enator John Cornyn is in the fight of his life. In a throwback to the Tea Party primaries of the early 2010s, the senior senator from Texas (first elected in 2002) has been forced into a runoff for the first time in his career by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton. Paxton, who was impeached by the Texas House of Representatives in 2023, managed to effectively tie Cornyn in the initial primary, with both receiving around 42% of the vote. While Cornyn is favored to win a runoff, particularly if President Donald Trump endorses him, it is by no means a sure thing.
Cornyn and his team may be wondering how they got to this point. They are not alone. Across the Western world, center-right individuals and parties are in deep trouble and seem unable to figure out why.
In Europe, the “respectable” center-right is a political dinosaur on its way to extinction. The German CDU is neck-and-neck (though more often than not, in second place) with the populist-right Alternative for Germany. Austria’s Freedom Party has been leading for the past three years, while Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy has led the country for over four. Poland’s right wing is dominated by two parties: a populist-right party and one that’s even further to the right. France and the United Kingdom have both seen their center-right parties decimated, replaced by the populist-right National Rally and Reform parties, respectively.
In the U.S., Donald Trump has been at war against the Republican Party’s establishment over the past ten years. President Trump’s change in vice presidents is the clearest example of how he has transformed the GOP. He picked Mike Pence in 2016 to satiate the establishment, but he selected JD Vance in 2024 as a successor who understands where the party is headed.
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