These Texas GOP voices are worth elevating over Cruz, Paxton, other election deniers

It’s been a rough week.

In truth, it’s been a rough year — a pandemic, economic strain, racial tensions, a contentious election, political unrest and conspiracy theories stoked by a handful of irresponsible leaders, some of them Texans, have culminated in a horrific assault on our democracy.

It’s a lot to take in, and it makes looking forward with hope difficult, particularly for conservatives and especially as we consider the role our public leaders have played in this crisis.

Much attention has been focused on how the rhetoric of Texas politicians Sen. Ted Cruz, Attorney General Ken Paxton and Rep. Louie Gohmert — all of whom have questioned the election results in various ways — arguably contributed to Wednesday’s violence.

There will be plenty of opportunity to deconstruct all that.

But good leaders do exist, even in Texas, and their words and actions need to be elevated, perhaps more often than the bad ones.

So here are a few conservative Texas leaders whose words deserve your consideration.

Rep. Chip Roy of Austin once served as Cruz’s chief of staff and, as a member of the Freedom Caucus, isn’t known for being a moderate. But he vocally opposed efforts to reject certification of the election.

On Sunday, he introduced a measure objecting to the swearing in of his colleagues in the six states where President Donald Trump and his allies questioned the presidential election results (Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin), in an effort to undercut their arguments.

“It would confound reason if the presidential results of these states were to face objection while the congressional results of the same process escaped public scrutiny,” he tweeted.

It was a Cruz-like move, drama without substance, but one worthy of praise.

Texas’ senior senator deserves credit, too.

While John Cornyn has supported Trump’s legal right to challenge the election results, as any politically savvy lawyer would, he has also insisted that such efforts require evidence instead of conspiracies.

In a lengthy explanation of his decision to not object to the election certification, Cornyn reiterated that challenging the election demands more than “unproven allegations.” He rejected Cruz’s call for a federal audit of the state elections in question.

Cornyn’s announcement earned him a public gibe from Trump, who tagged him in a tweet as part of the “ineffective RINO” section of the party.

While extremists within the party might seize the opportunity to attack Cornyn, he should wear the charge like a badge of honor. Because while he may not garner as many headlines as others, he’s one of the more powerful senators, and ineffective is not a word to describe him.

Some of the sharpest and smartest intra-party criticism of Trump has come from just-retired Rep. Will Hurd, who has never shied away from holding the president to account.

Even before the crowds gathered in Washington to storm the Capitol, the San Antonio Republican warned that public officials “continuing to sow doubt amongst the public for petty political gain” is a dangerous game that makes the U.S. weak and vulnerable in the international arena. As a former CIA agent, he should know.

Hurd encouraged his former colleagues to stop demanding futile recounts and focus on combating the political left’s agenda. Doing so will be paramount to the GOP’s success after its recent losses in Georgia.

The GOP will face a reckoning in the post-Trump era, but it still has leaders in Texas who are worth following.

We should all begin paying more attention to what they have to say.