June 13th, 2023 – Implications of the Trump indictment and the Paxton impeachment on politics in Texas.

[00:00:00] 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. 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 again today by Josh Blank, research Director for the Texas Politics Project. Uh, another happy birthday, Josh, and be, be. Some people I know have sent you birthday wishes and I would encourage others to do so.

[00:00:56] Jim Henson: Well now, now they get their chance. Josh’s birthday was, we’re recording Tuesday. Josh’s birthday was Monday. So, uh, sounds like you had a passable birthday

[00:01:05] Josh Blank: weekend. Yeah. I mean, you know, you get to a certain age, it’s the Monday birthday. Yeah. You know, kind, what are you gonna do? So the world go, goes on.

[00:01:12] Jim Henson: Right. The great, the great world spins. So in addition to Josh’s birthday, well, you know, It’s kind of a lot going on. So, you know, off the top, off the top of my head, or you know, right at the outset nationally, uh, Donald Trump’s federal indictment, his court appearance, uh, as we’re recording this, scheduled for later today, you know, swamping most everything else in terms of coverage and yeah.

[00:01:38] Jim Henson: You know, and not everything, but, um, Obviously, you know, uh, other things that have been happening that are interesting, even at the national level that I think, you know, we’ve talked about this. Maybe we’ll be able to link it all together. We’ll see. Um, without being here for an hour and a half, um, you know, in terms of national politics, there’s also been.

[00:01:58] Jim Henson: You know, this kind of implosion of the Republican caucus in the US House, house of Representatives. Um, last week, house speaker Kevin McCarthy had to basically send everybody home because his critics on the far right were. You know, voting against all of the rules that were coming out of the rules committee for some legislation that was planned, you know, essentially in protest.

[00:02:22] Jim Henson: Yeah. Over the debt ceiling deal now, uh, as I read, at least as of this morning, some of that seems to have been at least. Temporarily ameliorated, most of the, you know, the insider coverage from DC suggests this is a bandaid, not a solution or a resolution. Yeah, I mean, and that makes sense

[00:02:41] Josh Blank: to me. It’s a repeated game and we talk about that sort of idea a lot here.

[00:02:44] Josh Blank: But I mean, you know, to the extent that, you know, the far right caucus, both in the US house and also in the Texas House has, you know, sort of. Let’s just say, you know, played the game multiple times, you know, they’re getting better at extracting concessions and the razor thin majority that republicans in the have in the house only makes it easier for them.

[00:03:02] Josh Blank: Right. You know, and so that’s, that’s kind of what we’re watching play out now. And, and to your point, I think is right. Which is, you know, I mean this is, you know, any sort of deal that they get to now to kind of move forward in terms of, you know, kind of getting to some sort of regular order of business in the Congress and passing legislation and stuff is like, it’s just gonna last as long as it does until the next time.

[00:03:20] Jim Henson: Some of the spokespeople for. You know, the, the sort of anti or McCarthy skeptical shall we say? Yeah. Uh, forces in the house are saying, you know, that, you know, having felt burned by the debt deal and the lack of reduction in spending that they say they want, you know, wanna renegotiate the deal, uh, you know, which de facto they are already doing.

[00:03:42] Jim Henson: Right. Um, but I think that, you know, policy wise that could actually. Plunge us back into more instability at the national level when it comes to actually passing budget bills. Cuz a much of what they want is obviously dead in the US Senate and not going to be signed by the White House. Yeah, I

[00:03:57] Josh Blank: mean it’s interesting, you know, just, just for a moment even kinda looking back and, and you think about, you know, Nancy Pelosi and her time sort of dealing with a, with a majority and dealing with, you know, sort of far left critics and everything.

[00:04:08] Josh Blank: And you know, she took a lot of heat, but you know, to her credit, she was usually able, you know, to get the vote she needed. Yeah. You know, and I think, you know, and to not have to rely on Republicans and not have to rely on Republicans, it’s a big deal. And you know, and I think, you know, McCarthy already very early in his tenure show, he’s probably gonna have a much rougher road when it comes to this kind of, yeah.

