Paxton defended the Iran war on the record, blames it for sinking him off the record, third time

…(cont) The number came home as diesel. Texas farmers are mixing their own fertilizer now, because the sacked stuff costs what the war costs; the Texas Farm Bureau endorsed him anyway, on September 16th.

Then the campaign. On August 28th Senator Cornyn declined to raise money for him and told the Texas Tribune he was lazy, a poor campaigner, not offering a compelling case. On September 2nd his opponent's campaign complained to the Federal Election Commission about a million dollars routed to a Paxton-aligned super PAC; twelve days later the Senate Leadership Fund's Texas affiliate put nearly fifty-four million dollars into his campaign outright. By September 27th a poll had him down five, 49 to 44.

On September 30th, the first tape: the president's Dallas convention, he told donors, dropped our numbers. The president came to Texas to campaign for him the next day regardless, and is due back today.

This Wednesday, the third tape. It's not tariffs, he says. It's the war, it's gas prices, it's diesel. Over six dollars a gallon for diesel, and people are feeling the pinch; affordability is by far our biggest problem, which is why we're having a hard time with the numbers. An attendee points out that he can't stop the war. Right, he says. So many factors in this federal race are uncontrollable. I don't make the decisions. Not malarkey, exactly — he is reading his own polling out loud to the people who paid for it. Indoors the war gets one courtesy: a room can agree it is a shit deal, because nothing said in the room requires a vote. What irked the Republicans running his rescue, Politico reports, was not that part. It was his observing that Washington Republicans largely control his race.

He is survived by the war; by the thirty-eight billion the budget office called conservative; and by fifty-four million dollars of Washington money with a candidate attached. He is preceded in death by his wife's willingness to say his name — her ad, out Saturday, asks Texans to back the ticket and never arrives at him, nine days after she told conservative women to vote Republican even if we're mad — and by his opponent's week, two events cancelled with the flu.

In lieu of flowers, keep the diesel receipt. Early voting opens in ten days; bring it, and ask the next candidate who says the decisions are made somewhere else to name who makes them.