August 16th, 2023 – Why Abbott’s latest border policies likely buoy his support among Texas Republicans

[00:00:35] Jim Henson: And welcome back to the second reading podcast. I’m Jim Henson, director of the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin. Happy on a hot summer day to be joined by Josh Blank, research director for the Texas Politics Project. Uh, welcome back, Josh. It’s been a while since you’ve been in the chair.

[00:00:52] Josh Blank: Yeah. Well, it’s, you know, it’s nice, it’s nice to be back. I mean, I sort of, it’s one of these things where we do this every, and sometimes it feels like, Oh boy, gotta

[00:00:59] Jim Henson: drag myself into the studio,

[00:01:00] Josh Blank: but that’s why, you know, it’s nice to take a break every once in a while and realize how much you enjoy it.

[00:01:04] Jim Henson: Well, uh, that’s the spirit.

[00:01:06] Jim Henson: Yeah. We had a July break and I want to thank, uh, Lauren McGuire for joining me last week. Got a great talk about the Paxton case. Uh, you were off on summer break yourself and you missed that. Um, we had, uh, Lauren McGaughy of, uh, McGaughy of the Dallas Morning News last week had a really good kind of a deep chat with, uh, we got a couple of good jokes in it, even about Paxton.

[00:01:29] Jim Henson: Heard from a listener about the, uh, a funny comment Lauren made. So that’s a little teaser. Get in there, you know, um, you know, there’s a lot we could talk about today in both state and national politics. You know, there was a, you know, it’s good that we’re back in August. I mean, it’s been a thing is one of those weird media trope discussions.

[00:01:52] Jim Henson: I don’t know. You don’t. I don’t tune into the same kind of things I do necessarily. There’s been this kind of little sub thing among media people about like, Oh, it’s a quiet August. And people go, Oh, it’s, you’re an idiot. It’s never quiet in August. You know, but whatever we should, our expectations should have been.

[00:02:08] Jim Henson: It is not a quiet August. I

[00:02:09] Josh Blank: think it is usually quiet in August. I agree with that perspective. This is, this has not been a quiet

[00:02:15] Jim Henson: August though. And this discussion is all like the Friday Newsday discussion, right? I mean, there’s a generational, you know, and then there’s the actual empirical record, which I don’t know that anybody’s really gone and looked at.

[00:02:27] Jim Henson: Some of the Friday stuff I think people have. Be that as it may, there is a lot going on right now. So, you know, uh, we thought today we would start by revisiting one of our frequent topics, but it’s frequent for a reason. Um, and look at some of the developments on the Texas Mexico border this summer and, and Texas policy on the border.

[00:02:50] Jim Henson: Policy and politics. You know, I, I’m saying that we’ve talked about it a lot, you know, since, I, I think the last time we talked about it was, has actually been a few months. I actually went back and looked and, you know, it comes up unexpectedly all the time, but I think the last time we really, focused on kind of border policy was early May as it was kind of kicking up again in the legislature.

[00:03:12] Jim Henson: I think then we talked about how amidst the divisive session, there was some effort to use border policy to kind of re bond, attempt to re bond Republicans. It didn’t really work all that well, but that’s what we were talking about that time. But we’ve seen since that time, uh, you know, another series of, you know, pretty serious developments that I think invite some degree of consideration, getting a lot of media attention.

[00:03:38] Jim Henson: National media attention. Yeah, yeah. And which in itself is a topic, I think. Right, sure. You know, the biggest, most headlining, grabbing, headline grabbing development, uh, Greg Abbott’s deployment of, More resources, but particularly the deployment of these buoys in the Rio Grande River that are meant to deter migrants, um, and it’s triggered both a lot of coverage, as we’ve said, and an uptick in the, you know, perpetual conflict laden dynamic to some degree, and we’ll talk about that, between Texas and the federal government, and not to mention increased friction with the Mexican national government.

[00:04:18] Jim Henson: Right. Um, You know, the big stories that have come out of this, sometimes brutal enforcement from DPS officers that has actually gotten some kind of, you know, informal whistleblowing and blowback from inside the Texas DPS, Department of Public Safety, if you’re listening out of state, um, and welcome if you are, uh, And at least, you know, at least a couple of deaths that were related to the deployment of the buoys.

[00:04:45] Jim Henson: So, and, you know, you know, we had this instance, we were writing some poll questions related to this policy, you know, and, and when, and, you know, you found that photograph that illustrated, you know, we had, you know, this is, you know, another, you know, slight glimpse behind the scenes where we’re talking about, you know, how dangerous are the buoys themselves.

[00:05:06] Jim Henson: You know, there was all the talk at the time. A lot of talk about razor wire on the, on the border is the razor wire on the buoys.

[00:05:12] Josh Blank: It’s like the rain we, we, we decide, well, the razor wire is not on the buoys. And then right after we had kind of decided that got into some question, we’re going to be like, then I think it was congresswoman, uh, Sylvia Garcia, I believe, sort of took a video from her trip to the border.

[00:05:25] Josh Blank: And, you know, you can see, you look at the buoys and you’re like. Are those, uh, sawblades? Sawblades!

[00:05:31] Jim Henson: So the buoys have sawblades in between Yeah, the, you know, Mad Max

[00:05:35] Josh Blank: Thunderdome style. Um.

[00:05:39] Jim Henson: So there that was. Yeah, uh, you know, uh, I’m struggling for the adjective to put in front of the engineering feat there.

[00:05:47] Jim Henson: Um, there’s a lot of Yeah, I’ll keep going. So, You know, we talked a lot about the public opinion dynamics, and we don’t need to recap too much. Although I kind of want to attack that from a different angle, I think, than we’ve attacked it before. You know, by almost any measure, save one or two things, we’ll get to that.

[00:06:08] Jim Henson: You know, Texas Republicans, both elites and voters, tend to unite around aggressive border enforcement actions. Um, and as a, as a, again, in stark political terms, is an added benefit. for Republican incumbents, it tends to split Democratic attitudes. And by split, I don’t mean evenly, but you know, Democrat, you know, Democratic attitudes on a lot of these border policies, not homogenous.