[00:04:24] Josh Blank: I mean, I think. You know, like there’s a bunch of articles like you, you know what’s, I mean, I just love, like, just thinking back now, there are these articles like, you know what, Kevin McCarthy loves counting votes. Yeah. It’s like Kevin McCarthy, you know, he’s a, he loves, he loves, he loves the whip, you know, he loves to count, you know, count the votes and it’s like, yeah, I bet he loves counting those votes.

[00:04:40] Josh Blank: Yeah, I

[00:04:40] Jim Henson: bet he’s having a lot, yeah, having a lot less fun doing that right now. So I think you know that there’s gonna be more bad news from that. So we’ll keep an eye on that and maybe even circle back to both that and yeah, we might have some interesting

[00:04:51] Josh Blank: polling data. Actually,

[00:04:53] Jim Henson: we will. And of course the Trump, uh, indictment.

[00:04:56] Jim Henson: I mean, we’ll circle back, but you know. Meanwhile, back in Texas, we’re also seeing, you know, as you, as you’ve already kind of, you know, sort of introduced a, you know, Texas level variation on some of these themes, right? So in the Texas House, uh, they remained gaveled out after having fast tracked Governor Abbott’s legislative priorities for the special session in the, in the call and then adjourn, signing die on the first day of the new session.

[00:05:23] Jim Henson: Um, that we talked a lot about that last week. We don’t need to like re. Re-litigate all of that. But this, you know, I, in the interim, since we recorded last Wednesday and today, you know, has left the Lieutenant Governor to stew somewhat. Mm-hmm. And, and stew publicly. Yeah. Uh, and cast aspersions on the speaker and on the governor and the Texas, and, and meanwhile the Texas Senate.

[00:05:46] Jim Henson: At least for the first few days, kind of surreally to my mind, seemed to proceed as if everything was normal, at least on the floor. They debated bills, they discussed things, and it, it was kind of a strange spectacle. Now, I think we’re, I. Kind of past that over the weekend. I, you know, a lot of speculation over, you know, just what the Lieutenant Governor’s next move was gonna be.

[00:06:09] Jim Henson: Yeah. You know, it’s gonna be a hit to his pride to just adjourn, adjourn the Senate, sign he die and start over. But, You know, it’s also hard to keep people around doing nothing. Now I, I think, you know, they’re not doing nothing in the sense that there may, there’s, you know, may or may not be negotiations going on.

[00:06:27] Jim Henson: There’s certainly a degree of public negotiation going on, but, you know, as we said last week, I mean, and, and already things are beginning to. Point toward the next shuffling of allegiances among the big three. So both the, you know, the governor and the speaker of the house in the last few days have pointed to another special session to come on education.

[00:06:52] Jim Henson: Mm-hmm. Uh, the governor, as he’s already reiterated his promise that there will be another special session on education with, you know, school choice slash e essays slash vouchers on the call. Mm-hmm. And so that, you know, the. That issue will be resurrected on Monday. The, the speaker announced the formation of a House Select Committee on educational opportunity and enrichment.

[00:07:19] Jim Henson: I’m just scanning that to see if it has a snazzy, snazzy abbreviation or acronym, but it does not. Yeah, that’s unfortunate. Um, the, the SCI oe, um, you know, uh, As people look at the membership of that committee, it has a, a slight majority of anti voucher members on the committee. Kind of like the legislature as a whole.

[00:07:42] Jim Henson: Yeah. Well, well, you know, it’s in, you know, it’s interesting you would say that because I think that, you know, without, and maybe we’ll go, we’ll go back and do this later when, when they call the next, whenever this happens, but, If you handicap the votes on that, the committee is actually probably more closely divided than the house as a whole is, or even the Republican party as a whole.

[00:08:03] Jim Henson: I mean, different people could parse this different ways and there’s some wild cards involved. Yeah. But you know, it does look like it’s really only a couple of vote majority. Yeah. And that’s politically, I suspect you’ll say, Hey look, we didn’t just stack it right, per se. Right. Yeah. So, you know, and then we also saw kind of, you know, I think this week another interesting thing, I think worth flagging or this week and last week since last week, we, we podcasted, you know, we saw what I think is an interesting kind of split screen bill signings for the governor that really illustrates some interesting dynamics in the party.

