost a liar, and he does not give a fig about party loyalty,” Williamson wrote. “Trump cares about loyalty to Trump, and the more cynical reader here might reasonably substitute ‘subservience’ or ‘servility’ or ‘slavish boot-licking’ for ‘loyalty.’”

He added, “Far from being a party man, Trump has made a point of defeating Republicans who are inconvenient to him, whether they be obscure Indiana state legislators who declined to follow Texas’ gerrymandering example or state-level election officials who declined to participate in his 2020-2021 attempt at a coup d’état.”

Given Texans’ preference for Paxton over Cornyn, Williamson argued that it shows the Republican Party is beyond hope when it comes to overcoming its fealty to Trump.

“Imagine a rich, middle-aged car salesman who ditches his wife and starts dating a 21-year-old stripper with a meth problem, and then imagine that guy is a state—that’s Texas, Anno Domini 2026,” Williamson wrote. “With a slowing economy, rising prices, and the slow but steady creep of problems very similar to those facing other states—housing, infrastructure, etc.—Texas has some real issues facing it. It also has some imaginary issues facing it, such as the supposed takeover of … the Dallas suburbs … by Islamist radicals. Texas Republicans, having not very much useful to say about the real issues, currently are focused on the imaginary ones.”

Because this is so effective, Williamson chided conservatives who believe the Republican Party can be salvaged.

“Conservatives have been working to save the Republican Party—in Texas and elsewhere—from itself,” Williamson argued. “Perhaps it is time to give up that project. Like the car salesman with the meth-head paramour, the heart wants what it wants.”

He then concluded, “And if Selena Gomez isn’t your kind of sage, there’s always Livy: Eventus stultorum magister est [experience is the teacher of fools].”

Williamson is not alone among conservatives in expressing concern that Trump endorsed Paxton instead of Cornyn. Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) argued that it “puts that seat in jeopardy” and asked, “how does that help strengthen the president’s hand when we lose a state like Texas?”

She characterized her reaction as “Supremely disappointed.” The same sentiment was expressed by Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) who described Paxton as “an ethically challenged individual,” likely referring to the accusations of bribery, abuse of power and multiple extramarital affairs made against him.

“John Cornyn is an outstanding senator and deserved, in my judgment, the president’s support,” Collins added. “Obviously, it’s the president’s call, but I’m disappointed that he did it.”

Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wisc.) said he was “speechless” and otherwise would offer no comment. Meanwhile Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), a close ally to the president, tried to put a positive spin on the situation and said, “I think Paxton can win. I think it’d be three times more expensive.”

Polls suggest Trump’s last-minute endorsement of a scandal-laden Republican AG is mussing up a pivotal Senate race in Texas that Republicans must win in order to keep their slim Senate majority. But those concerns don’t appear to be registering over at Team Trump, according to an interview with President Donald Trump’s top advisor.

“I will note that the endorsement of Ken Paxton, the attorney general, who has been indicted, not convicted, impeached, not convicted, his wife filed for divorce on Biblical grounds just a year ago,” said CNN anchor Jake Tapper. “The [National Republican Senatorial Committee] was highlighting that — it’s the only reason I bring it up. There are a lot of Republicans on Capitol Hill who wonder maybe that's going to make the seat more competitive for Democrats.”

Tapper was echoing polls from Democrats, pollsters and even Republican critics that Trump just made an easy win in Texas a whole lot more complicated by endorsing Paxton, who faces a strong Democratic opponent at a time when both Trump and the Republican Party are suffering historic unpopularity among U.S. voters.

“It's going to cost three times as much now [to win that Texas seat],” said Republican strategist David Urban. …[Cornyn] was kind of a walk to win and beat [Democratic challenger James] Talarico. But Paxton — completely different story.”

None of those concerns fazed Senior Trump advisor James Blair, however.

“I guess it depends on what lens you view it through. I think we would say that the Democrats have put up one of the most radically left candidates that they've put up anywhere for any Senate race ever, and certainly in the state of Texas with James Talarico,” said Blair. “He is way out of step with Texas voters.”

But that’s not what numbers are saying, according to CNN data analyst Harry Enten, who pointed out that unlike Democrat Beto O’Rourke’s failed bid against GOP incumbent Ted Cruz, Cruz was polling ahead.

“Cruz was up by seven points in the polls in May of 2018. Paxton now is down by seven points,” said Enten. And at a time when Trump’s own polls are cratering.

Trump likely endorsed Cornyn’s flawed opponent due to Cornyn’s rare moment of disagreement with Trump in the past. It was the same motivation driving Trump’s primary destruction of Kentucky U.S. Rep. Thomas Massie, who pressed for the release of the Epstein files over Trump’s orders.

“Well, congratulation on your primary and all the pelts you have on your wall,” said Tapper at the end of the interview. “I saw the Thomas Massie-sized pelt added to the rec room. So, congratulations … I guess.”

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