GOV310 – In The News: A look at national politics through the eyes of Texas, April 6, 2016

In the news.

Welcome to IN THE News for American and Texas government. I’m Eric McDaniel. And I’m Jim Henson. All right. So

this week, again, as almost every week we’re talking about the primaries and the say that’s up to bat

this week. Is Wisconsin so known for giving us great cheese and beer

and the Packers broths bratwurst? Oh, that’s right. Yes. Yes. I won’t mention the Brewers

Cardinals fan. Plus, some respectable baseball fan. But we have some updates

on this, so we see a bit of intrigue. So Wisconsin has also brought us intrigue

this week. So I’m not talking about Bo Ryan’s affair,

but we’re talking here about Hillary Clinton losing to Bernie Sanders in

Wisconsin, as well as Donald Trump losing to Ted Cruz. So people who argue that

for Hillary Clinton, it means getting a little bit longer for her to wrap up the nomination and get

her. And Bernie, you’ve gotten some heated arguments lately. I think we know

Hillary Clinton arguing that Bernie Sanders should apologize for some of the attacks he’s made

on her. But on the Republican side, it’s actually more intriguing because we’re seeing

here is the probability of a contested convention really becoming almost an absolute,

I think some sort. 80 percent. I saw the figure, let’s say it was about a 75 percent chance of that

happening because Trump is losing steam. I don’t think anybody will be able. Nobody will

have the majority. But it looks like trouble going on with a plurality, but could be a very close

plurality. Yeah, I mean, a big problem here for Trump was obviously the the bad week he’s

had with women. It is now stretching into a couple of bad weeks now.

I think there’s a. We’ve talked about this before. There’s a real tendency to be a little bit myopic,

like the contest that is right in front of us. We’re always going, you know, OK, this time Cruz

and Sanders won the worms turning. This is probably a bump on

the road once we go to the northeastern states, New York, couple others in that region

and mid-Atlantic states, those are likely to be pretty good for the people we think of

that are the front runners, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. Nonetheless,

after many times of Donald Trump seeming to step on it and seem to

be in trouble and then recovering the week he had of the women was

pretty terrible last week. And we it had started even when we did the last podcast.

And then it got worse. And the thing that got the most publicity was Donald Trump’s comments

on women in relationship to abortion. In a clip with Chris Matthews going

to roll that sound. I want to apologize ahead of time that, you know, Chris Matthews is going to yell at everybody

in this a little bit. So let’s roll that clip and then talk about it afterwards. Should a woman be

punished for having an abortion? Look, this is not some can dodge. You say

abortion is a crime or abortion is murder. You have to deal with it under the law. Should abortion

be punished? Well, people in certain parts of the Republican Party and conservative

Republicans would say, yes, they should be fired. But I would say that it’s a very serious problem

and it’s a problem that we have to decide on. It’s very hard to say, well, wait,

are you going to say put them in jail? Is that what I’m asking you about? As you say, you want to ban it? I said I

would. I am against. I am pro-life. What is how do you ban abortion? How do you actually do it? Well,

you know, you’ll go back to a position like they had where people will perhaps go to

illegal places. Yeah, but you have to ban it. I know you. They go to somebody.

Yes, I think I. How do you feel about the Catholic Church’s position? I accept the teaching authority

of my church on moral issues like, you know, their position on abortion. Yes, I do. And do you concur with

that position? I concur with their moral position. But legally, get to the question. Here’s my problem. But let me ask

you. But what do you say about. It’s not funny to a church. It’s really not funny. What do you say about your church?

They’re very, very sterilized. But the churches make their moral judgments. But you running for president states will be chief

executive, United States. Do you believe that you believe in punishment for abortion? Yes or no as a principle?

And the answer is that it has to be some form of punishment for the woman.

It has to be some form of tenure that I don’t know. Why not? I think

everything else. I frankly, I do take positions and everything. It’s a very complicated position. Painful.

