Rep. Chip Roy barely won election to the House of Representatives from Texas’s 21st District last November.  He defeated Joseph Kosper by a surprisingly slim 9,000 vote margin. It was an alarm bell for the Lone Star GOP and it should have been wake-up call for Roy, too. He cut his chops working for John Cornyn on the Senate Judiciary Committee before becoming Senator Ted Cruz’s chief of staff. The fact that he struggled to fend off a Democrat in his bid to replace the disgraced Lamar Smith might have led him to conclude that his district is moving rapidly to the left in the era of Trump.

He is evidently heedless of the warning signs.

A House Republican lawmaker blocked a $19.1 billion disaster aid package on Friday, delaying a bill that would send federal funding to disaster-affected areas across the country.

Rep. Chip Roy (R-Tex.) voted to block the legislation, which has the support of President Trump and easily passed the Senate on Thursday. He immediately faced backlash, including from some Republicans for his move.

Roy said he was objecting to the bill because it would add to the country’s debt, as well as because it left out $4.4 billion in additional spending for federal operations along the U.S.-Mexico border.

“This is a bill that includes nothing to address the clear national emergency and humanitarian crisis we face at our southern border,” Roy said in a near empty House chamber, adding: “We’ve got emergency requests right now from the administration.”

The rest of that article is primarily dedicated to other Republicans venting about what an unmitigatedly asinine move this was on congressman Roy’s part.  To wit:

Many House Republicans are frustrated that Roy blocked the bill, said Rep. Austin Scott (R-Ga.), who represents a district where farmers were devastated by Hurricane Michael last fall and are awaiting aid.

“I think it was ridiculous. I think it was a political stunt. In the end, he hurt himself and his ability to get anything done for his constituents more than anything else,” Scott said in an interview…

…“We know the president supports the bill and that makes it that much more ridiculous,” Scott said. “It’s not like he’s trying to get a change made to the language.”

The 21st District has about how 100,000 constituents each from Bexar and Travis counties. Taken together, Roy lost these major counties. He did particularly poorly in Travis, which is the home of the state capital. His victory was solely due to his overwhelming success in the smaller hill counties to the west of Austin where he rolled up a ridiculous margins.  It won’t take much erosion in his support for him to lose next November. As the GOP goes aggressively after women’s reproductive rights, it’s not hard to envision Roy’s support collapsing in the Austin suburbs, and by defying President Trump on the disaster aid package, he may lose some support in his areas of strength. In general, it’s just a dumb move to pointlessly hold up disaster relief in a state that has had more than its share of recent floods and hurricanes.

I suppose he thinks he’s standing up for conservative principles, but his district just isn’t that conservative anymore.