GOV310 – In The News: A look at national politics through the eyes of Texas, March 9, 2016

In the news.

Welcome to the News. I’m Eric McDaniel. And I’m Jim Henson. All right. So this

week we want to start off as we have most weeks talking about the primaries. We have results in a few more states.

We’ll start with the Democratic primary where we see that Hillary Clinton was able to win Mississippi,

but Bernie Sanders was able to come through with a surprise and win the state of Michigan. That’s a burn.

Yeah. I mean, yeah. I mean, the Michigan huge surprise, really. I mean, I think maybe not

as huge in the last few days, but going into this Midwestern state, substantial black population,

large unionized labor force, not as large used to be, but large unionized labor force.

And yet Sanders edged Clinton out only by two points. But nonetheless,

another kind of rough night for Hillary Clinton, right, Eric? I mean, Hillary Clinton keeps looking to wrap

this thing up and she just can’t do it if she just can’t seem to close the

deal and put Bernie out. It’s like an old school WWE wrestling match where, you know,

the guy’s about to put him down. One, two. Then he pops out. So hopefully,

you know, I think she wants to pin Bernie as quickly as possible and get out

and move on to really the general election and get this wrapped up as quickly as possible and basically get her money

and funds and her focus and actually her message directed towards the general election

so she can kind of get away from partisan rhetoric that she should push at this point. And we don’t want to wallow

in tactics too much. But it does seem like she had a pretty good Super Tuesday, obviously,

and it looks like she may have pivoted a little bit too soon to talking about the general election. I

mean, she was talking general election style right after the Super Tuesday victories

and then this came along. They’re going to have the backside. It is worth noticing. Also, she won very big in

Mississippi and other big southern win, a state with a much larger minority, in this case,

the African-American population. Very good for her. Also, four primaries

actually in primaries and caucuses on the Republican side last night.

Another very good night for Donald Trump. Trump wins in Hawaii in the biggest

prizes, wins in Michigan and Mississippi doesn’t break 50 percent in either

of those races. Ted Cruz manages to win Idaho, Idaho, very conservative,

very wide, and has a little bit of of a fringe element there, probably going

in. Not surprisingly, that was that surprising that that was a good state for Cruz.

So Cruz and Trump take first and second, for the most part case or entirely

case. It was competitive in Michigan. He’s from next from Ohio

in the region case. But Cruz still beats case by a point, but

also a bad night for as as Donald Trump keeps calling

him. Little Marco. Yeah. I thought a little bad about doing that, but I can’t really help it.

That’s part of the Trump thing, I guess. He does these things and you can’t help. I mean,

given the fallout from the Republican led us Republican debate where we

are a lot of discussion of hand size and what’s that once that’s linked to

IQ. Yeah. Yeah. Yes. Yes.

Of a nice size like you myself. But the issue here is,

you know, it’s gotten really Rubio is really trying to find a way to stay in the fight. And it’s

it’s just not happening. I guess we’ll try to stay out of Florida. And if he gets beat in Florida, it’s

time to go and get. People are saying, OK, it’s time to go. Time to go. Really,

casework is kind of the forgotten individual in this case. It’s like, look, I’m the adult in the room

with all this yelling back and forth. But it’s now. It just ain’t going to

work. I think we talked last week with the kind of game of chicken that’s going on on the second. You know,

it’s not so much Cruz anymore now. It’s really Rubio in case it kind of waiting for the other guy to get out.

Rubio’s got a real problem and he’s he’s probably not going to get out. And the Cruz campaign has

once again gotten in trouble for. This this technique where they see

a mistaken report on CNN and they tweeted out right away before the correction can be made.

And so once again, last night they were circulating rumors that Rubio was going to get out in order to kind

of hurt Rubio and pad their vote. But Rubio’s got a real problem. He moved

the poll average for Rubio in his home state of Florida, which is people are saying must win all

the time in these races. Florida’s must win for Rubio. And he’s

I think that the polling average like 16 points. He’s behind Trump. He’s behind Trump, but 16

and a half points in the average of the polls. Just does not look good for Rubio. No, no. You see

this? You know, the Mitt Romney and John McCain kind of pushing look like

anybody but Trump. But it’s looking like it’s not going to happen. And

you see Trump talking about the idea of I’m a unifier last week, then also talked about unity this

week. You know, I’ll bring the party together. It’s OK. I’ll bring the party together.

And it’s really becoming pretty problematic for the party.