[00:08:39] Jim Henson: So on your one screen, the governor, you know, with some amount of fanfare though not. An incredible amount, but some signed HB 900, which set new standards for school libraries to follow when adding books to their collection. So this is the other shoe dropping of. The discussion we’ve been talking about for over a year of library books and, and materials deemed sexually explicit.

[00:09:06] Jim Henson: You know, the bill that was passed was, you know, moderated, I think from some of these initial conceptions though I think if you’re a kind of First Amendment advocate or you know, for a lot of people it’s still too much, but not what we were talking about, I don’t think in the very beginning. So, you know, the.

[00:09:22] Jim Henson: Texas State Library and RFS Commission will, you know, it has been given the responsibility to create mandatory material standards that then have to be approved by the State Board of Education. You know, authorities have been granted for to review book purchases and ratings and then, you know, in each district, and they have to publish a list of vendors that don’t comply.

[00:09:43] Jim Henson: With the rating requirements. So, you know, there’s definitely a lot more vetting going on here. And then school districts have to review the, the content, each odd numbered year suspect, and then submit a report to thet e a, you know, basically, you know, a compliance check with that first audit to occur no later than 2025.

[00:10:03] Jim Henson: So that’s one screen is get those books out. Right. Speaking to that, you know, and, and it’s, you know, build under the rubric of parental rights and review uhhuh. And we have polling on that, that suggests that, you know, at the end of the day this,

[00:10:17] Josh Blank: it’s not important to people. I’m outta sort, you know, just to summarize this, you know, when we go and we looked at sort of the things the legislature was considering, that like generated a fair, a significant amount of.

[00:10:25] Josh Blank: You know, public inc. Attention from legislators, attention from the public, you know, these issues that people were talking about. Right. You know, this was not something that was high on the list of like, you know, what does the legislature need to accomplish? The broad priorities. Yeah. We say, you know, when we look at this, can we do a lot of other things?

[00:10:39] Josh Blank: You know, just for example, you know, removing, you know, potentially, uh, inappropriate books from the library doesn’t rank as high as say, you know, Fixing the grid, making sure there’s water, school safety, you know, even, even things like property tax reduction. You know, there’s just a lot of, there’s just a lot of issues that are higher than this.

[00:10:57] Josh Blank: Yeah. And not only that, even the education space, when you look at, at this idea of, you know, removing books, you know, this is way, way down on the list relative to things like increasing teacher pay. And even to the point about under the broad rubric of like parental rights and insights, you know, there’s a lot more, uh, Appetite for like parents gaining access to, you know, instructional materials, let’s say, for example, than there is towards removing books from libraries.

[00:11:18] Josh Blank: Right? And so this has been something that, you know, I think, you know, it’s, it’s interesting. I’ll just, I’ll just say one more thing about it. You know, we’ve been pulling on this for a while and there is just sort of a natural. S I would call it squeamishness to this idea, right. Of, of, of taking books outta libraries.

[00:11:32] Josh Blank: Because, you know, ultimately what it comes down to, and this is sort of what I think is interesting generally about a lot of these issues is, you know, the state isn’t saying in a lot of cases, this is what has to happen. They’re almost saying this is a rubric for what we expect to happen, and now we want the school districts to deal with it.

[00:11:44] Josh Blank: Right. And I mean, I could repeat that kind of thing where we change that school district with something else. But there’s a lot of this dynamic going on here where, you know, it’s not really that, you know, again, the state has been saying, says, well, we can’t have all these patchworks of this, but ultimately, in a lot of these cases where we’re talking about community standards and things like that, yeah, you know, you are actually inviting.

[00:12:03] Josh Blank: You know, different interpretations to kind of take

[00:12:05] Jim Henson: place. Well it turns out in a big diverse state, like Texas State’s kind of a patchwork,

[00:12:09] Josh Blank: at least when it comes to the libraries, but Yeah, right. No,

[00:12:11] Jim Henson: exactly. So, you know, so that was a, you know, a ver but that was very much a, a, you know, I don’t wanna say it’s a sweet spot issue cuz it’s not quite that.

