The WSJ, which had devoted considerable ink to attacking Paxton and advocating his removal from office, proved to be a sore loser, accusing Patrick and the Texas Senate of corruption, without citing any evidence.

“It’s now obvious the fix was in from the start,” the WSJ opined, eliciting a blistering rebuttal from Patrick, who pointed out the obvious: The House’s impeachment case against Paxton was slipshod and full of holes. Paxton’s superb lawyers methodically tore the meritless case to shreds.

For decades, Texas has been a Republican state, and both houses of the Texas legislature are majority Republican. All of the players (Paxton, Patrick, and impeachment proponent House Speaker Dade Phelan) are technically on the same team — the GOP. Why, then, would one faction of the GOP commence an ill-conceived campaign of political lawfare against a popular statewide elected official who was just reelected with more than 4 million votes and enjoyed the unwavering support of the Texas Republican Party?

The schism results from a struggle for control, between the state’s conservatives (who view Paxton as their champion) and “establishment” Republicans who despise the grassroots. As I wrote in 2017, “Intra-party grudges can be even more rancorous [than partisan disputes], especially in a one-party state.”

The establishment represents the interests of the state’s dynamic business community, which —thanks to GOP policies — has become a powerful juggernaut in Texas. Due to the leadership of Texans for Lawsuit Reform, a well-funded statewide group founded in the 1990s when the state’s legal system was hijacked by the plaintiffs’ bar and Texas earned the unsavory moniker “lawsuit capital of the world.”