December 7th, 2023 – The Major Themes of a Tumultuous Year in Texas Politics

[00:00:00] Intro: 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. Sir, 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.

[00:00:24] Intro: At what point? Must a female senator raise her hand or her voice to be recognized over the male colleagues in the room?

[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. Joined by Josh Blank today, research director of the Texas Politics Project, uh, top of the late morning, Josh. Top of the morning. So we’ll get down to brass tacks.

[00:00:53] Jim Henson: This is the last podcast of the year, unless we really get a super wild hair between now and the end of [00:01:00] December. Unlikely. Um, you know, keep an eye out. We will have some new content coming out, uh, Um, and some new data before the year is out, but we will probably wait until January to discuss that in any depth, but do keep an eye out.

[00:01:18] Jim Henson: Um, you know, we did a lot of parsing of the special sessions last week as the fourth special neared its end. Um, you know, both chambers have now adjourned sine die. So, you know, it appears to be all over except of course for the fundraising events, which are ongoing, which some of you are probably. Either unfortunately, or fortunately aware of.

[00:01:46] Jim Henson: Given the combination of the calendar and the wind down of the legislature, we thought, you know, we take stock of the last year in politics, which was, of course, you know, for our purposes and the purposes of most people listening, dominated by the legislature [00:02:00] being in session virtually nonstop. And that’s, you know, particularly true if you include the Paxton trial in the Senate during which the legislature was not in session.

[00:02:11] Jim Henson: But. Right. You know, the Senate certainly was there every day and, and that, you know, made it, you know, it made it feel, I mean, you know, House members being for back in their district, other than the people directly involved, notwithstanding, didn’t make it feel like, you know, the legislature was still going, even though technically they were not.

[00:02:28] Jim Henson: Yeah, I mean, I mean, we were watching all year. Yeah, there was no lawmaking going on. It was the, uh. You know, the legislature, you know, making a rare foray into the judicial function to some degree, perhaps. And again, for those of you that are sticklers, I know it’s a legislative function. Got it. Blah, blah, blah.

[00:02:45] Jim Henson: Yeah.

[00:02:46] Josh Blank: Great. Panero is on your

[00:02:47] Jim Henson: nose. There you go. Um, you know, now, uh, you know, we were talking about this as we were thinking about doing this podcast and I, you know, I, I don’t want to say go too far with this, but look for all [00:03:00] the tumult and some frankly surprising events, the Paxton impeachment, um, the expulsion of Brian Slayton, um, you know, top the list of surprises, I think to some degree.

[00:03:13] Jim Henson: And some would say maybe the. You know, some might argue in retrospect, neither of those events was entirely surprising, but you know, they were certainly surprising as they unfolded at the time. I would say, yeah, you know, as, as much as you can rationalize, well, that these things should have happened to some degree, they were, you know, they were, they sort of rocked the session certainly as they were happening.

[00:03:36] Jim Henson: Um, but still, you know, as we’ve looked back, it, it does seem like a lot of the themes we were talking about at the beginning of the year continued to play out through the final special session. And then there was, you know, there was no real earthquake here. I mean, it’s been very eventful. There’s been a lot going on, but you know, there’s no major moving of the tectonic plates here.

[00:03:58] Jim Henson: Right. To put it that way. [00:04:00] Right. Um, and that, again, might be a little bit of a low threshold, but, um, Um, you know, a lot of these themes, you know, that we’re, you know, that we’ve looked at a lot and talked about a lot, you know, played out throughout the session, um, you know, and they all had their, you know, cross currents to not to be too, you know, sort of cut and dried about this and, you know, dialectics, if you will, if we’re still allowed to use that.

[00:04:24] Jim Henson: um, you know, what I mean by that is that for, you know, every way that we might summarize a particular dynamic, there were counter pressures at work. And, you know, as we unfold a few of these and try to, like, look at the big picture, you know, we’ll flag some of those cross pressures. In other words, you know, so, so let’s start, let’s just start with a, you know, I think, you know, I think, you know, we’re, again, we were talking right before we came on, you know, one could start telling this story in a lot of different places.

[00:04:53] Jim Henson: For sure. Yeah. Um, but I think, you know, the major theme that is defined [00:05:00] politics in the state from beginning to end and that, you know, if you’re not attentive to this. You’re not really plugged into what’s, you know, you’re not going to be able to understand what’s going on and that is, you know, lawmaking, policy, governance in the state, you know, have all been fundamentally shaped by the conflict within the Republican Party.

[00:05:19] Jim Henson: And I don’t think, you know, at this point, again, if somebody’s listening here, you’re not, you don’t have to work too hard to make this argument. But, you know, we’ve talked all year and, you know, frankly, as we talked pretty much the year before. about these multiple axes of division, you know, that have played out here.

[00:05:39] Jim Henson: I mean, and we’ll talk about several of them in detail as we go on, but, you know, not to, you know, just cut to, cut to the chase without, you know, playing out the movie. Um, You know, or the plot development, you know, whether you’re talking about the conflicts between the big three, the conflicts between the chamber, the, you know, [00:06:00] the personal conflicts, the institutional conflicts, the ideological conflicts, interest group conflicts, interest group conflicts, there’s just a lot going on.

[00:06:07] Jim Henson: Inside the Republican party that has caused a lot of tumult, tumult.

[00:06:12] Josh Blank: And I should say like, look, this isn’t cramming. Some of you might be able to say, well, yeah, those things are always going on. And if you’re even kind of high minded about this, like, you know, I think we try to be sometimes you’d say, Hey, well, isn’t that like what politics is isn’t, you know, isn’t, aren’t these institutions supposed to, you know, essentially, uh.

[00:06:27] Josh Blank: Process this conflict and produce, you know, an output and I think that’s true. But I think, you know, and I’d also say, you know, some people might also point out, Hey, these conflicts have also been around, right? These aren’t necessarily new conflicts. It wasn’t like Dan Patrick and date feeling we’re getting along, you know, last time, right?

[00:06:42] Josh Blank: I mean, it’s sort of, so there’s those aspects to it. However, what I think, you know, as someone, you know, as people who watches regularly, the centrality of the conflict to the discussion was, was, was. Different or at least or heightened in some way, right? And it’s impact on outcomes. Yeah,

[00:06:55] Jim Henson: and in turn On process and outcomes.

[00:06:56] Josh Blank: Well, right. And I was going to say, in turn, it’s impact on outcomes, right? Because it’s there. [00:07:00] If it wasn’t just, you know, it wasn’t just the, the communications strategies, it, it literally did affect the ability of the chambers to process the conflict and come to some sort of conclusion in some way.

[00:07:11] Josh Blank: Because again, in some, you know, I would say a lot of ways, like The policy desires, you know, even of the party in the central policy desires of either the, you know, the elected representatives or you can even say their voters were to some extent weighted less heavily than some of these. Conflict conflict elements as they became more central to actually like the process of

[00:07:30] Jim Henson: lawmaking, right?

[00:07:31] Jim Henson: And I think you know, we’ve made the point, you know I think it very you know We’ve sort of pointed out at various times that you know Look if you follow the process or you’re in the process, you’re seeing this play out, you know within the institutions You know at the kind of the elite level yeah But I mean, we have a couple of clear indicators of this in our polling, too, right?

[00:07:54] Josh Blank: Yeah, I mean, we can see this when we look at, you know, sort of, I mean, one of the big sort of axes of conflict is seemingly [00:08:00] ideological. And I only say seemingly because it’s too simple to just say it’s ideological. I mean, in the sense of it, we talk a lot in here about the meaning of ideology at this point.

[00:08:08] Josh Blank: But on a simple interpretation of ideology, and when we ask Republicans whether their state officials essentially are performing in terms of their level of conservatism, are they conservative enough, are they too conservative, are they not conservative enough? And what you find is about a third of Republican voters saying that their members are either conservative enough or not conservative enough.

[00:08:26] Josh Blank: Right. And the remainder, you know, about 15 and 11 percent respectively, either say they’re too conservative or just don’t know. But I think the main point here is, you know, you have about 60 percent of the party split between two positions about the output and the sort of stated positions of their statewide officials.

[00:08:42] Jim Henson: Right. And, you know, and I think it’s interesting when you break this down into the intensity of Republican identification, those numbers and again, you know, these numbers have pretty big. margins of error, given, you know, we’re just looking at Republicans. And then we’re cutting that into three different groups.

[00:08:59] Jim Henson: So, [00:09:00] you know, you can take these numbers with a grain of salt, but, but nonetheless, if you look at the people who say that they are strong Republicans, as opposed to not very strong or leaners. A little less than half, call it about half, 47 percent say the party is conservative enough. About a third say it’s not conservative enough.

[00:09:20] Jim Henson: Right. Right. And only, and among those strong conservatives, only 11 percent say it’s too conservative, right? Yeah. So when you think about how You know, on one hand, we know that there’s kind of a consensus that obviously there’s not even kind, there’s a consensus among everybody, but the Republican Party is the party of conservatives much more homogeneously than it was certainly 50 years ago, but even You know, probably 30 years ago.