[00:12:20] Jim Henson: But you know, when we looked at some of the data on this, this. This wasn’t generally polarized, depending on how you, that’s why it’s on how you framed it. Right. So if you framed it as, as you were sort of implying Yeah. You know, should parents be able to know what books their kids are checking out of a school library?

[00:12:37] Jim Henson: Sure. The Democrats are like, yeah, you know, whatever. That’s not so bad. Right. Um, So it is a, you know, a bit of how you, how you pitch it and Well, you

[00:12:46] Josh Blank: know, it’s, I mean, I’ve been saying this, you know, I mean, as somebody was asking me this weekend, you know, about a couple weekends ago about, you know, Ron DeSantis and, you know, sort of, I know pivoting in a weird direction, but this idea of, you know, running a national campaign on being anti woke and whether that’s like an effective strategy.

[00:12:59] Josh Blank: And to me it’s not necessarily that that’s an effective affirmative strategy, it’s just that the response is so terrible. And that’s kinda how this sort of stuff is. It’s not that, you know, there’s a bunch of people out there in Texas clamoring to, to take a bunch of books outta the, outta the libraries or get specific books outta kids’ hands.

[00:13:15] Josh Blank: The problem is, is that if you’re on the other side of that, and I’ve said this before, if you’re a Democrat who doesn’t want this to happen, you end up in the position of basically having someone read to you the most lured passage from whatever book they find and say, oh, do you, you think a, a third grader should have access to this?

[00:13:29] Josh Blank: And the answer is, Well, I don’t know. I guess not. Yeah, I don’t know who are their parents. I don’t know. Or no. Or no, but, but this is the thing ultimately that kind of squishiness in response to these things is just, it’s not a good political spot to be in. Even if, you know, the policy itself is kinda like, people are like, well, I don’t, does this matter?

[00:13:46] Josh Blank: But the flip side of that is being on the defensive on these issues, I think is, is pretty challenging, you know? Yeah, I

[00:13:50] Jim Henson: think that’s right. I think that’s right. So,

[00:13:52] Josh Blank: and that’s why some Democrats voted for this bill. I mean, just, yeah, yeah. No, notably it was like five or six, no small numbers

[00:13:57] Jim Henson: I remember. I mean, not a huge number, but yeah.

[00:14:00] Jim Henson: So, so on one screen you’ve got, Delivering on the library books issue, quote unquote, with all the caveats about why, you know, the extent to which it is an issue right there. The other screen, and I kind of, you know, I think I was traveling when this happened, or you know, just otherwise, preoccupied, governor Abbott also signed the Texas Chips Act.

[00:14:19] Jim Henson: Mm-hmm. And there’s a US Chips Act, but I think there’s not a lot of discussions Not to be

[00:14:23] Josh Blank: confused with the great show from Right.

[00:14:25] Jim Henson: California High. Yes, po. Yeah. Um, not to be confused with Ponch and I can’t remember the other guy’s name. The blonde guy. Yeah, the blonde guy. Larry Wilcox was the actor’s name that just popped in my head.

[00:14:36] Jim Henson: But anyway, anyway, enough free association for now. Um, but last week Greg Abbott signed the Texas Chips Act, which creates the Texas Semiconductor Innovation Fund, which is, you know, A fair size pot of money, um, you know, over a billion dollars closer to 1.3 actually,

[00:14:55] Josh Blank: it’ll help un, it’ll help access federal funds and that

[00:14:57] Jim Henson: kind of thing.

[00:14:57] Jim Henson: Right, right. Which, which, you know, subsidizes companies that manufacture chips in Texas and provides funds to universities and other entities to, um, do research and work on ship design or manufacturing projects. In other words, you know, It’s an industrial policy.

[00:15:16] Josh Blank: Uh, okay.

[00:15:18] Jim Henson: Yeah. You know, um, that’s what we used to call it.

