Steve Stockman Can’t Lose: The Political Genius of the Texas Firebrand

John Cornyn saw it coming. Even with no real competition on the horizon, the senior senator from Texas had been hiring staff, building his network and choking his state’s Internet bandwidth with ads that hinted darkly at Texas’s political future without him. Cornyn, an 11-year veteran of the Senate, may have been named the body’s second most conservative member by National Journal, but after criticizing Tea Party hero Sen. Ted Cruz during the prelude to the government shutdown this fall, he had good reason to fear a threat from his party’s far-right fringe. As chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, Cornyn had told sitting senators to be prepared for primary challenges—and he took his own advice.

There were rumblings of a challenge from several corners. Tea Party leaders had tried to draft Rep. Louie Gohmert, and evangelical historian David Barton had flirted with running. When conservative activists in Texas spoke privately, other names cropped up—like Ted Cruz’s father, Rafael, and Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst. So when a challenger came—even if he came, like an undergraduate with a term paper, less than half an hour before the filing deadline—Cornyn’s team was prepared.

But still, Steve Stockman?

Yes, that Stockman, the Republican congressman most famous outside Texas for his bombastic use of social media (his Twitter account is legendary, thanks to declarations like “Obamacare is less popular than Chlamydia” ) and outrageous proclamations (like his now-infamous “If babies had guns they wouldn’t be aborted” bumper sticker). For the most part, other Republicans here in Texas seem merely to tolerate him—or, at best, appreciate his ability to fire up the grassroots while maintaining their distance. (One long-time Republican strategist told me the Texas congressional delegation had adopted what he termed the “rabid dog approach” to handling Stockman.) Edward Chen, former vice chairman of the Harris County Republican Party, once summed up Stockman’s place in the GOP for Texas Monthly thus: “He’s a Republican. As a Republican, he’s on our ballot. And that’s about the situation.”

Just to be clear: Nobody in Texas thinks Stockman has a snowball’s chance of winning against Cornyn, and they’re probably right. “This is going to be an irritant,” says Matt Mackowiak, an Austin-based Republican strategist. “But it’s only an irritant.” Some argue that a failed primary challenge from Stockman will help burnish Cornyn’s credentials and distance him from his party’s far right. That may be true—and it may be true, as well, that Stockman’s campaign will help break the populist fever afflicting the state’s GOP.

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