AUSTIN— Just because somany Texas Republicans are not jumping off President Donald Trump's sinking ship, it doesn't mean they are going down with it.
An argument could be made that just the opposite will happen, at least in the near term.
U.S. Sen. John Cornyn made national headlines just after the electoral college voted on Monday when he came out and said Joe Biden was the president-elect. Acknowledging the obvious doesn't usually attract the spotlight, but it did this time because Cornyn was so much of an outlier among his fellow Texas Republicans.
Gov. Greg Abbott didn't acknowledged Biden's victory over Trump. Neither didSen. Ted, Cruz, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, Attorney General Ken Paxton or most Republican Texas Congress members.
And that could be, with the exception of Cruz, because all of them will have to face GOP primary voters next year if they want to keep their jobs. And even though Trumpis heading out the door, plenty of smart money says he'll remain on the political stage– one way or the other– for the foreseeable future.
More:Texas US Sen. John Cornyn on Democrat Joe Biden: 'He's the president-elect'
And that might explain why TexasRepublicans are loathe to cross him.
Let's look at Cruz as something of a case study. Recall that in 2016, he and Trump were rivals for the Republican presidential nomination. In fact, the Texan was the last candidate in the crowded field to fall in what turned out to be a bitter and highly personal contest.
No need for a full blow-by-blow replay here, but the highlight reel would include quotes like "Lyin' Ted" and "Donald, you're a sniveling coward."
And when Cruz declined to endorse Trump at the 2016 Republican National Convention, the delegatessmacked back with a chorus of boos that the nominee exploited in real time and in post-convention media interviews.
"Wow, Ted Cruz got booed off the stage," Trump said on Twitter. Later, on NBC's Meet the Press, he said the Texan's speech“may have ruined his political career” and floated the notion that he'd form a political action committee to take down Cruz's re-election effort in the 2018 Texas Republican Primary.
Cruz got the message, and finally made nice with the man who went on to defeat Hillary Clinton for the presidency.
And as a result, there was no Trump-backed primary against Cruz. And the president even came to Texas late in the 2018 campaign to help his one-time rival fend off a well-financed challenge from Democrat Beto O'Rourke.
Cruz has stuck with Trump for the most part since the election, even offering to make a case against the election results before the U.S. Supreme Court in a Texas case the justices declined to hear. More recently, however, he has reportedly told supporters the outlook for Trump's future in the White House was looking increasing bleak.
Tyler Norris, who has worked on several Republican campaigns in Texas over the past decade, said Trump’s influence over rank-and-file GOP voters “is not going away” any time soon. And neither is their belief that shenanigans were at work in the 2020 election cycle, he added.
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"If you're running for re-election in 2022 or if you want to run for higher office, the Republican primary voters don't wantyou to give up on thepresident,” Norris said. “GOP voters' anger over the 2020 election is still red hot, and any lawmaker wanting to look to the future should have plenty to say about election integrityand fixing our broken elections system."
Bill Miller, a longtime Austininsider, predicted that cries of "election fraud" will soon wear thin and that Republican politicians who insist on repeating them will one day come to regret it.
"That's sort of a cool thing to say among Republican circles," said Miller. "In truth, it's foolish and it sounds just like the Democrats did four years ago -- Trump didn't win; there was collusion with Russia.
"I don't think it's smart politics," he added. "I'm not going to give it that much credit."
Not all Texas Republicans are playing along. In recent days several congress members, including Austin's Michael McCaul and Dan Crenshaw of Houston answered with a terse "yes" when asked ifBiden had won.
Freshman U.S. Rep. Van Taylor, a Plano Republican, was much more forthcoming.
“Our Constitution defines the process for electing the President,” Taylor said in a statement Dec 14. “Today, the Electoral College voted and on January 20th, President-elect Joe Biden will be sworn in as the 46th President of the United States."
More:Texas electors formally put the state in Trump's column even as Biden won nationally
That's the right answer, said Miller, politically and otherwise.
"The election has occurred. It's been certified and it's over," he said. "And it's time to move on."
John C. Moritz covers Texas government and politics for the USA Today Network in Austin. Contact him at jmoritz@gannett.comand follow him on Twitter@JohnnieMo.
