April 27th, 2021 – Second Reading Podcast

Welcome to the second 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.

And welcome back to the second reading podcast on Jim Henson, director of the Texas politics project at the university of Texas at Austin. Glad to be joined again by Josh blank, a research director of the Texas politics project today. Welcome back, Josh. Well, thanks for having me. I didn’t know if I get invited back after such high, high powered high profile.

Well, you know, we’re getting, we’re getting a rhythm together here, you know, and, uh, uh, I can fill in you, you know, it’s, uh, the tapestry seems to be evolving here and, um, I I’m fairly happy with that. Um, it’s been an interesting week since I recorded last week with Ross Ramsey. Um, you know, there were, and we’re not going to dwell on a lot of this, but I, I feel a little obligated to know when things are actually begin to look even a little bit.

Businesses, we expect it, right. I mean, actual signs of governing in the legislative branch in Texas this week house committees had meetings this week, um, on some very practical aspects of real issues of including the public ed committee talked some about testing, kind of catching up on, on things in public ed right now on the state of affairs in public ed, um, state affairs and.

Pretty deeply into broadband deployment related kind of infrastructure issues in and around the broadband issue. And a little bit about energy, I think came up in some of that, um, high profile case on death row. Melissa Lucy Lucio receives receive a stay of execution, um, by the court of appeals, which I think is going to, uh, as I understand.

Likely to, to result in a review, some of the evidence or a case that had not been getting it gets sent back to the trial. Right. It’s been, it’s been remanded. So that’s interesting. Of course, some of the usual hi-jinks, um, as we’ll call, I mean, I w like, you know, I say that in that way, but we’d be disappointed if there weren’t probably, um, you know, both governor Abbott and Lieutenant governor Patrick urged the Supreme court.

To issue a ruling on, on attorney general Paxton’s appeal to throw out the whistleblower lawsuit against him. And, you know, there’s a lot of speculation around this and of course it could be more than one thing that motivated them. Um, you know, on one hand, there’s the idea that a ruling in a assert in a certain way could.

Rebound to the advantage of everyone in the executive branch, you know, be if the outcome is that elected officials are sort of, you know, have some degree of exemption from being the target of whistle blowers and in particular, the provisions of the whistleblower act, right. But it also raised a lot of eyebrows in that urging a decision on this, depending on what direction the decision went could actually not necessarily be good for attorney general, Paxton as he is in the midst of a runoff.

Yeah. I mean the Supreme court is, you know, I would say this. Six to eight months, the state Supreme court has really not blazed a very clear trail in terms of how to predict how they’re going to come down on these kinds of things. Right. And it’s not even clear from, uh, avid and Patrick’s are urging of them taking on that they’re even necessarily pushing for, uh, an outcome they’re really just pushing for them to take it on is from what I understand.

So it’s a very, it’s an interesting space. I get them and it’s not clear to me how long that could take it, cetera. But once again, Consistent with several of our previous discussions, uh, border security was in the headlines again, and really tightly wound with some of the major events in state politics and, and, and even with national politics.

And we, I think we, we talked about border security and in a different kind of setting, slightly different setting a couple of weeks ago. Um, But a lot of things have gone on since then that have, I think, I think added some new dimensionality to the issue and also invite us to drill down a little further than we usually do.

So among those things, you know, a federal judge, you know, as everybody noted a Trump appointed federal judge, um, Ruled that the, you know, the Biden administration could not end the title 42 remain in Mexico program. And there was some thrashing around about that in the Biden administration, uh, about whether to appeal that and they wound up deciding that they would appeal it.

Um, And for those of you used to fill in the title 42 program is the, the provision of the law that allowed the federal government to, uh, not permit, not permit migrants from entering the United States based on health concerns around COVID. Right. So, you know, that is, if you’re a refugee, you come in and say, you know, I want to claim refugee status.

It goes into a whole process. Normally you’d stay in the country, all that process plays out. Now you stay on the Mexican side of the border. Right. So now that, you know, so, you know, often overlaps with the reference to the remain in Mexico. Yeah. And the ending of this policy was the stated, uh, rationale for Abbott’s, uh, you know, sort of comprehensive truck inspection policy on the border recently.

And it has roiled, you know, Politics in DC as well. And we talked about this a little bit, I think a couple of weeks ago, because right before Congress was taking a break and this had obstructed, um, the passage of, of the COVID relief bill. Now it’s returned that COVID relief bill from based on what I’ve read seems to be back on track.

Um, but now there is an effort afoot in a, in a broad expectation that Republicans in, in Congress, in particularly in the house, want to attach the con you know, a lock or an amendment that would continue the title 42 program to the. Aid package that is pending before the house, which is, um, not surprisingly a very high priority items.

So you understand the legislative politics here. There’s a good, there’s a good read in Punchbowl news this morning. And in a couple of the, the major dailies about this, for those of you that are, that are interested in this as we record this on Wednesday, um, but the congressional politics of this very Royal, that’s a pretty straightforward calculation.

I think for most congressional Republicans, As, as has been the case, very complicated for Democrats, moderate Democrats want to, there’s a, there’s a, certainly a lot of will among moderate Democrats to see the program continue, at least in the short term and to not have them end it right now. Uh, progressive Democrats ending the program, a pretty, a pretty high priority, at least in terms of public positioning.

