Republicans in Disarray!

here's the ad. as much as i loathe ai stuff "he's got him a condo / it seats about 20 / so hurry up and bring your Nate Paul money" is kind of a bar.

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— gwen howerton (@kissphoria.bsky.social) March 17, 2026 at 5:12 PM

Gwen Howerton, at the Texas Chronicle, with the backstory — “John Cornyn and Ken Paxton are trying to drown each other in AI slop”:

… Thematically, “Love Shack” is a good choice for a parody. If you can remember, Paxton and Paul, a real estate developer, really did have a joint Uber account that Paxton used to meet with Paul and visit his mistress (the first one). There was also the little issue of Paxton and his wife, Angela, claiming three primary residences on mortgage documents. One of those appeared to be a condo on Enfield Road in Austin, which Cornyn’s campaign ad alleges functioned as Paxton’s very own little “love shack.”…

“Ken’s Love Shack” is just the latest salvo in the AI-political ad arms race (or race to the bottom, depending on your outlook on generative AI) that’s taking place in the U.S. Senate race. Paxton and Cornyn have traded artificially generated barbs at each other. In January, Paxton put out an ad in which a fake Cornyn dances with a fake Rep. Jasmine Crockett in front of the U.S. Capitol Building. Cornyn used AI to call Hunt a “show dog.” Republicans have also used AI to create an ad of Talarico reading social media posts they believe are damaging to his campaign. And who could forget Crockett’s “Texans don’t back down. We rise” AI-created ad done in vaguely anime-style?

But wait, didn’t Texas become the first state to ban the use of AI deepfake videos in campaign ads in 2019? Well, that law only applies to statewide races, not federal ones. And while most of the ads in the Texas Senate race have had disclosures that they were AI-generated, campaigns aren’t legally required to do so. A bill that would have required those disclosures on campaign ads run in the state of Texas stalled last year over a freakout on the right that the legislature was trying to “ban memes.” There’s no national law here, so Paxton, Cornyn and everyone else running for office is allowed to put as much AI slop in the trough as you can eat…

 
Puck, last Monday — “Children of the Cornyn”:

Republican John Cornyn, the four-term senior senator from Texas, is suddenly fighting for his political life to hold the seat he’s occupied for more than two decades. Party operatives have practically begged Donald Trump to jump into the primary runoff race and endorse Cornyn over his scandal-plagued but scrappy opponent, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton. And yet, Trump has held off—perhaps because he views the dangling sword over Cornyn’s head as leverage, or he sees a bit of himself in Paxton. Either way, it’s hardly clear whether a belated Trump nod would drag Cornyn over the finish line.

That’s a problem for national Republicans, who are betting the house—to the tune of at least $70 million so far—to keep Paxton off the ballot in the general. Paxton, after all, has generated perhaps the fattest oppo file in politics: He’s been impeached, acquitted, accused of stealing a Montblanc pen, and divorced “on biblical grounds.” Most strategists argue Cornyn is the only Republican who can beat Democrat James Talarico, at least without having to siphon millions of dollars from other Senate races…

Sure, not everyone is worried. Some Texas Republicans cannot see any scenario in which either Republican nominee loses the general election. The first wave of opposition research on Talarico, the seminarian Democratic nominee with a long history of liberal statehouse speeches and social media activity, heartened Republicans everywhere. “Anybody who says ‘Jesus is nonbinary’ and ‘There are six sexes’”—references to remarks Talarico made in the state House—“that ain’t gonna happen in the state of Texas,” insisted a Texas Republican consultant.

Even so, a good night for Texas Republicans in November could mean spending a fortune to hold on to a Senate seat that’s otherwise been reliably safe for the party. Meanwhile, there are all kinds of wildfires breaking out downballot, thanks to the G.O.P.’s own redistricting project, the national political environment, and one hell of a congressional scandal. One Dallas Republican source has taken to casually referring to the political affairs in his state as “a meltdown.” In other words, the party may be on track for a Pyrrhic victory in the Senate, but a great deal of damage has already been done…

Texas used to be where national Republicans went to fix their political problems in other states. Does a candidate need more money for the Raleigh media market? Go to Dallas and Houston to fundraise. Worried about losing the House? Call Austin, and Texas will pony up more seats in redistricting. (The most recent gerrymandering go-round was, after all, the second time in 25 years that national Republicans deployed this tactic outside the normal redistricting cycle.) This time, though, Texas Republicans are consumed with their own dramas and just about tapped out for everyone else’s. As the Texas consultant put it, “The state of Texas is on fire, dammit.”

In many ways, Cornyn’s dilemma is a microcosm of the state’s—and the party’s—larger spiritual problem. As a vestige of the pre-Trump G.O.P. and a former two-term chairman of the N.R.S.C., Cornyn lived through the turbulent 2010-2012 era, when the Republican establishment saw its incumbents and favored candidates fall to fatally flawed Tea Party candidates who twice cost them the Senate majority. Cornyn helped write the playbook for dealing with this threat, and now he’s deploying it himself: Run your primary campaign like your life depends on it. Of course, the guns-blazing approach comes at a cost—about $70 million has been spent on reelecting Cornyn so far, out of the $95 million spent on the Republican primary in total. “That’s the G.D.P. of small countries,” said a Washington-based Republican consultant. “That’s crazy.”

But the deeper concern is what the mess in Texas means for Republican efforts beyond the state. If Cornyn’s reelection were a gimme, the senator would be inviting Republican incumbents and challengers to meet his Texas donors, traveling the country fundraising for colleagues as a bold-faced Senate headliner; and raising ungodly amounts of money for the N.R.S.C. But Republican infighting in the state, and the looming threat of a genuinely competitive general election, means most of that money and energy is staying at home. And every dollar spent in Texas is money not going out to House and Senate races elsewhere…

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