Republicans spend $100 million and 7 million eggs rescuing Paxton, get nothing back in the polls

As it ran on the front

On September 5th, Republicans in Washington were, in print, fed up with their own Senate nominee. Four days later, on September 9th, the same Paxton, still sitting as Texas's attorney general, announced that a legal settlement worth millions in eggs would reach Texas food banks — 1.7 million eggs delivered, 5.3 million more on the way, his name on the release. The Senate Leadership Fund's Texas affiliate filed with the FEC for $53.8 million, wired straight into the Paxton campaign account. By this weekend the total for what the wire is calling the Paxton rescue mission had cleared $100 million, spent on one Senate seat in a matter of weeks.

The same math was running everywhere else at once. The New York Post reported this week that Republicans nationally are pouring money into battleground states after new polling showed them struggling in territory that used to be safely red. The Hill's survey of forecasters landed the same week: the nonpartisan Cook Political Report and others now read the numbers as a real midterm environment for Democrats, and count Republicans on track to lose ground in both chambers.…