The Wyoming Senate race between incumbent Mike Enzi and Virginian Liz Cheney just became the second most entertaining internecine GOP fight of the campaign cycle. Congressman Steve Stockman, the Texas Republican known for his trollish tweets and for inviting Ted Nugent to the State of the Union and for just being wildly unhinged, announced last night that he would mount a primary challenge against incumbent senator John Cornyn.
Cornyn, who is running for his third term next year, has a lifelong American Conservative Union rating of 93 percent — which, for the sake of reference, is 2 percent higher than Paul Ryan’s rating. Nevertheless, we get the feeling from the lengthy anti-Cornyn manifesto Stockman launched this afternoon that he’ll attempt to portray Cornyn as a liberal:
I’m conservative Congressman Steve Stockman, and I am running for United States Senate against liberal John Cornyn….
Liberal John Cornyn betrayed Ted Cruz by abandoning Republicans during the Obamacare filibuster.
Liberal John Cornyn betrayed Ted Cruz, and you, by voting to fund Obamacare.
But liberal John Cornyn is now doing what he always does, spending four years voting like a Democrat, then spending the two years before an election pretending to be Republican….
If liberal John Cornyn loves being a senator he can move to Massachusetts.
Liberal John Cornyn claims to oppose Obamacare, but he votes to kill any effort to stop it because he agrees with the D.C. establishment and thinks it will buy him votes.
Every Republican who works to fund Obamacare kills freedom twice as quickly as when a Democrat does it.
I refuse to let liberal John Cornyn continue to betray Republicans and this constitutional Republic.
It goes on and on like this. In all, Stockman refers to “liberal John Cornyn” a total of 27 times.
And despite all the overly dramatic language Stockman uses to describe his campaign — ”I’m sick and tired of being bayoneted in the back by someone in my own foxhole,” ”When freedom is threatened Texans have always mounted up and ridden to the sound of the guns,” etc. — Stockman promises his supporters that they will not have to lay down their lives for him:
I’m not asking you to take a bullet or face actual bayonets. I just need to hear from you and have your support.
Has John Cornyn guaranteed the same for his supporters? Sounds like Stockman is the smart choice here.