It’s certainly, I mean, you know, we’ll get into the, I mean, certainly I don’t even know if we’ll get that deep into this, but the whole, this whole argument over title 42. The reactions to its ending and sort of the, again, the, the, the falling politics you’re describing here, which we would not describe as like sane policymaking per se, around any of this.

I mean, it’s a really good encapsulation in some way of, you know, the difficulty or the difficulty, you know, I say, The poor way, in which like, as both parties have been able to respond to the immigration issue, I mean, you can see this, right. And then in part of this in multiple ways, and one I’ll just point out is the fact that again, like, you know, this is a pandemic era health policy.

That’s basically being held on to his immigration policy. And that’s where I think it just, if you just acknowledge that as a starting point, you realize how difficult this is. Well, and Democrats would say to be fair, you know, this was also played very much as an immigration policy by the Trump administration when they implemented it.

So the two have been, I conflate it like it’s a good use of the good time to use the word conflation, right? The conflation of these two policies in, in title 42 politics is it’s almost a facto impossible to extract now. Political sense. Anybody, if the goal is actually to like move forward on any of these issues, but we’ll keep going.

Let’s keep going. Right. And so, yeah, so all hundred New York is the, the, uh, DHS secretary is going to be in Congress today. Again, as we record this on Wednesday, they’ve unveiled a plan that is. Supposed to be the replacement process for title 42, based on what I’ve read, it’s unlikely to please anybody well, a shocker, but as is sort of the fig leaf, I think that they are attempting to put forward in order to end title 42, but the, the memo itself is very important.

This is also pointed out in this Punchbowl news thing, but they’ve got a link to the, to the, to the plan memo that New York is that the circulating. You know, that basically makes the, you know, has the unfortunate position of just being honest about it at one point and saying, this is intractable, and we’re not going to solve this in the short term without more comprehensive immigration reform, a little bit of a executive branch pushback towards Congress, but.

Uh, not likely to help the politics of the situation. So, and then also we shouldn’t, we shouldn’t forget this week. Big news in the state also that I believe it was a national guardsman was killed drowned in the Rio Grande day as part of an attempt to save migrants. Uh, his body was recovered earlier this week.

That’s also put a pretty grim note on the situation at the, at the border given. That there has been a lot of coverage of, you know, less than ideal conditions for the guardsman and, uh, that are deployed in, in the region, uh, as part of operation Lonestar. Yeah. And that’s one interpretation of that. Yes. So yes.

Now we’ve talked a lot about public opinion in the politics around these issues, and I kind of, what I’d hoped today is we can kind of recover, you know, recap that very quickly. Um, and talk about. Maybe we begin to think about what might be driving this, which is something we just never quite get to, I think, but in, in part, because it’s complicated.

So basic public opinion situation is we’ve talked about a lot. Let’s, let’s do this as quick as we can. Ready. So looking at our most recent survey in February 58% of Republicans said that immigration or border security was the most important issue facing. Texas about a majority said the same thing in February, 2018, about a majority said the same thing in February, 2011.

It doesn’t really matter when we look there’s blips, right. When COVID first came out, COVID kind of ran to the top. It dipped a little bit, but honestly, by, uh, I was looking this morning by our. Uh, June poll of 2020, so not long into COVID more Republicans. So that immigration border security was the most important issue facing the state then said COVID took two, two surveys and about a couple months for it to retake, it sort of plays at the top issue.

Uh, you know, over this time period, you know, between 2008, nine and 20 22, 23 states span on border security has increased from 110 million to about three over 3 billion, technically, right? So about 27, uh, 270% increase, I guess. Um, I should there’s you know, we’re gonna get to the pains here. I mean, there is something going on here, which is, look, there are a lot of migrants coming to the border right now.

How much of that is sort of, you know, an effect of lulls in migration due to COVID or consequences of COVID on people’s home countries, in terms of, you know, spray more able to migrate hard to know, but 2022 had the highest recorders of migraine encounters on the us Mexico border on record, about 1.6, 6 million 2022 looks like it should surpass that, but within the same, uh, re.

There were similar surges in the eighties and in the nineties, this is not like unprecedented or historical. It’s been this increase in migrants each sort of year has been taking place over multiple administrations has been an ongoing thing. I only mentioned that because I think, you know, whereas you know that a majority of Republicans say that immigration border security is the number one issue facing the state.

It’s like no Democrat. Yeah, 2% of Democrats. And this isn’t to say that, you know, Democrats don’t think this is an issue. It’s the salience of the issue. It’s the importance of it. But I think Democrats might be quick to kind of dismiss the fact that like we are at a historical peak in terms of the number of migrants come to the board.

I think that has to be acknowledged. So. You know, but in this context, even though the state is, you know, extreme, you know, expanded the spending significantly 50 to 60% of Republican voters say the state spends too little on border security. Only about one in 10. Say the state sends too much the spending that the state has continued to increase as a no impact on these opinions.

Immigration is a tough issue. There are multiple dimensions, but it doesn’t really matter when we look at Republican veterans in the state three quarters, uh, or I’m sorry, two thirds say that, you know, we look at Lee that we allow too many legal immigrants into the country. So two thirds, so about 66% consistently say that.

Too much in terms of when legal immigrants ends, we’re not even talking about, you’re still thinking about Republicans to be just Republicans. I’m only talking about Republicans here. Three quarters say that undocumented immigrants currently in the U S should be deported immediately. This is a very consistent finding and we find majority opposition to refugees settling in Texas.

