Is there any American politician who’s had a more disastrous past couple years than Texas Lieutenant Governor David Dewhurst? Not so long ago, with George W. Bush off painting and Rick Perry having face-planted in his presidential run, Dewhurst appeared to be the Lone Star State Republican with the brightest future.

A former CIA officer with a net worth of $200 million from his energy and investment company and four successful statewide campaigns under his belt, Dewhurst appeared to be on a glide path to the U.S. Senate in 2012. He even looked Senatorial. “He’s one powdered wig away from being a Founding Father,” Texas Tribune editor Evan Smith liked to joke.

One poll had Dewhurst up by 45 points five months before the GOP primary. But then Ted Cruz caught fire and you know the rest of that story.

After Cruz went to Washington and blew up Congress, at least Dewhurst could console himself with the knowledge that he’d lost to a political tyro. Until this week, that is, when he finished in second in the lieutenant gubernatorial primary behind a state senator and talk radio host named Dan Patrick (and not even this talk radio host named Dan Patrick). Despite his having swung far to the right since his loss to Cruz—even calling for Barack Obama’s impeachment—Texas Republicans deemed Dewhurst insufficiently conservative.

Indeed, about the only victory Dewhurst has scored in the last two years came in a courtroom—and it was pyrrhic: In January, Buddy Barfield, Dewhurst’s former campaign manager, gave the lieutenant governor his house and his business assets in order to settle a civil suit Dewhurst had filed against Barfield accusing him of embezzling $2 million from Dewhurst’s campaign treasury.