June 1, 2021 – Second Reading Podcast

Welcome to the second reading podcast from the university of Texas at Austin, the Republicans were in the democratic party because there was only one party. So I tell people on a regular basis, there is still a land of opportunity in America. It’s called Texas. The problem is these departures from the constitution.

They have become the norm. At what point must a female. Raise her hand or her voice to be recognized over the male colleagues in the room.

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. We’re back from an end of semester hiatus. Most of which I spent out of town. Uh, but I’m happy to be back and, and to be joined again today by Josh blank research director for the Texas politics project.

Josh, how are you this morning? I’m doing well. Although not as well as you, Mr. I’m happy to be. Yeah, well, you know, I got to say it was a good to be gone for a while though, you know, a, an odd re-entry. I mean, I landed back in the United States after being in Helsinki for 10 days or so the day the shooting happened.

So it was a, you know, sad and strange and, and kind of thought provoking re-entry and it’s a weird to experience something like that. You know, in, in another place, in another country. Right. I mean, you know, it was happening, you know, sort of right, right. In our backyard. Right. Right. And then we didn’t, you know, we didn’t come directly back to Austin.

So a lot of this unfolded, um, he thought the first few days of the aftermath unfolded, we were gone for that too. But yeah, it was a very, very strange and, and again, sad experience. So of course, today we want to focus on the politics in the aftermath of the shootings and you’ve all the. You know, we have a lot of context for this in terms of how we think about things and the work we do.

Uh, also, uh, a lot of polling to draw on. Tons and tons of polling. If you, if you go to our website and, and look at the search page and when we post this, um, all add links to a lot of these search results, and that’ll be in the blog section of the Texas politics project page, a blog blog section at Texas politics start youth, texas.edu.

Uh, Josh did a really masterful Roundup. Of that data on our website and then did a spin on that with more contexts where the political magazine. So I would also direct you to that if you search Politico, I bet it will come up first. I’ll also link to that in, in the post that I do. So, you know, Josh has thought about this a ton and, and been swimming around in the data.

So, you know, let’s, let’s start there. Um, You know, you thought about this a lot, uh, Josh and, and, and been in, worked with the data to produce all this, all these, these pieces. Um, you know, I kind of want to start, I think, with the issue that certainly, I know you got asked a lot by reporters. I saw a lot of this in the, in the press coverage.

And since I’ve been kind of back online, I’ve already talked to several people about it, and that is. This issue that if you look at polling, including ours, one can draw the conclusion. I think pretty plausibly and make an argument that there is a somewhat element in the gun policies that have been passed in Texas in the last few years, in the last few sessions.

And that, you know, that, you know, it’s hard not to notice that, but there’s also a lot to qualify that. Yeah, I think that’s, I mean, that’s, that’s all. Yes. I agree with all of that, that that’s all right. So, I mean, let’s just unpack that really quickly. And I said, you know, you can, you can check the website or any of these pieces to kind of delve into this data more deeply, which there’s a ton, but, you know, I mean, this are the building blocks to kind of, you know, create at least that initial viewpoint, the anti majority Marion piece.

Yeah, it can be done pretty clearly in the polling data. So for example, you know, we asked Texas regularly, whether they think gun control laws should be made more, less, more strict, less strict, or basically left alone. And, you know, we’ve asked this, I think I believe nine times since 2015. And one of the things we do is we, you know, we try to ask these questions, you know, Uh, particularly right around these sorts of mass shooting events, but we asked them intermittently, you know, around the legislative sessions at other points in time to kind of just not, you know, have a real, you know, candid reaction to these gun laws.

So we asked them a lot of times in a lot of different contexts. So it gives us a better sense of think of where people are. Necessarily just in the context of something, you know, something horrible happening, proximate something approximate and horrible. So anyway, uh, what we find is, is that, you know, maybe surprisingly to people in majority of Texas voters, you know, a plurality, but more often a majority of.