[00:06:34] Jim Henson: You

[00:06:34] Josh Blank: call this kind of a classic wedge issue, right? What do you get is 100% of your voters and then you, you drive a wedge between some share of the Democrats and the majority of Democrats who don’t approve of this. But ultimately, if you’re peeling off, let’s say 1 in 10, 1 in 5, you know, 1 in 3 Democrats, that’s a very good issue in this kind of environment, in this kind of political competitive environment.

[00:06:56] Josh Blank: Right.

[00:06:57] Jim Henson: And, and, and some of the, some of the data that we pulled to, you know, to think about in the, you know, the angle I said that’s a little bit different is, you know, we talk a lot about. You know, the breathtaking salient, you know, consistency in the salience readings of this for Republicans and the difference with Democrats, where that dynamic to some degree is evident, broad attitudes on immigrants, both legal and illegal, et cetera.

[00:07:20] Jim Henson: But you know, in the last poll we did in, in June of this year, We got, we returned to some more specific questions that are a little bit closer to current policy being pursued in Texas. And so we’ve asked a lot about spending and the, and the spending, I think the spending numbers are, are kind of one of the best things here, right?

[00:07:44] Jim Henson: Spending

[00:07:44] Josh Blank: stuff is really interesting. I mean, and a lot of times, you know, we sort of. Inherently, at least in our own minds, you know, we sort of ask a spending question in Texas. We’re always sort of thinking about, you know, the classic kind of fiscal conservatism is sort of, you know, something is a compare point of comparison, right?

[00:07:59] Josh Blank: To the extent that, you know, Republicans generally as well as in Texas have always sort of. Highlighted the importance of, you know, controlling government spending, small government, you know, especially in Texas. We think about low taxes, low services model. And when we asked, you know, again, uh, during the legislative session, both at the beginning of the legislative session at the end, the beginning we asked about spending in a lot of areas.

[00:08:19] Josh Blank: What you tend to find is that, you know, Republican support for more spending across a broad range of issues tends to be relatively limited. But when we talk about the border where the state has continued to spend, you know, Increasingly large amounts of state resources, you know, on, you know, in the name of border security, no matter when we ask, we find we actually tend to find the share of Republicans saying the state is spending too little is actually slightly upticking, if not remaining sort of constant around 60%, which is so the majority of Republicans, only 12% in our last poll in June said that the state is spending too much on border security, even though again, you look at the statesman board security, it’s gone up dramatically.

[00:08:56] Josh Blank: But again, one, one interpretation of this is, I mean, there’s two, I think, ways one could interpret this and they’re not, you know, they’re not mutually exclusive. Right. You want us to say on the one hand, there is greater appetite for more, right? That this is actually, you know, the majority of Republican voters saying, you know, not only are you not spending enough, you could be doing more.

[00:09:16] Josh Blank: And again, spending is a rough measure. I think the idea is just about effort, about resources more broadly. Right. Um, you know, and then the other side of it would be to say, well, you’re not doing a good enough job. You know, you should be doing more

[00:09:28] Jim Henson: right before you move on to the measure. I also want to say like the and and and that spending and on the spending piece, you actually see the democratic dynamic at work to exactly, you know, when we ask people, they’re spending too much, too little or about the right amount.

[00:09:43] Jim Henson: on border security. Um, sure. 40 44% but that’s kind of a glass half empty of Democrats say you’re spending too much. And that looks when you just look at the bar graph of that, that looks about right. Because, you know, Democrats and Republicans are really different. But, you know, more than a 5th 22% say that the state is spending about the right amount.

[00:10:06] Jim Henson: And then another 20% say the state is spending too little, not trivial. Yeah.

[00:10:10] Josh Blank: It’s not trivial. Well, and this is, and this is one of the big, you know, I mean, this is one of the big issues. We’re going to go a different direction, but I’ll pause here for a second. I mean, this is one of the big issues for Democrats.

[00:10:17] Josh Blank: I mean, I think one of the interesting. You know, one of the interesting things looking forward to the next election cycle is looking at sort of how the Democratic candidates, especially running for Senate against Ted Cruz, how they position themselves on the immigration issue and on border security in particular, and I think, you know, even right now looking for the two kind of leading candidates, Colin Allred and Senator Gutierrez, You do see, you know, some pretty distinct positions there that you don’t really see on a lot of the other issues.

[00:10:44] Josh Blank: I mean, if you were to say, how are they different on guns? He’s like, you know, it’s not that different climate, not that different. But when you look at this issue of border and this question of sort of how aggressively, you know, there should be, there actually is a pretty clear division between those two candidates, which I think in and of itself is.

[00:10:59] Josh Blank: It’s very interesting. It reflects, it’s reflected in these numbers, but that’s not really what we’re here to talk about. We’re here to talk more about, you know, again, the governing coalition, I

[00:11:07] Jim Henson: suspect we’ll have a lot of opportunity to

[00:11:10] Josh Blank: talk about that. Yeah, for sure. So then the other piece of this that I think is, is, is interesting is, you know, in that same June poll, we also asked, you know, basically whether or not, how, whether or not voters approved or disapprove of how state leaders in the legislature, in the legislature had handled a number of different areas, including immigration and border security in Texas.

[00:11:28] Josh Blank: And here, you know, what you find is, is you find, you know, again, not surprisingly, you know, you’ve got 45% of Democrats disapproving strongly. That’s not to be, you know, that’s just not surprising among Republicans. You know, you end up finding majority approval. 62% approve of the job that state leaders and legislature have done.

[00:11:45] Josh Blank: But what’s interesting is we want to dive into for a second. Only 23% approved strongly. 39% approve somewhat right? And, you know, how exactly to interpret that I think is a little bit complicated. Right. I mean, you know, I look at something like that. And part of it, I think, is we could put this into a pattern that we generally say when we ask about approval numbers.

[00:12:07] Josh Blank: What we tend to find is we tend to find let’s just say we’re talking about a candidate or a politician. Let’s just say we’re talking about a generic Republican politician that people have an attitude of. And I think this is kind of a similar dynamic here. You know, you tend to find that let’s say you have a Republican statewide official like the governor.

[00:12:21] Josh Blank: Right. And what you tend to see is that Democrats will vote. Express a lot of strong disapproval and Republicans will be mixed between approving strongly and approving somewhat. Now you flip it around and say, well, what about President Biden? And you’ll see a ton of strong disapproval among Republicans.

