HISTORICALLY CONSIDERED, Texas politics has seen a large (as befits Texas) number of flamboyant personalities. Lyndon Baines Johnson, for one. Mark it down: Sen.-elect John Cornyn, a man not given to fancy speeches or grand gestures, isn’t among them.

In remarks to supporters on election night, the soft-spoken former judge interpreted the returns in his race as a vote not about himself or even his politics but about “the management of the U.S. Senate.” Texas voters, he said, wanted a Republican Senate.