Every single one of those surveys ask for stricter gun control laws. I actually think gun control laws should be made more strict even among Republicans, uh, the plurality position. And again, often the majority position, you know, for the last seven years has been, uh, to actually leave the laws alone that the status quo is fine.

Now, obviously that kind of stands in stark contrast to a legislature in a, in a, in a, in a government that has, you know, sort of increase the areas in which people can carry guns. Made it easier for people to carry firearms in more places and really often with, with less and less training. And so there’s something here that sort of seems, you know, patently amiss to be, to begin with that.

I think, you know, what sort of adds to that is that we find repeatedly the Texans, like most Americans, uh, support universal background checks. I mean, very, you know, solid the majority of between 70 and 80% every time. Majority of Republicans support a universal background checks. A majority is also support red flag laws.

So we see sort of this, you know, around these sort of big, big, uh, heading policies that we talk about a lot, the Texans, like most Americans, Texas voters support these policies, but at the same time, you know, there, it’s not that simple. I mean, as you said, you have the context kind of matters. Um, and so, you know, the sort of tune, there’s a couple of things that make this complicated, right?

So we have that polling that’s the set piece. The second piece of this is that we look at, um, you know, the fundamentals and we say, yeah, but the legislature just passed basically a permitless carry bill. That every time we pulled during the last session, which this should not be surprising, the majority of voters said they opposed.

So the idea is letting any sort of lead, you know, anyone who could legally carry a gun over the age of 21 to be able to carry one without a permit or any training. We’ve pulled it three times during the session. And majority of people pose it. And yet at the same time, When we ask about, you know, evaluations of how the legislature handled, uh, second amendment rights on one hand gun violence on the other, a majority of Republicans across the board have said that they approve of the legislature in both these fronts.

And so you have to kind of try to figure out what do we make of this, right. And I, and I’ve always kind of thought the safety thing is lurking below that. Right? Well, this is the thing. I didn’t think this is the thing here that is important. I, you know, Uh, we’ll get to the familiar, let me, let me lay out two more of these things and then we’ll get this because it seems inconsistent, but what’s what, where’s the complication.

Well, I think there’s two sort of fundamental things here. The first fundamental piece is that, um, you know, ultimately, there’s, there’s another question we ask about arming about, about the effect of art, of more people, basically carrying firearms in America and what that effect would be on safety. And we find is the majority of Republicans about, you know, a little.

North of 60%, I believe say that if more people carry guns in the U S we would all be safer. This is the good guy with the gun. If somebody was there with a gun, they would have stopped that tragedy. Right? The flip side is about 71% of Democrats are more feel that if more people carry guns, we would be less.

So first, first of all, when we start talking about, you know, a policy surrounding, you know, whether we should limit guns in the wake of these mass shootings, you’re automatically going to have some Republicans scratching their heads, and you say, but how has this consistent with those will look, I think it’s consistent in the sense that within the sense that it doesn’t say anything about illegal gun owner, going through a background check and then buying as many guns as they want.

It doesn’t say anything about, you know, someone who’s not considered, you know, someone, it didn’t say anything about a court, you know, looking at someone who’s made threats against people repeated. And say, you know, I think we’re going to hold on to your guns for a minute, right? Because the idea is, is that legal gun owners should be no threat.

And if legal gun owners are no threat, then there shouldn’t be any threat to a background check system or a red flag system. And I think a lot of Republicans probably see that, but then the other piece that really complicates this is that, you know, in addition to the fact that there’s just different views about the effects of guns and sort of, you know, the, the amount of guns in circulation as a policy response to all this, but also the other piece about this, it’s very difficult.

Is that a mass shooting really complicates the discussion, right? Yeah, because. Ultimately, we only talk about gun policy in the wake of these mass shootings, but these mass shootings activate very different attitudes among Democrats and among Republicans among Democrats, we asked, you know, so we’ve asked again, I mean, unfortunately, no, I mean, I, you know, it’s, so, I mean, I’m sort of laughing, but it’s only out of discomfort.