[00:12:35] Josh Blank: Among Democrats, you see sort of a mix of strong approval and somewhat approving, right? And so to some extent, you know, I mean, this is just a nature of something that we talk about a lot. We talk about negative partisanship a lot in here, but to the extent that, you know, these sort of negative attitudes define our politics a lot.

[00:12:49] Josh Blank: I mean, you could say that that’s what’s maybe going on here is that, you know, as much is when you look at these attitudes, you know, this is it. As much about the fact that, you know, partisanship is defined by what Democrats aren’t willing to do for Republicans as it is about what Republicans want.

[00:13:02] Josh Blank: There’s a flip side to another interpretation we could take at this, too. And I think, you know, and it’s not unreasonable in the state in the case of immigration and border security, which is to say that, yeah, Republicans approve it, but maybe. Maybe there’s I mean, I get there’s two interpretations, but maybe they think more could be done at least.

[00:13:18] Jim Henson: Yeah. Well, I don’t see this, too I know he was

[00:13:20] Josh Blank: saying yeah Well, I mean, I think you know if you’re listening to this you might say well, of course only 39% Republic Or let’s say of course more Republicans approved somewhat than approved strongly could say because these these policies on the border are so divisive You could that could be your position you could say You know, once you start putting barbed wire on the border and, and these, you know, there’s these sort of sort of quasi whistleblowers in DPS saying, well, you know, they’re telling us not to give them water or push.

[00:13:42] Josh Blank: Maybe some Republicans are taking a step back and saying, you know, maybe we could be doing this in a more humane way. But the problem is there’s no evidence anywhere else in the existing data when we look at specific policies.

[00:13:55] Jim Henson: And in fact, the existing data points in the other direction, right? Which is they seem to think.

[00:13:59] Jim Henson: You just look at the. The data we just talked, the other item we just talked about, you know, if that’s the case, then you would think that. There would be more Republicans saying we’re spending too much or we should slow down on spending on the border, and that’s not what we’re getting. 60% of Republicans say we’re spending too little

[00:14:16] Josh Blank: and furthermore, you know, you know, across many, many years of polling on various, you know, sort of policies aimed at the border, whether by the state or by the federal government, you know, what we tend to find is that You know, I would say somewhere in the neighborhood of 70 to 80% of Republicans regularly express approval or support for really any range of punitive policies, right?

[00:14:36] Josh Blank: That might be seen as deterring or deterring immigration. I would say illegal immigration, but I’m actually gonna say deterring immigration full stop or, uh, you know, essentially yeah. Uh, seeking to, you know, essentially expel people here illegally. And so we ask

[00:14:55] Jim Henson: people straightforwardly pretty regularly.

[00:14:56] Jim Henson: Do you think people that are in the country illegally should be deported immediately? And we get the kind of numbers you’re talking about.

[00:15:02] Josh Blank: Exactly. And so I think, you know, interpreting this, you know, it would seem to me that, that, you know, given that the state is so, uh, You know, it’s a, I mean, so clear in its policy.

[00:15:14] Josh Blank: I mean, this is, I mean, I have to take a step back just to say this. I think the right way, you know, a lot of times government do does stuff. That’s just not clear to people, you know, I mean, I’ll give an example, right? You know, to the extent that the legislature did a lot of work to shore up the electric grid.

[00:15:26] Josh Blank: If we went out and start talking to voters about what they did, it would be news to them. They would not know about it. It would be difficult to understand. And that’s true for most policy areas. But right. But the border policy that the state is engaged in has been so public and So blunt and so blunt.

[00:15:41] Josh Blank: And so, you know, I mean, and so overtly political. And I don’t say that in a negative way. If you’ve listened to this podcast before, but I mean, it’s been packaged in a way so as to appeal to the Republican electorate. You know, at this point, there’s no way to interpret this to my mind other than to say, you know, there’s more appetite in the Republican electorate for border, these sort of border policies.

[00:16:03] Josh Blank: Despite the negative coverage, despite questions about sovereignty, despite the continued and increasing cost of it. And so given that, you know, where does that lead us?

[00:16:13] Jim Henson: And, you know, the, yeah, and the piece of, you know, to point out, you know, we often, you know, try to occasionally put some pointers. I mean, uh, John Moritz in the Corpus Christi Caller Times had a very interesting story about, uh, this that’s getting some play today.

[00:16:27] Jim Henson: I think it was published yesterday that, you know, an international commission that oversees The Rio Grande River found that the buoys are actually on the Mexican side of the, of the river.

[00:16:38] Josh Blank: Yeah. And I mean, and it’s sort of like, you know, is that a problem from the, in terms of internal Texas politics? No.

[00:16:44] Josh Blank: Nope. I don’t think so. I mean, that’s not going to change people’s fundamental views

[00:16:48] Jim Henson: on that. Yeah. No, I, yeah. I mean, I think it underlays and that, and then, and so that kind of brings us to the politics of all of this. And let’s talk about that for a few minutes. You kind of walked us right up to that and the politics of this in particular for Governor Abbott, who for better or for worse, or, you know, I think unambiguously is and purposefully is the face of this policy and seen as the agent of these policies on the border.

[00:17:12] Jim Henson: Um, you know, I mean, and again, I, it was interesting to think back to how we talked about this in May, you know, and how we. I saw the politics of this, you know, or at least playing out or not playing out in the legislature. You know, this is, this serves, put it this way, this serves to, you know, divert media attention from other less pleasant policies for less pleasant stories for, you know, Republican governance and Republican elected officials in Texas.

[00:17:48] Jim Henson: It’s a. You know, stories that are either unpleasant or simply not as good. I mean, I think the economic story with, you know, has gotten a little more mixed in the state. Not because, you know, I mean, I, you know, you can email me if you want, but I mean, not, not because the economy is in the tank in the state.

[00:18:04] Jim Henson: Do you look at the economic stories in the state right now, the ones that are not driven by You know, efforts, you know, to point reporters in certain directions, you know, if you were to let the economic story in the state sort of settle to its natural point, you’d still have stories about people are coming to Texas a lot.

[00:18:23] Jim Henson: But the big story would be housing costs, the unaffordability.

[00:18:26] Josh Blank: I mean, just be unaffordability. And the thing is, and part of it is, you know, look, this is not a Texas specific story. But it’s Texas sized because of, you know, Texas is major metropolitan areas on the one hand where, you know, through the housing costs are really sort of, you know, so problematic, but also Texas’s population, which is young and diverse.

