July 19th, 2016 – Second Reading Podcast

[0:00:00 Introduction] Welcome to the 2nd Reading Podcast from the University of Texas at Austin. The republicans were in the Democratic Party Because there was only one party. So I tell people on a regular basis, there is still a land of opportunity in America. It’s called texas. The problem is these departures from the constitution, they have become the norm at what point must a female senator raise her hand or her voice to be recognized over the male colleagues in the room.

[0:00:32 Jim] And we’re here for the second reading podcast for the week of July 18th. I’m Jim Henson, director of the Texas politics project at the University of Texas. I’m joined by my colleague, Josh Blank. How are we today, Josh?

[0:00:45 Josh] Doing wonderful! Thank you.

[0:00:46 Jim] That’s good. This week will be focusing on the Republican national convention in Cleveland this week. And though there have been lots of things going on and what has just been a relentless summer, I was gonna say, eventful but eventful is way too neutral. Um you know, another police, Another shooting of police in Baton Rouge the naming of mike pence to the vice presidential ticket in a very weird rollout uh terrorists, another terrorist attack. It looks like or at least a terrorist related attack in France

[0:01:20 Josh] Terrorist inspired

[0:01:21 Jim] Inspired I think is right. So we may be able to hit on some of these things as we talk about the focus This week on the of the political press and the news media on the Republican Convention, which is uh, one of the media events really of the 2016, a lot of any election cycle, but certainly with Donald Trump being uh, made the formal candidate of the Republican Party or made formally made the candidate. Um, a very eventful thing. So let’s let’s start by talking about what the conventions are supposed to do. In other words, what we think of of what conventions are supposed to accomplish for campaigns.

[0:01:58 Josh] Right? Well, you just said the primary thing, right? Which is they nominate the candidate for president. So even though there are all these, you know, elections and contests primaries taking place over the course of the last year, you know, even though you feel that you’re voting for a candidate when you vote in those, you’re really just actually a lot of ways voting to send delegates to represent you at this convention, and then they actually nominate the candidate. So that’s the first thing. The second thing kind of speaks to what you’re talking about about the in some ways this or the arc of the campaign and where this fits in it, right? Which is, um, you know, it’s important to remember that most people aren’t paying any attention. It’s sort of it’s sort of it’s an old saw, but you can’t say it enough. That’s why it’s an old saw right, that, you know, for the most part, people have got better things to do than follow primary campaigns going on in other states that have been going on for a year plus. And so, you know, what usually happens is this is a chance for the party to sort of come out and say, hey, here’s our candidate, here’s our party get on board. So, one of the big pieces of the convention is to sort of display unity, say we had this, this whole contest, we had this whole fracturing among ourselves, decide what, you know, what we want to represent us. Now, it’s time to come together and part of what that also does, which fits into the sort of longer arc is something called partisan activation. You know, for a lot of people, they’re just just now tuning into this because it just happens to be on prime time on the network so they might pick some of this up. And for a lot of people, this is a reminder of why there are republican and for the democrats next week, a lot of democrats are gonna watch it. It’s gonna remind them why they’re democrats and most people have some sort of partisan affiliation and this reminds them that, you know, I may not have supported trump in the primary, but I still agree with most of what republicans want to do or I may not have supported clinton in the primary, but I actually still agree with most of what democrats want to do right.

[0:03:41 Jim] For most people, it’s just kind of out there at the edges of their ambient awareness, but they’re not really, you know, they know this thing is going on, but they’re not they’re not really jelly, it’s not really jelling with them. They’re not putting their full attention to it in a way that would get them to do something. Now. Part of the mechanism for that, it’s really then another thing that the that the convention is trying to accomplish and that is to create kind of a positive a positive media coverage for the candidate and for the party and that’s, you know, this party identification and partisan activation thing is kind of tied up in this. But the mechanism here is what used to be and it’s a little less so now. But it’s again, this is a weird year and we can talk about that is that the convention is really out there, it becomes the political story or at least should be. And that’s the purpose of the that’s what the conventions are designed to generate. Is this idea that the convention is the story going on, and that then if you’re planning the convention, you’re trying to to to manipulate this in a way, or at least strategize it to be, I guess more nice about it, so that you’re getting the kind of coverage that you want out of this. And this results traditionally in what we think of as as the convention bump, that is a quick rise in the poll that, you know, the research on this, it varies, it can be as much as five points, more or less,

