Can someone explain to me what the unholy Texas gym sock hell is going on with Ken Paxton

To all of my Texas readers: I have a request. An urgent plea, even. I really, really need someone on the ground who can explain What The Hell Is A Ken Paxton, because for the life of me I haven't been able to parse out how a man with the charisma of a wet gym sock and an obvious penchant for both corruption and general sleaze managed to get himself elected to anything, much less the attorney generalship of a not entirely insane state.

It's not that Paxton is kinda-sorta a crook of the sort that is now commonplace in the Trump Republican Party. For years now the man has seemingly been attempting to achieve some sort of corruption shoot-the-moon, ticking through every type of petty sleaze from pen stealing to whatever the hell this is:

As fireworks exploded over the Burj Khalifa skyscraper to welcome 2025, Paxton and his girlfriend Tracy Duhon watched from a luxury high-rise balcony full of people, according to a video of the gathering viewed by The Wall Street Journal, details of which were contained in court filings and confirmed by people familiar with the matter.

Why is the sitting attorney general of Texas at a New Years party watching fireworks pop off at the Burj Khalifa, in Dubai, and why was the married Paxton there with a "girlfriend," and what sort of party was this where the Texas attorney general could show up with his Adultery Side Piece and nobody at the party or in the know thought any of this was unusual enough to mention until now.

Among those at the event with Texas’ top law-enforcement official were two Americans who had been indicted months before on federal healthcare-fraud charges but failed to return to the U.S., Anosh Ahmed and Sameer Suhail, according to the court records and people familiar with the matter. Ahmed, a healthcare executive, had donated $190,000 to Paxton, campaign-finance records show, including $25,000 days after he was indicted.

Oh, okay, it was that kind of party. Just the Texas attorney general and his girlfriend sharing some quality time with a couple of indicted fugitives, one of whom had spent more money on Paxton than the Texas attorney general's government salary. Just a fancypants luxury party in Dubai where everyone can talk about their latest indictments for bilking the U.S. government out of hundreds of millions for fake Covid-19 tests.

And there's video of this, because of course if you're gonna have a party of rich connected indicted people you're gonna want video.

As a side point, I've seen enough video of skyscrapers in other countries to wonder whether "what if we lit things on fire from every balcony in this sucker" was really a good idea—but what do I know. I can't imagine a construction industry reliant on slave labor gives a particular damn about fire codes, though.

Paxton, 63 years old, has long been a survivor of controversy, and Trump’s allies maintain the MAGA faithful will power him to a win in the Nov. 3 election.

Wow, yeah, he sure has been a "survivor of controversy." The man managed to hold off his trial for securities fraud for ten damn years before striking a plea deal and paying a $300k fine about nine months before this video was shot. And yes, while being the sitting Texas attorney general. He was also so crooked that his own top aides whistleblew on his crookedness back in 2020, and the only result of that was that Paxton fired all the whistleblowers (and eventually cost Texas taxpayers $6.6 million when the whistleblowers sued over it.)

The man has been a national stain for at least ten damn years, and the only price he's paid for any of it is a $300,000 fine that some other indicted fraudster probably reimbursed him for!

And, despite Ken Paxton being Ken Paxton, an unwashed gym sock with anger issues, multiple crimes under his belt, a pleased-as-punch serial adulterer in a state and party that supposedly has a lot of things to say about morality and Bible-talkin', somehow he has remained attorney general.

Nobody has ever been able to explain to me what Texas Republicans see in the guy that makes him immune to consequences. I mean, I get it partly. I get that there's a broad Republican base that thinks it's funny to do crimes. I get that the car dealer and other petty bourgeois segments of that base think that it's their God-given right to scam people and do weekend adulteries, but ... I mean, come on.

Look at this guy. Listen to him talk. He's a leathery bag of cringe. Even if Donald Trump, the king of all leathery bags of cringe, endorsed him, how did the Texas base settle on this lifelong omnicrook as being Senate material. Was it a dare? A bet gone wrong?

"Oh yes, I definitely think the spirit of Texas is best exemplified by the adulterous bribe-taking security fraudster who parties in Dubai with his side piece and fugitive patron indicted for defrauding the U.S. government. That John Cornyn guy is a piece of crap, I bet he never did a Dubai adultery run in his life."

There are people in Texas—a majority of Texas Republicans, in fact—who genuinely think like that, and I am begging anyone in politics to give me a non-ridiculous explanation for it.

To be clear, I'm not trying to pick on Texas here. It's just that Texas is the latest example of this phenomenon where the more transparently crooked the Republican candidate is, the more the petty aristocrats of the party devote themselves to propping that cringe-troll up. And while I understand, I promise you I really do understand the lesson of "humanity is inherently evil and will do piece-of-crap things at every opportunity if left unsupervised" I still remain deeply confused as to how this guy won any election for anything.

Hang on, let's look at this again.

Effing Dubai, man. The man who's finally ditching his America's Crookedest Attorney General gig because he thinks he's Senate material is jetsetting to luxury parties in Dubai with a "girlfriend" and two people indicted for fraud, supposedly one of the things an attorney general is supposed to give a crap about and which a campaigning Senate candidate is definitely supposed to at least pretend to give a crap about.

So far, I've been able to scrounge up exactly zero Prominent Republicans who think this is a bad look for Paxton—and in fairness, why would they, if you're already supporting the guy even after knowing the last ten years worth of scandals you're not going to suddenly recoil in shock at the Dubai Adultery Fugitive New Year Bash.

Instead, Republicans have slapped back with a hoax theory supposing that when Democratic opponent James Talarico was out with the flu earlier this month (Talerico had to prove it, because that's our lives now) it was actually evidence he was in Ohio and, therefore, having some sort of mental breakdown.

Because of the two possibilities, Republicans think that being depressed in Ohio would be far more scandalous than attending the Crimeguy Adultry Party in Dubai, I guess. And because somebody being laid flat by the flu in this glorious year of the Donald Trump Everyone Gets Explosive Diarrhea Travelin' Tour didn't sound plausible to them.

Meanwhile, of course, we continue to have JD Vance and other surrogates insisting that this election isn't about whether Paxton is a felonious manslut, it's a last-ditch effort to save the state and country from a conspiracy to trans the youngfolk. Or something, I can't even parse it out. Nobody has ever been as obsessed with children's underwear as Trump era Republicans are. The people who make children's underwear don't think about children's underwear as much as JD Vance does.

So here's my question, for those of you who either grew up in Texas or live there now: What does this Paxton guy have that makes his Texas Republican voters willing to forgive ten damn years worth of the silliest, stupidest, most gym sock-ish scandals ever? What is with this creep?