[00:18:45] Josh Blank: And also, you know, a lot of cases in a lot of places, relatively low income. And so there’s a, there’s a, there’s a higher pressure point on that. You know, I think how, you know, Texas has, you know. One of the most restrictive abortion laws in the country right now, which is not done well at the ballot box when it’s actually been put to a vote and public opinion here reflects public opinion in most other places.

[00:19:04] Josh Blank: So there’s that piece of it on that issue. On that issue, there’s gun violence. There’s the school safety concerns, you know, even though again, you’re very likely to go into a special session about vouchers when that

[00:19:13] Jim Henson: even the grid in which You know, elected officials can stand up and say, we did something about the grid, but our numbers have shown and we’ll have to, you know, we’ll check back into this, but even after the session that people are not persuaded necessarily in their gut expectations, their reflexive expectations, that this is not something they should still be worried about.

[00:19:33] Jim Henson: And, you know, the heat wave doesn’t help

[00:19:35] Josh Blank: that. Yeah. And then you might say like, Oh, you know, you’re just going down a laundry list of these things, whatever. It’s like, yeah, I understand that. But the thing that’s interesting about the border and to bring it back to that is that, you know, this isn’t. Uh, an obvious conclusion.

[00:19:48] Josh Blank: Like this isn’t an obvious next step, right? Right. I mean, these are, these are very clear decisions to escalate the degree of conflict, both with the federal government, but also honestly with, I mean, I mean,

[00:19:59] Jim Henson: maybe whatever fight they can pick. Look, the busing is the good example of this. I mean, the busing is clearly, you know, contributed to big problems in New York City.

[00:20:08] Jim Henson: It’s actually caused a pretty big problem, Headache for the mayor of New York City, right? Who, you know, there’s a good piece of, you know, slight Eric Adams, slight diversion. There’s a good piece in the New Yorker. That’s kind of like can Eric Adams get by on charm and bluster alone? You know, and this has been out.

[00:20:27] Jim Henson: I’m not, you know I’m not close enough to that to make a judgment on whether that’s a fair story or not, but that’s a really, but I mean, but it underlines the fact that here, let me just make some problems for other people that are for Democrats.

[00:20:38] Josh Blank: No, I mean, that’s a really good point. I mean, I think, you know, to the extent that the busing policy, you know, when it first started was, which I guess I overwhelmingly supported by Texas Republicans.

[00:20:47] Josh Blank: Yeah. And, you know, again, not again, not a small share of Democrats. Yeah. And to the extent that that started off. You know, I think with I think it’s fair, you know, a self evidence argument that this was a political ploy. But the reality is, is there’s been no punishment for it of anything. There’s been benefit to it.

[00:21:04] Josh Blank: So I mean, if you want to say what was the lesson of the busing policy and how is it informed the current moment? It’s that, you know, expand, expanding the scope of conflict and finding more, you know, again, democratic actors to see as, you know, essentially not serious about the border and, you know, again, elevating, uh, The conflict beyond, you know, sort of Texas media and Texas politics to democratic cities, national medias, it hasn’t hurt the governor.

[00:21:31] Josh Blank: And if anything, you know, it probably helps him with his voters. And so, you know, since the beginning, you say, you know, I mean, you go from a policy of, well, we’ll put up some shipping containers. So there’s kind of a, you know, a physical barrier over here to, okay, now we’re just going to start, you know, busing people to democratic cities to, okay, well, what if we, what if we put barbed wire out, you

[00:21:49] Jim Henson: know, what if we, how about buoys with some saw

[00:21:51] Josh Blank: blades?

[00:21:52] Josh Blank: Yeah. I mean, yeah. You know, and to the extent that you say, well, you know, someone in some, someone in some conversation at some point said, you know, that’s probably going to, you know, that’s probably going to be controversial. And I think someone else in that conversation said, yeah.

[00:22:05] Jim Henson: So what? Yeah. If not, so what?

[00:22:08] Jim Henson: Even beyond that, it’s like great. Yeah. Yeah. That it will be controversial. Yeah. So, and again, I don’t want to be too flip about this, but I, and I, and I think that the busing is a good example of. You know, to my mind, I mean, and I think we’ve talked about this on here, but to kind of redo and use it as a transition to another point, you know, the busing turned out to be, I think, a lot more complicated than a lot of people’s first impressions.

[00:22:38] Jim Henson: You know, kind of, you know, especially progressive and people on the left, you know, the issue thing is, oh, he’s forcing people to get on buses. Now there are, they’re not, there are cases. Well, and there are cases where people were, you know, you know, promises were made that were not kept. People were kind of either pressured or a certain amount of the hustle and obviously some legal action around that.

[00:22:56] Jim Henson: But stepping back, there were plenty of Democrats, including Mayor’s in the border area and some of the reps saying, you know, great. If you would just do this a little better, we’re already, you know, trying to help transfer people out of our cities because if we don’t, they don’t want, you know, they didn’t cross the border to stay in El Paso or name your city, they are trying to get to somewhere else.

[00:23:22] Jim Henson: And there is a humanitarian argument for one, you know. Even within the legal rubric of processing migrants for helping people get to where they have family members, contacts, sponsors in other parts of the country. I think we talked about

[00:23:37] Josh Blank: this. Yeah, we did. We did. You know, he says specifically, you know, there’s, you could, you could make an argument that a Democrat and even a progressive Democrat who hadn’t really heard much about this might say, Oh.

[00:23:45] Jim Henson: Good, right. Well, and I think there was, you know, and I think you and I’ve spent maybe even on the podcast. We speculated about how some of the democratic support for this is potentially people going, Oh, they think these hurt, you know, these guys think they’re hurting these people, but they’re actually helping some of them.

[00:24:01] Jim Henson: So, you know, just shows how much they are or whatever, a lot of mental gymnastics there, but I think they’re there for some people. Well, to your point, I

[00:24:09] Josh Blank: think something that’s, you know, a key feature of Texas that, you know, I think people, yeah, May or may not, you know, there’s varied degrees of incorporation to this, but it’s a very varied and diverse place.

[00:24:18] Josh Blank: If you’re a democratic voter, you know, consistent democratic voter living in Del Rio, you know, or, or, or, you know, another, you know, let’s say, Eagle Pass or wherever, you know, you’re not, you know, you’re looking around and thinking, you know, okay, like, this is a pretty small place, what do we do with all these migrants and they don’t have the social services to deal with it.

[00:24:36] Josh Blank: A lot of people don’t appreciate the diversity of Texas in which, you know, you’re going to have a lot of Democrats living in border communities who do see the social resources available. They’re strained in some way. And so, you know, there’s a lot of reasons, you know, to see this is being, you know, again, we’re again, progressive or liberal people might support this policy.

[00:24:53] Josh Blank: But the key here, I think, in a lot of ways, is that, you know, the conflict That was produced out of the policy really is probably broken the governor’s way. I mean, in the grand scheme of things, I mean, I don’t think that anybody would look, you know, looking back at the politics is what we look at is the politics of this.

[00:25:08] Josh Blank: And now we have hindsight, you know, at no point has the other shoe dropped on. I mean, look, I’ll say this. A child died on a bus being taken to Chicago this week, so I don’t want to like, you know, discount the humanitarian, you know, I mean, I was just in general, there are serious humanitarian issues across all these policies that we’re not talking about because we’re talking about the politics of it, right?

[00:25:27] Josh Blank: And we’ll get to some of the humanitarian issues, maybe, you know, in a second, but, you know, putting, you know, setting that aside for a second, you know, the other shoe has not dropped. For the governor of anything, you know, the more strain that he puts on Chicago, on New York, on LA really, you know, it, it fits into the brand that he’s cultivating of, you know, essentially, you know, this kind of warrior, you know, in some ways standing at the border saying, you know, no, you can stop what, you know?

[00:25:55] Josh Blank: Yeah.

[00:25:55] Jim Henson: And, and look, in a sense, I mean, it has put. You know, you’ve seen different responses from different big city mayors, kind of depending on their own political positioning, largely Democrats, but, um, we were talking about Eric Adams earlier. I mean, you know, Eric Adams was, you know, did kind of say, Hey, you know, Biden administration could be doing more about this.

[00:26:18] Jim Henson: Well, you know, we’re kind of catching this all and that’s, you know, you know, it’s a It’s a fair bit of politics. That’s a I

[00:26:26] Josh Blank: mean, I would say that’s a really Important shift in the national, you know Let’s just say in the broad political discussion that you know I think should be like noted and we’ll note it right here for the first time But I mean you are seeing more democrats come out and say hey Like we need to be we need to be more serious about this I mean and I said this to you, you know, I mean going back to referencing ourselves, but I mean I said this about You know, if I may quote myself, I mean, you can go back and, but I mean, I said this about O’Rourke, you know, in the Abbott campaign is to a large extent, you know, what I thought was one of the major, you know, failures of that campaign was not having a clear statement of what the democratic border policy would look like and seeding that.

[00:27:04] Jim Henson: Yeah. And that’s been a common criticism of, of, and I think, and look. You know the biden administration I think heard that and responded

[00:27:12] Josh Blank: Yeah, no, I mean look I think the biden administration has kind of been whipsawed around both because of the politics of it But also sort of you know The various court decisions that have kind of put them in a difficult position because they have you know I mean, they haven’t been able to have a consistent border policy over this first term because you know, what is and is not allowable is sort of been Changing, you know, throughout the course of a few years.

[00:27:33] Josh Blank: And so that’s, that’s tricky. And,

[00:27:35] Jim Henson: and to pivot a little bit back, you know, to your previous point is to turn it a little bit, you know, but, and, you know, when you’re in that position, you know, you face the fact that in this political environment and probably generally it’s a lot. Easier for people to, you know, focus on a negative response than a positive

[00:27:51] Josh Blank: one, right?

[00:27:53] Josh Blank: Yeah, it’s usually easier to focus on. Yeah, so bonds And so that’s the thing so I mean part of this is you know I mean what’s what’s interesting about this, you know Generally as you can sort of see as we start to lay this out There’s just sort of multiple avenues along which you know Abbott is gaining politically from being ever more Let’s just say Out front right of this, this particular political conflict.

[00:28:15] Josh Blank: And we said this before. I mean, I don’t think, you know, Abbott’s not running for president. I don’t expect him to run for president anytime soon. I’m not sure I expect him to run for president ever, but no politician, you know, basically jettisons a good opportunity to put themselves at the center of a big conversation.

[00:28:29] Josh Blank: In a, in a policy area where they feel advantaged.

[00:28:31] Jim Henson: Yeah. And we’re, you know, and that advantage is not only political in Abbott’s place, you know, just to flag and to be, you know, who we are. It’s also the institutional piece, right? When Abbott is out front on the border, everyone else is behind him. Yes. This is not an issue where the Lieutenant Governor can very easily step out and go, well, you know.

[00:28:51] Jim Henson: I matter, et cetera, you know, which he does. And, you know, but, and so, you know, it makes it another in that, in that kind of political sense that we’ve talked about those dynamics a lot. So before we move off of this, you know, let’s go ahead and kind of round out, I mean, so we’ve talked about all the assets, but we’ve also raised that.

[00:29:09] Jim Henson: When you talk about the politics, it’s easy for the human dimension and humanitarian issues here to fall by the wayside. We’ve mentioned that people have, you know, lost their lives trying to navigate the buoys. We had, you know, a child fall ill on a bus and die in the last week, or at least the story ran in the last week.

[00:29:33] Jim Henson: I’m not sure what the turnaround time on finding out about that was. You know, and it does raise the issue that we’ve raised before is that. You know, like most things, you know, the political well here is not bottomless, right? Or to switch metaphors, you know, you can, you know, this Paul, these policies have in the past enjoyed broad support, but then drifted or, you know, either drifted or, you know, gone in directions that bumped into limits.

[00:30:02] Jim Henson: And they usually do involve Children. Yeah.

[00:30:04] Josh Blank: I mean, look, you know, as good as the politics of this are in the way that we’ve laid it out, you know, you get a them You know, three, four year old child caught up in some barbed wire, you know, and a media crew shows up and where they’re trying to rip this kid from the barbed wire.

[00:30:22] Josh Blank: You’ve got a problem, full stop, it doesn’t matter what the kid’s nationality is, doesn’t matter why he or she came here, that is bad optics, right? And I mean, and the thing is, I mean, and the state is, you know, really like, And it’s, you know,

[00:30:35] Jim Henson: and it’s bad optics because, I mean, you know, I just want to add to that, you know, to pursue the, you know, the kind of point you were making earlier.

