Just a few hours ago, Ted Cruz, in a result that would have been a shock to everyone almost a year ago, won the Republican runoff for Texas's open Senate seat by a smashing 58-42 margin of Lieutenant Governor David Dewhurst. While we can still hold out hope that Democratic nominee Paul Sadler will stop Cruz in November, Sadler is an underfunded candidate who has gotten little traction thus far. So, for all intents and purposes, Ted Cruz was elected to the United States Senate tonight.
This result will be sliced and diced millions of ways, but there are a few simple takeaways from this result.
The Koch brothers can nominate whomever they want.
Now, this might not have been true in the Presidential primary. Too many people pay too much attention to that nominating process for the Kochs to dominate it completely, and in any case, in a Presidential primary electability is a serious issue. Conservative billionaires in that case know that they cannot nominate just anyone and have them be elected President.
But, in a Senate primary, in what is widely assumed to be a "safe" state for Republicans (how long that will last, no one knows), the Kochs and their cronies can throw their weight around and exercise almost complete control over the nominating process.
And that's the case even in a big state like Texas. David Dewhurst, a multimillionaire who could throw a lot of his own money into the race, was thought to have a big financial advantage, but outside groups threw a whole lot of money Cruz's way. A year ago, Cruz was a complete unknown to most Texans, polling in the single digits in early polls. But then, Cruz became the chosen candidate of the Tea Party. Grassroots conservative bloggers -- taking their marching orders from the people with the money -- latched onto Cruz as part of the nebulous "conservative movement," lashing scathing criticisms of Dewhurst, a man who by almost any standard is a very conservative politician. Outside groups launched scathing ads, tarring Dewhurst as a "moderate" while portraying Cruz as a "true conservative."
So what was Dewhurst's cardinal sin? It wasn't that Dewhurst was actually a moderate. Dewhurst had spent the last decade effectively functioning as Rick Perry's right-hand man in the state Senate, which has hardly been a "moderate" body in that time period. Of course, the Texas state Senate is a body in which, by tradition, you need a two-thirds majority to get anything done, so obviously Dewhurst was going to have to work with some moderate Republicans (and even some Democrats) to get any legislation passed. Still, though, when Dewhurst has presided over a body that has almost never voted to raise taxes or increase spending on, well, anything, you can't really say his Tea Party credentials aren't in order.
No, Dewhurst's real sin is that, had he been elected, he wouldn't be indebted in any way to the Koch brothers and the other shadowy millionaires and billionaires behind the Tea Party movement. Dewhurst, prior to his run for the Senate, was well-known and reasonably popular among Republicans in the state, allowing him to raise large sums of money. And, since Dewhurst has more money than God, he can afford to drop large sums from his own bank account. Furthermore, Dewhurst, at 67, might have been perfectly fine serving one term in the Senate and then calling it a career. Shorter: David Dewhurst answers to David Dewhurst (and, to a lesser extent, the voters of Texas... some of them, anyway.) Yeah, he's a conservative, but he's not a conservative. Cruz's outside backers supported him against Dewhurst because they knew that Dewhurst could not be trusted -- because he doesn't need their help.
But why Cruz, and not one of the other candidates? That's a more difficult question. Also running against Dewhurst in the initial primary were two candidates who started out far better known than Cruz. But Tom Leppert had a prior record as mayor of Dallas that indicated he could not be trusted, and Craig James would have had some difficult -- even in Texas -- winning a general election.