Rep. Steve Stockman’s moment as a viable Senate candidate lasted exactly 13 hours, 47 minutes.
At 7 p.m. Monday, the far-right Stockman, R-Toxicity, announced via the right-wing website WND that he would challenge incumbent John Cornyn in the Texas Republican Senate primary. And for a brief period, it appeared that Stockman could pose a credible threat; his decision was immediately praised by the Tea Party Patriots and the Senate Conservatives Fund, founded by the Heritage Foundation’s Jim DeMint.
But then something unexpected happened: Sanity prevailed.
The Club for Growth, which started the trend of conservative primary challenges to incumbent Republicans, issued a statement just before 9 a.m. Tuesday saying that it was not on board with Stockman, the flamboyant lawmaker who distributed articles of impeachment against President Obama this fall and who tweets messages such as “Obamacare is less popular than chlamydia.”
“While Congressman Stockman has a pro-economic growth record, so does Senator Cornyn, as witnessed by his 87 percent lifetime Club for Growth score,” the group said, adding that “we do not expect to be involved in the Texas Senate race.”
Matt Lewis, a highly regarded conservative writer with The Daily Caller, pronounced Stockman doomed. Conservatives were “in danger of throwing some babies out with the bath water,” Lewis said, and he praised the Club for Growth’s restraint in Texas as “leadership by example.”