Stuart Stevens is a Lincoln Project alum, writer of books, and former campaign man. He knew John Cornyn back in the day and he’s saddened by what he’s seen Cornyn become — what he’s seen the Republican party become. Here’s the letter in full, courtesy of the Lincoln Project.
Oh, John. It didn’t have to be this way.
When we first met, you were a highly respected Texas Supreme Court Justice. That was 1997, and you were thinking about running for Texas Attorney General. You were reluctant to leave a job you found intellectually rewarding for that thing called politics.
When you ran for AG, you had high standards about the kind of campaign we could run. When we wanted to paint you as the toughest sheriff west of the Pecos, you said no. You told us that in Texas, the Attorney General mostly deals with white collar crime and child support, not kicking in doors for hardened criminals.
When I argued you had a better chance of winning as the tough-on-crime guy, you shrugged and said that if you lost, you lost, but you weren’t going to run that kind of campaign. You won anyway. You became the first Republican AG since Reconstruction.
When you ran for the Senate against Dallas Mayor Ron Kirk, who would have been the first African-American Senator from Texas, you vetoed our toughest negative ads. You wanted to win, but on your own terms. As a campaign professional, it was frustrating. But we all respected it.
When Trump rolled out his Mexicans-are-rapists campaign, you called him out in your gentlemanly, measured way: “This idea that all you can do is build some obstacle and people won’t come over it, or go under it, or go through it is naive.” That was the John Cornyn I knew.
Then came the Access Hollywood tape. Many Republicans were calling for Trump to step aside. And you showed the first symptom of the disease that yesterday killed your political career: “Well, you know the problem in presidential elections is you have two choices. The primary process has worked its way forward. I’ll support Mr. Trump.”
The wording is telling. It was the “process” that produced Trump, not the Republican Party of which you were a leader. That framing absolves you of responsibility. And when you say there were two choices, what you’re really saying is that you had no choice.
But of course you did. You could have said no. You could have refused to support a man who bragged about assaulting women and spoke publicly about dating his own daughter. You could have done that as a father, as a husband, as a decent human being. You made a choice.
There’s a reason the first hit of crack is free. Once you suppressed your own moral standards for political gain, once you decided to support a man you wouldn’t have allowed in your home, the compromises came easier. Bear Bryant put it well: “The first time you quit, it’s hard. The second time, it gets easier. The third time, you don’t even have to think about it.”
The transformation from John Cornyn, the respected jurist, to John Cornyn the Trump supplicant was sadly predictable but excruciating. Former Arizona U.S. Senator Jeff Flake said the quiet part out loud. “You look at the positions he took to please the president and the groveling, it was rather painful to watch.”
Flake’s career was the X-ray that showed the cancer consuming John Cornyn and the Republican Party. Flake chose to leave the Senate rather than become what you became, denouncing in his retirement speech “the flagrant disregard of truth and decency” and declaring: “There are times when we must risk our careers in favor of our principles. Now is such a time.”
In January, Jeff Flake and John Cornyn will both be former United States Senators. One stayed true to his principles. The other lost far more than a Senate seat. What is so often overlooked in the Faustian bargain is that Mephistopheles doesn’t only take your soul. He never delivers.
John, it didn’t have to be this way. I’m sorry.
