There’s a scene in “The Godfather” where Michael Corleone tells his childhood friend Tom Hagan that he will lose his leadership during the movie’s mob war, saying, “You’re not a wartime consigliere, Tom.” It could be difficult with the moves we try.” That sentence echoes what many Texas GOP voters say about Texas Republican Sen. John Cornyn.
I met Tim for lunch at Pegasus Plaza in downtown Dallas just three days before Cornyn’s Tuesday match against Attorney General Ken Paxton, and he told me, “I like Cornyn. He’s a good guy, but Trump needs fighters in DC.”
Tim is in his 30s, works in banking and went on to say: “Cornyn just seems to be from a different time. Maybe it was a better time, but it’s not now.”
Another Texan Paxton I met was Patti, who is retired and told me, “Cornyn is great when the other side plays fair, but she doesn’t.”
What Cornyn, who is trailing in the polls but still within reach of victory, may realize is that there is a political price to pay if he runs for office — that when an electorate is angry, affability is not an asset.
Advertisements are currently running in the Lone Star State calling on senators to break the filibuster and pass the SAVE Act, which would require a voter ID in U.S. elections. Everyone I talked to, including Democrats, told me they thought Paxton would do it and Cornyn wouldn’t.
Not just in Texas, but across the country, I’m hearing tremendous frustration from Republican voters about Senators like Thom Tillis, Lisa Murkowski, John Barrasso and even Majority Leader John Thune for bringing a mole hammer to a gunfight.
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As one man quipped to me this weekend, “Trump has enough Democrats who hate him to fight. He doesn’t need any Republicans to fight either.”
Cornyn appears to be waiting out Trump’s term, confident that the kind of Republican Party he emerged in will reemerge once Trump is out of orbit and no longer pulled by his political gravity.
But with J.D. Vance holding a big lead in the Republican Party’s 2028 — albeit very early — presidential primaries, Cornyn’s desire to return the party to the favored loser status that Democrats in Congress regularly roll them into seems remote at best.
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Cornyn belongs to a political era in which Republicans’ primary task was to maintain the status quo in domestic and even foreign policy against the Democrats’ rising radicalism. But his Maginot Line-style defensive approach isn’t happening today.
In Trump, Republican voters found an agent of chaos — someone who offended the left and, frankly, broke a few things along the way.
Senator John Cornyn, R-Texas, walks the halls of the U.S. Capitol on February 12, 2026 in Washington, D.C. (Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)
Take foreign policy. Trump’s view of the neoliberal world order was that the US paid to protect everyone, accepted bad trade deals to maintain stability and asked others to take the lead – all while apologizing for being in charge. He is now blowing up that model.
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Paxton has shown a willingness to support the president on everything from tariffs to war and “making America healthy again.” Can this be criticized as a rubber stamp for Trump? Certainly. But that’s exactly what many voters want.
As for Paxton’s scandals, which his opponents say will negatively impact his eligibility in the general election against Rep. Jasmine Crockett, D-Texas, or her “Beto 2.0” challenger, James Talarico, I see little evidence of that.
Several voters I spoke with were not even aware of Paxton’s personal life problems and dismissed his alleged corruption. But what they did know was his performance as a tough attorney general.
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Even one Democrat I spoke with, a Talarico voter, praised Paxton’s work in cracking down on H-1B visa “ghost offices” that are allegedly committing millions of dollars in fraud against the American people.
One hope for John Cornyn is that moderate voters may be quieter voters, less likely to speak to me or even respond in polls. But with some regularity, so-called silent majorities turn into election losses.
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Almost no one I spoke to disliked Cornyn. There were a few who spoke more like an
Ultimately, in “The Godfather”, Michael made the right decision by demoting Tom. He needed loyal fighters, not a smart man who knew how to please all sides. Now it’s up to Texas Republicans to decide who their wartime consigliere will be. From what I can tell, it’s most likely Ken Paxton.
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