[00:09:50] Jim Henson: Um, but the, the faction that says that still says, and these numbers that we’re talking about are from October. So this is after, [00:10:00] you know, the regular session, which, you know, was reasonably conservative. So we’ve said, I think, you know, in terms of its ideological output, probably roughly speaking somewhere between 2019 and 2021.

[00:10:12] Jim Henson: Yeah. A little more ideologically driven, a little more identifiably conservative quote unquote, then like 2019. Um, not, but not as much as 2021, you know, more or less, you know, that’s one could quibble about that perhaps, but I, I think I’m

[00:10:32] Josh Blank: pretty secure in that. Well, but broadly, I mean, to the point, to the extent that 2021 was considered an extremely conservative session in 2023 is either, you know, somewhere in that ballpark.

[00:10:40] Josh Blank: The point is, is that, you know, you look at these numbers and you look at the actual, you know, direction of government over that period. And you’d say, boy, I mean, Right. Been pretty

[00:10:48] Jim Henson: conservative. Yeah. And you’ve still got, you know, you’ve still got about a third of Republicans and about a third of very strong Republicans saying it’s not conservative enough.

[00:10:58] Josh Blank: Yeah. And I think even, you know, more to the point, what’s really [00:11:00] interesting, that data and you put this in and now I’m looking at a little bit more closely, but when you look at the lean Republicans, and this is a really interesting group, you know, and they tend to look more conservative than you’d think.

[00:11:08] Josh Blank: Um, you know, we can do a whole podcast on that, which we’re not going to do today, but when you look at just the people who are essentially at first, we asked them, you know, are you a Republican or Democrat? They say, I’m neither of those things. And we said, but no, but really, like, do you lean one way or the other?

[00:11:20] Josh Blank: And these people said, okay, fine. I lean towards the Republican Party. When you ask those people this question about Republicans being conservative, it’s almost flipped. You have 46 percent that are just under half saying they’re not conservative enough. With 30 percent saying they are. Which is interesting because in some ways, this kind of speaks to a whole thing about partisan attachment and whatever.

[00:11:36] Josh Blank: But these people are part of the party. Yeah. And it’s important to note here that these what they are is is they’re part of the party. And really, their conservatism is actually probably maybe even a little bit higher than your sort of sort of, let’s just say, just normally strongly attached Republican, but their perception of the party’s direction shows a certain amount of dissatisfaction, right?

[00:11:55] Josh Blank: That speaks to the internal conflicts within the party in a very kind of obvious [00:12:00] naked way in some ways, right? Even it’s a very simple measure.

[00:12:03] Jim Henson: And so, you know, I think we can’t, you know, you can’t ignore that. You can’t, I mean, you know, I don’t, you know, maybe we were going to flag this for later, but as long as we’re, you know, really have drilled into this a little bit, you know, you can’t really underestimate then the degree to which over the long term or, you know, I should say the medium term, you know, you think back to when we were charting the rise of the Tea Party and the ideological composition of the Tea Party and you and I did a lot with that.

[00:12:31] Jim Henson: Yeah. You know. I think what you’re seeing here is the long term impact of that. Yeah, that’s right. Right. In terms of moving, you know, where the center of gravity, if you will, the ideological center of gravity is in the Republican

[00:12:45] Josh Blank: party. And it also, I think, you know. It is taking place in a larger, you know, sort of historical context right now, which sees, you know, a lack of trust in all sorts of traditional institutions, organizations and groups.

[00:12:57] Josh Blank: And so, yeah, I mean, this conflict is still playing [00:13:00] out within the two party system as we have it, because that there’s a lot of reasons why that’s the case. And that’s what we have. But it doesn’t mean that you’re looking at, you know, I mean, what’s interesting about these numbers is you’re not looking at polarization necessarily in the same way that we think about it, which we’ve thought about historically over the last Two decades where we think about people moving into these ideologically homogenous camps and each party is like, well, you know,

[00:13:20] Jim Henson: I would say only comparatively

[00:13:22] Josh Blank: only comparatively.

[00:13:22] Josh Blank: Yeah. And it depends on what we’re talking and it depends on what we’re talking about. Right. So it’s, you know, but these conflicts are not going anywhere at this point,

[00:13:29] Jim Henson: you know, and, and, you know, I want to circle back to the end in terms of why. Why that’s so pronounced, you know what the impact of that is here, but those are some of the other themes Yeah, yeah so let’s you know, so the other thing another big theme for the year and you know something that we’ve talked about a lot and You know is you know is the governor’s, you know, continuing political preeminence as you know he leverages the power of the governorship and you know in many instances with the goal and the effect [00:14:00] of strengthening a The institutional position of the governor in the governor’s office big theme in our podcast.

[00:14:06] Jim Henson: So, you know, it’s maybe endogenous to the discussion. Um, but, you know, I don’t see, well, I know, let me, let me, I should, I shouldn’t pose that that way. You know, I think it’s hard not to look at the governor’s job approval ratings. How he’s positioned himself in all of these conflicts and not say that, you know, he emerges from this year, which has been a very bruising year of Republican politics, you know.

[00:14:42] Jim Henson: In not too different a position that he was in right after he was elected. Yeah, I’d agree.

[00:14:47] Josh Blank: I think. I, you know, the only caveat I might put on that

[00:14:50] Jim Henson: baseline, that baseline comparison is not what I had in mind and doing it, but as it occurs to me, I think, I think that’s right. Yeah, let

[00:14:55] Josh Blank: me, let me, let me throw this out there as a potential caveat.

[00:14:58] Josh Blank: Maybe slightly stronger [00:15:00] because other people’s positions have become more complicated or people have taken hits. I mean, that’s interesting. So, I mean, the sense that, you know, by staying in this, you know, we can say by staying in the same place, he actually moves ahead a little bit because he has been a, you know, sort of a consistent, a consistent presence in a consistent force.

[00:15:15] Josh Blank: And in some ways, you know, the other things he’s also, I mean, I just sort of thinking about this as we’re talking about and it’s, and it’s. It’s reinforced his position of strength is he’s also generally treated with kid gloves by all the other actors. Well,

[00:15:27] Jim Henson: yeah, I think that’s a, you know, I think you and I were talking about that yesterday and that’s interesting.

[00:15:30] Jim Henson: I mean, I think. You know, and I think that, you know, that speaks to both, you know, the, you know, uh, and again, a common theme here, you know, where Abbott sits at the, at the, at the intersection of politics and, and the politics of his position that are, you know, contextual. And the institutional situation that, how he’s institutional, how he’s institutionally situated.

[00:15:58] Jim Henson: Right. And I think [00:16:00] that, you know, I think he, to some degree does not get. There’s not, there’s not sufficient acknowledgement of the degree to which I think he has managed that and which, into which his political experience prior to becoming governor gave him a less steep learning curve than we’ve seen with other governors.

[00:16:27] Jim Henson: I agree with

[00:16:28] Josh Blank: that. I think that’s right. So I’m going to say this. I agree with that on the politics side of thing on the politics and the calm side. I think, yeah, I mean, you know, and, you know, we talk a lot about how, you know, Abbott comes is in a different position than a lot of, you know, a lot of previous government has served.

[00:16:43] Josh Blank: No legislative experience. And so to some degree, you know, over time, he’s gotten a lot better. And I think, I think, you know, at least in terms of what I can see from where I’m sitting, just to be clear, but I think he’s got a lot more, a lot better or more direct in his dealings with the legislature than when he started.

[00:16:59] Josh Blank: At the [00:17:00] same time, I think he’s really grown again, the sort of the political public weight of his office, you know, sort of in a way that does speak to the strengths that he has at the same time. I mean, I don’t necessarily I wouldn’t necessarily say he’s And then we get this to be a whole other podcast, but I don’t know if he’s necessarily had a higher success rate I think he’s just managed, you know in terms of like the actual policy output I mean, I could look at that, but I think he’s managed to put himself in sort of a Position of promise and or sort of as the victor and a lot of these fights that have gone on That have been pretty messy for a lot of other people right and seemingly not

[00:17:33] Jim Henson: for him Well, I think you know, I mean I was thinking about that.

[00:17:36] Jim Henson: I mean I You know, I mean, look, that, that brings up, you know, our, the kind of template for this discussion. Like right. You know, where are the cross pressures? What are the dialectics here? Yeah. I mean, because one of the interesting aspects of that is, I mean, there were some, as you were spooling that out.

[00:17:51] Jim Henson: Yeah. There are definitely members of the legislature right now that would say you, Josh Blank are smoking crack. Sure. Because. [00:18:00] You know, as we look at the way that he has been, we look at the perceptions of him among some legislators, particularly in the House, as an unreliable partner, etc. But I think it is one of the interesting dialectics here is that I can imagine that there are people on the inside thinking, you know, how wrong could we be?

[00:18:21] Jim Henson: in terms of think, you know, that we couldn’t be much wronger in thinking about Greg Abbott, given how, how much, you know, look, I mean, my notes, I’ll just say what’s in my notes about all the bitching, you know, that people do about him. I mean, you know, inside the process, there was a lot of complaining about how Greg Abbott handles the legislature.

