The editorial board of The Dallas Morning News is conservative. But it is not MAGA. It does not traffic in lies and conspiracy theories. It adheres to a basic standard of civility, the kind that enabled members of different parties to compromise and occasionally agree on bipartisan legislation. Not now, but not so many years ago.

This is the editorial board’s view of the primaries on Tuesday.

Well, that was telling.  

Given a choice between John Cornyn, a man who spent his career governing as an honest, deeply conservative representative, or Ken Paxton, a man whose personal and professional dishonesty is so manifest that the mother of his own children can’t endorse him, Texas Republicans said, “we’ll take the second guy.” 

It somehow gets worse. Given the choice between Jim Wright, an experienced railroad commissioner who openly favored the oil and gas industry, or Bo French, a conspiracy-mongering bigot, Texas Republicans said, “give us the bigot.” 

We would set up the same comparison for the Texas attorney general runoff between “MAGA” Mayes Middleton and Chip Roy, except we wouldn’t know who to compare as the better of the two. Both debased themselves as lickspittles of the president while doing all they can to drive division against immigrants, Muslims and any other group they could demonize to stir fear and hatred as a path to power. 

What happened Tuesday night in Texas tells us so much about what the deep base of the Texas Republican Party has become. It should shock every person of good conscience and be an awakening for conservatives who still believe this party and its current leadership can serve the traditions of independence and liberty that Texas was founded upon. 

Because it’s Ken Paxton’s Texas GOP now. It’s Trump’s Texas. Remember that Paxton is the man Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick saved from what looked like certain conviction in an impeachment trial right after a $1 million donation and $2 million loan from West Texas Christian conservatives flowed Patrick’s way. This is the man whose top deputies, people who devoted their lives to movement conservatism, decided he was so corrupt they abandoned their careers to alert law enforcement. This is a man who pretends to be the moral authority of this state even after his wife filed for divorce on “biblical grounds.” Read that as infidelity. That’s your Texas Republican Party now. 

Regular readers of this page hopefully know a few things about us by now.  

We seek to support a thoughtful conservatism grounded in limited government, the expansion of free enterprise, the power of capital to lift people into wealth, the fundamental importance of faith and family to living a good life, a belief in an ordered society where laws are respected and enforced from the border to Main Street, and a strong suspicion of movements that would upend the traditions that have defined our country and our common humanity for generations. 

We hope for a democracy where good, if imperfect, people with different points of view are elected, take office and find ways to work out their differences through compromise that respects both the majority’s will and the minority’s rights. 

We believe the founders of our nation and our state would have wanted nothing less. That was the sort of natural freedom they sought to enshrine, a freedom rooted in the protection of individual rights and the promotion of shared responsibility for democratic norms and a basic decency toward one another. 

The people who are being elected to represent Republicans in this state cannot represent that sort of conservatism. They cannot represent the values that a majority of Texans believe in. 

Don’t take our word for it. Take theirs. Paxton and Middleton have told us repeatedly where their loyalty lies. It is not to the people of the state they seek to represent. It is to a man who governs not on the basis of conservative principles but on his daily whims. This is the fundamental promise these candidates have made to Texas voters. We will do whatever President Donald Trump tells us to do. 

John Cornyn tried to play this game. We can’t help but believe he will spend a lot of days in regret for what the end of his political career looks like. He did all he could to appease the president’s ego, and it wasn’t enough. So many good conservatives have had to learn the hard way that it is never enough. He will take and take until there is nothing left.  

We try to imagine one of the men who founded this state, one of those who rode into Texas when it was still a wild and dangerous land where people had the thought that, if they could survive, they could prosper. We try to imagine the sacrifices along the way, the hard winters and blistering summers. The decision to fight for independence from Mexico. The stubborn streak of self-reliance and persistent belief that Texas is still, somehow, its own place. 

None of that squares with who these men are. The men who won the GOP’s nomination Tuesday night are not their own men. They are, by their own admission, wholly servile. It is their entire political identity. The tough talk veneer goes only as far as Trump will let them go. There is nothing in them that is independent, that is their own, that is Texan. 

We know that most of the people who cast their ballots for Paxton, Middleton and French don’t give a fig what this page says. So many of them long ago tuned out people who still insist on asking questions, who see places for compromise, who believe our neighbors who might be a little different from us are still our neighbors, deserving of our respect and love. 

There is a word for what happened in this state Tuesday, and that is shameful. 

Texas deserves better than people who truck in lies and bigotry. But that’s what we got. 

Where we go from here is hard to say.  

My observations:

If there are enough old/fashioned, principled Republicans and independents, Texas has a good chance of turning blue. At the top of the Democratic ticket are two excellent candidates: James Talarico for the U.S. Senate and Gina Hinojosa for Governor.

Texans need fresh leadership. It needs leaders who have not been bought by oil money and White Christian nationalists. It needs leaders who want to solve problems, not engage in bigotry and culture wars.

Talarico would bring a fresh air of honesty and candor to D.C. and a deep commitment to improving the lives of working people and those in need. Hinojosa has the same commitment to helping those who need help and a passionate commitment to public schools. Her own children are public school students. Like many states, Texas has underfunded its public schools and its teachers. Hinojosa understands that Texas needs to educate all its children well. That’s at the top of her agenda.

Talarico and Hinojosa have a chance to change Texas. They represent youth and the future.