[00:15:21] Jim Henson: You know, I don’t think we, you know, and so I, I, I underline this as the split screen because we’ve been, you know, we’ve been going on for years, if not months, about the, you know, competing imperatives mm-hmm. And the competing constituencies inside the Republican party. And we haven’t done a big, you know, sort of roundup on all this, but this was one of those.

[00:15:43] Jim Henson: Pieces of legislation. Mm-hmm. Not very controversial. Yeah. You know, discussed quite a bit. Passed I think without too much pushback in, in both chambers. Um, but you know, what can I say? It’s a, it’s a pro, you know, we’ve talked a lot about the Eco Divo impulse and it’s, you know, it is again, industrial policy pursued by the state.

[00:16:08] Jim Henson: And, you know, a not insignificant amount of money. Again, some of which is going to business and some of which is going to higher ed

[00:16:15] Josh Blank: research. Well, again, you know what I mean, with this, with this di you know, you’re bringing up this dichotomy, man. I’ll try to be a little bit more explicit than I, I’ll bring up another example of this cuz it’s, it’s interesting, right?

[00:16:24] Josh Blank: Like on the one hand, You know, you’ve got the legislature, you know, and I just, you know, I’m just gonna say it this way cause I feel like, you know, trying to burn books basically. Right. You know, but on the other hand, you know, there’s the reality of the fact that Texas is in this, you know, in and of itself is in this very competitive economic environment that’s not even just based in the US but it’s, it’s a worldwide competitive economic environment around something like chips.

[00:16:44] Josh Blank: Which, you know, you think, I mean, I, I think it’s, I’m kind of laughing when you talk about his industrial policy, obviously, because also, you know, The people working, you know, on these chips and, you know, working these places. This is not your standard industrial job, you know? Right. These are pretty, these are pretty high end jobs for the most part, and most of these people probably read a lot of books.

[00:17:00] Josh Blank: Right. Went to college. The, the dynamic there of these sort of two things going on, on the one hand, like, well, can we like move back? You know, again, I don’t have, you know, I’m just saying, you know, Standard sort of conservative policy direction. Can we, can we take a step back? Can we slow down? The kids are seeing too much whatever on the one hand.

[00:17:16] Josh Blank: On the other hand, we need to be at the forefront of the technology, you know, that of the next, you know, at least 50, a hundred years. It makes me think of, you know, sort of the similar dynamic that was faced with. Uh, the legislature’s orientation towards higher education institutions assessment. Lot of people pointed out, which is on the one hand you’ve got this, I this desire, this priority.

[00:17:37] Josh Blank: You know, especially in the house to invest big in Texas’. Public universities put a bunch of money in there. The idea was we’re gonna do this in exchange for keeping tuition flat and everybody was kind of on board

[00:17:47] Jim Henson: with this for and, and to spread and to spread the higher ed. Ecosystem and, and the resources within it to the, not to the, to the schools that are not the current flag.

[00:17:58] Jim Henson: The big there’s, beyond the a and m and the a and m

[00:18:00] Josh Blank: and utc, the biggest thing they accomplished a session was the way that they reformulated, uh, community college financing. That’s just, well,

[00:18:06] Jim Henson: and also the, the formation of the, the tough. Right.

[00:18:08] Josh Blank: So just, just setting this, so there’s all this stuff going on the one hand to basically bolster Texas’s higher education institutions.

[00:18:14] Josh Blank: Well, at the same time, like, let’s get rid of tenure. Right, which would destroy Texas as higher education as institu. I’m not saying that as some like, you know, hysterical academic. I don’t really care. I don’t have tenure, you know, I’m never gonna have tenure. Right. Not my problem. But, you know, ultimately I do know from a market perspective, you know, there would be a huge, you wanna talk about immigration, there’d be an outflow re reverse migration.

[00:18:34] Josh Blank: Yes. Yeah. There’d be a pretty huge outflow of faculty, you know, from all of Texas top universities, basically to. Anywhere else. Yeah, immediately. And so sort of like, you know, there’s,

[00:18:44] Jim Henson: and look, even the discussion there are, you know, reasonably, you know, anecdotal, but reasonable, you know, because they have to be, they can’t be that documented, but, You know, a lot of evidence that it actually is, is already the discussion, even hurt

[00:18:56] Josh Blank: recruiting.

[00:18:56] Josh Blank: Well, look, you know, I, and I was thinking about this this morning, you know, I, I’m not, I really, yeah, we’ve kind of stayed away from this. No, and this is a more general observation, but I, but it relates, which is, you know, I was thinking this morning for something else I might do later today about, you know, people who claim they’re gonna move cuz of politics and like, And it’s just one of those things.

[00:19:14] Josh Blank: I’m not saying that there aren’t situations where people move because of the politics of a place, and I mean obviously in extreme conditions for sure, right? When we’re talking about immigration broadly. But when we’re talking about trans kids, well, we’re talking about trans kids for sure, but when we’re talking about like your everyday politics, living life in the United States of America, I’m tired of

[00:19:29] Jim Henson: reading the newspapers about what’s going on in my state or my country.

[00:19:32] Josh Blank: Yeah. You know, the idea that like, you know, people moving is some sort of like a, a broad based actual political response. Like, you just gotta stop and like, time out for a second. Like, what kind of a symbol of, you know, let’s just say, uh, Economic, you know, freedom. It is to even consider the idea of like picking up and moving from someplace that you presumably own a home, you have a career, you have all these things, and you’re just gonna go like, well, I’m moving to Colorado.

[00:19:57] Josh Blank: Right. It’s like you’re not, and just real quick, we’re not talking about normal people here. We’re talking about people who have the resources most times to like even consider something like this. Seriously. Right. You know who people like that are in some cases. Academics who could get university jobs somewhere else, right?

[00:20:10] Josh Blank: I mean, they have the ability to actually move in a market where it’s common to move state to state, where it’s common to take a job somewhere else. And where again, you know, they’ll pay for your moving expenses and you may have to

[00:20:19] Jim Henson: move down market, but you know,

[00:20:21] Josh Blank: but if you really want to, you can, you can.

[00:20:24] Josh Blank: And so, I mean, I think that’s actually a more real thing than I think a lot of people say, well, I’m moving to Canada. It’s like, yeah, right. Okay. Right. I’ll see you there.

[00:20:30] Jim Henson: Yeah. I mean, I think, yeah, we’ve even, even in terms of the. You know, all the discussion of the political composition of the, in migration to Texas from other states.

[00:20:39] Jim Henson: Mm-hmm. You know, we’ve not seen a whole lot of evidence that people are moving for political reasons, economic drivers.

[00:20:46] Josh Blank: Yeah. Like can you get a job? Right. Does it pay well? Is it in a cool place? Can you afford

[00:20:51] Jim Henson: housing it? Yeah. It’s the place comparably. Yeah.

[00:20:52] Josh Blank: Are you, you know, you know, and the thing is, Texas still has a lot of those places.

[00:20:56] Josh Blank: Right. You know,

[00:20:57] Jim Henson: and so, you know, I mean, but I think, you know, the broader point there that. You know, to go back to the split screen metaphor tied all together, I mean, higher education, I mean, you know, the debate over higher education, the debates over higher education in this last session, last couple of sessions really have very much.

[00:21:16] Jim Henson: Illustrated this and that. There’s a, you know, there’s a kind of internal contradiction there. And again, to go back to the idea of an industrial policy, and again, by industrial policy too, I mean, yeah. As a, as a term of, you know, as an academic term, that’s not just like we’re talking about manufacturing, we’re talking about.

[00:21:32] Jim Henson: And, you know, economic strategy led by, you know, state investment of resources to influence the underlying fundamentals of an economy. Right. So, um, go back to my comparative politics plan. Yes, I know you like that. Um, I do, I do. Like, uh, so, you know, that was, that, you know, the, the, the split screen on higher ed during the, you know, we talked about this, probably not on the podcast, I don’t think, but offline a little bit.

[00:21:57] Jim Henson: It’s like, you know, Were it not for the politics which make it kind, which make it kind of comprehensible, if not defensible. Yeah. One could be forgiven if you just, you know, kind of arrived and go, wait, does the left hand know what the right hand is doing here? Um, that’s almost two pointed in terms of left and right, so, And then of course, the coming trial in the state, the coming trial of Ken Paxton, uh, in the Senate continues to fuel speculation, a pining on, on the politics and, and the process that will shape, uh, what the impeached Attorney General’s fate is going to be.

[00:22:34] Jim Henson: And, you know, I don’t feel like there’s been a, an enormous amount of public movement on that.

[00:22:41] Josh Blank: No. It’s a lot of, a lot of public

[00:22:42] Jim Henson: speculation and, and, but there’s, you know, Uh, they are, I’m pretty confident hard at work on crafting the rules for what that trial is gonna look like, which is coming up, and we’ll find out about that later this month, at least per the, the initial announcement by Lieutenant Governor.

[00:23:01] Jim Henson: Um, so given all that, but you know, I mean, I think the, the lieutenant or the, the, the attorney general being impeached, Brings us full circle back once again to the, you know, once again, you know, unignorable Donald Trump, right? And his indictment by special counsel Jack Smith. So, you know, you know, we’ll open it up a little bit.

[00:23:21] Jim Henson: I mean, big question here in political terms. You know, we can start in Texas and we’ve got some national polling over the weekend that we can vector off a little bit. How does this impact views of Trump?

[00:23:31] Josh Blank: Probably not at all.

[00:23:33] Jim Henson: Yeah, I, you know, sorry. No, I think that’s, you know, I think that’s kind of, you know, I mean, I mean, let’s, that’s the answer everybody is struggling with.

[00:23:40] Jim Henson: Right? That’s, well, you know, and I mean, and not struggling because it’s so. I think that’s the safest, most apparent and most defensible answer. Yeah. You know, but it’s the same question we’ve been asking for the, about this guy since

[00:23:53] Josh Blank: 2015. Well, and you know, the thing is, and it’s not entirely Trump. I mean, I think, you know, the thing about it is, is that we ask the question about Trump repeatedly because he is ignorable and because, you know, his conduct makes him, you know, a consistent object of, you know, Just, you know, whatever you wanna call it, public attention, public fascination, you know, relevance even in the process and the processes that are going on.

[00:24:15] Josh Blank: Um, and you know, Ultimately, you know, we’ve been watching this for a long and I’d say just to add to this, you know, and the other side of this would say, you know, it’s kind of like Joe Biden too. I mean, I wouldn’t say that people are necessarily elect, there’s a lot of things that could happen that are gonna necessarily fundamentally shift the electorates view of Joe Biden.

[00:24:32] Josh Blank: You know, it’s just, it’s sort of one of the sort of facets of politics. I mean, the question just really kind of comes down to your left an asking a question. It’s a lot more narrow. Right? Which doesn’t say, is the public gonna shift? You say, you know, well, Does the, does the sh you know, does the share of, you know, quote unquote never Trump Republicans as small as they are, does that share, grow?

[00:24:51] Josh Blank: You know, does the share of Republicans who maybe would lean towards Donald Trump in a Republican primary, you know, Uh, but now might consider an alternative. I’m not saying vote for an, just even open up their, does that share grow? And when I say that, I’m not even saying, do we go from, you know, if you look at most national point, do we go from, you know, a third of the electorate to half?

[00:25:10] Josh Blank: No. It’s like, you know, does, does 20 to 30% grow to 35% is my mind. You know, we’re talking about like little, little bits. Um, And, you know, I just, there’s no evidence at this point that anything that is gonna ha that he’s done is going to change people’s views. Cause one, I mean, these are not new allegations.

[00:25:27] Josh Blank: I mean, it’s just in a silo. This information has been out. The detail is obviously greater, uh, you know, more damning probably than the general stuff. But, but to a large extent, you know, what we know about people and you know, the way that you, they’re cognitive habits. Yeah, cognitive habits, the way that people process information, you know, it’s sort of like, You know, it doesn’t take much to look at something.

[00:25:46] Josh Blank: Oh, that looks like a duck. It’s probably a duck. And you just kind of keep going. Yeah. And there’s something to that, which is this Still a duck? Still a duck. Right. Which is to say, you know, you know, the process was still best up. The Justice Department is still weaponized. I mean, I was talking about this on Friday, you know, in, you know, sort of in the wake of the indictment.