[00:18:43] Jim Henson: Um, Um, you know, in general, how people interpret Abbott’s, Abbott’s solidity, I think is the word I’m looking for here. And what’s [00:19:00] interesting here is that I think that’s been going on for, Yeah. And I think inside, it’s gotten a little bit worse. Now part of this is just longevity. I think after somebody’s been there a long time, and you saw a bit of this with Perry at the end.

[00:19:16] Jim Henson: Yeah. You know, people just are like, you know, they get, there’s a certain kind of fatigue and an accumulation of grievances and disappointments that happen over time that are, that is a little bit inevitable, I think. And I, you know, I would like to have somebody. On to make the stronger argument about that.

[00:19:34] Jim Henson: You know, Abbott should not be viewed as, as effective as this is implying. Now I think you’re. You know, I mean, cause there are some people that would say, look, you know, you can say he’s gotten better at this, but as he’s done this, he certainly alienated more people now that goes back to something I remembered, you know.

[00:19:53] Jim Henson: Sort of Ann Richards saying in an interview I did with her years ago about how you know when she became governor You [00:20:00] know what, you know, I asked her like is there anything you think you learned for this you could have done better Which you know, she didn’t love the question actually as I recall her affect But you know one thing she you know, she said was, you know, I could have been a lot better at Realizing that I need how I was supposed to handle the legislature That people told me that I was supposed to like, you know, get to know, you know, all the legislators and, you know, because then I just wasn’t very good at that.

[00:20:29] Jim Henson: You know, I just really didn’t want to visit with, you know, I think she, I have to go back and listen to it if I had my act together, we’d have found this and we could put it in the podcast. But it’s something like, you know, I didn’t really want to go talk to Joe Blow. And I think she used that term about whatever.

[00:20:42] Jim Henson: I just wasn’t very good at that part of it. And,

[00:20:45] Josh Blank: you know, which is kind of, which I gotta say, it sounds kind of

[00:20:47] Jim Henson: ridiculous. Well, it does. Right. And she was a one term governor. So, well, you know, not to mess with the legend of Anne, but I mean, but I mean, To bring this full circle without going down that rabbit hole too far.

[00:20:59] Jim Henson: [00:21:00] I, you know I do think there is an expectation that that is part of the job. And it does make you, you know, the back slapping and the palliness a part of that. But I also don’t wonder if that’s not changing a little bit. And it’s, you know, and Abbott’s style on that has not been, I mean, members of the legislature say he’s not been consistent and it makes people think he’s inconstant and unreliable.

[00:21:23] Josh Blank: Yeah. And I mean, I think, you know, when you’re talking, you know, we’re talking about sort of the, the quote unquote bitching about him on the inside. I mean, the way that I have often heard that couch is in terms of, and I mean, you said solidity, you know, or, or reliability is kind of part of it. But my, you know, what I sort of hear often is like, yeah, if the governor would just take a position on X, then we would know which way to go or something like that.

[00:21:42] Josh Blank: And this is like, I mean, you know, like there’s some political science 101, not 101, probably like 201 aspect of this in terms of like, you know, how executives can, you know, have levers of influence on legislative branch or not, and which ones they can use. And so a lot of times it’s sort of, you know, Abbott kind of sitting there.

[00:21:57] Josh Blank: I will say to give Abbott, you know, to be fair, you know, which I, [00:22:00] you know, is, I, I don’t know what that dynamic, you know, how difficult that dynamic is when you have someone like Patrick in the Lieutenant Governor’s office. Elected at the same time who’s also been accumulating power in that institution to the point where you know his control and presence There is unquestioned.

[00:22:15] Josh Blank: And so it’s not to say there’s a there’s not an equal counterweight in Patrick, but for Abbott You know, I mean in terms of how you think about navigating, you know Some of those dynamics and whether it’s worthy of taking a strong position Yeah, you know It’s like, well, yeah, you can do that to sort of navigate the GOP caucus in the house.

[00:22:32] Josh Blank: But then where does that put, you know, where does that put everybody at the end? Well, it depends on what Patrick thinks. And so that sort of, you know, I think just to be fair, there’s a little dynamic there that sort of like, you know, and I want to say, look, good leadership shouldn’t care about any of these things and just go and do it.

[00:22:45] Josh Blank: Blah, blah, blah, Norma stuff. But at the end of the day, this is these are politicians. This is politics. And they’re all thinking about this in terms of multi step. Yeah. You know, games that are going to go on here and both are playing. I mean, I can’t I cannot forget after the winter [00:23:00] storm when, you know, there was all these fights going on between the chambers about, uh, you know, basically what to do next in terms of response to that.

[00:23:07] Josh Blank: I remember Patrick holding a press conference and basically saying, well, you know, the governor is a very powerful person. And if the governor wanted to do in parentheses what I want him to do, you know, well, We could get this done and it was sort of like, I mean, it was funny because it was, you know, sort of a poke at the governor because the governor can’t do anything.

[00:23:25] Josh Blank: The government doesn’t have control over the house, neither does Dan Patrick, but it is sort of playing at this same dynamic here, which is, I think some, you know, I mean, there are always people on, you know, in different parts of these policies who want the governor to come in and use that public persona to kind of push something.

[00:23:40] Josh Blank: But I think the, the voucher. Failure is a good example that these are not costless choices for the governor. He’s not going to win every time and even on issues where he really pushes, he might not win. And to the effect that there’s a cost of that, there is a cost that it might not be external. It might not be in the electorate.

[00:23:55] Josh Blank: It might not even be in the primary electorate. But in terms of these ongoing discussions about is the governor a reliable [00:24:00] partner? Is he, you know, but I mean, to your other, but to the point of this theme, he’s still always at the center of the discussion in some ways, whether or not he’s even stepping

[00:24:09] Jim Henson: out.

[00:24:09] Jim Henson: And that’s what I mean about that. And that’s what I mean about the. the institutional piece, right? They were balancing or, you know, managing the political and the institutional piece. And, um, you know, look, you know, and he didn’t always win. And, you know, when you don’t win, you know, it creates some degree of exposure, you know.

[00:24:31] Jim Henson: Uh, but it does bring up, you know, look, I mean, we’ll continue with this in a way because, you know, it does bring up the other major theme that you, you know, sort of a requirement of kind of understanding what’s been going on in the state this year, and that is, you know, Abbott was at the apex, and I, and I think Putting him at the apex is kind of the takeaway of the previous point, you know, of a contentious, distrustful relationship among the big three, that is the governor, the [00:25:00] speaker, the lieutenant governor, that has really contributed to difficulties and, and look, to use The Lieutenant Governor’s term, the dysfunction of state government.

[00:25:15] Jim Henson: Um, and I don’t, you know, I mean, I, and so I think that, you know, Abbott’s position is interesting in that relationship. And I think you re, you know, you raise an interesting point that part of the dysfunction is the kind of. You know, the passive aggressive, you know, antagonism toward the governor, particularly frankly among lieutenant governor, who, as you say, you know, you know, if the if the lieutenant governor is talking about how powerful the governor is, you know, it’s usually not simply to make that point or to flatter the governor, right?

[00:25:53] Josh Blank: Absolutely

[00:25:53] Jim Henson: not. Right. And so, you know, that, you know, that is [00:26:00] such a, you know, prevailing theme. You know, condition of anything that’s getting done right now, you know, and I, and I think it does, you know, it does in a way, you know, fold back on, you know, thinking about Abbott’s position and, you know, some of the internal frustration with him, which is that, you know, you can’t, you know, I think one of the reasons that they, that people sort of think about the lieutenant governor or the governor as not solid enough, or it’s, you know, whatever term you want to use there, is the fact that, you know, there is an impression that You know, he doesn’t make very many decisions that aren’t mindful of the position of the lieutenant governor.

[00:26:50] Jim Henson: Yeah. That may be true. That may not be true. But I think what is, it’s, to me, it’s very true that that is how people parse it. Yeah. I mean,

[00:26:58] Josh Blank: it certainly looks that way. Right. [00:27:00]

[00:27:00] Jim Henson: And you know, in that case, the appearance becomes part of the reality, you know, however true or not. And look, if he didn’t do, I mean, to be, again, to be fair, if he wasn’t doing that, he would be thought of as making a rookie mistake.

[00:27:14] Jim Henson: Yeah. And I mean, just to mention the given the, given the influence of the Lieutenant Governor and his influence over the Senate. Right. And just to

[00:27:20] Josh Blank: mention the cross pressures here. I mean, we’re talking about this sort of the dysfunction in government because of this. I mean, look, they do find ways to agree, right?

[00:27:26] Josh Blank: I mean, they are, you know, I mean, I mean, look, we have to take a step back and remind, you know, I think remind ourselves, remind the listeners, you know, remind a lot of people that, you know, uh, most Republicans agree on most major public issues. Most Democrats agree on most major public issues. And so look, you know, a lot of legislation got passed, a lot of legislation got signed, but at the same time, you know, to the extent that there’s this desire that goes on to, uh, I mean, I think about this, you know, you know, the, the, the breakfast that used to take place.