[00:30:43] Jim Henson: It’s bad optics because the optics can’t outweigh, you know, the optics, you know, bring up, Something, you know, kind of peels away the politics, right? Because it’s such a, you know, it’s such a visceral human thing. Well, it’s like when you

[00:30:59] Josh Blank: say, you know, Oh, you know, I mean, when people were criticizing the busing and they said, Oh, you know, this is a political stunt.

[00:31:05] Josh Blank: And, you know, this is like a humanitarian issue because you’re basically forcing people, you know, into the interior of the country who may or may not want to go there. And that’s all very theoretical. I mean, ultimately, I think, you know, time has sort of shown and, you know, yeah, maybe, maybe not. Maybe some people didn’t want to get on the bus, but for a lot of people, they do.

[00:31:20] Josh Blank: Want to go somewhere? Not like Brownsville. You know, they want to go somewhere else. They have family somewhere else, etcetera. There’s no counter narrative to a child wrapped up in barbed wire. You know, there’s no way to say that this is not a humanitarian thing. This is border policy because this is the other issue.

[00:31:38] Josh Blank: It’s not really border policy. It’s the state’s policy and it’s it’s Governor Abbott’s policy. Yeah. And so that becomes, you know, I think it opens the possibility for many problems. And I think, you know, I mean, you mentioned a couple of times, you know, the sort of, and it’s, uh, some migrants who’ve, you know, died getting wrapped up in the buoys.

[00:31:56] Josh Blank: And even that’s sort of a little bit like, well, is that what happened? Did they die up river and then they were swept into the buoys? But I mean, you know, You know, it’s interesting to me, and I’ll just be snarky here for a minute because I feel like it. But to the extent that, you know, DPS director Steve McCraw comes out and says, oh, no, they definitely died upriver.

[00:32:12] Josh Blank: Well, you know what, who I, you know who I don’t trust in the immediate aftermath of a tragedy?

[00:32:18] Jim Henson: Yeah, the, the

[00:32:19] Josh Blank: per, yeah. The person who went to the Texas Senate after Uvalde and basically towed the company line that was found to be completely inaccurate about what happened that day. And I mean, I think, you know, again, I, you know, I’m reluctant to say it, but I will.

[00:32:31] Josh Blank: I mean, you know, the fact is on that day, He really showed his ass because he went out there. He told the political line of the story that was sort of concocted as to what happened, and he kind of showed that he is a political actor like everybody else. And so the fact is, is that, you know, DPS and their role in this and what they’re saying is going on.

[00:32:50] Josh Blank: It can’t really be 100% trusted at this point. And that’s and that’s sort of the environment, particularly when

[00:32:55] Jim Henson: you got as we made reference to, you know, some clear kind of, you know, Reservations among the rank and file about

[00:33:02] Josh Blank: about the policies, whether written or unwritten as to how they’re dealing with this.

[00:33:06] Josh Blank: And that’s the other thing, too, is, you know, DPS is not a border patrol unit. That’s not what these guys signed up for. That’s not what their primary job is. And to the extent that you’re putting them into greater con contact in more conflictual situations with larger number of migrants, you are going to have more issues.

[00:33:24] Josh Blank: And ultimately, at this point, you know, it’s Abbott’s basic response to these things is like, well, you know, we wouldn’t have to do this if not for the federal government, but to the extent that you’re putting saw blades on buoys. Well, you don’t have to do that. We haven’t been doing that. Nobody’s done that.

[00:33:40] Josh Blank: That’s not something that’s been part of, you know, policy. So that argument becomes a little bit problematic at some point. And again, I think that the optics and the visceral nature of the kinds of things that are going to happen, you know, they do. Again, I’m not going to say it’s going to change them, but it creates an exposure.

[00:33:56] Josh Blank: A lot of negative exposure,

[00:33:58] Jim Henson: potentially. So with that, I think, you know, I’m not going to try to struggle for a manufactured transition here. We’ll be, you know, this story, obviously, the story will develop itself. We will talk about again, you know, you know, continue, you know, moves back into a central position, you know, it never gets very far.

[00:34:14] Jim Henson: But, you know, but I mean, it is fair to, you know, for the, you know, much of the session, you know, we kind of commented, we weren’t talking about border security a lot. And it does do that. It goes into abeyance, at least in the public attention. But it’s always there to. sort of be drawn on, but before we go, I do, you know, it would feel a little like malpractice to not at least flag what, you know, everyone else is, you know, sort of noticing, which is that, um, The long awaited, you know, sort of fourth set of Donald Trump indictments in Georgia, you know, we’re finally, you know, sort of were filed and made public and came out this week and the last few days, as we record this on Wednesday.

[00:34:53] Jim Henson: um You know, we don’t need to really do much about the things themselves. If you, you know, you have any exposure to media, you know, you can listen to this. You probably know what kind of a lot about it, but there was, you know, it was a very convenient roundup by Priscilla Aguirre in my essay, uh, the, my San Antonio website.

[00:35:13] Jim Henson: Um, and one of the, you know, and what they did was, you know, what I kind of want to just touch on, which is that they ran, uh, the writer rounded up social media and, and quoted responses from Republicans to the latest, this latest set of Trump indictments. Um, and so you saw very familiar patterns. Um. You know, which is, you know, uh, kind of the central, one of the central least national political issues for Republicans at this moment in terms of particularly Republicans that will be on the ballot in 2024, which is how do you manage that?

[00:35:48] Jim Henson: And what we saw, you know, among Texas Republicans, not surprisingly, that is among the, the major responses that we saw, people were supportive of Trump. Um, you know, the, the, uh, the, my essay story has tweets from, uh, Lance Gooden, Ronnie Jackson, Ted Cruz, uh, all pro Trump and, and echoing, you know, familiar, uh, familiar messaging, weaponization of the justice department.

[00:36:21] Jim Henson: Uh, et cetera. Um, but then it’s still signs of people that are trying to take a slightly different path. Now, these people are much lonelier and, you know, for example, what Wilherd was, you know, uh, kind of took the tact and in the material that I saw that, you know, Trump’s troubles ensure another Biden

[00:36:41] Josh Blank: victim.

