[In Texas, Attorney General Ken Paxton escaped conviction after
being impeached.]
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THE GOP IS THE PARTY OF CORRUPT OLIGARCHY  
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Ryan Cooper
September 19, 2023
The American Prospect
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_ In Texas, Attorney General Ken Paxton escaped conviction after
being impeached. _

Ellen McCluskey holds a sign outside the Senate Chamber as the
impeachment trial for Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton continues at
the Texas Capitol, September 14, 2023, in Austin., Eric Gay/AP Photo

 

Texas has been a reliably Republican state for over two decades now,
producing national figures like George W. Bush, Ted Cruz, and Rick
Perry. Recently, the Texas GOP has gotten national attention for a
less savory figure: Attorney General Ken Paxton, who was impeached by
the Texas House earlier this year for egregious abuse of his powers of
office.

That was remarkable given that the House is controlled by Republicans.
Yet as Justin Miller reports
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the _Texas Observer_, in the trial in the Texas Senate, Paxton was
acquitted on every count. That’s the Republican Party for you—even
when some party members attempt to rid themselves of their worst
elements, they are slapped down by the rest.

As Christopher Hooks explains at _Texas Monthly_
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Paxton has long been a cat’s-paw for Tim Dunn, a fervently
right-wing oil billionaire who has been funding the state’s
Republicans for years. When the GOP finally took control of the House
and the rest of the state government in 2002 for the first time since
the 1870s
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and his fellow oligarchs assumed that they’d have the run of the
state. But because the Texas House elects its Speaker with a simple
majority vote of both parties, the remaining Democrats allied with
traditional business-minded Republicans to elect the relative moderate
Joe Straus as Speaker of the House. This infuriated Dunn not only
because Straus is not a febrile reactionary, but because he was the
first Jewish Speaker in Texas history. Dunn reportedly told Straus to
his face
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that only Christians should be in offices of state leadership.

But that wasn’t Dunn’s only priority. Another was taking care of
the Texas Ethics Commission, which had drawn Dunn’s ire by
attempting to impose minimal disclosure requirements on his enormous
political spending. He backed Paxton heavily in the attorney general
race of 2014, which was decisive. Sure enough, Paxton then cut off
legal support for the TEC in its legal battles against Dunn, which put
a stop to the disclosure requests.

In office, Paxton’s door was unsurprisingly open to about any
conservative with a big bank account, a checkbook, and a functioning
pen, which brings us to the impeachment. One was real estate developer
Nate Paul, who not only cut campaign checks but also employed
Paxton’s mistress, and was facing scrutiny from federal law
enforcement. Paxton directed his staff to help Paul fight off the
feds. “When they resisted, Paxton threatened to fire them; after
they blew the whistle, Paxton did fire them,” Hooks writes
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So a critical mass of House Republicans decided they had had enough of
this guy, not least because his record of achieving anything in office
is poor. Paxton’s scandals drag the party down—he was also charged
with securities fraud in 2015, though he’s managed to drag out the
start of the trial for eight years and counting—and he isn’t even
very good at filing tendentious lawsuits to give the Fifth Circuit and
Supreme Court an excuse to legislate by decree. And then in June,
after the impeachment vote, Paul was arrested and charged
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in federal court with eight counts of making false statements and
reports to financial companies.

Ken Paxton might be a corrupt, incompetent doofus. But he is very good
at doing what his oligarch paymasters tell him to do, and then
activating the conservative grievance industrial complex
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by claiming to be the victim of a conspiracy when facing
accountability of any sort. “This shameful process was curated from
the start as an act of political retribution,” he said
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just before being impeached. “Let’s restore the power of this
great state to the people, instead of the politicians,” he added,
with truly astounding chutzpah.

It worked.

Today’s Republican Party simply selects for this kind of person now.
This is what their system produces: toadies and lickspittles for
oligarch billionaires, whose bone-deep corruption actually makes them
_more_ appealing to the billionaire class. As Hooks points out, Paxton
is totally dependent on Dunn’s support, without which he would have
fallen years ago.

There are many other examples of this kind of Republican, but none
more relevant than Donald Trump, who combines the role of corrupt
toady and oligarch billionaire into one person. This was a guy who
campaigned on the same kind of hysterical nonsense as previous
Republicans, except even more shamelessly, and in office was by far
the most corrupt president in American history. When he lost, he
claimed to be the victim of a conspiracy, attempted to overthrow the
government to stay in office, and in the process nearly got many
Republican members of Congress lynched if his mob had caught up with
them. But when it came to convicting him for attempting to negate the
outcome of the presidential election, the party blinked and acquitted
him in the Senate.

Now, both Texas and nationwide, Republicans are saddled with comically
corrupt and unpopular leaders who are facing criminal indictments.
Trump is facing 91 felony counts
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in four different jurisdictions, and may face more. Paxton, it seems,
will no longer be able to delay his securities fraud trial much longer
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and may face more charges
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relating to the Paul affair.

The political choice for the foreseeable future is clear: If voters
want politicians who flagrantly abuse their powers of office to
benefit themselves and their oligarch enablers, the Republican Party
is the way to go. They just can’t help themselves.

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Ryan Cooper is the Prospect’s managing editor, and author of ‘How
Are You Going to Pay for That?: Smart Answers to the Dumbest Question
in Politics.’ He was previously a national correspondent for The
Week.

* Texas Attorney General: Ken Paxton; Texas Republicans;
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