[00:27:53] Josh Blank: Right. And you used to have the breakfast legendary, the legendary breakfast between, you know, the governor, lieutenant governor speaker, sometimes the controller, you know, [00:28:00] depends. Um, but you know, not to idealize this or make it seem like it’s more than it is, but to the extent that like, you know, there was a regular venue where these, Three players or four players.

[00:28:11] Josh Blank: We’re having weekly conversations behind the scenes. That’s very different than this sort of, you know, I would say desire from lots of different quarters of, you know, the party of the process, depending on the situation, depending on the issue to try to draw the governor out into taking some kind of a public position.

[00:28:27] Josh Blank: But because every time that happens, you know, it just adds to the potential for dragging these Yeah. Yeah. Conflicts out into the open, which reinforces these dynamics again of dysfunction and distrust and basically,

[00:28:38] Jim Henson: you know, it was, it was, you know,

[00:28:43] Jim Henson: it’s one of those things I, you know, I, I have to say that I, I, I’m fascinated with and, and, you know, I’ll just say, I mean, I kind of admire about the lieutenant governor’s communication style is that during his press [00:29:00] conference, you know, when the app right after the let, you know, the Senate adjourned sine die this week, Um, you know, he, after, you know, spending several minutes attacking the speaker, um, he opined that, you know, he tried, he tried to care after, you know, that this wasn’t personal.

[00:29:21] Jim Henson: You know, that it was all really about policy and, and doing the right thing for the people of Texas. And it wasn’t personal at all. And, you know, somebody, you know, one of the reporters, of course, you know, Threw back one of the, you know, choice bits of language. Oh, no, I mean, that wasn’t even a tweet. It was.

[00:29:37] Jim Henson: No, I’m

[00:29:38] Josh Blank: saying one of the tweets that the Lieutenant Governor put out of Phelan.

[00:29:40] Jim Henson: Well, well, he, he, you know, he even, I don’t know how much, how close you watch that. But I mean, at one point, the Lieutenant Governor said, no, you know, we, you know, somebody just, you know, he said, it’s not personal. And people kind of gassed in the room.

[00:29:51] Jim Henson: He’s like, look, we’ve had some fun. I mean, you know, California day, you know, that was just playing around. A little of the give and take. And then somebody, you know, [00:30:00] kind of threw back, you know, threw out a couple of the adjectives he had used in that very press conference, which seemed very antagonistic and very personal.

[00:30:08] Jim Henson: And the Lieutenant Governor just kind of laughed and, you know, I mean, there’s a certain winks as good as a nod, you know, in some of his, in some of these claims, but you know, this is at work. And that really leads us to the other theme here, if you want to zero in on the legislature Lamorvich’s look, you know.

[00:30:25] Jim Henson: There’s no way that this, a big factor this year is that the antagonism between the Speaker and the Lieutenant Governor, with all due respect to Lieutenant Governor’s claim that it’s not personal, you know, it really fed, you know, the already overdetermined tension that’s, that’s always there to some degree between the House and the Senate.

[00:30:48] Jim Henson: And, you know, to the extent that, you know, one of the headlines from the lieutenant governor’s press conference was that, you know, essentially that the legislature is dysfunctional and it’s the [00:31:00] speaker’s fault. You know, I would say that’s half right. You know, and that, you know, or, you know, look, three quarters, right?

[00:31:08] Jim Henson: Yeah. I mean, in that, you know, the Lieutenant Governor not taking any credit for the conflict or the dysfunction at work there, aside from, you know, playing around on Twitter or something, you know, doesn’t really pass the laugh test. Right. Just to be fair, you know, the near constant infighting, you know, over, you know, who was going to manage the agenda, who was going to get credit, um, you know, and, you know, that reached, I think.

[00:31:34] Jim Henson: In more than one instance, kind of absurd levels. I mean, you were, you know, you were talking before, you know, sort of recap some of that about, you know, I think we have a sense that over time we expect there to be these conflicts. Yeah. We also expect that there will be a mechanism for inducing some degree of cooperation and compromise, however begrudging, you know, whether it’s, you know, social mores of negotiate, you know, [00:32:00] favoring negotiation, compromise.

[00:32:02] Jim Henson: You know, some of which takes place in the process or even the institutional process of, you know, compromise, you know, conference committee, that whole structure. Um, you know, and just. You know, that was still going on, but it was just a much rougher ride. And, and sometimes it, you know, did break

[00:32:19] Josh Blank: down. Yeah. I mean, look, you know, one of the big biases in media coverage of anything is, is a bias towards conflict.

[00:32:26] Josh Blank: Yeah. Right. And so to the extent that a legislative session begins and, you know, one of the, the, you know, the, the, the, they The majority party’s priorities has, you know, a bill in the House and the bill in the Senate, and they’re vastly different, but covering the same subject. This is seen sometimes as some sort of a conflict or to say, you know, Oh, how are they going to come to this?

[00:32:43] Josh Blank: I mean, I remember, you know, the beginning of the session, we look at the initial budget rollouts and see how far apart they are on the different articles and that kind of thing. And, you know, on the budget in particular, not surprisingly, they come to some sort of a consensus by the end, in most cases.

[00:32:56] Jim Henson: And again, it was something that we, that we, you know, that everybody noticed a lot, and it [00:33:00] was.

[00:33:00] Jim Henson: Notice, because it was telling given the priors was that the two budget, you know, the original approach to the budget, we’re not that far off. Yeah, that was, I mean, there have been sessions that have

[00:33:09] Josh Blank: been much farther apart. Yeah, absolutely. And in some ways, you know, that was kind of easy, you know, but, but the thing is, you know, we watch these processes and people will say, oh, but you know, the house and the Senator are so far apart.

[00:33:18] Josh Blank: And I think, you know, in previous sessions, you know, many sessions, you know, as someone who watches, we’re going to say, yeah, hold on a second. You know, let’s let’s wait and see because oftentimes, you know, you don’t know what’s going on or unless you’re in those conversations are really focused on that policy or their discussions that are ongoing.

[00:33:31] Josh Blank: And then one day there’s a substitute bill and that settled all the huge conflict that was apparently taking place. And I’m not saying that that didn’t happen. I mean, look, that happened. I’m sure that happened in a million places that we never even looked. But the point is, is I think this session, the extent to which there were these, these conflicts that the session began,

[00:33:49] Jim Henson: I mean, it happened in some prominent places.

[00:33:52] Jim Henson: I mean, it, you know, and look, I mean, this is maybe, you know, indicative of, you know, another aspect of, you know, I [00:34:00] mean, it happened with the grid bill. How about the grid

[00:34:02] Josh Blank: bill? I mean, how about property taxes eventually? Right, right. Um, but we, but in both of those cases, not without a lot of teeth gnashing and more so on property taxes, even in the grid.

[00:34:11] Josh Blank: And I think, you know, the other piece of this was here, you know, there were areas where they just never could come into alignment with. I mean, most notably, you know, around the public education space, they just could not. You know, managed to come up with some sort of a deal on something that they all, you know, for the most part, 90 percent of which they they agreed with on a lot of things, right?

[00:34:28] Josh Blank: And so that’s one of the things you sort of that you kind of take away from that and say, you know, normally, you know, you expect there’s behind the scenes negotiation. There’s, uh, you know, there’s a there’s effective behind the scenes negotiation that is going to lead to some kind of prop compromise on priorities.

[00:34:42] Josh Blank: That seemed less the case this time than it has in the past.

[00:34:45] Jim Henson: Which brings us to another point that I think, you know, and when we tie this all together, we want to circle back to the city, but I mean, you know, another thing we have to sort of mention here that I think animates a lot of this is just the continuing structural weakness of Democrats.

[00:34:58] Jim Henson: Right. Right. I [00:35:00] mean, in the political arena, in the, you know, in virtually any political arena you look at, certainly in the legislature, in the electoral, uh, in the electoral arena, in public discourse, you know, and I think. You know, on paper, what one might think is that these divisions among Republicans should provide opportunities for Democrats.

[00:35:27] Jim Henson: And I think by and large, we saw some of that. Um, but other than the prominent, but you know, and then we can unpack this, but still interesting example of vouchers, we didn’t see it a lot.

[00:35:44] Josh Blank: No, I mean, I think, you know, the theme, if you will, you know, and this is not just this session. It’s been going on for many sessions that, you know, Democrats will still find some of something akin to success.

[00:35:55] Josh Blank: We’ll put success in quotes, right? And it’s going to be through their, you know, [00:36:00] sort of supportive, non controversial or bipartisan measures that they can co author. They nibble around the edges of some policy areas in some cases, and occasionally they might block a bill, but they too are facing a certain amount of cross pressure here too, which is, I think there’s more vocal criticism.

[00:36:14] Josh Blank: from within their caucus about this sort of standard strategy, sort of this kind of go along to get along kind of approach, um, you know, essentially calling for the Democrats to be a more vocal opposition party, even if that means that they’re going to lose what power they have in the chamber, in particular in the house, little though it may be.

[00:36:32] Josh Blank: And I think this is sort of, you know, again, we’re talking mostly about Republicans. We’re gonna come back to talking about Republicans.

[00:36:36] Jim Henson: Just to flag something else. I mean, and you know, we don’t really have this in here and we should, although we’ve come up on across on, you know. You know, so you were flexibly so, you know, in the house, right, because that’s not happening in the Senate.

[00:36:47] Jim Henson: Well,

[00:36:48] Josh Blank: that’s that one. That’s part. I think that’s part of this too. I mean, to the extent that the Democrats, you know, once, especially John Whitmire Lee, you know, likely leaves are completely shut out of, of this, of, you know, any sort of real position of [00:37:00] power in the Senate. I mean, their, their power is getting smaller.

[00:37:02] Josh Blank: The policy is moving further to the right. At the same time, I think, you know, for Democrats are saying, Hey, isn’t this a game more competitive? Shouldn’t we be trying to exploit this, you know, quote unquote dysfunction? Shouldn’t we be exploiting these cleavages maybe between Republican voters and elites and some of these business interests in the state that have normally looked to the Republican Party as sort of their safe home, but are increasingly at odds with them over Yeah.

[00:37:24] Josh Blank: A range of policies. So, I mean, that’s a discussion. It’s not something that the Democrats are just going to turn around tomorrow and sort of change their orientation and change the way that they approach the legislative process. But ultimately, you know, sort of what they’ve been doing, they’re still doing, maybe, and I would say, look, probably to a lesser extent as time goes on, because I think, you know, the, the days of like Democratic House committee chairs are, you know, are probably.

[00:37:47] Josh Blank: Probably numbered. I mean, one way or another, because it’s just hard. It’s just becoming less and less tenable politically. Um, and so, you know, when do they sort of shift? You know their approach is sort of one of these questions

[00:37:59] Jim Henson: [00:38:00] and look to be fair. I mean, this is a difficult Yeah, it’s real difficult, you know, it’s a difficult discussion and you can kind of you know parse out, you know What the what the competing ideal point positions are going to be right, you know, but the but the you know so so like there’s two I think connected points here one is You know the terms of the discussion of what Democrats should handle what has now settled into a long term minority party status.

[00:38:31] Jim Henson: I mean, you know, you know, I’m searching for the right, you know, modifier here because you don’t want to say they’re the permanent minority status because forever is a long time. But You know, for all intents and purposes, they’re in permanent minority

[00:38:50] Josh Blank: party status. You know, let me say, they’re in a structural minority.

[00:38:53] Josh Blank: Right. I mean, the structures, you know, are going to keep them that way, regardless of the politics

[00:38:57] Jim Henson: for a while. You know, I mean, if, you know, and that leads you [00:39:00] to, you know, I mean, the kind of discussions you’re alluding to, and there’s not going to be a single answer to this. I mean, I think, you know, I think the, uh, the relatively adult way to think about this is what is that it requires two things.

[00:39:16] Jim Henson: It requires somebody to be able to settle into.

[00:39:23] Jim Henson: attain and settle into and be able to maintain and defend a leadership position Among Democrats and look, you know, we saw this, you know I was going back and looking back for something else I was working on looking back at Governor Abbott’s State of the State speech and and you know as a reference as I was looking At that to the democratic response and it now seems like ancient his yeah man But you think back to that democratic response and you know, and it was sort of You know, frequently criticized, but I mean, it really highlighted the structural problems that Democrats have, right, is that, you know, it was [00:40:00] clearly divided among about a half dozen Democrats, elected official Democrats, all of whom you could see were kind of in a comparable tier in the party of certainly not having statewide stature, but being seen by virtue of.

[00:40:18] Jim Henson: You know, one factor or another as people that needed to be given some real estate as spokespeople for the Democratic opposition. So you have that problem, you know, right, which is what you, what you really need is somebody that can handle, that can handle the inherent instability and complexity of the situation of being for the foreseeable future in a structural minority.

[00:40:46] Jim Henson: As you said, you know, the, the structural permanent, structurally permanent minority in the legislature is you have to have somebody that’s very nimble, right? That can make these judgment calls about, you know, [00:41:00] when you are compromising with and, and trying to extract something from the Republican leadership, whether it’s in your chamber, typically in the chamber, but also in the state, but mostly in the chamber.

[00:41:13] Jim Henson: And When you are just being an opposition party by, you know, in the more simple definition, definitional sense of the word and saying no and trying to prevent, obstruct, change the agenda of the leadership. And I, you know, look, that’s not easy and it’s not. And in some ways, you know, even though you can say Democrats that have been for a while around for a while now.

[00:41:38] Jim Henson: A lot of people have had a chance to learn about this and get better at it. On the other hand, you know, it doesn’t get any easier. If anything, it gets a little harder. Well,

[00:41:47] Josh Blank: and on the other hand, if you’ve been around for a while and you’re not already kind of persona non grata, like, you know, you’re sitting there with your vice chair position on a committee you care about.

[00:41:56] Josh Blank: Potentially influencing maybe maybe legislation, [00:42:00] maybe the pace of legislation or some of the direction and for you, you know, again, you’re a minority within your party there, but you’re probably one of these people who’s been around long enough in a position of power within the party to say, Whoa, Whoa, Whoa, if we start just sort of being the party of, you know, let’s, Grind everything to a halt.

[00:42:15] Josh Blank: Let’s say no, let’s be bomb throwers, whatever that may be. Let’s be a real aggressive right opposition party. Well, with that evaporates what little, you know, sort of, you know, credit they have in in that institution. You know, that vice chairmanship is gone. Maybe that committee assignment is gone, so on and so forth.

[00:42:32] Josh Blank: Again,

[00:42:32] Jim Henson: probably, you know, more operative in the House and the Senate. And this is where

[00:42:34] Josh Blank: you kind of and this is one of these sort of, you know, I mean, this becomes a very different discussion. We’re not going to go into, but it’s sort of a normative discussion about democratic, you know, um, Strategy going forward about, you know, are you better off getting small policy victories here?

[00:42:46] Josh Blank: And there are you better off just being a full throated Opposition party and looking to try to win elections is your your primary goal of a legislative session,

[00:42:54] Jim Henson: right? Well, and you know, how are those two things linked?

[00:42:59] Josh Blank: [00:43:00] Yeah, well, that’s the thing. Right. Because, you know, I mean Well, right now, I mean, I think, you know, they’re I mean, I honestly would say, you know, I think they’re in conflict with each other.

[00:43:05] Josh Blank: Now, maybe they are, maybe they aren’t. the point. Well, that’s the

[00:43:08] Jim Henson: complexity, right? They are in

[00:43:09] Josh Blank: conflict with each other. So

[00:43:11] Jim Henson: You want to be able to say, hey, look, despite, you know Look, there’s one, you know, to oversimplify, you can go out and one thing is say, look, what you want to be able to say is, we fought all the bad stuff and still managed to get some good stuff.

[00:43:26] Jim Henson: Yeah. Which is what, you know, which is what being a minority party kind of leaves you with. Yeah, I particularly two party system in this setup.

[00:43:36] Josh Blank: Yeah, I let’s I don’t want to stick on this point, you know any longer But I I agree with that, you know,

[00:43:41] Jim Henson: and it’s you know, I

[00:43:42] Josh Blank: don’t know, you know But you know what I’ll just say is but it leaves the Democrats in an odd position of sort of being fish nor fowl here You know, are they important parts of the process that like, you know, you know, or are they you know An effective opposition party and if you you know, if you ask me, you know, which is it I’d say well Yeah, [00:44:00] not really sure, but, but, but what, where does that leave us?

[00:44:02] Josh Blank: Right. I mean, basically that leaves us with, you know, again, the structurally kind of weak internal democratic party kind of left to their own devices. Um, and so what impact does that have again, more broadly on the system, right? It brings us to our next theme

[00:44:16] Jim Henson: here. Right? Right. And so, you know, this does leave I mean, I think one of the consequences that, you know, Democrats don’t really, you know, it’s a, you know, it’s, I don’t want to call it, it’s not right to, it’s incorrect to think of it as an unintended consequence, but it’s, you know, look, the, you know, maybe this is just part of the, the large structural dynamic, you know, speaking of dialectics, right?

[00:44:41] Jim Henson: I mean, sorry, but, you know, left, you know, this really basically leaves the Republican party preoccupied with their own internal fights, right? Right. That, you know, they’re not worried about the Democrats, democratic weakness, both in the process, generally speaking, [00:45:00] and, you know, and we’ve probably undersold maneuvering in the house a little bit, but maybe come back to that, but, you know, the pumpkin party is an organization this year, you know, continue to be the home of, you know, extremists who would help move the center of the party to the right.

[00:45:17] Jim Henson: I mean, we kind of touched on this earlier when we were looking at the attitudes among the electorate, but, you know, Both in terms of public discourse and the policy process. Um, and what Republicans have accomplished and what they actually moved through the, what can move through the process, you know, the boundary of legitimate Republican politics has continued to move

[00:45:41] Josh Blank: rightward.

[00:45:43] Josh Blank: I mean, like, and I just think, you know, we could pick a million examples, things, but I mean, look, if it were 2015, there’s no way the party was putting up an all, a ban on abortion on the floor. You know, it wasn’t making it to the floor of either chamber. There was no chance I would say that you could imagine, you know, even serious discussion about [00:46:00] let’s say banning books broadly in some sort of space.

[00:46:03] Josh Blank: Right. But we’ve moved pretty far over that time period. And I should say, like, look, it’s not uncommon for like, you know, the Republican umbrella groups to give voice to some extreme faction of the party. There are Democrats, certainly Democratic leaning umbrella groups that give, you know, voice to extreme factions within, within the party.

[00:46:18] Josh Blank: However, you know, look, and I say, and this has taken place for a long time, go back and look at the party platforms, you know, over the last number of years. Which I don’t think are representative of party views. They’re representative of these activists, really engaged views. And so that’s been going on.

[00:46:31] Josh Blank: But at the same time, you know, this never ending desire to take the party and the state further rightward is bumping up against a lot of, a lot of issues, right? So one is bumping up against majority public opinion in a number of areas. I mean. Notably, abortion and guns. Yeah. Um, it’s leading the state GOP to, you know, really discard very popular policies at times, like teacher pay raises.

[00:46:52] Josh Blank: We just couldn’t get to that. And it’s as a consequence of not advancing, you know, the desires of really what is a small section of this faction of very, very [00:47:00] conservative voters on, on other policy, like tangent, sometimes tangentially related policy issues. Um, and at the same time, this is also reinforcing or requiring sort of a continued toleration, if not like, you know.

[00:47:11] Josh Blank: Embrace of increasingly illiberal determinedly bigoted sometimes factions within their party and we can sort of look back to the last week and see the Texas GOP’s failure to basically take a vote that would distance themselves from self identified Nazis and Holocaust deniers, which you’d say like that’s that should be a slam dunk seems pretty easy seems pretty easy, you know, I mean, you know, and I mean, I thought some of the stuff from that meeting was You know, would be hilarious, if not kind of sad when one of the sort of for the members who are for basically said, you know, the arguments against doing this or that.

[00:47:41] Josh Blank: Well, this is too vague. And how could we start? How would even know? And the woman, you know, the woman, I think, on the committee said, you know, who voted for this? Well, wait a minute. We’re the party that talks about, you know, rhino, rhinos, leftists, you know, all these sort of, you know, socialist, all these groups.

[00:47:55] Josh Blank: But we’re like, we’re not cool saying somebody’s a Nazi. Like, full stop. Like, [00:48:00] that’s, that’s too, that’s too unclear. So, I mean, but this is, but this is what, you know, this is the cross pressure here, right?

[00:48:08] Jim Henson: Yeah, and I, and I think that You know, I, you know, I, I think, you know, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s interesting to me and I’ll come back to this, the, the degree to which, you know, this kind of point in our, you know, the discussion of the weakness of the Democrats are connected.

[00:48:26] Jim Henson: Yeah. Right. And we’ll, we’ll come back to that. So, you know, so again, to caveat this a little bit, but also, you know, we don’t have to go into this log because it’s kind of what the last podcast is about. It was about, but I still think, you know, it’s fascinating to me that for all the heat over these issues, and I, and again, I keep coming back to the Lieutenant governor’s press conference, which was, you know, so in, you know, intense in its, you know, in its criticism of the, of the house and [00:49:00] in particular of, of speaker dade feeling and then you know when it was nice little kind of patrick touches at the extent to which he kept purposefully miss i i can’t i have no direct evidence that it’s purposeful because i but i also think that there’s probably Good records of Lieutenant Governor pronouncing the speaker’s name properly.

[00:49:21] Josh Blank: I think it’s, I think it’s totally fair and justifiable to assume that the Lieutenant Governor knows how to say the speaker’s

[00:49:28] Jim Henson: name. I think that’s a, you know, and making it sound like, you know, it’s pronouncing it closer to the word failing than feeling. It’s hard to imagine that that was Somebody, somebody

[00:49:38] Josh Blank: thought that was cute.

[00:49:39] Josh Blank: There was

[00:49:39] Jim Henson: some mispronunciation. Again, the wink is good is a nod aspect of the Lieutenant Governor’s communication strategy. It’s not personal. It’s not personal. Right. Exactly. You know, um, you know, but given all that, you know, you know, traditional stakeholders and the traditional policy networks are still at work in the, in the legislature.

[00:49:58] Jim Henson: Yeah. Even amidst all [00:50:00] this dysfunction we’re talking about. And we talk, you know, we don’t have to go, you know, into this in great depth because, you know, I would refer people just to last week’s podcast. But, you know, kind of our overall point last week is that whatever, however much one might criticize the extent or the specifics of what the legislature accomplished during the, mostly during the regular session, and you add on the special session that it took them to get the tax, the property tax, uh, break done.

[00:50:30] Jim Henson: You know, they did infrastructure, they did some water, they did some transportation. Broadband. You know, they did broadband. You know, they’ve, they’ve done a lot of stuff. Yeah. Yeah. You know, um, and so I don’t, you know, I don’t want us to, to lose that, but I think in a way. They made, they made,

[00:50:46] Josh Blank: they made a publicized effort to shore up the grid.

[00:50:49] Jim Henson: Right. And, you know, and again, roundly criticized, but, you know, approved by the voters in the constitutional election, a very small number of voters. And

[00:50:56] Josh Blank: so long as the power stays on, it will seem effective.

[00:50:58] Jim Henson: Right. And, [00:51:00] and, you know, I mean, I think if anything, I think I, I, you know, I, I, I raised that not just as sort of, yeah, but, but also that it actually tells us something about the nature of the political climate right now.

[00:51:16] Jim Henson: Mm hmm. the way politics are playing out in the state that all anybody really wants to talk about. And by anybody, I, you know, I’m also going to sort of ding the press a little bit on this. I mean, you know, the frame now becomes, you know, from the very beginning, the most important thing in the session was vouchers and they didn’t do that.

[00:51:37] Jim Henson: So the governor’s failed and the legislature’s failed. You know, everybody’s failed. And I, you know, I think that’s myopic and not quite right.

[00:51:45] Josh Blank: Yeah. I mean, I would go so far as to say it’s

[00:51:47] Jim Henson: wrong. You know, so, you know, I mean, would everybody, would the Republicans all, would a lot of Republicans put it that way in the leadership that promised vouchers feel better had they passed [00:52:00] vouchers?

[00:52:01] Jim Henson: Yes. Sure. Does it mean that, you know, they should all, you know, they all have to have their tail between their legs and this portends big trouble? I don’t think so. And we’ll come back to that. Mm hmm. So, you know, I kind of want to talk about the overall part here, but we should also, you know, it wouldn’t be a second reading podcast.

[00:52:17] Jim Henson: If we didn’t also note that, you know, the other huge bit of continuity, but I, but I think in a very relevant way that I, you know, we’ll come back to, and that we raised a little bit in the last podcast, is the continued preeminence of border security and immigration. When we talk about all of these other kinds of issues that have come up, whether it’s things the Democrats are disappointed in, things Republicans say that they should have done, particularly, you know, thinking about, again, about the Lieutenant Governor’s press conference.

[00:52:51] Jim Henson: Border security and immigration continue to be, you know, the most sort of reliable feature of public attitudes [00:53:00] towards policy and the most reliable go to and kind of a home base for Republicans. Yeah, and I think Particularly Republican incumbents.

[00:53:09] Josh Blank: Yeah, and I mean, we’re not gonna talk about this much, but I’ll just say this, you know, if you imagine a counterfactual where, you know, the issue of immigration and border security didn’t You know, sort of capture the attention of 60 to 90 percent of Republican voters and the same share of support among them for almost any policy, you know, maybe these other conflicts we’re talking about might, you know, take, you know, be more important.

[00:53:30] Josh Blank: I mean, they may, they may have a greater impact, but because we know that, in fact, it was not vouchers that was the most important issue for Republican voters, in fact, nowhere on the list, but issues like the border, but then also. The economy, right? Inflation. That’s what topped the list for Republican voters.

[00:53:47] Josh Blank: So to the extent that they spent a boatload of money, again, and ever increasing on, you know, border security related measures, to the extent that everybody was just given the chance to, to give, you know, their seal of approval to all these [00:54:00] infrastructure improvements that are gonna, you know, not directly address, but help deal with, you know, I think problems facing Every state and city having to do with housing and transportation and just general infrastructure, you know, I mean ultimately like they had those and so

[00:54:14] Jim Henson: ironically, you know, you know, and there’s an interesting dynamic at work on these infrastructure issues and those are by the way

[00:54:19] Josh Blank: those those hit the issues that not only their voters said they cared about but most voters said they cared

[00:54:24] Jim Henson: about right and and if Even even if it’s not top of mind for them, you know, it provides a lot of opportunity to go.

[00:54:33] Jim Henson: Before your voters, both primary voters and general election voters ago and by the way, you know, look, we have a lot that we can talk about. And this is actually true to some extent for Democrats. I mean, I’ve seen Democrats to this recently. No saying, yes, it’s terrible, but let’s not forget. And this kind of goes to our Democrat discussion, you know, It is possible to hang in there and help influence good things that happen.

[00:54:58] Jim Henson: And these are the things that they [00:55:00] talk about. Mm hmm. You know, in addition to the kind of, you know, smaller pieces of legislation that entrepreneurial Democrats are successful in passing. Right. You know, Feminine Hygiene Program, product tax exemptions, etc. Right. Okay, so let’s step back. So how do, you know, tie this all together.

[00:55:16] Jim Henson: And, you know, I’m going to set aside something, I mean, I am going to say, I mean, before we go to tie in all the other, you know, one of the interesting things about the immigration border security point is that. You know, we could go back to virtually every single point we previously made or theme we explored and use immigration and border security as in, you know, as some, as illuminating of some aspect of each one of those points.

[00:55:42] Jim Henson: I was kind of going back and do it in my head. It’s pretty amazing. And if

[00:55:46] Josh Blank: you’re sitting here thinking to yourself, you’re taking notes on the, on the themes that we’ve been laying out and you think to yourself, no, that can’t be right. No, really go back and do it. Because if you’re thinking about it, you’d think, well, wait a minute, but aren’t these contradictory in the answers.

[00:55:57] Josh Blank: Yes, and you still saw this dynamic play out. [00:56:00]

[00:56:01] Jim Henson: So you know, so, okay, so as we tie all this together, I’d like to close out in the last few minutes here. Um, you know, what do you, what, you know, what do you kind of go, Oh yeah, you know, you know how, what ties this all together, where I think this all kind of puts us, what do you, what do you think of

[00:56:16] Josh Blank: first?

[00:56:17] Josh Blank: You know, maybe I’m myopic or I’m just looking at what’s in front of me, but it, it does make me think about, you know, whether or not this is going to have any sort of impact on the elections. And I say elections, plural, not to say within this election, but I’m thinking elections going forward over time.

[00:56:30] Josh Blank: You know? I, you know, I, I wonder, you know, I mean, we talked about the Democrats meaning a structural minority and I think that’s, you know, very true and we’ve talked about why that’s the case, you know, here before with, you know, redistricting, et cetera, et cetera. But you know, I do wonder to some extent whether or not.

[00:56:45] Josh Blank: You know, the word, Dan Patrick’s word here, dysfunction, you know, is going to eventually accumulate to create problems. And some of that is, you know, I think, you know, does it, does, uh, perceptions of dysfunction within the GOP [00:57:00] impact, you know, their own turnout? You know, in certain cases, I mean, I think there’s obviously a lot of conflict going on at the, you know, thinking about like the presidential election and, and sort of the, the, the fighting that’s going on within the Republican nominating fight and Donald Trump will probably become the nominee, but obviously there is, it seems, and polling seems to indicate that there is certainly a significant share of Republicans, you know, for an election who have issue.

[00:57:21] Josh Blank: Right. And then the question becomes, I think, you know, do, do Republicans in this state eventually have issue either with the rightward shift of the party or with the dysfunction over some of the basics here? Like, Can we give teachers a raise? You know, let’s say things like that. I’m a little skeptical.

[00:57:35] Josh Blank: Now, part of it is the timing of things, right? I think we’re, you know, we have, I mean, one of the things that works out for the legislature in terms of statewide leadership and their impact on it, which is a lot of what we’ve been talking about here, is that they’ve got a, they’ve got an election off. And so really, you know, I imagine the presidential election is really going to subsume any of these individual kind of issues and these, you know, going forward.

[00:57:54] Josh Blank: Um. You know, is it going to have an impact on the primers? Well, that’s, I mean, this is when it’s going to have an impact if it’s going to have [00:58:00] an impact. I mean, I think what’s, what’s sort of interesting here is, you know, everybody sort of looks at what happens and then takes that as, you know, justification for whatever their interpretation of the world was before it happened to say, you see, this is because X.

[00:58:12] Josh Blank: Dan Patrick will say, if a bunch of house members get swept out at the same time, you know, favorite word of ours, it’s all endogenous. So to the extent that Republicans have been spending a year essentially hitting each other over their, over the heads with clubs and calling each other rhinos, well yeah.

[00:58:25] Josh Blank: That’s gonna create some uncertainty. , you know?

[00:58:28] Jim Henson: Right. I mean, yeah. You know, I think, and I think we talked about this a little bit last week. Yeah. I mean, I think that’s a great point because, you know, I think we were saying, I, I think this was last week. You know, you know, I did the thing for Pat and I can’t remember what I said in the podcast.

[00:58:41] Jim Henson: Mm-Hmm. or what I said in the Pat thing, so forgive me, but. But you, you, Josh, I forgive you, but you know, on one hand, it’s like, yeah, there’s a lot of primary races this time and it’s going to be kind of more wild than we’ve seen in a while because there’s so many, there’s so many more challengers as a, on the other hand is you’re kind of implying like.

[00:58:59] Jim Henson: Well, of [00:59:00] course.

[00:59:00] Josh Blank: Yeah. Yeah, they’ve, I mean, Republicans have created the dynamic that invites lots and lots of challengers. I mean, if you’re anyone who considered running for office, you know, in a Republican primary or for, you know, the state house or there’s a market response. Yeah. There’s a market. Yeah.

[00:59:14] Josh Blank: There’s a market response. You’ve created, you know, you’ve, you’ve told people that, you know, they should be really unhappy with these representatives. So not surprisingly, a bunch of people say, you know what, let’s go give it a try. Now, does this impact the general election? I’m, I’m a lot less inclined to think so.

[00:59:28] Josh Blank: One, because of the question we’ve raised about contingent on

[00:59:30] Jim Henson: what we see in the primaries. Some degree was to say is

[00:59:32] Josh Blank: definitely. Yeah. Yeah. I was, I mean, that’s what I was going to get to is that, you know, depending on who makes it through these primaries, Republicans may finding themselves in more competitive races in some places than maybe they would have thought.

[00:59:42] Josh Blank: You know, at the same time, we go back to the democratic piece of this and, you know, Democrats haven’t necessarily lined themselves up as a full throated opposition party focused on, you know, Essentially electing majorities at this point, as far as I can tell, I mean, and that’s like saying that out loud.

[00:59:57] Josh Blank: It almost sounds like no, that’s great. No, but it’s not crazy. I mean, if you’re watching [01:00:00] it and thinking about it, and I mean, I’m not trying to be mean here, but I mean, you think about the unintentionally mean, I mean, unintentionally, but you think about, you know, the successes or lack of successes of the Democratic State Party in terms of, and I’ll just say in terms of even meeting their own metrics, Right?

[01:00:16] Josh Blank: Yeah, I just don’t see that happening. Having said all that, you know, you look at, I mean, I think the question I have as someone who’s watching this in the long term is, you know, is there an accumulation effect? You know, you look at, uh, Uvalde, you look at, and the basically total failure, I think, in a lot of ways of the legislature to really respond to that, and I’ll stand by that, you look at the grid failure, and then you look at, you know, the abortion law, You look at, uh, you know, sort of, and then you’d look at just consistent inability of statewide leadership to come together on things that seemingly everybody was for.

[01:00:52] Josh Blank: I mean, they got somewhere on property taxes finally, but it was teeth pulling. And now they got

[01:00:56] Jim Henson: a little bit of a problem with that potentially because of this challenge to [01:01:00] the election. Now, I kind of think they’re going to figure out a way by hook or by crook. But it, but it speaks to your, to your point that.

[01:01:08] Jim Henson: You know, the difficulty that they’re having with that is also in part a function of having sent mixed signals and also cultivated. Yeah. You know the the forces that mounted those challenges to those

[01:01:21] Josh Blank: elections to begin right so all these themes are Playing out. I think and you know very real ways But you know, I think the thing that you know, it’s just sort of my Those impacts are slow.

[01:01:33] Josh Blank: They’re slow going and I think anyone who says well, you know, well, they didn’t give teachers a pay raise So aren’t aren’t we gonna see Democrats? It’s like no like oh, they didn’t pass a voucher program So and all these are I don’t think so. Yeah,

[01:01:43] Jim Henson: it sounds like you’re in a position I think we often find ourselves in which is sort of like So look, you know, it’s going to be, it is going to be an interesting election, primary election season, potentially an interesting election season as a result of all this.

[01:01:58] Jim Henson: But is it, you know, where we [01:02:00] started, does it portend a huge shift? You’re skeptical.

[01:02:05] Josh Blank: I’m skeptical. Yeah. So what about you?

[01:02:07] Jim Henson: What do you, what do you think? Well, I mean, I, I, uh, on the election part. No, I meant overall. Yeah. I mean, I know I, you know, overall look, I mean, I, I suspect that if I go back to the last podcast of last year, this is going to be remarkably similar to what I said last year.