People are saying the party is looking like a laughingstock because of what Trump has done. But the key

thing we need to we need to remember is that, you know, people may not like Donald Trump, but Donald Trump

is tapping into something. And that’s what you have to do to win an election. You tap into something and

maybe the good, the bad and the ugly. But, you know, you tap into something and you use that to connect to the

White House. And he’s tapped into something in the American public. We may not like what he’s tapped into in the American

public, but it’s there. And we need we need to acknowledge it. And by kind of ignoring it or

treating as if it’s not important, we’re really missing the message in many ways. We’re we’re

missing out on this kind of underlying basic revolt that that is coming about.

And we’ve seen a lot of discussion in the last, you know, between the last podcast or the last broadcast and this

one in which Republican leaders, stakeholders, elites

have invested even more heavily in trying to knock Trump out. Trump talked about that last

night in his victory speech after Michigan, which in itself was up

even for Donald Trump, was a pretty weird affair. We don’t we don’t have video of that.

It was too late. But Trump gave a lot of the usual riffs, picked on his opponents,

was calling Ted Cruz lying Ted. But also as a way of pushing back

on the idea that he had not been a successful business person, had an array

of his of his products there. So this victory speech began to

look like an infomercial where he was talking about steaks and his beautiful wineries and all

his products. It was very it was very weird and is only going to get weirder,

I think, as we go on. But I guess at this point we should move on to something a little less disturbing.

So how about how about we talk about the Zika virus? We don’t really mean it. Mega-Trends from Trump to viruses,

but it’s sometimes that’s how it goes. So there’s a great deal of attitude to the

Zika virus. And we have a real quick clip to kind of explain why there so much concern about the virus.

The Zika virus, which is linked to children being born with small heads, poses several challenges

right now. Diagnostic tests are imperfect. There’s no treatment and there’s no vaccine.

As the secretary, Dr. Anthony Foushee, head of the infectious diseases branch of the NIH,

says the outbreak is a pandemic. You have multiple countries in South America

and in the Caribbean. So by anybody’s definition, that would be considered a pandemic.

There’s concern the virus will eventually be found in mosquitoes in the U.S. If you have

this much Zika in South America and in the Caribbean, sooner or later, we’re going

to see a local transmission. Now, she says controlling mosquitoes

that could carry Zika is key. And the United States has one big advantage. Most

of the United States goes through a real winter, and that’s very, very important

in containing mosquito borne virus. So the Zika virus is really becoming a bigger

issue. And specifically, this relates to Texas. So if you look at the next figure,

we show that we’re looking at the mosquitoes most likely to carry the Zika virus. You know,

west east Texas is really going to get hit hard by this. And wow,

you know, a good port. While the U.S. has probably a better infrastructure for controlling mosquitoes and you’re seeing

coming out of the Latin American countries, you should still see a significant effect. But furthermore,

complicates this is really the budget problems in Louisiana. So East Texas,

because of the budget problems in Louisiana, that they may not have the infrastructure

to do this. And so you may need the federal government to step in to help out not only Texas, but also Louisiana

took care of this. And this presents a great deal of right radio. Your questions specifically

the fact that while the Zika virus itself is not as a non lethal virus, it isn’t linked to birth

birth defects. And while some people have kind of question to the extent to which it is linked to birth defects,

there’s growing evidence showing that. And so while we run into this problem of,

OK, how do we control the mosquito population, how do we keep the public health of,

you know, the southern part of United States safe? But in addition to that, what do we

do about these possible birth defects? So lot of countries are saying, you know, don’t get

pregnant, which means support for contraceptives. And even the pope has come out and made an argument

that is. No, not necessarily been anti contraceptive. But he said, you know, condoms are not

the most are not the most evil thing. So now you run to issues of contraception. But also

when it comes to the idea of trauma be born with a birth defect, there are concerns about

abortion. And if you look at the recent Texas poll, this

is done in 2014. Oh, you thought about, you know, more than half of Texans believe

that it’s OK to have an abortion. If you believe there’s a. Serious birth defect with a child. And so this

raises a great deal of policy questions of how do we how do we deal with this?

Because as we were talking about earlier, you know, it’s really hit Puerto Rico pretty hard. You

know, in Puerto Rico, remember, is a is a U.S. territory. And there have been, I think, you know,

roughly as many cases that germinated inside Puerto Rico as

have been transmitted into the United States by people traveling already. So that’s kind of that’s going to be a serious

problem. I think that the way you’re talking about it is really makes sense from a political point

of view. You have two big areas of social policy that are very active in the United, a policy

that are very active and important in American politics. One, this issue of state federal relations

is, as Erick was saying, Louisiana is undergoing a severe budget crisis. Texas

is not undergoing a severe budget crisis right now. But there are some pretty serious clouds on the horizon.

These are both states that have spent the better part of the last decade or more criticizing the federal

government, trying to tell the federal government to stay out of state politics and state budgetary matters,

who may very well need to turn to the federal government for help in something like this. And then, of course, as the issue

of social policy, because the Zika virus is is intersecting with abortion,

as Eric was saying, it’s sexually transmitted. So there’s going to be these issues of contraception,

public health issues related to sexuality. We’re going to run into that as well.

And you’re going to get sort of these questions like we’re seeing the pope in the scene, the pope engage.

Yeah. And so this is this raises a high level of questions in terms of what

are we going to do? What do you see in terms of not only federal policy, but also how state policy might change?

So Texas is a low tax, low service state, and so do they have the infrastructure to carry this

out? And it’s been pretty much well established said Louisiana’s infrastructure to carry these things out has severely

been depleted. And so this is one of things to really pay attention to as things go along.

Again, this while this while this disease is not a deadly disease, people are not dying from the disease.

It is causing it is linked to serious birth defects. And so this may have an

effect on, you know, generations to come. Now, another issue that’s come forward that’s been a bit

of a conflict has been really be federal government with Apple over the iPhone. Let’s

roll a real quick clip of that. It’s a move Apple CEO Tim Cook is calling unprecedented

and a threat to the security of customers. A judge is ordering Apple to help the FBI break

into a cell phone used by one of the San Bernardino shooters. The FBI is asking to disable

an iPhone security feature that locks cell users in a race as the phone’s data after

the wrong password is entered 10 times. Cook says that would mean building a new operating system

with potential to unlock any iPhone. He says if the FBI could use it as a backdoor into your iPhone,

hackers could, too. So the way Zika pits the federal government against state government,

it kind of inter, you know, involves those kinds of issues. In this case,

we see an area where the federal government tends to get a bit more support because it seems like

in the in terms of this privacy, in the cellphone, in the iPhone versus

national security concerns and the federal government’s desire here on the phones, that the

public opinion is divided, but not that closely. And a lot of ways people siding with national security, I think,

yeah, you’re seeing that if we take a look at a Pew poll, we find is about 51 percent,

only 51 percent of the public believes in unlocking the phone. Are you get you have more than a third to

say, do not unlock the phone. But you also have a lot don’t know. This is should be expected. And this

is really an issue of civil liberties versus net security. And this has been

going to be a major issue. And I’ve looked at iPhone users, even among iPhone users, there’s

a good amount of support for it. Again, with 51 percent saying unlock the phone. Thirty eight percent saying

don’t unlock the phone. But again, you know, it’s kind of a tight one there.

Now, what’s further complicated this is that while you have one federal judge saying that they should unlock

the phone, you have another federal judge has actually said they which is a stay that order from the FBI

saying that they they don’t have to unlock the phone. Furthermore, there have been activated.

The FBI has tried to unlock the phone and they had some type of mishap which which

caused this as a basis with what the FBI wants Apple to do is create a program which allows

us to input. I guess there are over 10000 codes you can put in

to put these in over and over again without the phone locking up and that it’s automated so that you want to put it in by hand.

And again, the FBI doesn’t know what’s on the phone, but they try to get as much information as possible.

And so it’s really a fight that may not turn up much information. But the

idea here is we need to get this information. We need to get as much information as possible to see what’s going

on, because this was a deadly terrorist attack. And we need to understand who was involved.

And again, it is a really good example of where you’re seeing. Basically, rights

and values being being pitted against each other where you have civil liberties being pitted against

natural security. We’ve seen this over and over again and that the pendulum is kind of swung back and forth with

discussions of the NSA and metadata, et cetera. So it’s going to be a shame to see how this is plays

out. And I thought the government actually took an interesting way of counterpunching when they

said that Apple is really not concerned about your civil liberties. They’re just trying to further their brand,

which is, you know, a pretty a pretty interesting way of fighting against of pushing

back against Apple. Yeah. Yeah, it’s about a market share is pretty important. And the fact that Bill Gates has sided

with the government almost makes it look it’s a fight over market share.

And I guess all the moves coming out about Steve Jobs and how he’s not the, I guess, most scrupulous individual

you could buy into that argument. But at the end of the day, it’s I mean,

you know, it could be in the way it’s a civil liberties vs. net security argument. And

we’ll see how this all comes. There’s a lot of civil libertarians and libertarianism inside the technology committees. You

really do have a sense that Apple is playing to their crowd without discounting the fact that they have

some legitimate issues. You know, there are legitimate philosophical issues here. So we want to close today by talking

a little bit about something much closer to home in Travis County in the election

last Tuesday. As the dust was settling on the big pictures of Super Tuesday,

it also became clear as early as election night that a couple of funny things had happened on the ballot

in Texas and in particular in Travis County, which is that the county in which Austin,

U.T., Austin is located for those of you that pay no attention to local government whatsoever.

So deep down on the Republican ballot in the Republican primary was a contest for the Travis

County, for the Travis County Republican chairman. And this is just the person who

sits atop the administrative position in the party. It’s not a public position.

He’s not a public official, per say. But the person who has this position has a ranking

position that has organizational responsibilities inside the Republican Party.

So Republicans in the party primary vote for this person and the guy that one is named Robert

Morrow. Now, Robert Morrow, that’s largely unknown to most people, but he’s actually

been on the political scene for quite a while and he’s a fairly unorthodox guy, to

say the least. He really came to national attention, or at least statewide

attention in 2010 when he ran an ad in a local Austin alternative weekly

in which he offered something. I think ten thousand dollars was the amount for anybody that would come to

him with evidence that they had had homosexual contact with the then governor,

Rick Perry. He got lots of play for that, a fairly unusual political move.

And now the guy resurfaces six years later, having won the Travis Park County

chairman. Now he won mainly by a quirk of the ballot. We think there were only

two people on the ballot. This measure was way down on page five or 10

of of the ballot. But because he was first, he he probably won

for that reason. We know from research that ballot order matters. It’s one of these things that has nothing to do

with Democratic preferences or are ideals of democracy. We know that if you’re deep on the

ballot and it’s nobody knows who’s on there, you can win with you can gain as much as a point

and a half. Two in some. Some research shows as much as four or five points even. And that

can really make the difference in getting elected. Now, the night of the election, I was watching

election returns with a bunch people and I noticed that he had won this. And I found an article on Twitter and tweeted

it out and we began to see what this guy was like. So I tweet this and then

Mauro wrote a response to me within an hour or so on Twitter with one of

his signature lines and which he says much of the Bush family should be in jail.

Rick Perry is was a rampaging bisexual adulterer. Now,

this is obviously coarse language, very coarse discourse. There’s no evidence of

any of this of either of these things. But this was the beginning

of Robert Morrow going on a rampage on Twitter within. By the weekend, he was on

the John Oliver Show. And we can’t even really show a video clip or play an excerpt of that, because

between Oliver and Morrow, there’s just not much, you know, many clean passages.

Nonetheless, he got then another big national push, another explosion of things on Twitter. His Twitter

feed is is just a parade of obscenity and and some

pornographic pictures in response to John to John Oliver. Paying attention to

him, he tweeted that he owned the EXPLETIVE DELETED Internet for a week. Hello.

Which is actually one of the more mild things you’ll find on his Twitter feed. So this really is.

A weird story, a funny story, but also tells us a little something about the the

the weakness of parties as organizations. I mean, we’re struggling to make an academic point here. Yeah, I mean,

when we think about the I guess the pig, the poem, the pass, a party and government

party, the electorate and party organization. This is a story about party organization and how organization

may not be doing it. We could argue that Trump is an example of the party in the electorate and

some issues associated with that. And then furthermore, we could argue that what happened was from what happened

with John Boehner being pushed out and being replaced is an issue of party in government.

All three of these are different aspects of party and party power. And the Republican Party

seems to be at least within party, in government, they seem to be shored up. But what the

election of Paul Ryan is the speaker, but they were a little bit shaky. They’re part of the electorate. There’s little shakiness

there because of the Trump and no party organization. I think for the most part, they’re fine. But in Travis

County, there may be some some issues. Man, you are good. You got from Robert Moore to John

Boehner and like, fifteen seconds. I got to keep this. This is for the children.

This is a family show. But yet again, just try and make sure you

can link this back to something academic. No matter how hard we try. We need to get

a chance to talk about the woman running for the state electoral board who was

in I’m against. Yes, State Board of Education. Mary Lee Bruner. Who? Mary Lou Bruner, who was also

made it into the Oliver segment, who thinks that Barack Obama was a male prostitute.

Yeah, papers, drug addiction throughout college. So good times in the Travis County

GOP. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So again, I’m not really sure where that one falls. And party

electorate, a party organization, but a I think that transitions us to.

We’re not going to be back for spring break. Yes. So we’re going to take maybe ever

after this podcast, but we’re going to take a week off to basically the

accurate reading all this thing about this. And I’m going to wash my mouth and my brain out. Lord, have

mercy. I’m starting to worry about the future. Travis County

Times. Some said, listen, the house for sale. But all jokes aside, we

will be back in two weeks with another IN THE News segment. We hope you all have a

good spring break and enjoy the rest of your week. So long.

The government 310 and the news podcast is hosted by doctors Jim Hansen and Eric muqdad

and is produced by the Liberal Arts t-s Development Studio and the Department of Government and the College