Two things are as certain as bluebonnets in spring now that Ken Paxton is the Republican nominee for the Senate in Texas: Democrats have a better-than-usual chance of winning statewide. And the next 23 weeks are going to be hideous. Paxton's big win comes days after President Trump stuck his finger into the wind, determined that incumbent, John Cornyn, was toast, and gave the attorney general his last-minute support. Even though the nearly 28-point margin was surprising, it was probably always going to be Paxton. A runoff tends to attract the hardest of the hard-core'the kind of determined voter who is willing not only to show up to vote in March, but to show up and vote in March, sit through 12 weeks of brutal attack ads, then head back out to the polls in May. The kind of Republican who might argue, as one woman did in Dallas when I spoke with her last week, that Paxton and Trump are bringing masculinity back to the party like Bambi's father 'coming out of the forest with those...
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