Unfortunate. We’ve polled about what people think the causes are not only of mass shootings in the wake of some high profile mass shootings, but also what the, what the causes are of school shootings in the wake of these kinds of hope, high profile school shootings, and what the, the, some of that data tells us is that in the wake of these shootings Democrats almost universally see.

Gun laws is a primary cause if not the primary cause of mass shootings, Republicans are more likely to see mental health and individual failings is the cause in the school shooting parenting and the school shooting parenting, that’s the individual sort of keeping it, you know? Right, right, right. And so, you know, what that tells us is that, you know, when you start thinking about what a policy response would look like, you know, it just tells us that the Democrats Republicans are looking for two different policy responses and in some ways that’s almost.

Thing from this whole question of like, yeah, but should we have background checks? Well, yeah, but if you start talking about background checks in response to a school shooting, to some share of, you know, it’s a, the Republic, you know, the Republican governments, electorate, you know, you know, their, their base voters, that’s going to sound confusing and disconsolate.

Right. And so that’s kind of where w and I think that, and that leads in that, you know, and that leads to the, to the, to the policy, to the rhetoric that we see, um, you know, the cons of like, well, that would not have helped this. Right. You know, if we, if you had a red flag law, well, this person, there was no record of the person having mental health.

You know, kind of, you know, focus on DDO, synchronicities of each individual case, but in their nature are going to be a little idiosyncratic. Well, right. And I mean, and the other thing it’s also, it’s also very selective, right? I mean, I would say, you know, to say like, well, this, you know, this person had no mental health and in the case of the Valdi, for instance, and this is part of, I think, you know, we’re going to kind of transition here into the politics of this, but I mean, this is where, you know, the re you know, The rhetoric that has been painted has really painted, you know, a lot of Republicans and Chrysalis into a corner.

And you can see that around you evolve, right? You say, well, you know, this person didn’t have any mental health history that would have, you know, raised a flag, but this is clearly a mental health issue. Now, look, I think this is something we’ve heard for a long time. And I understand, I mean, ultimately Democrats, aren’t going to say that someone who walks into a school or a movie theater or a Walmart and shoots the place up is mentally.

Right. Nobody’s going to say that. Well, an interesting league governor Abbott took that position in one of the press conferences. Well that’s well, and that’s the thing though, but that’s because they’re forced into this position and say, well, no, but see, we never would have known, but then here’s the other issue you say?

Well, if no laws would have worked, why did the gunman wait till he was 18 years old when he was able to legally buy. Yeah. And, and look, if you, if you follow that logic down two or three leaps of logic, it leads you in a place that I think Republicans don’t want to be. But nonetheless, you know, that that’s part of what happens in this debate is that, you know, it gets, it gets dispersed in a way that, you know, as you said, people that are defending the current regime.

You know, just really need to deflect the discussion in a lot of ways, in my view, it will. Exactly. And I think that’s kind of, what’s been sort of the most sort of the most notable part about the political response in Texas, like, you know, locally, so far, which is that, you know, I think, you know, we saw sort of, I would say what was the standard response, right?

Which is to raise, you know, the idea of mental health resources and, and hardening soft targets. Um, and you know, at that point, Uh, Beto O’Rourke started yelling right now. You know, there’s a lot of, I think the reaction to that could be a pocket of itself, you know, in terms of how people started to kind of filter that and respond to it, to our work’s response to it.

But I think, you know, the thing about, about it is that one I’ve said this to other girls say, Uh, work, I think was doing something that he’s done pretty well as a campaigner over time, which is he, you know, he was channeling people’s frustration. He was channeling his voter’s frustration. He was channeling the frustration of some independence and the idea of one that he could.

Two weeks to do that, I think is not really true. That’s not how anger works, right. It would dissipate and it would be less, you know, it’s just more of a, more like a stunt than it did to some people. But two, I think it also pops a hole in the idea that, you know, Abbott’s sitting there with Patrick and other statewide.