Who’ve gone through security clearance processes in. You know, multiple different kind of refugee groups. We’ll talk about that in a separate section here. There’s a little bit of a difference when you look at children, but only, but even, even in here, I think it’s actually, the differences is kind of important.

And we often say what’s the limit. And we have to remember, I mean, sometimes, especially in this moment where the, the family separation policy seems like it’s at least, I mean, you know, I don’t know that it’s actually been solved, but as a public matter, it’s in the rear view mirror. Situation, thus sparred is not, that was an artifact of a few years ago, but certainly illustrated a limit to this.

And I think what you find in looking at all these survey results, different dimensions of the issue, and then over time on immigration, what you see is that, you know, there are, there are relative, you know, there, there are relative objects here, right? So, you know, slight majority opposition to refugee settling, you know, two thirds saying that we let too many legal immigrants in three quarters say.

All undocumented immigrants have the country right now. That’s sort of, you know, there’s escalation from, uh, you know, refugees to legal immigration, to illegal immigration. And we look at children, we see something different or something similar, but at a different level. Right? So when we ask about DACA, which are children, who’ve been in this country, their whole lives, right, right there.

We actually said that DACA, just to remind people is, you know, the deferred administration program that allowed people that had been. Migrants that had been brought to the country without documentation, as miners to stay in the country. Right. You know, as long as they met certain, basically they see, do, do what conditions.

Right. Do good. So in February 21, 40 6% of Republicans said we should continue DACA only 40%. So we should end it. So again, these are for undocumented children. Who’ve been in this country, their whole life, but this is a big. In June, 2018, 46% supported separating children from their parents at the border.

That’s a plurality of Republicans, 36% oppose. This was during the Trump administration’s policy of separating parents from their children, right in April 21 fifth, when we asked, well, what, what, what should we do with unaccompanied children who arrived? Because there were these sort of children caravans, right?

59% of our hugs. And we gave a lot of options. We said, we could turn them away. We could have the government, take them in. We can have, you know, charities come to with. 59% of Republicans said that those unaccompanied children should be turned away. And I make the distinction here in my head for the DACA versus some of this other stuff.

And this is it with DACA. You’re talking about it again. First of all, pretty much nearly even split in opinion, whether to continue to Rand debt, but that’s also talking about children. Who’ve been in the U S their whole lives, but then we start talking about, you know, again, children arriving at the border first with their parents.

We can separate them. Then we say, what if they’re. Oh, send them back. So across all of this, you say, what do we see? We see an issue that is highly salient. We see an issue that has really, you know, homogenous attitudes among Republicans were, you know, I think somewhere between, you know, at least majority, but usually two thirds to three quarters hold, you know, similar views or similar directional policy preferences.

Right. And then further. And we talked about this on the podcast before. You know, ultimately these other immigration keeps becoming a problem because of, you know, the increase in sort of, again, border apprehensions and increase the number of migrants arriving at the border is a real house attendant disruptions in that, in the region.

And they tend to disruptions, you know, there’s a non-trivial number of Democrats who, you know, disapprove of the job Joe Biden is doing on immigration and border security. And who, who, you know, in some cases probably approve of some of the things that Greg Abbott is doing right. Independence and to look more like Republicans and Democrats on these issues, but still somewhat in the middle, but ultimately it’s a winning issue for, but leaning more towards the Republican direction, you, in most cases, right?

And these overall partisan dynamics really benefit Texas Republicans in the sense that with a Democrat in the white house and Democrats in control of Congress, again, migrant surging at the border based on historical numbers and Republicans in control of Texas, the biggest border state. There’s a natural sort of benefit to, to playing the partisan dynamics that have so far benefited you when you are the party of the majority of voters in the state.

And this is not the first time that we’ve seen this, you know, in, in the last couple of decades. I mean, it’s, it’s been interesting to think about comparing where we are right now in year two of the Biden administration and a Democrat in the white house with where we were in year two, around 2010 with. A Democrat in the white house when Barack Obama was president when we saw not identical, but very similar, pretty similar, pretty similar dynamics.

Um, well I think the point, I mean, I think the point to make here too, is that anything that I should have just explicitly, we already said the word durability here, but like everywhere, the result that I just kind of mentioned, this is not from asking it once last year, almost all of these are basically results we’ve seen on items that we’ve probably asked five to eight times over the course of somewhere between four and the last 12 years.

Right. You know, hinting here, I guess, you know, we’ll have. You know, a pretty good set of new results on this in the near future. Um, from a UT Texas politics project poll that’s in the hopper right now. Um, and so I think at some point we’re going to have to bite the bullet and put together some trend graphics, another kind of trend page on immigration.

Like we have on some of these. Some of the other data that we have on the site. So there’ll be updates on a lot of this and it’s spoiler alert. We’re not seeing any big disruptions in the patterns. Josh was just talking about. Um, if anything, in some cases, maybe I don’t want us to go too far out too strongly say the opposite, but some of these are really.

Good holding up and aggravated or, you know, executive sort of amplified, I think by the current, by the current circumstance. So you talked about durability and let’s, let’s talk a little bit about that as you know, so we stepped back, you know, what can we make of this? That’s not just saying what we’ve said before, in terms of, you know, all these patterns you just hopefully kind of summarized and talked about.

