The Lone Star shame

by Steve Schmidt - May 27



The booking sheet from the Collin County Jail of indicted Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, now the Republican Party nominee for the state

Texas once produced giants.

It produced Sam Houston, who resisted secession and warned that disunion would bring catastrophe to the country he loved. Houston sacrificed power rather than betray principle. That’s what courage looks like in public life.

It produced Audie Murphy, the most decorated American combat soldier of the Second World War, a man who fought fascism on battlefields, while today’s political charlatans cosplay patriotism beneath arena lights.

It produced Barbara Jordan, one of the greatest constitutional voices in American history, who spoke about liberty, law and duty with a reverence and seriousness now almost absent from American politics.

It produced Lyndon B. Johnson, a flawed but towering figure, who nevertheless bent the machinery of government toward the cause of civil rights and human dignity.

Texas once revered sacrifice more than grievance, duty more than spectacle and character more than performance.

Now comes Ken Paxton.

The most corrupt individual appearing on an American ballot in 2026 is Ken Paxton, which is an extraordinary achievement in an era overflowing with crooks, fanatics, liars, degenerates and cowards. He is a Texas-sized embarrassment preparing to become a national stain.

Paxton isn’t merely a disgraceful politician. He’s a moral sewer wrapped in sanctimony. A Christian nationalist hypocrite being divorced by his wife on “biblical grounds.” A lawless election denier. An insurrectionist. A man so ethically malformed that he’s become the embodiment of the collapse of integrity as a value and duty as a concept.

Audie Murphy he is not.

The contrast matters because Texas was once associated with largeness of spirit, not pettiness. Strength, not cruelty. Seriousness, not performative outrage. It was a place that produced builders, warriors, statesmen and patriots.

Now it risks becoming the proving ground for something far darker.

Paxton is a clown in cowboy boots leading a movement that venerates vandalism and celebrates insanity.

His supporters don’t recoil from corruption. They thrill to it. They see the indictments, the scandals, the grotesque abuses of office and the endless ethical sewage surrounding the man, and instead of shame they feel excitement. Their enthusiasm deepens as the degradation worsens.

This is one of the defining pathologies of Trump-era America: corruption is no longer disqualifying. It’s the attraction.

The theft becomes proof of strength.

The indecency becomes proof of authenticity.

The vulgarity becomes proof of dominance.

This is how republics die.

Paxton believes the people of Texas are fools — and he may be right — because a healthy civic culture would reject him instantly and permanently. A functioning democracy would treat him as a cautionary tale. A warning to children about what happens when ambition devours conscience.

Instead, he rises.

Every speech ever given about character — from the ancients to the founders to the sermons delivered in dusty Texas churches across generations — was about men like Ken Paxton, and what not to become.

He represents the death of shame in public life.

He sought to overturn the will of the American people after the 2020 election. His lawlessness and extremism would have ended any political career in a functioning democracy. Instead, in today’s Republican Party, they are credentials.

That’s because the party no longer values virtue. It values obedience to the cult.

In this degraded environment, Paxton’s obvious unfitness barely registers. His fanaticism, instability and recklessness are now viewed as strengths inside MAGA politics. He’s a dangerous and unfit untreated psychiatric patient whose unfitness makes Lindsey Graham look like Aristotle.

And now Texas faces a moral test.

Not a partisan test.

Not an ideological test.

A moral test.

What kind of people reward a man like this?

What kind of society elevates a figure so drenched in corruption and deceit into higher office?

What does it say about a state if it embraces him willingly, proudly and enthusiastically?

The people of Texas are about to tell the country something important about themselves.

An election isn’t merely a mechanism for selecting leaders. It’s a collective character test. A civic mirror. It reveals what a people admire, tolerate and excuse.

There can be no embrace of Ken Paxton without a personal admission of a character defect. Support for him requires the abandonment of civic responsibility and patriotic duty. It’s impossible to separate the man from the rot surrounding him.

It’s grotesque.

Texas now stands before the country confronting an enormous question: will it reject the politics of corruption, fanaticism and moral rot?

Or will it become America’s rottenest state in a decaying country collapsing under the weight of an ethical cancer consuming decency, democracy and liberty?

What a test in Texas.

The outcome will tell us something profound about the Lone Star State — and about the fate of the American republic itself.