The Texas Republican infighting mimics the party’s national dispute, which has pitted traditional conservatives against Trump allies — and has largely gone Trump’s way so far. Paxton is perhaps the most powerful Trump surrogate in Texas. He’s an evangelical champion of anti-immigrant, antiabortion, anti-transgender and so-called election integrity legislation revered by his party for his legal battles against the Biden administration. Paxton spoke at Trump’s “Stop the Steal” rally in Washington on Jan. 6, 2021, ahead of the insurrection.......

Paxton has castigated Republicans who voted to impeach him as being in “lockstep” with the Biden administration, abortion providers and gun-control advocates. While taken up by his supporters, the accusation underscores how much of the dispute is about power, not policy — many of those same Republicans helped pass an abortion law that effectively outlawed most instances of the procedure before the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last year, as well as bills banning critical race theory and allowing Texans to carry guns without permits.....

Jason Villalba, Dallas-based chairman of the Texas Hispanic Policy Foundation and a former Republican state lawmaker, is among a minority who believe the impeachment fight could lead Texas Republicans to reject Trump’s election falsehoods and back away from battles to limit access to abortion and LGBTQ+ rights that contributed to their midterm election losses nationwide in 2022.....

Joel Montfort, a Democratic consultant based in North Texas, sees Paxton’s impeachment trial as a chance for Texas Democrats like U.S. Rep. Colin Allred, who’s challenging Sen. Ted Cruz (R) next year, to “present themselves as a moderate alternative.”

“The Republican Party is in a lot of disarray. You’ve got the extreme wing of it working feverishly to try to take it over, and they’ve had a lot of success to the frustration of us Democrats,” Montfort said. " … There is definitely an opportunity for Texas Democrats to benefit from what the GOP is doing to itself. They are eating themselves alive.”