There’s always a structural piece lurking here. That’s both about immigration and border security, but in some ways about things that are much bigger. And I think, you know, if we look at this as structural problem, I think we, you know, it is fair to start where you started in a sense by saying, look, this is a durable problem.

Yeah. And by durable, you know, I don’t even mean the last 10 or even 20 years. Right. The issue of migration at the Southern border of the United States, whatever we’ve called it at different times has been with us for a very long time. And while somebody who’s a policy expert, I’m sure would say, look, there’s, you know, there are things that we can point to where there were attempts to address this, the big immigration reform.

That passed during the Reagan administration, you know, constituted kind of a reset. You can even go back further than that to the sixties and look at immigration legislation there. But certainly if you step back and look at the broad pattern, You know, the combination of what people that talk about sort of migration and immigration talk about is the combination of push and pull factors to put that over simple, to put it to simply, we’ve not done a lot about those.

And if anything, those have been a lot more dynamic in driving this, then have attempts to address this at policy. And just the, you know, I mean, on the American side, to the extent that you think migration is, you know, an issue of economics. And labor or that the problem of, of criminal flows across the border has been about drugs and gangs.

You know, those problems have not been. Those those, those pull factors, as we, as people might put it have not fundamentally shifted in any big way. And sometimes we have seen migration flows affected positively or negatively by either a booming economy or, you know, an economy that sagged a little bit. I mean, the Obama administration in fact, got a little bit of a break for a while and immigration because when the economy kind of crashed here during the late Bush period, after the.

The banking bubble and on the push factors, the push factors. That is what is going on in all of the other places in the world that produce migrants. I have also been subject to a dynamic that has nothing to do with any of the things we’re talking about at this point, frankly, you know, whether it’s the long arc of U S policy in central America that has now resulted in many ways in driving such a huge number of people from some of the, uh, central American countries on the Northern end of the estimate is quite a mall in Nicaragua, El Salvador, which is where we’re seeing a lot of these migrants coming from.

Look at Haiti, look at. Even, even instability in the Southern cone. And even if you want thinking about this right now, instability in Europe, to the extent that you have in the middle east, you know, some flow of immigrants that flow through Latin America to come through the Southern border rather than migrating through New York.

So you’ve got, you know, those are all huge, complicated things that for all the talk about policy addressing these things. We’ve really not done a very good job of managing that. I mean, international pandemic thrown in there and the pandemic is, you know, is a more proximate factor, but you know, what’s interesting to me is you could even, I was thinking about this as you were talking about the pandemic and again, the pandemic right now is clearly a, a huge factor here.

It’s obviously what’s the, the vehicle for title 42 for some people. But even if you were to like take out the pandemic. The huge amount of, you know, the, the huge, you know, the, the very complicated drivers that send people on their way to the border and the things that make the, the United States, you know, a rational place for people to want to go, you know, are pretty deeply seated and very hard to address in policy.

You can send, you know, Kamala Harris to central America as many times. Well, I only mentioned the pandemic there just because this is an example of, you know, I mean, I think you laid out some of the, sort of the classic kind of structural things, but then I also just started there short-term things that happen.

Right. You know, we call it. Drinking game exogenous shocks that just affect the system like the pandemic, but they’re also sort of, you know, long-term, uh, you know, changes in society and people are not gonna like disruptions to kind of, you know, the industrial economy they’re taking place everywhere that like are just, that are manifesting themselves right now.

And sort of in these kinds of patterns in ways that we’re even still just kind of figuring out, right? Yeah. So, and we spent a decade or two talking or a decade and a half. Probably at its peak, talking about how great globalization was and you know, the increased flow of people, services, goods across borders.

Um, we’re kind of having a sour moment when you get a lot of ways, but I mean, that is the context of this is. But I think that is, I mean, that is the context of this, right? I mean, in some ways I think is what you’re saying is that, you know, we had this experiment with, uh, globalization, I think in right now we’re in a bit of a retrenchment from that clearly.

And that’s been going on for a number of years. Right? I mean, I think, you know, the one thing about 2016, that was funny. It was like Bernie Sanders, Donald Trump talking about. Not so, yeah. I mean, while it was, you know, you could think of it as is a backlash. I mean, and we’ll have to remember. I mean, the, the early, you know, the pat Buchanan candidacy, um, presidential candidacy in, in 1996, well, no generation owns backlash, right?

Well, but why does it say, you know, the backlash to global, but what was initially a backlash to globalization? That appeared at the time was just sort of almost stay residual thing, getting bowled over by this massive, the massive momentum and the, and frankly, the embrace of this by elites. Let’s talk about this conflict.

Right? So let’s talk about this conflict manifests itself in Texas a little bit in some of the data that we have. Right. Right. So, you know, ultimately when one interesting thing in all of this is, you know, Texas is as a state, obviously is. You know, it’s sort of, I mean, it’s unique. I mean, I think any texts would say that, but I think when, I mean that, what I’d say is Texas has a big enough economy that you could consider it a global player on its own.

And a lot of it’s very internationally integrated. It’s an internationally integrated economy. I mean, we know that, uh, you know, it’s a very, and it’s an incredibly diverse state. It’s one, the most diverse states in the country. And ultimately, you know, it’s a state that attracts a lot of people from a lot of places.