I actually felt 70. I don’t know. Mine. Yeah. I mean, Chris Matthews

got who was basically like a dog on a bone. You keep saying you’re not going to get out. And I got get out of it. I’m going to,

you know, and any question Trump had, he answered very quickly. But this isn’t about me. This is about

you. And in many ways, I felt like, you know, Chris Matthews was talking to my six year old kid trying

to change the subject. When I say you do. What are what are we talking about? Focus here. And it’s clear

he does not want to answer that question. Yeah. I mean, and he also I mean, he tries the classic Trump,

you know, counterpunch. Let’s talk about your Catholicism. What do you think? And you could

see Trump even wavering some as he’s answering the question. And

as he went into the extent that he wavered in that, he wavered a lot more in the

of the Trump clips. Let’s go to the Saturday Night Live recap of this and what Saturday Night Live

did with this, which then in turn drove a lot of media coverage over the weekend. Women’s History

Month really ended on a high note. During an MSNBC town

hall on Wednesday, Trump said women should be punished for getting abortion. Then an hour later,

he said doctors should be punished. Then an hour after that, he said, we should just let the states decide.

Then the next day he said, you know what, let’s just leave the laws alone before finally saying yesterday,

when I’m president, I’m going to change those laws. So at this point, Donald Trump has

to be pro-choice because he’s made all of the choices.

Also, Donald Trump, how do you not already have a stock answer for an abortion question?

You’re on MSNBC. What you did is not ask you. Their number one show is, so what do you think about

abortion? And the answer is never. Women should be punished.

I do care what the question is. You don’t say that on TV. Even if you own Wheel of Fortune and the board

says women should be punished.

How do you set up Chris Matthews basically as a sexist as what? And your

answer was, I’m a sexist. And he should be punished. They pretty much had their

way with Donald Trump on that. But it does get to a real problem

for the Trump campaign that has been compounded. And, you know, you know, that clip was from

Saturday Night Live, but basically pulled from the CNN coverage, which tells you something.

You know, this this problem that Trump is having with women voters like the way to think about this is

some people have said this is a problem because women aren’t an interest group. They’re more than half of the electorate.

It is a huge deal and a huge problem. And we’re seeing that. And we and we’ve seen it almost immediately

in Trump’s approval numbers. His favorability numbers among women. So

the morning after, you know it basically over the weekend, Gallup

released a poll with unfavored with the fave unphased for Donald Trump. His his unfavorable

ratings have been rising pretty steadily. Among women, it was at 70 percent

and that’s about a 14 percent gap. If you compare that to his fave on fades

among men. So if you look at those, he’s also been having

some trouble with his. His favorability, Ray’s ratings flattening or going down, his

unfavored going up at a pretty big gap between men and women. We’ve seen this in polling

in Texas as well. We did some favorability

ratings for Trump in Texas. And, you know, his he was at his negatives

among women were at about 64 as of February. Yeah. I mean, he started

off low to begin with. He didn’t have the best reputation with women. I mean,

the best way to think about this is he was one the favorite guest of Howard Stern. And so you won’t

think of Howard Stern as a feminist, but also paints into this is that, again, for the general

campaign, this can go this fit with this larger argued the Democratic Party has with Republicans,

Republican, the GOP has a war against women. And so saying that women should be punished where abortion becomes problematic.

And one of things that’s coming out is we’re talking more about talking about abortion more as realizing that abortions are not as

rare as we thought. I believe, one, it’s two estimates that it’s somewhere between 25 percent and 25

to, you know, to 33 percent or so. Sometimes two to one of four to one in three women have had

an abortion. So that’s a lot of women want to be punished. If you’re going to follow through with this policy.

And so one of the things we’re going to going to really puts us forward to the forefront

is what do we do about this abortion issue? What do we do about women’s right to choose?

If we decide to punish, well, who gets punished? Who doesn’t? Because we don’t have that many data

on abortion. Really? Isn’t that well, cap? Because the private issue, it’s a controversial issue, but saying that

women should be punished when we have a sizable portion of the female population that is having abortion

presents all kinds of problems and mean be truthful. I wouldn’t be surprised if, you know,

people at the DNC were kind of dancing a jig when they heard this. You know, they

made Ben Crump in doing the wobble because they thought, hey, we got something good for him. So

he stepped in it. We’ll see. You can step out of it. Yeah. I mean, the Saturday Night Live skit really did

get directly at something that was pretty amazing about that. Is that as much as we’ve talked

about Trump, you know, the mixture of where, you know, the degree to which Donald Trump is both a good candidate and the way that he’s

transferred some of these marketing skills in the way that he is not a traditional political candidate

was really on display here in the sense that, you know, he walked into a haymaker in that interview

and, you know, it’s like he just got sucker punch. He didn’t see it coming at all, even though he should

of. I mean, Michael J. You’re on MSNBC. What do you expect? And, you know, I mean, you

have to you have to have a better answer than that. No matter where you are in part of it is not it’s not just about being a candidate

either. It’s also about having a thoughtful position on something that,

you know, is complex and, you know, is going to come up. So. So he should probably move

away from the campaign, though. It’s kind of hard. I mean, this is like it’s a thing you start talking of, no matter

where I am, you start talking about Donald Trump and and he just goes in that direction. Yeah. I mean, and there’s a lot going

on. I mean, what’s what’s really important is why we’ve spent all this time about Donald Trump, who also.