[01:02:20] Jim Henson: But I mean, I’m just, you know, I’m, I remain fascinated by the relationship between You know, the partisan dynamics in the state and the partisan, you know, the, you know, the structural balance of power between the parties. Mm-Hmm. in the state. And, you know, you were talking about the future accumulation, you know, of all the effects of this and the accumulation of that.

[01:02:50] Jim Henson: How long that structural, that set of structural elements has been in place. In other words, you know, we’re now gonna enter our third decade. Mm-Hmm. [01:03:00] of. You know, kind of monotonic Republican rule in the state and, you know, Uh, looking at election dynamics is, you know, what’s always right in front of us.

[01:03:13] Jim Henson: What’s harder to see is, you know, what to me, you know, what is the impact that this is having on, you know, the capacity for governance in the state and, and the nature of governance in the state, you know, and, you know, I’d like to move beyond, you know, the simple formulation that, you know, if you have more competent competition, you have a, you know, bigger marketplace of ideas and you have more compromise, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, you know, maybe, maybe not.

[01:03:42] Jim Henson: Under some conditions. Yeah. Under some conditions. But, you know, what, what seems to be increasingly apparent is that, you know, the presumption of limited or no competition in the general election. Is affecting governance, not just in the [01:04:00] policy output, but in the functioning of government. Right. And I think that’s what we saw a lot.

[01:04:06] Jim Henson: I mean, you know, we’ve been, we’ve been forced, you know, not forced, but as we’ve kind of parsed this out, as we talked about it in the last few weeks and today in the, in the podcast, you know, we see, we kind of saying, yeah, look, they got some stuff done, but it was harder. Yeah. Um, But I think there’s also the question of what doesn’t get done, what doesn’t get addressed, and what the patterns of that are, right?

[01:04:29] Jim Henson: And so, you know, you take even the things that we’re trying to be, you know, kind of even handed about, you know, you look at the nature of what happened with All of the effort and the resources putting into securing the grid and the policy outcome of that without getting into, you know, too far over the end of our skis here, you know, is open to a lot of criticism in terms of what, and as you say, as long as there’s not another grid outage, maybe it’ll [01:05:00] be fine, but.

[01:05:01] Jim Henson: You know, it might not, and there’s a lot of reason to think that that could have been done a lot better. You look at, you know, um, abortion not as a political issue, but just as a public health policy issue. And the outcome of the extremity of that abortion legislation. I mean, there is a, you know, story in the news in the last couple days where, you know, a woman has gone to a judge.

[01:05:28] Jim Henson: to have a judge okay sign off, essentially, and that’s oversimplified, but not too far, not so much on her ability to get a an abortion in the case of a life threatening fetal anomaly, fetal

[01:05:44] Josh Blank: anomaly in the abortion, and it’s life threatening to her, and there’s a fetal anomaly, the baby is not going to survive, and the judge actually has granted her permission as of this recording now, which will almost certainly be, I’m expecting to be appealed by this afternoon, but

[01:05:58] Jim Henson: You know that I mean, that’s [01:06:00] you know, if that’s not a perverse outcome in terms of just thinking about the delivery of health care Yeah I don’t know what is

[01:06:06] Josh Blank: when you’re putting the state in the position of making some pretty

[01:06:08] Jim Henson: untenable arguments and you look at You know, what, you know, what the legislature is able to pay attention to, what they’re, what they’re not, and what they’re able to execute.

[01:06:20] Jim Henson: Um, you know, I’m, you know, interested, you know, in a rare moment of, you know, social science. You know, sustained thinking about social science, you know, what is the relationship between those two things? Because it, it does seem to me that The diversion of all of this, you know, conflict within the Republican Party and within and the way that it’s now being acted out inside institutions of Texas government and politics, um, is having a, you know, a very distorting effect.

[01:06:57] Jim Henson: Now, look. Devil’s [01:07:00] advocate or, you know, to sort of red team my own argument, would you rather Democrats and Republicans were fighting to death and not able to do anything like in Washington or, you know, I, I see that this is not the only way of, you know, that there are other ways of thinking about it, but this is what we have right here in Texas right now.

[01:07:16] Jim Henson: And it does seem to me that. You know, after, you know, and I don’t mean this from just looking at the, the ideological valence of the policy output. I, you know, the process itself and, and the, and its impact on actual governance. I mean, we haven’t had an open discussion about any number of issues that, you know, by the very nature of the situation seem like I’m, you know, might be saying, well, you’re not thinking about liberal issues enough.

[01:07:47] Jim Henson: You know, the, the spectrum of the policy discussion is severely curtailed, and has been pushed, [01:08:00] you know, and the combination of that with agenda management issues that are driven by this one party dynamic mean that the The agenda of what the legislature can realistically be expected to engage right now, and realistically is a term that hides a lot of things, is really limited and is fundamentally shaped by this dynamic.

[01:08:22] Josh Blank: Yeah. I mean, I, I agree with what you’re saying. I mean, the only thing I would add, and there’s not much to add to that. I mean, you’re talking about sort of the, how, you know, the optics of some of these discussions become, you know, Really muddy, I think was wasn’t that something I was taking out of that and I was thinking, you know, I don’t think I can.

[01:08:37] Josh Blank: I can remember a recent session in which I’ve seen so many Republicans called Democrats by other Republicans. Yeah, you know, I mean, it’s sort of interesting. This is, you know, at a time when, you know, really it is about this one, this, this conflict within the party. I mean, the extent to which, you know, members within that party are going to even greater lengths to try to distinguish themselves amongst each other by saying that someone who you would probably work with on again.[01:09:00]

[01:09:00] Josh Blank: 80, 90, 90 9% of issues. But instead, because of one or two issues here, they take, well this person is just a Democrat. Right? They’re not even, you know, they’re working with the Democrats, you may as well put ’em in the Democratic caucus. And it’s like, whoa, .

[01:09:12] Jim Henson: You know? Yeah. And, and, and so I think that, you know, I mean, you know, we talk about the weakness of the Democrats as a structural characteristic, and it feels like, of course, you’re kicking the Democrats and you’re kicking somebody when they’re down.

[01:09:24] Jim Henson: And I, you know, I don’t mind doing that necessarily. Yeah, sure. But that’s not really the point. No. You know, the point really is that. You know, we’ve got a very kind of distorted political system right now, and it’s, you know, and I think, you know, to your point about watching elections in the long run, you know, these things happen, you know, these things accumulate slowly and their effects have a lag.

[01:09:50] Jim Henson: Yeah. And sometimes a very long term lag. Right, exactly. And so, you know, I do come out of the year, you know, thinking so. You know, if you’re right or, you know, [01:10:00] your speculation is on target, I’m not saying you’re saying this is what’s going to happen. But if you’re, but if you’re, you know, general assessment now, which I generally agree with is that, you know, we’re not likely to see any kind of fundamental shift in election outcomes by the time we get to the, you know, when we’re doing this finally a year from now.

[01:10:20] Jim Henson: Right. You know, that doesn’t bode well for the governance process and will only, you know, it is likely, you know, to deepen this problem. And I, and I think that, you know, we’ve seen, you know, recent examples of why I think this is, you know, frankly. Probably a concern we should keep an eye on because, you know, when there was some intimation and it turned out to be, you know, from a democratic perspective or from the perspective of, you know, thinking about the impact of a more competitive environment, you know, the little tiny kind of false spring that we saw after 2018 in the 2019 session, I think kind of underlines the point.

[01:10:58] Jim Henson: Yeah. You know, [01:11:00] in that, you know, we did see, you know, a somewhat more opened up agenda and a somewhat more opened up discussion of tackling harder issues that are not so driven by one wing of the party or the other, or one wing of one party or one way or the other, which in Texas means the difference.

[01:11:18] Jim Henson: That’s, just that apoint is the, one of the things that we think needs to be added with the, uh, uh, prop, uh cancel the first advert and say, hey, we need to figure out how you with the CFPB. Um, so I think who I was was wondering about that. It’s kind of complex. There’s a process between being a candidate and then someone who’s conspiring to, uh, impeach and win.

[01:11:39] Jim Henson: So continue to do that. And, you know, do, you know, tell your friends about it if you enjoy listening to it and you can say, Hey, this is, you know, I enjoy listening to this mostly, you know, feel free to add all your caveats. We caveat everything and we expect you to as

[01:11:54] Josh Blank: well. I do too. When I promote

[01:11:55] Jim Henson: this to people, so, um, and, and thanks again [01:12:00] also, uh, really to our excellent production team in the dev studio here.

[01:12:04] Jim Henson: In the College of Liberal Arts at UT Austin, they, they tolerate our last minute requests, our last minute scheduling requests, you know, our poor correspondence habits, particularly mine. Um, So thank you guys for all the support on that and the production of the podcast for all of you. One last reminder, you know, and today we did talk about a lot of data.

[01:12:25] Jim Henson: You can find all of that at Texas politics dot u texas.edu. So thank you for listening, and we’ll be back probably early next year with another second reading podcast.

[01:12:42] Jim Henson: The second reading podcast is a production of the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin.