Last weekend, the Texas Republican Party voted to punish one of its own party.

Tony Gonzales, a two-time San Antonio congressman, was censured for supporting, among other things, a modest gun safety bill after 19 children and two teachers were slaughtered at an elementary school in Uvalde.

The day after the party issued its conviction, Texas Rep. Ronny Jackson on Fox News (Motto: Lying to viewers for fun and profit) where he was wise about removing a cancerous tumor from President Biden’s chest.

Biden is the cancer, said the Amarillo Republican. He’s what needs to be removed, not the lesion they found.

There has been no call among Texas Republicans to rebuke Jackson for his callous and tasteless remark, and none is expected.

Taken together, the events, though unrelated, say a lot about the state of our politics and especially the nature of the Trumpified GOP.

Forget basic human decency. What counts is fighting spirit, frenzied and blind, staunchly loyal to the party line.

For years, the Texas 23rd Congressional District, a behemoth stretching hundreds of miles from El Paso to San Antonio, was one of the most competitive districts in the country.

Gonzales, a former Navy cryptologist who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, won a close race in 2020. He had an easier time as he sought re-election in 2022 after the lines were redrawn to give the district a more Republican slant.

But it’s still competitive by Texas standards, and Gonzales’ performance suggests a lawmaker trying to navigate shaky political ground.

His district includes Uvalde and his vote for the gun law after the May 2022 massacre was hardly a radical response; all the legislation did was strengthen background checks, help states implement red flag laws, and boost funding for school mental health and safety. (A leading Republican negotiator was John Cornyn, the senior U.S. Senator from Texas.)

If the measure came again, Gonzales told reporters as the state’s GOP weighed action against the congressman, he would double his support.

Another folly of Gonzales’s was voting for legislation that codified same-sex marriage. It was not a difficult vote, he told the Texas Tribune, noting the diversity of his district. If the Republican Party is to grow and prosper, we must be open to it.

Republicans used to call it the Big Tent, and everyone would be welcome inside.

But for extremists who have taken over the leadership of the GOP in Texas and other states, the focus is no longer on party-building. Its purges and purity tests.

By Gonzales count, he has garnered nearly 1,400 votes in Congress, and most of that was with the Republican Party.

Does not matter.

Following Saturday’s overwhelming vote of censure, the state’s GOP issued a statement accusing the legislature of a lack of allegiance to Republican principles and priorities and nearly begging a challenger to his party to step in and end it in 2024 to take on Gonzales.

Never mind that someone more rigid and ideological might get the upper hand in a primary, but then very likely lose the House seat in November.

If Donald Trump and his supporters have shown one thing in recent years, it is that they are not very good at winning competitive elections.

Ronny Jackson served as a White House physician for five years under Presidents Obama and Trump, and it’s frightening what he’s revealed since anyone even let him go near the Democrat.

The crude joke about Biden’s cancer is the least.

The former naval officer, elected to Congress in 2020, has helped promote Trump’s stolen election lie. Jackson voted against confirmation that Biden’s victory suggested the spread of COVID-19 was part of a Democratic electoral plan, offering unfounded theories that questioned the president’s mental and physical health.

None of that has hurt Jackson with voters in his mostly pro-Trump district; he won re-election in November with over 75% support.

In Texas, you don’t get censored for being too far right, said Cal Jillson, an analyst and political science professor at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, or for taking a vocal, confrontational stand for guns and against gay rights.

What about mocking the president who has skin cancer?

Our politics have descended to a level where that’s not uncommon, Jillson noted, adding that if that sort of crass behavior brought more widespread condemnation, many people would be censored very often.

Here’s a better idea. If you want to see more compromise and bipartisanship in Washington, vote for someone like Gonzales who is willing to think independently, stand on principle, and cross party lines to achieve a greater good.

And send Jackson to the sea where he belongs.