And again, we’re focusing on Republican attitudes. The reason we’re focusing on Republican ads is because Republicans are in the majority party and the driving policy in the state. So it’s not to pick it’s to point out where this is all coming from some of these underlying pieces. So an item we’ve, and again, these are all items we’ve asked multiple times.

I’m just usually looking at the most recent, you know, we asked whether it increasing racial and ethnic diversity in Texas. Uh, is a cause for optimism or cause for concern in August of last year, 43% of Republicans said it was a cause for concern, 22% said a cause for optimism and the 35% of the. Right. I mean, I think that’s one of the newest that we talked about, whether I don’t know, responses to substance difference or something.

This is a substantive response. In some ways, you know, what I would say is it’s a meaningful response, right? I don’t think you’re going out too far on a limb to read that is the group that has a not positive response to, I wouldn’t, I wouldn’t say this. I would doubt that many of that 35% is going to jump into the optimism camps.

Right, but okay. In October, uh, of an October 20th, 1960 7% of Republicans said that newcomers from other countries, thread in traditional American customs and values. Yeah. I said, that’s an important one. I often forget about, you know, we now that’s, again, this is about people coming here about the changing nature of Texas.

But when we look again, Sort of nativism is in both directions. So when we ask, uh, whether or not the U S would basically be better off, if we just withdrew from the rest of the world’s problems, essentially Republicans have been consistently split on this issue in our polling, going back quite a ways about.

Plurality say that actually we should probably not be involved with the rest of the world. Slightly less say that we still should. Uh, but ultimately, you know, this is, uh, Democrats are a lot less slid on this, that our cats are much more willing to endorse data of the U S pest to play a role in the world.

Right. And then last, you know, I already mentioned this, but you know, we have majority opposition to resettling refugees in Texas. Who’ve gone through. Processes. This is true, whether we’re talking about generally, this is true. Whether we talk about specific groups, although just to make a tease, there may be one group for whom a majority of Republicans is in favor of resettling.

But not to be too cagey about this. I mean, in the past we asked about relocating refugees from Syria during the Syrian conflict, the Syrian civil war. That’s about it more generally. And then yes. And then we’ve asked about, you know, how comfortable people are with Texas accepting refugees and with their communities accepting.

Right. So, I mean, what would, you know, what would you call me? I’m not good at these terms. You’re much more of a theory guy, I think, than I am. So, you know, I mean, Class these the other sort of as nativist. I mean, well, I mean, I think, um, you know, there, there are some interesting Venn diagrams here that we’ve yet to work out and that are widely discussed.

I mean, I think when you look at, uh, you know, particularly a few of those results that you talked about, um, not just the. I mean, I think for a long time we looked at the heat check question on illegal immigration, illegal immigrants being deported right away. And there was always some, I mean, you know, the cognitive, you know, the, the, the predispositions.

Did you bring to that question? Could plausibly be about lawn order as well as, um, attitudes towards immigrants. But I think when you look at that in conjunction with the stability of the results that we see about legal immigration, refugees, and about refugees and about some of these other things that you raised.

You know, you have to look at this as something that is defensively called nativism, which is a, you know, an embrace for a kind of native born blood and soil. Dare I say kind of conception of the good and of citizenship and of, of what you want, what people want the culture to be. And I think that we’ve seen that grow stronger in the Republican party, you know, and I want to point out something here that I think is really important, which is, this is not just a view among white people.

No. So just so you know, you know, if you were to look at all of the. Opinion, like I say, you know, what’s your prior probability here. So when we talk about, uh, Hispanic attitudes in Texas, among registered voters specifically, generally, you know, if you were to say, you know, if you were to basically say here’s an issue and it’s got a pretty, you know, pretty normal partisan split, you know, Republicans line up on one side Democrats line up on the other end, it’s an issue that I would suspect people would kind of know more enough about to kind of put themselves on one side or the other.

If I know that. And then you say, okay, where, how are Hispanics going to split on this issue? I would say. Somewhere between 60, 40, and 70, 30 up to the democratic side of the position. Right. But the minority there is non-trivial the minority, there is non trivial. When you say that. And I think, you know, this is an ongoing discussion we talked about on this podcast, you know, but when you talk to, you know, let’s say, uh, you know, a quote unquote Hispanic person living in a set, uh, rural south Texas county who is been living here for four or five generations.

That’s a culture. That’s part of a culture here that we’re still actually talking about when we’re talking about this nativism, we’re talking about these issues. And so it’s not as though this is like a purely white thing, although it’s not, not a part of it. Right, right. Well, and again, I think that’s right.

I mean, it’s, you know, it’s tricky because there is look, there’s an overlap. Between these things. I mean, there is a now very visible white nationalist movement and a bow, and it’s not even just a movement. There is a body of white nationalist thought Activision or activation social, you know, the best thing to call it as a social identity.

Yeah. Right. Now politically meaningful in a way that it was not 10 years ago. I would say it was not even five years ago. I mean, I think that’s, I mean, that’s, what’s interesting. So, I mean, this kind of gets to the other piece of the attitude said is I would kind of break it out, right. So there are these immigration agents one, and I think, you know, the point you made, I’m just gonna reiterate, I think it was so it’s so spot on, which is, it would be one thing if we were just talking about illegal immigration, But we see it everywhere.