To kind of go up and say, this is not the time to talk about politics, but we’re going to talk about the mental health response and the hardening of schools. And to try to kind of like limit this discussion in this space that we’re comfortable with. I mean, that’s a political response and the, and we’d see it in the part of the, we know it because we’ve seen it before.

I said, look, you can, you know, one can, one can do things. To blatantly political in a situation like this. I don’t, I don’t think that that, that in the end, I don’t think our works thing is going to be looked at that way. Although I think it was fair for some people look at that in, in the instant, but the larger point there is.

No, this is not, there’s no way to separate this from politics now, you know, there probably never was, but particularly now it’s just, you know, people’s views are too well-formed on this. And, and in this case, it’s just, you know, there’s a lot, as you said, there’s a lot of emotion and anger, you know, floating around in this.

And I think there’s a lot. Yeah. We, as you said, we can parse the over thing, you know, I do want to like, you know, so given this as a baseline, A lot of, you know, not surprisingly, and again, another reason why divorcing this from politics is very difficult. You know, there’s a lot of, you know, so what are the implications for the fall election now?

And I, you know, and I think that, you know, one of the things that’s interesting that comes out of, you know, the description you just gave is that for a lot of Republicans and Democrats allowing for the fact that it’s very sensitive to context, these attitudes look differently slightly. In terms of context, framing, particular policies, et cetera.

Is that in terms of the Abbott or work race? I don’t think we’ve seen, you know, much of anything that is likely to change. What are, you know, very well formed attitudes about both of these candidates. You know, and one aspect of a beta or Rourke’s intervention in the press conference is that it was easy for Republicans to interpret that as consistent with what they find negative about our work.

Not just, you know, a lot of which is just as partisanship, but also the negatives, the negatives perceptions of him as a persona political person. And, you know, there’s nothing about the Abbott response that is likely to understate the case to make Democrats go, oh, you know, maybe I should reconsider my views of governor rabbit.

Yeah. I mean, it’s, you know, well, that’s exactly right. I mean, it’s interesting. I have, I, you know, I wrote another short term considerations. No, I mean, it’s interesting, you know, I wrote, I wrote a different angle on this data and this is the thing. I mean, you can interpret this data. Different ways to pay on how you kind of want to think about the short term, medium term, long term, you know, how you think about the balance of some big picture questions here.

But I mean, I wrote, I wrote an op-ed I think for, you know, UT for Texas perspectives or whatever. Right. And the point of that was to say, you know, Republicans could lead on gun control in Texas. I mean, truthfully, right? I mean, if you look at this data, another way to look at it would be to say, You know, Republicans have a lot of credibility on this issue.

They have high approval on their protection of second amendment rights. They just expanded gun access, you know, significantly in the state. And it’s an, a state where, you know, the vast majority of voters, including the vast majority of Republicans would support a universal background check system. I mean, if Republicans in Texas couldn’t Institute a system that would pass muster with Republicans, or at least enough Republicans, let’s say right.

Uh, and you know, really neuter the arguments of Democrats that they’re not willing to do anything about gun violence. Well, you know, I mean, that would really not only take the issue off the table here. Um, but it would also show Republicans more broadly kind of how to, you know, how they might engage this issue.

And also it really raised Abbott’s profile even further in a different light than it has been for much of the last couple of years. Right now. Maybe it’s just a bridge too far, and it’s easy to imagine why that would never happen, but it’s also not crazy to think why there is a, it’s not, you know, it’s not like it’s an impossible space to operate in.

I mean, a red flag law is possible in a place like that. It’s just unlikely. Yeah. I mean, I, I think, uh, yeah, as soon as certain kind of view of the universe, I mean, this is counterfactual we’re, we’re, we’re, it’s big kind of counter faculty. We were like, we should just stop this conversation because if we want to talk about what’s really going to happen, this isn’t helpful.

Yeah. I mean, I couldn’t really see that. Um, of course not. Um, you know, but I also, you know, and so in terms of the campaign, I mean, there’s a, you know, as you talked about the. You know, short, medium, long-term, you know, it’s hard for me to not, I mean, you know, the, the cynical piece here and it’s just the calculating it’s the cold politics of this, right.

Is that. You know, I, it’s hard for me to not feel that the Abbott campaign is playing for time here, which is, you know, the obvious kind of play here. You know? I mean, if you go back, there’s an article, you know, there are, there are still thousands of migrants with. At the U S border to enter the us, waiting to see what’s going to happen with the pandemic restriction.

And you know, one of the, one of the political aspects of this that’s been interesting to me is, you know, we’ve been talking, we’ve talked recurrently on the podcast and looking at, you know, all of this, you know, all these guns, gun, data attitudes, or gun attitudes, um, in the data we have among independence is that, you know, we talk a lot, you know, before the break about.

Agenda management and elections. And this is an issue where, you know, independence, who, you know, are not really enamored of either one of these candidates, but are certainly, you know, in Texas are certainly more of, you know, have, have more of a positive disposition towards Greg Avett than they do towards beta or.

Yeah. And have attitudes that look more like Republicans than Democrats on the economy on Biden, on immigration and border security. In fact, on guns, look a bit more there between Democrats and Republicans as they are in a lot of ways, but lean a lot more to. Democrats than they do towards Republican positions on this.

In other words, they, they joined Republicans. And in certainly the lion’s share of Democrats and supporting the kind of measures you were talking about. Background checks, red flag laws, but they also look a bit more like. Democrats, when you look at things like the strictness measure that you were talking.

Yeah. Well, I mean, you know, you raised something I just want to go back to, and then I want to come back to this, which was just, you know, talking about the plane for time here. And one thing I didn’t mention when talking about the data, that’s really, really important. And I, you know, I want to say, I should’ve mentioned it first, but this is a good, it was good.

A place as any, which is that, you know, these attitudes are incredibly consistent. And so there’s also this sense of like, well, yeah, but you know, this was, this was, this tragedy was so bad. We would expect something to happen. And we’d say, you know, in terms of attitude change, we’d say, yeah, but also we had Santa Fe in Texas, we had a, we had a DESA.

We don’t pass out. I mean, these are all recent events. Um, and what we found is that, you know, if we go back to the shootings in El Paso and Odessa, which occurred, I think, you know, less, less than a month ago, Right. In August of 2019, we pulled on the same gun attitudes in February of 2019 before those shootings.

And then in October, uh, with a little distance from those shootings and these attitudes were, were basically unchanged, right? And that was after two, you know, incredibly high profile mass shootings with large body counts, especially at El Paso. And, you know, ultimately. The opinions kind of set. So, so first things first is that, you know, there’s this whole wait playing for time thing.

I think that’s exactly right. I mean, ultimately, you know, the Republican response to this and the governor’s response is pretty much what we’ve seen in the past. And the other thing that we’ve seen that I’ve seen is that, you know, if you look at sort of Google search trends, and one thing that that’s kind of come out today is that, you know, the attention that people are devoting, uh, to the, to the shootings and Ubaldi.

You know, is waning much more quickly than previous mass shootings. Now there’s a couple of theories for why this might be the case. It could be, you know, we had the Buffalo shooting just 10 days before. I’ll say I’ll throw in. We had a long weekend where a lot of people probably just tuned out. But, you know, I mean that these are all things that honestly played at saver because to your point here about independence, I mean, you know, if we look at sort of the issue basket, you know, we’re talking about a little bit yesterday of kind of what we’re looking at, coming ahead.

My issue basket for what I’m thinking is 20 20, 22 looks like in Texas is, you know, basically the economy and sort of general mood, immigration, and border security, abortion, guns, and education. And maybe the grid comes in. If there’s a, some kind of grid collapse and on the economy and mood and immigration.

Avid is in the catbird seat, right? Ultimately, you know, Democrats are control of Congress and troll the white house. He can point to Biden, same thing with immigration. He could point to Biden and say, you know, we’re fighting the fight, but all these other issues, abortion, guns, you know, education they’re on the wrong side of public opinion, you know, in the majority for muskies cases, definitely on the wrong side of public opinion with independence.

And the issue becomes, you know, this is sort of these sorts of these questions. We’ve asked this question before, you know, these overlapping big picture question, you know, how far is too far on some of the policy? Is it that, you know, there’s death by a thousand cuts in terms of, you know, well, you know, Republicans are gonna upset voters on these, a number of issues.

And that in total is going to bring peace, make people upset, and you know, let’s say raise. Or none of these things, really a fatal blow because the economy and the mood and immigration exactly the point I was. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. And so it’s just, you know, it is, it’s sort of, it’s hard for me to imagine though, you know how this fundamentally changes something.

Cause it’s so difficult to bundle together this, you know, two things, one to sort of, you know, bundle of issues, neither one, any one of them is going to be the primary issue that some, that, you know, most voters are gonna vote on mostly. And I, you know, and I think that, you know, as we move on to kind of what this looks like in the bigger picture, um, the Abbott, you know, this, this is one of the areas where, and this is, you know, very mundane in a certain way, but I think it becomes important as we watch this play out.

You know, the ability of Abbott as a long-time incumbent and as somebody who, you know, kind of knows how to do this, if you will, when it’s surrounded by people who know how to do this, Even though, I think, you know, this is, uh, you know, this is, uh, you know, this is pressing them. There’s no two ways about that.

This is not, you know, they are having to manage this and respond to this politically. Um, you know, they have a lot of practice at this and I think, you know, I could be wrong, but I think the analysis they make is pretty consistent with, you know, what we’ve been saying here, which is, you know, they know how to wait, they’ve done it before they know how to wait for, you know, new events to sort of present themselves.

And to respond to them and they know how to ma you know, that they know how to work the levers of the political system, you know, even a Mitch, you know, new conditions and uncertain circumstances. So I think, you know, from outside Texas, you know, you see lots of coverage of, you know, Democrats and even some Republicans call for a special session.

Well, anybody here knows that the odds of that happening are extremely unlikely. Very, very long. I mean, it’s as close to a zero probability thing is uncomfortable saying there’s a zero probability. Are you saying that the governor doesn’t want to see what messaging control he has over this to the body of the Texas legislature?

Well, and I think even beyond the messaging piece, you know, we’ve also talked a lot on this podcast about the fact that. You know, part of the, you know, in retrospect, you know, once the Abbott governorship is over, one of the things that we look back on and we will see happened, we will say happened in the, in the big picture, is that the governor’s office and the executive branch continued to play a larger role in the political system.

And I think, you know, just today, you know, less than an hour, probably before we recorded this, you know, the governor issued a call to the legislature to. You know, form a special committee to consider, you know, uh, uh, gun measures, the bulleted list included, you know, school safety, mental health, social media, interesting day for that police training and, and firearm safety.

Um, Uh, you know, from the outside, you know, this is a response to, you know, to the call, to involve the legislature. And we all know that this will not give the legislature any increased leverage or, or role in this, you know, in the shorter, probably even the medium rods. And that’s a, you know, again, that’s a small kind of mundane, immediate example, but it’s also, you know, uh, exemplifies in a lot of ways.

The, the, the political positioning that, that the governor is good at, and that is both an institutional advantage, but also a political advantage. Yeah, no, I, I agree with all that. I mean, I think, you know, we always say, we’ve said before that, you know, I think Abbott in his and his advisors are pretty good at making these gambles and these bats.

Right. I mean, I think there’s sort of two, you know, there’s sort of two bets here that are sitting, you know, that are kind of floating around out there, you know, to my mind, I think, I mean, the first is the fact that, you know, I think, you know, the one thing I would worry about is to the, you know, I’m sure they’re doing polling and kind of thinking about this, but, you know, has added, lost credibility on this issue.

And part of the issue is, is that, you know, I think it’s easy to, I mean, not, it was not long ago. After the El Paso shooting that both Patrick and Abbott were discussing the possibility of gun regulations, right? Either red flag laws, laws in particular, potentially, you know, requiring some paperwork with the transfer of firearms, you know, that kind of thing.

I mean, they had, they had floated the possibility that this might be something they would do in the wake of, you know, that horrific mass shooting to then come in the next session past permitless carry right. And so, I mean, you know, just as it stands, and this is why, again, this is why, you know, uh, a special committee appointed by the, you know, the, the leaders in each chamber to carefully select reasonable people who aren’t necessarily going to make a lot of noise and keep this issue front and center.

It makes a lot more sense than calling the legislature and giving everybody a vote and the opportunity to propose. Yeah. But the composition. Yeah. And, and, you know, look not to be too blunt about it, but on the special session thing, just the, you know, Restate the obvious in case somebody not from Texas happens and listen to this.

I mean, the chance that the governor rabbit is going to call the call the legislature in and aside from giving the legislature a voice of this and the, and the executive legislative balance politics of this, you know, what should they have managed in the way that I’ve described? I think, um, you know, the show that he’s going to give the, the Lieutenant governor more of a voice in this is.

Right, right, right. Unless, you know, unless they decided it’s in their interest in some way. And I think that is not that that is not on the table at this point. And not, not much of a possibility. Um, so a lot nothing. Yeah. So, I mean, you know, I mean, I, you know, I, I think the composition of that committee is going to be very interesting, you know, that’s the immediate point I was going to make after what you were saying that, you know, I don’t expect, there will be a lot of surprises when we look at the appointments on that committee.

And by that, I mean, these will be, you know, company. Yeah. Um, you are not, you are not going to see. And, and I think that this will be heavily vetted. Um, I mean, obviously this is, you know, the chances that, you know, every, every now and then I’m surprised that, you know, people in the legislature say, yeah, the governor’s office, wasn’t in touch with us about this.

But, uh, I think it’s highly unlikely that the Lieutenant governor, that this was a surprise for the Lieutenant governor. Uh, again for listeners elsewhere, both of whom are Republicans and as complicated as that three-way relationship is, uh, it seems unlikely that, that they did not know this was going to happen.

And the composition of the, of this committee will not have very many surprises on it. Yeah. And look, I mean, just to say this, you know, I mean, and I think that the overall there’s an overarching point here, which is to say, you know, if, if we had an, uh, you know, look Abbott. I wouldn’t say he’s guaranteed to win reelection, but I mean, he’s, he’s pretty close.

As far as politics goes, even though he’s facing a very strong challenger, it’s a good year for him. You know, if you told me today that the entire 20, 20, 22 election is going to be about the issue of gun violence and gun control, you know, Abbott’s likelihood of success goes down significantly. Sure. And I think that’s, and that’s the point here, which is, you know, is horrific as this is people’s attention is, is, is.

You know, attitudes are incredibly consistent and, you know, and people have shown that they know how to navigate the space. The question just is can they navigate it the same way this time as they did last time and, you know, do so without really, you know, taking on any damage themselves. And that’s kind of what we just kind of have to see now.

Right. And I, and I think that, you know, and I think they’re, you know, they’re keenly aware of that. So we’re seeing that in the strategy they’re executing and. You know, again, in, in stark political terms, they will be very keen for other issues to emerge that are. You know, more favorable to their positioning as we get closer to the fall election.

So, um, with that, uh, I want to thank Josh for being here again today. Thank our excellent audio production team, the liberal arts development studio at UT Austin. Thanks for listening. And remember, you can find all the data we referenced today and much, much more at the Texas politics project web. That’s Texas politics that you texas.edu, did you came across this on, uh, through a podcast delivery system?

Uh, I would urge you to go to our website and find the blog post that this podcast will also be embedded in. We will have a lot of data and a lot of links to the things that we discussed. The writing Josh has done in the last couple of weeks. Uh, various pieces that we’ve done over the years, and we’ve done a lot of them.

And again, just piles of data on gun attitudes in Texas, which are. You may find useful, but are certainly interesting in this context. So thanks again, and we’ll be back next week with another second reading podcast.

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