[0:05:04 Josh] Usually relatively short lived, but this, but this is also sort of, you know, this is what happens in terms of, you know, you’re introducing the candidate to a wider audience. And that’s sort of the last big piece of what usually goes on at these conventions is that, you know, again, this is a weird year, right? Because you’ve got donald trump who basically had 100% name identification, nobody knew who he was before he ran. You have Hillary Clinton has been in the public eye for so long, there’s very people who don’t know who Hillary Clinton is, but traditionally, you know what you’re talking about, a mitt Romney of Massachusetts

[0:05:36 Jim] Or for that matter of Barack Obama

[0:05:37 Josh] Little, you know, sort of a somewhat little known senator who’s known, certainly in liberal circles

[0:05:40 Jim] In 2008

[0:05:41 Josh] In 2008, right, this is a chance for the candidate to come out and introduce themselves to a wider audience in prime time, he said in a way that hopefully, you know, drives positive coverage. Again, one of the things that’s going on here is that the trump campaign in conjunction with the Republican National Committee, they get to decide what the lineup is with the speakers are, what the theme is if they want, they can go so far as to vet the speeches. I mean they have a lot of control over what content they’re putting out and they know that everybody is going to cover it in some form or another,

[0:06:12 Jim] Whether everybody watches it is another day thing that has varied over years, but it definitely gets a lot more attention than other things that have run up to this. So these typical goals have been and you know, have been driving, it will continue to drive a lot of the media discussion, but I think, you know, it’s fair to ask in this very unusual political year with a very unusual candidate like Donald trump. You know, is this really what Donald trump is trying to accomplish? Is this, I mean, I think he they will take it, but is it really what trump is after, is trump thinking about it this way and, you know, given the fact that he has been such a mixture of conventional, you know, I mean the predictable things that we would expect a candidate to do and things that are very different from almost all candidates, you know, in the modern era before him. Does this, you know, is he is this really what he’s up to?

[0:07:08 Josh] Right? I mean, it’s, you know, it’s interesting reading some of the pieces out this morning and kind of just reading coverage and and there is this idea that, you know, we’re gonna evaluate how this convention went or the media is going to evaluate how this convention went if trump can unify the Republican party, if he can look presidential, if he can drive up his poll numbers, especially among some subgroups that he’s had trouble with, for example, women. So that’s why everyone was really focused on his wife’s uh speech on monday night to see whether that might help him a little bit like a little bit more sympathetic. But it’s interesting because, you know, trump is in the position he’s in because he’s unconventional to a large degree, but he’s still always evaluated on these conventional metrics that, you know, you could say of any candidate at this point in time. And so the idea that trump is really, you know, sort of strategically sitting down and saying, okay, you know, how are we gonna drive up my, you know, my positives among among women, how are we going to unify the party? It’s a little it’s a little difficult to just go and say, yeah, so that’s what trump’s doing right? And so far it doesn’t really seem like there’s much evidence that that is exactly what he’s trying to do.

[0:08:16 Jim] Yeah. I mean, I think we’re seeing some of the trappings of the convention have some of the conventional things that we expect. There are daily themes. You know, his wife spoke on the first night, etcetera. But in other ways he’s doing some things that are very unconventional or at least not typical. Let’s put it that way. So maybe let’s roll some sound we have of Donald trump calling in to the, to the to talk to Bill O Reilly while the convention was going on and we’ll talk more about why that kind of mattered. After we listen to the clip.

[0:08:49 Clip audio] Let’s turn to the convention. The Ohio governor john Kasich should be at the convention is not. Have you spoken with him? How do you feel about that? Look, I beat him very badly. I won 38 states. Uh, I won the highest number of votes in the history of the Republican Party. Uh, second was very, very far away. Uh, I beat him very, very soundly. And you have to understand this was a contentious. Some people say the most contentious primary they’ve ever seen either party. If I were him and got beaten that badly, I probably wouldn’t show up either. He has a problem though. He signed a pledge and from a standpoint of honor, I think it should show up. I also think this, if this were the Democratic convention, I think you should show up because it’s good for Ohio. I wanted it to be here and we have lots of choices. I wanted it to be in Ohio. I recommended Ohio and people fought very hard that it be in Ohio. It’s a tremendous economic development event and you look at the way it’s going so far. It’s very impressive. I wanted it to be here. The republicans wanted to be here. But honestly, even if this were for the democrats, he should at least show up and say hello and say how are you doing? He got beaten very, very badly. He could have left, he should have left probably many weeks earlier than he did, but he hung around. Do you think he’s being a sore loser? Well, I don’t want to say that, but you know what, it was a very contentious primary. He lost very, very badly. And maybe if I were in his position, I wouldn’t show up either.