He also came out with a plan to force Mexico to build a wall by

stopping transfers, money transfers from us to Mexico. But

we really have really talked much about Cruz’s platform, a case X platform. And

even Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders platform as much because we’ve been talking about the

spectacle that is Donald Trump’s campaign. I feel a little like we’ve fallen for it, just like everyone else says.

Yeah. But, you know, what can you do? I mean, it’s it is significant. It’s a significant change

and it’s a kind of shift that is significant phenomena in the political system very much. I feel okay about it. You feel okay

about it? You know, a. All about the customers. I think we’ve now made ourselves feel better about it.

Elsewhere in the political system, the Supreme Court this week handed down a significant

redistricting decision based on a lawsuit filed in Texas

nominally against the Texas leadership. It was even while the Abbott and the court

decided in that case that against the plaintiffs in the argument in this case

was that Texas should not be running the redistricting system. That is

the process by which district lines in Congress and the state legislatures are

are drawn according to population. What the plaintiffs were saying was that,

in fact, if you’re going to respect the principle of one person, one vote, rather than apportioning

districts by population, you should apportion them on, you know, by some basis

that has to do with either registered voters or or voter turnout. I think that the case was actually

asking for registered voters or even voting age population.

And the court threw out this decision. And one of the big surprises, Eric, was that it was an ATO decision.

Yeah. And this has been one of the big issues like hobgoblins 4 4 decisions

I found that to be extremely interesting. Now, again, as we pointed out, the decision left some

openings, didn’t initially slammed the door shut, but it did leave some openings. But it was basically

arguing that, look, you know, you can use different calculations for drawing up districts. But

what you’re proposing one at work, right. Another which you can’t you can’t constitutionally

mandate that use one system and one system only for

four drawing districts. And so what’s interesting about this is that from the perspective of a lot

of legal and legal scholars, what we’re likely to see is that it’s not

this case that’s fundamental. It’s the next one. When another state comes up with a method of

drawing districts that maybe is closer to what the plaintiffs wanted in this case, which is

a more restrictive view of the population, almost certainly likely to

have a negative impact on on minority voters. And so it’s when that

other system is challenged that will really see a more fundamental decision, because really what the

what this unanimous court said in this decision was

that it should be it should be left up to the states and the government, that the federal government in the constitution

can’t impose one system now raising that, you know. So this is yet another issue in

which we’re looking at the relationship between the states and the federal government

in this federal system, where there’s always some competition between the national government, the state government

and local governments. Now, that configuration came up and yet another way recently

in the case of the passage of what, you know, so-called religious

freedom acts in the states. So you have North Carolina

passing a bill which prevented localities from passing

laws that protected the rights of homosexuals. Then more recently, Mississippi

passed the law, which allowed individuals to discriminate against homosexuals based upon

religious beliefs. Now, I know Indiana tried to pass something like this. Georgia

tried to pass them like this. But but it was vetoed by the governor after a significant

lot of pressure was put on them. But in the U.S., we sued the North Carolina and the Georgia and the Mississippi

cases. They went through Mississippi’s as much as much more stringent. And there’s a

very strong backlash specifically in North Carolina. There is there is a backlash

because Mississippi, but the economic sanctions, things like in terms of business pulling

out, it’s gonna be strong in North Carolina and Mississippi, I believe. Yeah. This is really raised

a lot of internal politics, particularly inside the Republican Party. Now,

these laws are being passed almost. Actually, not even almost exclusively in states

that have Republican legislatures and Republican governors. So these is a real

partisan element to this that’s driving a lot of the politics here.

And I think we’re gonna we’re gonna see more of that. And it will you know, you see it reflected in

public opinion. There’s been talk about these kinds of laws in Texas. We pulled on this in the U.T.

Texas Tribune poll last year. We asked, do you think that

businesses should be allowed to refuse services to gays and lesbians for religious

reasons? So if you look at those results overall, it was forty

forty one percent said that businesses should be or should be allowed to refuse

services. Forty five percent said they should actually

the other way around. Right. No one is allowed to discriminate, right? Should be allowed. Refused

services 46 was should not should not be allowed to research, to refuse services.