We see it talking about just like, you know, again, children showing up at the border alone. We see with refugees, we see what legal immigration. So there’s that, there’s this question of sort of nativism this idea of a changing, underlying culture and the people who are contributing to, and also our orientation to the world as a piece of this.

And then there’s this other piece to this, which is what I’m kind of clustering as hierarchy. And I’m borrowing this from our colleague, Eric McDaniel, who sort of introduced me to the concept here, but this idea of sort of, you know, we call it a racial. Uh, racial gender, gender hierarchy. So it’s not just about, you know, basically what is the order of, you know, sort of the, you know, the races in terms of what we think about is the hierarchy of society.

Yeah. How racial identity informs, you know, social status and social power. Right. But also how gender informs that. So, okay. So in October, 2020, we asked a series of three state, basically question, you know, statements that you can agree with or disagree with. Uh, you can completely agree, mostly agree, mostly.

Or some, you know, mostly disagree, completely disagree. And the statements were to this effect, right. Uh, you know, you agree or disagree with this statement efforts to increase diversity, almost always come at the expense of white. It was the first statement. Another statement was society as a whole has become too soft and feminine in number three, God has granted us a special role in human history.

That’s important. I’ll get back to this anyway, on the first one, 69% of Republicans agree that efforts to increase diversity, almost always come at the expense of whites. 81%. That society as a whole has become. Uh, it has become too soft and feminine, 78% that God has granted the U S a special role in human history.

If we take a step back right to, uh, June 20, 20, June 19, and kind of think about what was going on right in those areas, we see the me too movement come up first, right? And we see the black lives matter movement really come to the fore in that period. And these are both, you know, two groups that were pushing back against, I think, you know, traditional conceptions of the hierarchy, you know, the reason that kind of that last one, you know, God has granted a special role and, you know, for the U S and human history, religion reinforces a lot of these hierarchies.

It has traditionally, I think a lot of religions traditionally, A lot of traditional religion certainly reinforced the idea of a male dominated kind of household is kind of the archetype. And certainly religion has been mobilized to, to establish racial hierarchies repeatedly and widely. So the fact that, you know, these sort of two movements come along in 20 19 20 20 and say, Hey, we’re kind of pushing back on the hierarchy and we’re trying to make light of it.

76% of Republicans had an unfavorable view of black lives matter. Uh, about 60%, very unfavorable, 63% had an unfavorable view of the me too movement during that period, uh, in October 18, when we asked, you know, who faces more discrimination in society, men or women, the plurality of Republicans, 43% said men, 33% said women.

And in June, 2021 is really counted. And then in June, 2020, we, I said, you know, how much discrimination does each of these groups face in society? Uh, you know, a lot. Among Republicans, 34% said Christians face a lot of discrimination. Society. 24% said white people, 14% said black people, 14% said trans gender people.

And only 8% said that of Hispanic people. So when we asked, who is facing the most discrimination in society in that poll, 28% of Republicans said Christians, 17% said white, 16% said African-Americans. And so you bring that together. And you have, I think both an embrace of it, you know, uh, a traditional, I think, you know, historically well-established of traditional social structure, a racial hierarchy that is, you know, I think been very much well-established and that’s a whole other path to go down here.

Right? Um, but you also have, you know, I think in the last five years movements that have been, you know, I think very overtly trying to challenge that, you know, I think an immediate environment and landscape where, you know, this information is unavoidable framed in multiple ways, right? Uh, And, you know, I think amongst the group, you know, again, I think this was even if we went back further, these attitudes existed before black lives matter and me too.

So these Republican attitudes and discrimination existed when we measured them even earlier. And so when you look at that, you know, you have a group that says, well, actually we’re the ones being discriminated against, but we’re being told something else. This gets a little thing even talking about. This is really difficult.

I mean like, well, I mean, I think, you know, there’s been a lot written recently about.

You know, trying to sort of Inus in a sense pose the subjective position of

yeah. The groups that are holding these attitudes, which are very widespread. Right. And, and how you might sort of think about that and, you know, look on one hand, if you are somebody who. And it, doesn’t almost, doesn’t really matter why, whatever, because of your social identity, because of, you know, whatever, however you want to attribute this, that looks out.

Reply to like a common national polling question that I don’t think we’ve asked before. You might remember that we have, but I don’t think so. Which is something like, you know, do you think attempts to remedy discrimination have gone too far? Yeah. Right. Common way of asking something similar to that, which was basically, you know, during black lives matter, obviously, do you think the attention is going to, do you think all the attention to the racial issues are going to help race relations?

Race relations. They make things worse or have no effect and the plurality of hugs. Well, they’re going to make things worse. The second most common response have no effect and only, you know, I think less than probably one in five, so it’ll make it better. Right. And so from that position, you’re kind of see this.

So if you’re in a position where you feel like either consciously, subconsciously as a predisposition, as an active position, Traditional social relationships that we’re calling, you know, including these hierarchies. Are worth preserving. Then you’re seeing them under siege by objectively changing demographics, by legal changes.

And by something we, you know, you mentioned in the discriminant, in the, in the battery and these new social identities, right? Whether it’s more aggressively asserted or more, you know, more centrally asserted, racial and ethnic identities, sexual and gender identities from women to. Yeah, non-binary and identity.