[0:10:30 Jim] Okay, this is weird in any number of ways. You know, we, as I said on the, on the way in in a sense trump is stepping on his own convention here. He calls into the O’Reilly show while there is live convention going on while the convention is going on. And that in fact, I think they were speaking about, there was a Benghazi survivor, what was supposed to be speaking at the convention, supposed to be a pretty moving moment and trump decides to call in the O’Reilly show and beat up on john Kasich.

[0:10:58 Josh] Right, I mean, so the, you know, if you think back to the goals we were talking about here, so, you know, one party unity, well, okay, you’ve got, you know, the Republican governor of a major swing state

[0:11:09 Jim] Kasich is the Republican governor of Ohio.

[0:11:12 Josh] Ohio is a is a notoriously competitive state in the general election that’s important for either party to win. He’s sort of kicking him repeatedly. I mean, he showed restraint and not, you know, saying that he’s a sore loser, so that there is that, um, you know, but at the same time, we think about one of the big things, as you know, given the fact that there are these sort of ideological questions about trump’s ideological purity, especially among the republican base, which is part of why he named, you know, indiana governor mike Pence as his running mate was, you know, assure those things, you know, one of the, you know, sort of, I think there are two things that really unite republicans regardless of how they feel about trump. One seems to be immigration and the other is there dis distaste for Hillary clinton. So, to the extent that, you know, you’ve got this moving, you know, sir, testimony from survivors of Benghazi, who the republicans have willfully, you know, kept alive as a story for and they will continue to throughout the campaign. And again, this is just to make the point here clear, you know, trump and the RNC have complete control over the coverage of the event. I mean, look at the coverage of the event, but of what the content of their event, the programming of the event, and instead he calls in and cuts away from basically the main Republican channel to kick the republican governor of Ohio. So all those goals you’re talking about at the outset, you can look at this one clip and say, well, is that really what he’s trying to do here?

[0:12:31 Jim] I think there was a tendency for a while for people to think about this, so trump has made another gaffe, but he’s it just seems like he’s just often doing something very different, and this does feel a little bit like he thinks Really about quantity of coverage of himself. And so to him, it’s like if he gets covered for calling in the O Reilly show and saying a few things and the convention gets covered. Well,

[0:12:57 Josh] It’s like double coverage, it also maybe not 1.75 coverage

[0:13:01 Jim] And there may there may be something to that. Nonetheless, as we look at the newspapers and the internet, the internet today in the news outlets, the outcome of the day one coverage was trump steps on his own message in this uh, Melania trump would have, I think we could say is plagiarism of Michelle Obama.

[0:13:24 Josh] How how would we just like, I think this is worth it. We were saying this isn’t something that you would give a student an F four, right?

[0:13:29 Jim] If if let’s put it this way, if Melania trump was a student, say even in a course with the writing component and we compared Melania trump’s paper to Michelle Obama’s paper which had already been turned in and was out there. Uh Melanie would have the paper turned back under, you know, with a severe warning that this was against the rules of academic honesty and would be told to rewrite the assignment and would be flunk should she use another source in exactly the, in the, in the same way again. So if you google Michelle Obama, Melania trump’s speech is there’s a new york times story that does a very nice job of highlighting the things that are common and it’s it’s pretty close. Um you know, and and some coverage of the negative tone of the convention and I don’t think that’s a big deal. I mean that’s probably what they want because what what they’re being negative about. Yes, what they were negative about yesterday was Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. So it was kind of an attack day. And I think that’s not a big deal. So that’s that’s that’s an okay bit of coverage. The other two things are not early on to write.

[0:14:38 Josh] I mean, part of the expected to kind of start negative, make sure everybody, you know, sort of again, we all agree that, you know, for republicans that we dislike Hillary clinton, let’s remember that. And then we can build up more toys. We’ll see whether it builds more towards a positive message or something more forward looking, but we’ll see.