Some people are pretty evenly divided. If you break that down by party, you really

see how much of a partisan issue this is in public opinion and why this is driving

politics in Republican dominated states. So 64 percent of Republicans

supported refute, you know, allowing businesses to write to refuse services. Seventy three percent

of Democrats didn’t support that clear partisan divide.

This is likely to come up again in Texas in the next legislative session that starts in January.

I think you’ll see things move through the legislature. If they get through the legislature, the governor is likely

to sign it. But this is one of those gray areas because it divides business

from the base and businesses in Texas. Big business associations like the Texas

Association of Business have already come out as skeptical of these things because of the

dampening and effect it has on recruiting businesses to the state. The governor will sign it. But my

guess is he’d probably just as soon support it publicly,

but privately, not be all that eager for it to come to his desk and for him to have to choose between

the base and the business community. Yeah, this is a very important issue. I mean, the pressure that was put on Georgia,

in India, in Indiana was, OK, fine. You want to sign this bill? The NCAA

was like, we’ll take the tournaments away from from Indianapolis, Super Bowl NFL to the Super Bowls away

from Georgia. You know, and so you have a lot of major events going on in these states. And the idea

of separating the business interests from against these social conservative interests is a classic thing.

So the primary example of this and Professor Shaw talked about this in the lecture was the

Montgomery bus boycott. And what the Mugabe bus boycott, which you saw going on, is a fracturing of the racial

conservatives from the business interest. And so while they kind of work hand-in-hand

early on, this long, drawn out boycott basically

start to hurt the business interest quite a bit to the point. Well, okay, look, we can’t have this going on anymore. And it’s kind

of been a classic story in the south. Were the arguments been, you know, you stop lynching in the south, not because

people said lynching is bad, because it was bad business. You couldn’t get northern businesses down. And

you see the same thing going on here that if you get this, you can split up this this group. So

social conservatives and ambitious conservatives working together. But if you could find a way to split them

in many ways, you can you can advance your issue in one. The ways you’re seeing the advancement

of LGBT rights is through this is through business interests,

that by the fact that Indiana was pressured to look. If you do this, the NCAA said we’re

gonna pull it, we’re going to pull out tournaments. I think maybe the NFL tried to take one Super Bowl. Same thing

going on in Georgia. And if you think about Texas, where we just had the NCAA championship here,

Houston plan for Super Bowl and Houston and in Dallas, you know,

a lot of these major events happening in the state of Texas and affect fact Texas to such a large state.

And Texas is actively trying to recruit businesses from other states, really puts

it in this weird situation where individuals say, why would I move to a state that could openly

discriminate against my employees? So this becomes a humongous issue. And so

you see all saying the same thing with immigration reform. I’ve seen in Arkansas and Arizona

and Alabama that these things may threaten business and it’s not good for business.

Then it may not be that a lot people will move away, especially as much as much as Texas

prided itself on being a pro-jobs state. This could undercut some

of the things that it wants to accomplish. Yeah. I mean, that’s I mean, that really gets it. That’s why I think, you know,

Governor Abbott has to keep that coalition together. I mean, that the coalition of the traditional

business sector or the Republican Party in Texas with social and more ideological conservatives

is really the linchpin of this working. And they’ve got a real problem. And I think there’s a

there’s an increasing separation of powers here thing that we see in terms of political tactics.

And so my guess is we’ll hear Governor Abbott talking about this some as it comes up,

but not doing a lot to really push it through, particularly with, you know, already established

vocal opposition by business in Texas. I mean, he’s already passed legislation where work

which protects clergy from having to to take part in these things. Now, what’s I mean,

what’s also interesting and again, if you think of the speaker of the House, Joe Strauss, he’s he’s a business conservative. He’s

then said to be that high, high up on the social conservative aspect. So he may try to kill it early

on or it may be one of the individuals who will basically

work as a surrogate for Governor Abbott to kill it early on. That would be my guess because of the biggest

impetus for this. I mean, there’ll be people in the house that want it, but the people that have been most vocal on these

issues have, in fact, been in the Texas Senate. So. All right. So.

Those kinds of comments we have for this week, we have a lot of topics to discuss. So we’ll

be here next week to give me even more information. So you all have a good week. So long.

The government 310 in the News podcast is hosted by doctors Jim Hansen and Eric McDaniel

and it’s produced by the Liberal Arts US Development Studio and the Department of Government and the College