Kenny Boy Paxton as Trump's "real" AG nominee? I doubted it before being proven right

As everybody and their mom knows in the world of politics, Matt Gaetz pulled out and withdrew yesterday. He's reportedly done that before.

He also removed his name from consideration to be President-elect Donald Trump's Attorney General nominee. (I see what I did there!)

Ken Silverstein offers some analysis, as well as some speculation that Trump was playing his version of 11-dimensional chess, per the header. Here's the nutgrafs on that:

From the perspective of Trump and his political advisors, the strategy was to “flood the zone” with cabinet nominees, including some that were near certain cannon fodder, with Gaetz at the top of that list. The administration would be happy in the unlikely event that any of the dregs somehow passed Senate scrutiny, but completely unbothered if they didn’t, the calculation being that the Democratic and a few potential Republican rejectionists wouldn’t block all of his preferred choices even if they were all completely unqualified or unsuitable for the respective positions he’d allotted them for fear of looking intransigent, or they lacked the courage or integrity to go to the mattresses more than once or twice.

Hence, the president’s enemies would be more than satisfied by being able to brag about how they saved the nation from the nightmare scenario of Attorney General Matt Gaetz; meanwhile, Trump might be able to sneak through a replacement nominee who was just as bad or worse, and had been held in reserve for that reason rather than being nominated first. For example, one of the sources cited the possibility of Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton as a possible substitute for Gaetz, but I’m pretty sure he was joking.

Sorry, but not buying it, from here in Tex-ass, to expand on my retweet of Ken Thursday. Note; It's not Ken, but a source of his saying that. Nonetheless, Ken, pass it back up the line. And, I'm leaving that just as I wrote it, because less than 24 hours after Gaetz had AG interruptus, Trump pivoted to Pam Bondi.

Yes, Kenny Boy is one of Trump's biggest suck-ups and ass-kissers here.

But, there's the question of whether he really wants to leave Tex-ass or not. There's many reasons he might not want to.

One is to continue on his revenge tour against Texas House Republicans who voted to impeach him last year. I don't think this is a big deal, but it could be a small one.

Second is to build on the revenge tour against the old Court of Criminal Appeals and actively work on trying to reshape it with its trio of new judges. This might be something.

That said, even as I updated this Thursday evening to include the Pam Bondi info, I saw on Twitter that Kenny Boy was on Steve Bannon's show. He certainly indicated interest when Bannon said that he heard Paxton was being shortlisted. OTOH, he certainly wouldn't just feign interest.

Third? That's 2026.

Big John (Cornyn) lost his bid to be Senate Majority Leader, and he's up for re-election then. He'll only be 74, a practical child still in the gerontocracy of today's Senate. As of the start of the current Congress, per Pew in 2023, before Feinstein kicked the bucket, there were four Senators over age 80 and 30 in Cornyn's 70-79 age bracket, with him being at the younger end of that at 71. But, Thune is nearly a decade younger, and the GOP doesn't term-limit the majority leader, unlike the majority whip. Unless Thune is a fuck-up, or decides HE wants an early retirement, Cornyn isn't getting the brass ring.

Will that be enough for him to want to step down?

Or, even though by some voting metrics, he's become more wingnut than Havana Ted, will he face pressure from the far right to step down?

If so? Would Gov. Strangeabbott want the seat? Or would he want to run for re-election to break Tricky Ricky Perry's gubernatorial tenure length?

In either case, Dannie Goeb as Lite Guv is two years older than Big John. Even if Cornyn doesn't step aside, Goeb might. 

(If Strangeabbott ran for Senate, there's no way Goeb is running for guv; that would be like a cockroach coming out in the light and wanting to stay there and be visible. That said, if Paxton ran for guv, Patrick might want to return to office for one more term, to be a mentor, a shield, and a "break glass in case of emergency" guy.)

So, it's possible that Kenny Boy would have one, or two, options on moving up in two years. Or he might hope that Trump appoints him, not to the federal bench at the district level, but the Fifth Circuit.

Beyond that, with Trump's transactional personality, why would he really be looking at Paxton in the first place? His suck-ups aside, Paxton is nowhere close to Trump's inner circle. Did you see him get featured at the RNC? No. Bondi, OTOH? A no-brainer. And, per the above, what sort of Trump circle is Bannon in these days?

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Side note: Contra Ken, I don't think Gaetz's payoff is going to Fox. OANN or Newsmax? Possibly.

Side note 2: With Kelly Loeffler at Ag instead of Sid Miller, it looks like Texans have been shut out, other than the recycled John Ratcliffe. Maybe Trump thinks they're such ass-kissers, so subservient, that they don't need to be placated.