And on top of that being, uh, you know, sort of put in front of you by a media that is, you know, quickly media, and I also say corporate elites who are quickly sort of much more quickly responding to these changes in society because of customers, customers, and employees and shareholders. Right? Yeah. And then all of a sudden, you think, and then you add in, and then, you know, you have, we have Democrats in charge of Washington as an example, right.

I’m really in charge of. Really any government, you know, the democratic party is having a really tough time kind of talking through these issues and how far they go and how quickly they embrace these changes. I mean, this is an ongoing discussion in democratic politics, which is part of why it’s also still, you know, an issue that, I mean, you know, going back to the beginning, like brass tax politics is great for Republicans in a sense that there’s this strong homogeneity of views that kind of overlapping Venn diagram of.

They’re really create very little boundaries, you know, in terms of what you can say and do. But on the other hand, it’s not as though it’s so easy for Democrats to come in and say, oh, but you know, you shouldn’t do that. Or you shouldn’t say that, or, you know, this is where the relatively homogenous attitudes among Republicans.

I mean, a lot of those majority’s you’re talking about or pluralities are significant, right. And, and likely to continue to move. And so, so I guess the point here to wind up is. Step back and kind of say, yeah, we talk a lot about immigration and border security and the proximate politics of the situation.

I think if you step back and plug this into. A lot of the broader and biggest and most important questions in American politics, and that have implications for state politics. There are big structural things going on about these fundamental cultural politics that are being exacerbated in some ways, or fueled by institutional factors that we haven’t even talked about.

I mean, implicit in what we’re talking about is the ideological. Demographic sorting of the parties and those reinforcing cleavages on that, that are making this even harder to, to manage, but also harder to understand. And I, I, one of the reasons I kind of wanted to do this in the podcast today because I thought we needed to pause and kind of put this in a little bit in a, in a broader context.

And I think this broader context, subsumes a lot of the things that we are going to see going on that we’re already seeing going on in the 2022 campaign. I mean, This notion of this sense of disruption of hierarchy and the different reactions to it and the REIA and the integration of new social and political identities into the political system and into even electoral politics and, uh, in a very co you know,

Sure what the right adjective is. I mean, that gets what I want to say contentious, but also a really transformed mood of social discourse in the week where everybody’s talking about Elon Musk, buying Twitter, buying Twitter, all of this really just, it’s just vibrating and on the heels of the week and on the heels of a week in which governor Abbott was talking about invasions, right?

Exactly. Which we didn’t even mention. No, I think we need to kind of try to keep an eye on this a little bit more, and it’s just good for people to listen to this for us to flag. You know, we’re kind of thinking about these things. We’ve got a lot of data on this and I do want to, once we get into some, you know, some laws and he’ll electoral cycle returned to some of these questions, um, because they’re lurking beneath a lot of the topics we choose any way.

And I think because we talk a lot about the politics of the moment, some of these larger. Big structural questions. We wind up setting aside or putting a pin in, but that, you know, that, that, that pin board is getting pretty crowded with these things. I think also, I mean, if you have any think about the things that we’re talking about here, I mean, these are, these are hard issues to discuss.

Yeah. I mean, I would say, I mean, as a, as a professional who looks at this stuff all the time, these are hard issues to discuss. And I think one of the things that I think you know, is so difficult in, in politics is the fact that, you know, And this is true in life, right? I mean, everybody sort of thinks that they’re overly representative of everybody else.

You know, that like my views are the most common views. And one of the great things about being a pollster, maybe one of the only great things about being a pollster is the fact that, like, I just know how many people will disagree me on it with me on any given issue. Right. And to some degree, you know, that brings a certain amount of, I think, Humira.

To the process because you have to understand it. And most people don’t really, I think, take the time to consider that. And so what I think is, is, you know, when you’re kind of embracing these discussions about, you know, okay, what are the, what we’re talking about, you know, change big changes that are ongoing and kind of the structural hierarchies of society.

And, you know, people are reacting to these in various. I mean, you know, to be a little bit, you know, to not automatically start calling everybody a racist on the one hand and to kind of step back and say, Hey, you know, regardless of someone’s color, skin, color position, whatever, if they had been living their whole lives in a position of relative privilege, and maybe didn’t even know it, and someone came to them and said, by the way, you don’t deserve this, they’re not going to react well, you know, I mean, they’re just not going to react.

Well, now this is now again, the flip side of this is I’m not trying to be an apologist for anybody. Right. And so I think, you know, it’s tough, you know, I think even as someone trying to really, you know, get into these issues and to kind of. Uncover a little bit more of what’s going on here to do this in a way that I think, you know, treats everybody fairly, but also treat everybody fairly means, you know, these sort of attitudes that I think, you know, a lot of people it’s, they’re, you know, pretty anachronistic to where we are in this time and space.

It’s like, yeah, but they’re also extremely widespread. So we have to acknowledge that before we kind of even really begin to discuss this in a serious way. That’s a, that’s a nice way of posing the dilemma that, you know, again, you look at these notes like, well, this seems pretty anachronistic, but, you know, but by definition it isn’t, but it’s also, it also seems pretty pretty present right now.

Yeah. And, and it underlines, I think one of the, you know, there’s kind of a meta difficulty here, which is that all of the things we’re talking about have been internalized in the current political dynamic by, you know, people that are. Political entrepreneurs and. And have figured out a way to kind of accommodate the discomfort and exploit the discomfort you’re talking about.