[00:36:41] Josh Blank: I think, and I think, uh, I think Chip Roy has kind of taken that approach. I

[00:36:44] Jim Henson: think he’s Yeah. And I didn’t see much by Chip Roy. It puts Chip Roy in a little bit of an awkward position because Chip Roy is also a major advocate of, you know, the weaponization argument, just not so much in the defense of Trump necessarily.

[00:36:57] Jim Henson: And I, and I just haven’t, if you saw, I just haven’t seen what, what Congressman Roy’s had to say. I’m going to, I’m making a note to go look that up actually, because I’m just curious about that. You know, from the kind of work that we do, it raises the eternal question. And this is obviously a big question in the national media, you know, you know, will anything move Trump’s numbers in a way that are significant?

[00:37:21] Jim Henson: And I, you know, before we came on, I, you know, I want to kind of explore. Maybe a slightly different argument than what we see out there because much of the media coverage, especially in the last few weeks nationally to get into our bailiwick, and we didn’t really talk about this beforehand. But there was a New York Times Siena poll that got a huge amount of play into my mind was an exercise in something.

[00:37:45] Jim Henson: You know, we talk about on here. A lot is a particular point you like to make, which is the over interpretation of data, which showed, you know, the national race, you know, Biden with either a very narrow margin or it essentially tied and people’s kind of, you know, their hair on fire, kind of, you know, like Trump could win and Trump, you know, Trump is like completely, you know, and obviously it is, that poll means very little at

[00:38:10] Josh Blank: this point, I would say means nothing.

[00:38:12] Josh Blank: Right. I mean, the only, the only thing I would say is, you know, the only thing that you get out of that poll And I mean, this is not a criticism of the poll generally, but just that

[00:38:19] Jim Henson: the polls, you know, quote, unquote wrong. No,

[00:38:21] Josh Blank: no, no. There’s good stuff in that poll. But I mean, the main, the main point here is that, you know, the only sort of thing you’re comparing it against is expectations.

[00:38:28] Josh Blank: The expectation is that a bunch of people, whether Republicans or others, who formally, you know, were fine with the former president’s conduct or whatever, now all of a sudden have decided, you know, no. And then this is, you know, this is too far. And then you find in the data, this, this wellspring, this sort of.

[00:38:44] Josh Blank: There’s a couple points. I kind of want to make about that. And so let me let me just let me just do this a couple ways. So the first is, you know, man, do it. You know, I mean, one thing is, you know, when we talk about some of these, I’ll go in a reverse order. I mean, something else I’m thinking about as you’re talking about it, you know, is that.

[00:38:59] Josh Blank: Social science is and polling is a as a social science tool. Okay. And I would say this, you know, it’s not great at finding small differences, right? And so if you’re if the goal is to say like, Hey, I want to know if support for Trump is 51% or 20% I can tell you that. I can tell you with confidence, whether it’s closer to one or the other, whether it’s significantly more than 20% if you say to me, well, is Trump support 48% or 45%?

[00:39:28] Josh Blank: I said, well, you know, that’s going to get a little bit tricky, right? And not only is it gonna get tricky, it would get tricky if we were a week before the election trickier still over a year out. Right when we don’t know what the electorate looks like but honestly like that’s kind of what we’re talking about here I mean, I think one of the things you know There’s this I mean to go back to where you started on this section or not on this section button This this discussion this piece of it is like, you know, nothing’s really seemed to move Trump’s numbers in the past You know will anything and the question becomes, you know move and move how much there’s like the mechanisms of movements Which are interesting and we’ll talk about For a second here, but then there’s also the consequence of it.

[00:40:05] Josh Blank: So when you think about the mechanisms, I think one of the questions that we’re kind of looking at here is, and I think what pollsters are thinking is, okay, well, one, you know, you stack these indictments up on top of each other. Does the accumulation setting aside the specific effects, but the accumulation of multiple indictments Multiple different courts, multiple different investigations.

[00:40:23] Josh Blank: Does that accumulation lead to some kind of decline in evaluation of Trump for whatever reason, whether his conduct or his electability, it doesn’t even matter. Fatigue, whatever. And that’s, that’s, that’s another question you could ask even after that. So the accumulation may have done something and you may say, well, how?

[00:40:36] Josh Blank: Right. Is it because, you know, again, people think worse of him. Is it because they just think he’s not electable, but they love him. Who knows

[00:40:42] Jim Henson: if she’s on

[00:40:43] Josh Blank: different alternatives, another possibility that we might think about is, you know, we’ll do the different, do the different investigations and indictment.

[00:40:49] Josh Blank: Do they, do they have different weight, you know, do some people see, let’s say, well, yeah, you know, he gave stormy, you know, they gave stormy Daniel some money, but that doesn’t matter. Yawn, yawn, but like, you know, Oh, everybody takes documents, but like, Oh, you know, trying to

[00:41:04] Jim Henson: everybody pays off their stripper lovers.

[00:41:06] Jim Henson: It happens.

[00:41:07] Josh Blank: But, but then the, but then it’s like, but then maybe, maybe some voters would say, yeah, but you know, the conspiracy charges are a problem. You know, or something, right? Right. Maybe, maybe not. Maybe they all look the same. Maybe, you know, among Republicans, they’re all political charges. Maybe among Democrats, they’re all serious, and you kind of say that’s a wash.

[00:41:24] Josh Blank: Those are all mechanistic, and they’re interesting, you know, whatever. But, like, if we just take a, but, you know, now at this point, you’re like, oh my god, okay, great. But let’s just take a step back and say, but why would it matter? Ultimately, you know, we ask, how much of an impact… Would these things, regardless of the mechanism, have to be to have a fundamental impact on the outcome of the next election?

[00:41:45] Josh Blank: And I think the important part to sort of just take a step back and say, it actually probably isn’t very much. We’ve had very close national elections, you know, the last number of years, both parties really, you know, we talk about elections. I mean, I talk about elections or some people think about elections way is either, you know, sort of mobilization versus persuasion.

[00:42:01] Josh Blank: Elections is obviously not mutually exclusive, can be both. But generally speaking, you know, the part, you know, when we look at elections. In the current environment, it is generally about mobilizing one’s voters first and foremost, so, you know, if you kind of go and look at the closeness of national elections and say, look, you know, if because of the range of indictments, whether it’s the specifics of some indictments or the accumulation of them, whether it leads to Some Republicans in an independence to either think less of Trump or think that maybe, look, it’s too much of a distraction.