[0:14:52 Jim] But I think it is fair to say that reminding everybody of how badly donald trump beat john Kasich was really not part of that messaging. So before we close, let’s let’s talk a little bit about the GOP convention from the view of Texas, because Texas of course is a a big state and a big republican state, so it has a major kind of presence at the convention. Um but Texans, you know, the Texas GOP and and Texas republicans having away been going through their own process of unification and reunification and reconcile ng themselves to a large degree with donald trump being the nominee. And this sets the stage for for Ted Cruz’s speech on Tuesday night, which will happen today. So we can’t really, we don’t know what he’s gonna say per se. So there’s a very Texas specific piece to this, which is that Ted Cruz was really the last man standing if you will, in what began as a very crowded Republican primary. He had become in many ways the traditional conservative alternative to trump, even though republican elites, many of them dislike cruz almost as much, if not more than they dislike trump. Cruz is very popular here in Texas. Um, but we also know from recent polling that texas voters are by and large more or less coming around to the trump candidacy, but the convention is part of that in a public way for Texans.

[0:16:22 Josh] Yeah, definitely. This goes, this goes back to the partisan activation piece of this, which is, you know, whether or not you agree or disagree with trump, you agree with most of the things that republicans stand for, you’re probably going to agree to a large extent with some of these other, you know, sort of GOP luminaries who are making speeches, paul Ryan is going to make a speech, is he going to be overly, you know, effusive towards donald trump? Almost certainly not. Almost certainly not rick. Perry gave a speech yesterday, earlier in the day, didn’t mention trump’s name once. Even Perry’s actually been a little bit closer to trump than some other sort of Texas, you know, more recently recently, um you know, and and that’s sort of I think kind of, you know, again, I think part of what is going on in some ways is a lot of republicans saying to other republicans, you know, remember the Republican brand is not necessarily donald trump, even though donald trump is kind of trying to subsume the republican brand a little bit.

[0:17:14 Jim] Yeah, it’s tricky if you think about it, like a Ven diagram of overlapping circles, you know, it’s not very stable, that kind of float closer in some areas and then back and just trying to stabilize that in his bed, as you know, from the public eye with as much overlap as you can, but you’ve got plenty of people trying to maintain their own brand, which certainly crews will be trying to do. And so I think the, one of the big questions, if we look at, um, kind of the big three prominent figures as far as this goes, that is Cruz Governor, Governor, Greg Abbott and Lieutenant governor dan Patrick. Uh, crews will be main kind of maneuvering to maintain his political position inside the convention. That was inside the party. There was talk for a while that he might not even go Now. The question is, I was talking to a reporter on the phone yesterday. I was like, well, is he going to endorse trump or not? I strongly suspect not. Um, I suspect doesn’t seem like that. You know, it’s, it would be a big headline if he did, but I just don’t think it’s going to happen.

[0:18:17 Josh] And I think, I mean, it seems very clear that Cruz is going to run for president again, it seems very unlikely that he’s not. And the fact is if he’s a betting man, you know, he’s probably saying that, you know, the chances of trump winning are less likely, right, less likely than him winning. And the truth is he can yeah, right. And he can basically sort of sit from his position and say, look, I you know, this is my brand, I’ve kept it consistent. I’m not just going to shift for the because the party said to which is again part of his brand is bucking the party,

[0:18:47 Jim] but I won’t be a sore loser and not show up,

[0:18:49 Josh] No but I won’t be a sore loser and not show up. That’s right. Uh And he gets sort of the benefit of, you know, getting getting the chance to speak, being in front of those people, reminding them who he is. And then later he can say, well, I told you so.

[0:19:01 Jim] And then we’ve also got, you know, Governor Abbott, who’s not going to be at the convention right now, pretty clearly the most popular republican among republican voters, in Texas, in Texas, you know, had this injury last week where he was burned and so do not will not be showing up the convention. Probably kind of convenient for him not being burned. But politically, it’s hard not to look at this and say that for Abbott to have a good reason to not be there in the midst of all this. He’s been uh, formally, he’s endorsed the ticket, but he’s not been going out and talking a lot about donald trump, saying especially, you know, praiseworthy things of trump. Abbott has been historically very close to Cruz. In some ways, Cruz was a bit of a political protege of Abbott’s given that he was solicitor generally worked when, when Abbott was Attorney general. And then you got dan Patrick, the lieutenant governor, who’s got very, somewhat different math kind of triangulate between Cruz and Abbott on this and that, you know, probably more ideologically and stylistically, um, similar to Patrick in the sense or to Cruz, I’m sorry Patrick were similar to Cruise in terms of who he appeals to. The tenor of his ideological approach is a very, you know, relatively strident conservative, shall we say? Um, but it’s been working pretty hard as lieutenant governor and kind of hovering in the popularity, you know, kind of job approval and popularity ratings under Governor. Abbott has been taking a lot of opportunities to get in the national spotlight. And we’ve talked, I think we talked about this a little bit last week, taking the lead on transgender bathrooms. Um, he was at the town hall. Another thing has happened in the last week with President Obama last week. And uh, you know, ask the very kind of political question of the president in many ways on national television.

[0:21:00 Josh] I mean, he’s not, you know, to sum it up, he’s not shy about, you know, trying to elevate his profile and he’s been doing this for a while. He continues to do it. And in some ways, you know, cruz’s rejection of trump and Abbots, you know, let’s say luke warm embrace one armed hug if you will, gives, uh, you know, it creates a space for Patrick to fill in some ways. You know, I mean, Texas is a big Republican state. It has a ton of delegates, it has a ton of money, It has a bunch of major cities with their own media. So the fact is, you know, for Patrick, it’s a great opportunity to put himself out there

[0:21:37 Jim] and now he’s sort of the de facto head of the texas delegation in in Cleveland, given that the governor, Abbott can’t be there. So, you know, I expect that we’ll hear, you know, we’ll we’ll hear more from dan Patrick as the week goes on, be my sense or, you know, and he’s gonna have a lot of competition, but we’ll hear more. And, and he’s also been, yeah, he’s, as you say, he’s been proud of these three. And really if you throw in speaker straus, the speaker of the House is the other kind of major Republican, less publicly known. But the other major Republican figure in the state, a little less full throated or a little more full throated in his endorses trump right?

[0:22:13 Josh] And what you can see what you can see across all all of these, uh, these officers, I mean, each of their reasons, idiosyncratic and it’s really specific to their situations and their political context. But you know, this is sort of this is what is kind of going on in some ways. What makes the whole convention a little bit of a challenge is, I mean, a lot of the stuff that’s been written about is sort of the lack of, you know, besides basically mitch McConnell, uh, Senate majority leader and the speaker of the House paul Ryan, who are, you know, basically, you know, who are mostly acting on behalf of the party. A lot of, you know, big name republicans have shied away from prime time speaking slots, have shied away from sort of big endorsements and they’re all kind of making various versions of these political calculations of, you know, how do you, you know how do you endorse the GOP ticket without taking on any potential past and future liabilities that donald trump might present. And so you can see across the three of these, I think Patrick is definitely more of a risk taker and I think his previous actions have shown that he’s willing to write Strauss is certainly the most risk averse, which is why he’s basically been silent. You know, again I think Cruz has his own set of reasons that are probably more personal, but also in some ways are you know, again specifically looking ahead and Abbots being kind of in the middle. And I think you can kind of look at a lot of politicians around the country but republican politicians and and sort of fit them into some version of these kind of mold and thinking about their own political futures, right?

[0:23:34 Jim] And I think to, to tie it together from a texas perspective, part of what you’re seeing here in terms of texas, political leaders engaging in national politics, but also thinking about their position at home. You know, this is there, you know, they are each other’s competition, given that the Democratic Party is now so weak and the Republican party has been so powerful in texas now for a couple of decades. This is what these, you know, the National Convention is looking at their brand and looking at the company, the presidential race trying to solidify in order to confront the democrats, cruz Patrick Abbott. They’re looking at home and really what they’re doing is consolidating their position in republican primaries, because none of them are very threatened by the democrats in the general election. And so there’s a definitely a kind of looking, looking out and looking inward factor here if you’re a texas republican in a state that is so dominated by republicans at the state electoral level. So I think with that we will call it a close and uh, urge you to keep an eye on the convention. Ted Cruz’s speech Tuesday night, donald trump will speak thursday night and should be interesting. Have a good week and we’ll see you on the next Second reading podcast. The Second Reading Podcast is a production of the Texas Politics Project and the Project 2021 Development Studio at the University of Texas at Austin