{"id":5733,"date":"2026-09-04T23:09:55","date_gmt":"2026-09-04T23:09:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/interstatelogisticshubs.com\/?p=5733"},"modified":"2026-09-04T23:09:55","modified_gmt":"2026-09-04T23:09:55","slug":"how-washingtons-losers-cash-out","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/interstatelogisticshubs.com\/?p=5733","title":{"rendered":"How Washington\u2019s losers cash out"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Texas Republicans spent close to a hundred million dollars this spring settling an argument inside their own party, and the bill has not stopped growing.\u00a0\u00a0;In May, GOP primary voters fired one of their own \u2014 a four-term senator with a reliably conservative record \u2014 and replaced him with a nominee carrying more attitude and more baggage.\u00a0\u00a0;Three months later, a Senate seat that should have been the easiest hold in the country looks like a coin flip.<\/p>

Read more Migrants in Ceuta catch an infant dolphin and beat it to death\u2014because it\u2019s fun for them<\/a><\/p>\n

The Purge<\/h1>\n

John Cornyn had represented Texas in the Senate since 2002.\u00a0\u00a0;On May 26, Attorney General Ken Paxton beat him in the Republican runoff by nearly twenty-eight points, 63.8 percent to 36.2 percent, making Cornyn the first sitting Texas senator to lose renomination since 1970.\u00a0\u00a0;Close to a hundred million dollars poured into the race, most of it spent defending his seat.\u00a0\u00a0;It bought him nothing.<\/p>\n

Afterward, Cornyn told interviewers that sidelined Republicans still \u201chave cards to play\u201d \u2014 sharp talk, but well within the normal bruising of Washington score-settling.<\/p>\n

Paxton, it turns out, does not have the easy autumn he expected.\u00a0\u00a0;As of late August, independent polling from Emerson College\/Nexstar, the University of Texas\/Texas Politics Project, Texas Southern University, and a YouGov\/254 Labs survey all place the race inside or near the margin of error, with Democrat nominee James Talarico leading in three of the four.\u00a0\u00a0;None of this guarantees a Democrat pickup in a state Donald Trump carried by nearly fourteen points in 2024.\u00a0\u00a0;But it is not the romp the party thought it was buying when it traded seniority for certitude.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Confession<\/h1>\n

John Bolton left no such room for interpretation.\u00a0\u00a0;He built a second career \u2014 a bestselling memoir, a busy speaking circuit, cable panels he once distrusted from the inside \u2014 out of his two years as Trump\u2019s national security adviser.\u00a0\u00a0;On June 26, in federal court in Greenbelt, Maryland, that career collided with the law.\u00a0\u00a0;Bolton pleaded guilty to one felony count of illegally retaining national defense information, resolving an eighteen-count indictment over material he transmitted and retained, including more than a thousand diary-like messages sent to his wife and daughter while researching his memoir.<\/p>\n

Prosecutors will not seek more than five years in prison.\u00a0\u00a0;Bolton agreed to a $2.25-million fine, forfeiture of his federal pension, and a hundred hours of community service.\u00a0\u00a0;\u201cI am, and I\u2019m sorry for it,\u201d he told the judge.\u00a0\u00a0;He is seventy-seven.\u00a0\u00a0;Sentencing is set for October 28.<\/span><\/p>

Read more Unbearable progressive lunacy<\/a><\/p>\n

Why This One Is Different<\/h1>\n

It is worth being precise here.\u00a0\u00a0;The cases against former FBI director James Comey and New York attorney general Letitia James were dismissed last November after a judge found the prosecutor who brought them unlawfully appointed \u2014 a ruling the Justice Department is still appealing, so neither case is closed, only frozen.\u00a0\u00a0;Bolton\u2019s case did not stumble on a technicality.\u00a0\u00a0;He stood up and admitted what he did.<\/p>\n

What They Owed<\/h1>\n

None of these men built his career alone.\u00a0\u00a0;Cornyn was elected by Texas voters for nearly a quarter-century; Bolton was appointed, twice, by presidents who handed him the country\u2019s most closely guarded secrets.\u00a0\u00a0;Mark Esper, the former defense secretary who monetized his own four years at the Pentagon into a memoir and a cable news seat the moment he left, fits the same pattern, without Bolton\u2019s legal exposure.\u00a0\u00a0;Each owed something back \u2014 not blind loyalty, but a basic gratitude that should outlast the job.\u00a0\u00a0;What tends to happen instead is that the gratitude evaporates the moment the office ends, and the access gets repackaged as personal property, priced for the highest bidder in attention.<\/p>\n

The Line<\/h1>\n

Not every departing official who criticizes a former boss is doing something wrong.\u00a0\u00a0;Genuine whistleblowing, aimed at real wrongdoing and willing to absorb real cost, remains one of democracy\u2019s more important safety valves.\u00a0\u00a0;The test is whether the criticism rests on verifiable fact and public purpose, or on wounded pride and a payday.\u00a0\u00a0;Cornyn\u2019s post-defeat interviews read like the former.\u00a0\u00a0;Bolton\u2019s diaries, shared with unauthorized readers to help sell a book, read like the latter \u2014 and a federal court has now agreed.<\/p>\n

There is another way to leave.\u00a0\u00a0;Plenty of former officials absorb a defeat, go quiet, and let a long record speak for itself instead of narrating it into a grievance tour.\u00a0\u00a0;It is the less profitable path \u2014 no book advance, no viral clip \u2014 but the only one that keeps a reputation intact on the way out.<\/span><\/p>\n

Cornyn\u2019s cost so far is reputational, and still recoverable.\u00a0\u00a0;Bolton\u2019s is a felony conviction, a forfeited pension, and an October court date that could still include prison time.\u00a0\u00a0;And the Texas Republicans who paid a hundred million dollars to replace an institutionalist with a purist now get to find out, over the next ten weeks, whether the trade was worth it.<\/span><\/p>

Read more Secretary of War Hegseth continues to take a beating from the legacy media<\/a><\/p>\n

\n

\"<p><em>Image:<\/figure>\n<\/span><\/p>\n

Image: John Cornyn.\u00a0\u00a0Credit: Gage Skidmore via Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Texas Republicans spent close to a hundred million dollars this spring settling an argument inside their own party, and the bill has not stopped growing.\u00a0\u00a0;In May, GOP primary voters fired one of their own \u2014 a four-term senator with a reliably conservative record \u2014 and replaced him with a nominee carrying more attitude and more […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5731,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,813],"tags":[2250],"class_list":["post-5733","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics","category-texas","tag-related-topics-texas-james-talarico-john-cornyn-john-bolton"],"yoast_head":"\nHow Washington\u2019s losers cash out - Interstate Logistics Hub<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/interstatelogisticshubs.com\/?p=5733\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"How Washington\u2019s losers cash out - 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