Dan Crenshaw, the eye-patch-wearing Navy SEAL who spent four terms in Congress trying to convince us he was on our side, just got obliterated in his own Republican primary by 18 points. Texas state Rep. Steve Toth didn’t just beat him. Toth made him look like a Democrat running in the wrong district.
Whoa! Eighteen points! That’s not a loss. That’s a restraining order from the voters.
Crenshaw was the only Republican House member in all of Texas who didn’t have Donald Trump’s endorsement. Let that sink in. Every other Texas Republican had Trump’s backing. Crenshaw was the one guy standing alone in the corner of the party wondering why nobody wanted to dance with him. Maybe it was the Ukraine funding. Maybe it was the public brawls with Tucker Carlson. Maybe it was telling the base that the 2020 election was totally on the level while we all watched it get stolen on live television.
Whatever it was, the voters of TX-02 figured it out a lot faster than the D.C. consultant class.
Crenshaw had a massive war chest and a national media profile that most backbench congressmen would kill for. Remember when he was on SNL? When the cable news shows couldn’t get enough of the one-eyed veteran who was going to be the “future of the Republican Party”? That was the establishment’s version of the future. The actual future just showed up and it’s named Steve Toth.
Toth ran as the unapologetic MAGA candidate and picked up a late endorsement from Ted Cruz, which tells you everything about which way the wind is blowing in Texas GOP politics. When Ted Cruz — a man whose political survival instincts are basically cockroach-level (we mean that as a compliment) — jumps on the Toth train, the smart money follows.
Crenshaw’s sin wasn’t that he had a moderate vote here or there. Every congressman does. His sin was that he picked fights with the base. He went on podcasts and lectured MAGA voters about why we were wrong about the 2020 election. He voted to send another $60 billion to Ukraine while telling his constituents that border security was his top priority. He called people who disagreed with him conspiracy theorists. And then he was shocked — shocked! — when those same people decided they’d rather vote for someone who actually listens to them.
You know who else was shocked? Eric Cantor.
Here’s where this gets interesting, and every Republican in a safe red district should be paying very close attention. Cantor was the House Majority Leader — the second most powerful Republican in America — when he lost his Virginia primary in 2014 by 11 points to a guy named Dave Brat that nobody had ever heard of. Cantor outspent Brat by a factor of 26-to-1 and still got smoked. “How did this happen?” wailed the Beltway crowd. “We had all the money!”
Yeah, funny thing about money. It doesn’t vote.
Within four years of Cantor’s loss, the entire Republican establishment had been turned upside down and Donald Trump was president. That’s how fast these dominoes fall. Cantor’s 11-point loss was the earthquake. Trump was the tsunami. Crenshaw just lost by 18 — seven points worse than Cantor. So what’s the tsunami this time?
Start counting. There are roughly a dozen House Republicans right now who voted for Ukraine aid, don’t have Trump’s endorsement, and sit in districts Trump won by double digits. Those members just watched Crenshaw — a decorated war hero with millions in the bank and a Fox News Rolodex — get run out of his own district by a state legislator. You think they’re sleeping well tonight? (“Hey Congressman, your primary opponent just called. He says thanks for the motivation!”)
And it’s not just the congressmen who should be nervous. The defense industry PACs and K Street lobbyists who bankrolled Crenshaw’s career just got a very expensive lesson. They poured money into a “safe” incumbent and got an 18-point loss in return. That’s not a bad investment. That’s lighting your money on fire in front of your shareholders. Mark my words — PAC spending on incumbent protection in Republican primaries is about to crater. Why would a defense contractor write a $50,000 check to protect a congressman when the voters are going to incinerate him anyway? That money bought absolutely nothing.
Meanwhile, just down the road in TX-23, Tony Gonzales is headed to a runoff against Brandon Herrera — a rematch from 2024 when Gonzales barely survived. Gonzales has been picking the same fights Crenshaw picked. He voted for gun control. He voted for Ukraine funding. He called his own voters “scumbags.” (Really, Tony? That’s your reelection pitch?) With the Crenshaw scalp still fresh, Herrera has all the momentum heading into that runoff.
The GOP establishment spent a decade telling us that candidates like Crenshaw were “electable” and that MAGA candidates were “risky.” We just watched the “electable” candidate lose by 18 points to the “risky” one.
The only risk, it turns out, was ignoring the voters.