[00:42:31] Josh Blank: It doesn’t really matter. But if it decreases his support by, let’s say, you know, 5% among Republicans, and I’m not saying those Republicans go and vote for Biden for a second term. But maybe they just don’t turn out three to 5% of Republicans say, you know, this is like, this is too much, or this is too much trouble.

[00:42:48] Josh Blank: Or I think this is a real problem.

[00:42:50] Jim Henson: I don’t feel it’s quite

[00:42:51] Josh Blank: right about this. I don’t feel quite right about this. Well, you know, in the national environment, that’s about enough to lose an election. Yeah, it’s not going to take much more than in fact, that might be enough on its own. And so I think, you know, that’s sort of the thing, but like to the extent that like a poll, let alone a poll a year before the election is going to national poll.

[00:43:07] Josh Blank: Yeah. And a national poll. And again, there’s no national election to the extent that like, you know, you start to think about this stuff. The reality is, is, you know, the tool is not going to uncover that both because of, you know, the measurement error, because of how far out we are, because we don’t know what the electorate is going to look like, but also we’re trying to.

[00:43:23] Josh Blank: ascertain whether there’s, you know, a less than 5% drop in support. That’s hard.

[00:43:30] Jim Henson: And, and, and, uh, you know, and I know this is no accident. And so if you look at our numbers and you look at Trump’s favorability rating, say in the last year and a half, February 22 is favorability rating from among Texas Republicans.

[00:43:45] Jim Henson: Still very strong has gone from 80 to 76 with some fluctuation around that line. You know, in the, so drop of four points per your point, not something you can make a lot of a lot out of, but the estimates, the estimate, and then you look at his favorability ratings among it or his, you know, his, his unfavorable ratings among independents, his negative ratings among independents have gone from 49 in February of 2022 to 55 in June of 2023 again, um, I’m sort of raising my hands.

[00:44:23] Jim Henson: I mean, not nothing. Well, I’ll

[00:44:25] Josh Blank: put it this way. Could that be random fluctuations in the data because we’re sampling people a hundred percent. Could that be a reflection of the fact that he keeps getting indicted for serious crimes?

[00:44:35] Jim Henson: And there’s some subtle

[00:44:36] Josh Blank: erosion. Yeah, that’s very possible too. And we just won’t know yet.

[00:44:40] Josh Blank: But if you think about, you know, the, the, the, the teeth grinding going on along them. Among a lot of Republican elites at the moment, it’s because they understand the electoral dynamics are such that, you know, he can’t lose 5% of Republican 5% of likely Republican voters and win a national election. Most likely, right?

[00:44:59] Josh Blank: And that’s what they’re looking at. And in the face of no viable alternative, right? In the primary, I think there is, I mean, you know, I mean, this actually kind of brings us back to the Texas response and the response from, you know, the, the core of, you know, you’re kind of, you’re, you’re in for, you know, in for a penny, in for a dollar or whatever, in for a dime, in for whatever, I don’t know.

[00:45:17] Josh Blank: Yeah, in for a dime, in for a dollar. In for a dime, in for a dollar. Inflation. Well, you know,

[00:45:21] Jim Henson: I, you know, I come from, I’m the generation where we use cash.

[00:45:24] Josh Blank: Yeah, that’s right. I never had cash. So. But I mean, if you think about it, the teeth gnashing is going on right now, I mean, you don’t really have a choice but to say this is the weaponization, this is nonsense, because what, you know, when you’re talking to is you’re not talking to Democrats, you’re talking to Republicans, you’re talking to independents, you’re saying, don’t take this seriously, because really doesn’t take a lot of Republicans taking these charges seriously to create a serious problem in terms of the national political campaign.

[00:45:48] Jim Henson: Right. And to your point about the politics of this, you know, I mentioned, you know, that the people that, you know, I, you know, that at first cut, And again, I didn’t do a comprehensive survey here, but you know, for every one of the people that I mentioned, you know, a cruise, a good and, uh, a Ronnie Jackson who took time to do this when he wasn’t, you know, MFing cops at the rodeo, um, you know, there’s five or 10 Republicans who are just Yeah.

[00:46:16] Jim Henson: You know, which, and this is, you know, one of the reasons they’re doing that. It’s, you know, it’s, you know, these people are making the odds on bed in terms of dynamics inside the party and certainly inside the Texas Republican Party. But it’s, you know, it’s, you know, it’s, it’s, it’s not a position anybody is enjoying.

[00:46:35] Jim Henson: I’m positive of that, including.

[00:46:37] Josh Blank: Well, and the thing is, there’s no, I mean, there’s no clear viable alternative path. I mean, if you think about it, you know, there’s no, at this point, looking at the same set of data that’s available to everybody, there’s no advantage, in fact, a significant disadvantage for someone like Ted Cruz, Lanscreen.

[00:46:53] Josh Blank: In stark political terms. Ronnie Jackson going out and saying, you know what, former president’s too compromised. I’m going to support Ron DeSantis. Right. You know what you’re supporting? You’re supporting the likelihood that you have a primary challenger. Right. That’s what you’re supporting at that point, you know, and a vindictive former president who will support that primary

[00:47:12] Jim Henson: challenger, right?

[00:47:13] Jim Henson: Yeah. And they’re saying, you know, somebody was, you know, clearly has been exposed as running kind of a Mickey Mouse campaign would

[00:47:19] Josh Blank: seem it would appear. So that’s good. All right. That’s good

[00:47:21] Jim Henson: on that terrible note. I’m gonna thank Josh for being here. Uh, Thanks again to our excellent production team of the Dev Studio in the College of Liberal Arts at UT Austin.

[00:47:33] Jim Henson: We couldn’t do it without you all. Uh, thank you for listening. If you have found this podcast via the usual platforms, please try our website, texaspolitics. utexas. edu. If you click a couple times, go to our blog section, you’ll find a post that features not only a link to this podcast, but also some graphics of some of the data we’ve decided that we’ve discussed today.

[00:47:56] Jim Henson: So again, thank you for listening and we’ll be back soon with another second reading podcast. The second reading podcast is a production of the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin.