Poor John Cornyn. Bet he’s really glad his seat’s safe until 2014.
The Republican Junior Senator for Texas turns up at the conservative-friendly Tea Party on the steps of the Capitol on the Fourth of July and gets booed as a “traitor” (possibly because he let the cat out of the bag that the whole deal was organized by Americans for Prosperity, an astroturf outfit funded in part by billionaire anti-regulation maven David Koch). But, frankly, what did he expect?
Cornyn was basically reaping the whirlwind of of anti-Washington rhetoric in which the Republican Party has indulged – as has Cornyn himself. (On energy policy, “Senator Cornyn believes Washington should get out of the way”; On schools, “Should Washington bureaucrats control public education, or individual states?”; And on health care, “My constituents in Texas don’t want elites here in Washington to make decisions for them.”) All of which would be fine if Cornyn wasn’t a globe-trotting lawyer-turned-career Washinton politician.
But Cornyn is increasingly finding himself in a difficult position and in search of support.
Last week, he sat down with the Mexican American Legislative Caucus (see this week’s issue for more on that). They were all in Austin for the legislative special session, while Cornyn just dropped by to discuss, well, why no U.S. senator had met with the biggest group of Hispanic lawmakers in the House in the 20 years that it has existed. For that, Cornyn did a mea culpa and said he should have been there a lot earlier.
Rep. Renee Oliveira, D-Brownsville, took him to task for letting the radical right dominate the immigration discussion, and it was mea culpa time again. “I’m blaming myself for not doing a better job of reaching out to my constituents,” said Cornyn, who also called the rhetoric of Lou Dobbs and Bill O’Reilly “out of line [and] unacceptable.”
However, there’ll probably be some consequences back in DC when his fellow lawmakers hear that he said “I hate the idea that someone from Vermont or Kansas or Delaware is writing immigration law.” According to the U.S. Census bureau, in 2000 the foreign-born population in all three states ran around 5% (not including illegal and undocumented immigrants). Since Vermont is also a border state, and Delaware is a coastal state with a deepwater port, the explanation of why exactly those states shouldn’t have a voice in foreign policy could be enthralling.
There’s equally little succor to be found in the anti-immigration/anti-immigrant community. Big-bucks think tank Numbers USA has recently lambasted him as “especially disheartening [and] a constantly frustrating figure” who only gets a tepid thumbs-up from this group because “the citizens of Texas pound him before every vote and generally get him to do the right thing.”
This article appears in July 3 • 2009.