I mean, I think that, you know, that’s driving, frankly, you know, the elevation of critical race theory. Absolutely. The fact that, you know, right now, somebody, you know, I, I would have zero, you know, I have zero doubt that if there were people that you could play this conversation to, that will just say, oh yeah, that’s just that’s.

This is what I mean by critical race theory at work, because we’re talking about the play of race and social identity as a structural feature. I can’t pick that up with, with the time we have left. Right. But I, you know, I mean, but that’s part of what’s going on here is that the conversation is inherently.

The analysis is inherently difficult. The social discussion and social politics are inherently difficult and we’re going into direction that makes the discourse is in a direction right now that makes that conversation even harder because of the terms of that the debate are taking on. Right. And, and look, you know, I mean, you could also argue, I mean, There’s a false parody here that I should probably just cut this off now, but you know, I, and I could understand that, you know, people will look at the left and see accesses and the whole idea of, you know, what is now become known as cancel culture, et cetera, the culture cancel culture.

Well, this is, but this is the thing I was thinking. It was, you’re talking about that, you know, trying to bring broader context of this is hard for me not to think about, uh, The late sixties. Right. And I mean, particular, I was thinking of, if you read some of the history, you know, you always think about like, oh, the rate, the great, the late sixties was this huge disruption in society.

Right. Um, you know, and I think in a lot of ways, kind of similar to what we’re talking about now, or, you know, social structures were changing their questioning, you know, again, hierarchies, things like that. And everybody kind of tends to associate that with her of the counterculture that kind of came out of that, uh, you know, peace, love and rock and roll.

And I was like, and also like, Religious fundamentalism, which people forget about. And so there’s a sort of thing where, you know, to the extent that this thing, you know, this thing is happening, you know, in society. Yeah. Like, you know, a lot of people like you are going to react in a similar way. And a lot of people, not like you are going to react in a different way.

Yeah. And I think, you know, you’re kind of seeing something like that going on right now. And, and the truth is I’m even within those groups, I think there’s a lot of trying to figure out, you know, how overall are we reacting to this? And you see that on the democratic side. And instead of how far do we go with cancel culture?

How woke can we be at, you know, is that even, should we be, you know, on and on and on the Republican side, You know, you’ve got this leg. I mean, it’s sort of, I mean, it’s, it’s weird. I mean, there’s sort of another big conversation we’re not having that we talk about is like, what does it mean to be a conservative right now?

And I said this a while ago on the podcast about some of the, the transgender sports and school stuff is sort of an unpopular potential view. But I agree, but I’ll say it again with all this stuff, which is, there’s an aspect of this, which is the most traditionally conservative thing you just definitionally, which is they’re trying to maintain the social.

Hi, you know, the social hierarchy, whatever elements go into it, that has existed for a number of years. And if anything, they’re seen as a very quick shift away from it. Right. And so we’re seeing a lot of policy to try to move back and it manifests in a lot of different places, right. It miss manifesting the schools it’s manifesting in immigration policy, it’s manifesting in public safety.

Right. And on and on, I’m sure I’m missing some. So it’s, you know, it’s an ongoing discussion that we do want to keep an eye on because there is some big picture stuff happening here. I think, you know, when we talk.

The role of this, you know, the sense of, you know, the hierarchy, you know, accepted social hierarchies or previous social hierarchies being under siege. You know, this is something else we’ve mentioned another thing in passing in here, but it does come up, you know, you’re right. It’s attendant to this is, you know, what is liberalism and progressivism.

But in this moment, I think the more pregnant question is what is conservatism right now? And is there now. Something that is more fairly called reactionary. I mean, as you’re talking about, there are people that are, you know, I mean, there’s, there’s a difference between saying we’re moving too fast and we should go backwards.

Right. And I think that we should go backward. Momentum has gotten more significant. And that is to my mind by definition reactionary. That’s not standing in front of history. Athwart history saying stop right, stop. And back it up. It’s pushing the Boulder back down the hill. Right? Right. And, and that metaphor I think is actually, I mean, it’s a natural advantage.

I think that you have in that position that you’re trying to rolling back change. Arguably a lot of circumstances is going to be easier than continuing to push it. Yeah. I think that’s true. I mean, I mean, we got to end this, but I’ll say, I mean, I agree that I’m thinking, you know, just, I love to torture analogies, but it’s like, you know, Boulders and pushed up the hill.

And it’s like a bunch of people made businesses down there. They’ve established little stores and shops and stuff. So like the idea that the Boulder can just kind of roll back down the hill and there’s going to be like a lot of friction along the way. Right. And destruction and, and new new forms of resistance.

Right. So I think with. I’m going to thank Josh for being here. That was a, I think, I think we kind of did some of what we wanted to do here today. Um, as we’ve hinted at keep an eye out, we will have new polling data out, uh, pretty soon after this podcast. Not immediately, depending on when you’re listening, but pretty soon.

So keep an eye out for a new UT, Texas politics project poll, and we will be back next week. Um, probably talking about that. So thanks to Josh for being here. Thanks to our excellent production team in the audio studio in the liberal arts development studio at UT Austin. Thanks for listening. And remember, you can find data we’ve referenced today and much, much more at the Texas politics project website that is Texas politics dot U, texas.edu.

Thanks for listening. And we’ll talk to you again.

The second reading podcast is a production of the Texas politics project at the university of Texas at Austin. .