[00:26:01] Josh Blank: You know, it was pretty easy to say, look, you know, if you kinda look around Twitter as an example, an imperfect example of anything. I’m not saying this is a sample. Big asterisk. Yeah. But a sample of it. But, but I think, you know, gives you a sense of what the currents are and you had, you know, Democrats producing a lot of memes and stuff, you know, essentially gleeful in this event, which I think is pretty premature.

[00:26:19] Josh Blank: And you’ve got a lot of Republicans out there kind of following the same path, you know, standard. Path that they’ve been following and including in fact, with response to Ken Paxton, which is to say the process is messed up. This is political. Uh, you know, ultimately, Hey, what about these other guys? Right.

[00:26:34] Jim Henson: You know, I think the, you know, and, and this is where I think we can return to the theme that we’ve, you know, talked about a little bit before, but, you know, I think that’s right and I think, and I think that it’s interesting to compare. The national dynamics and the response to Trump and all these locked in views and the Texas response to Paxton, because the big diff, I mean, there’s, there’s several differences that are relevant.

[00:26:57] Jim Henson: I don’t want to overly reduce this. Trump is obviously much more prominent. Mm-hmm. And a much more, and because he’s more prominent. Probably the attitudes are more, are a bit more baked in. Yeah, I think so. And obviously awareness of Trump is, you know, much higher than awareness to the attorney General as we are Polling has shown.

[00:27:13] Jim Henson: But at the same time, you know, one of the big differences is that, you know, the response to the Paxton, to the Paxton, uh, impeachment in his situation. You know, the math and the calculations among Republicans is much more primary driven, I think, because the, you know, the competitiveness at, in the general elections here is just so much, so much lower than at the national level.

[00:27:38] Jim Henson: We are talking about this beforehand. And so the flip side of this is, you know, at the national level where presidential elections are being decided by. You know, a percent or two we’re looking at a series of 49, 51, 49 0.5, 50.5, they could man, and,

[00:27:54] and

[00:27:54] Josh Blank: that, and that percentage gain manifested in a few states.

[00:27:57] Jim Henson: Right. So it just, you know, it changes the dynamic. And one is that, you know, and I was suggesting this beforehand, and I don’t, you know, I think I believe this, that, um, you know, there could be incremental changes in views of Trump that may not show up in any way that we find reliable. Mm-hmm. In polling.

[00:28:15] Jim Henson: Mm-hmm. That could actually be significant. And I think, I think that’s lurking out there in, and what makes me suspicious of that is that it’s lurking out there as kind of the conventional wisdom. Yeah. I think, no, maybe not quite that elaborated in things. No. The way that people are

[00:28:31] Josh Blank: phrasing that I think is the conventional wisdom is like, well, you know, the, I, I’m putting my hands on my hips right now.

[00:28:36] Josh Blank: Right. So, you know, well, you know, the indictment might help Trump in the primary because it sort of reinforces this idea that he’s under attack. By Biden and the Justice Department and an unfair system, and he’s the one who’s gonna stand up to it. And it also makes him the center of attention. And the idea is this right.

[00:28:49] Josh Blank: Sucks the oxygen out of the room. Now we’ll come back to that. Yeah. But the idea is that’s how it helps him in the primary. Let’s set that aside. But then in the general election, I mean, I said, I mentioned the idea of, you know, does this increase, you know, incrementally serve Republican skepticism towards Trump?

[00:29:01] Josh Blank: That doesn’t mean they’re gonna vote for a Democrat. Maybe they just. Don’t show up. Maybe they don’t support him in a primary. Again, it depends on who the democratic nominee is, a bunch of stuff, right? But the other piece of this in, in elections that are like 49, 51, does this sour him even further among independence.

[00:29:16] Josh Blank: And that’s where you’ve got a

[00:29:17] Jim Henson: problem. You know? And, and I think that’s, I’ve not, you know, it’s a little soon, I think, to rely on any of the polling. There was some, you know, some fresh polling came out over the weekend that was quality polling. I mean, you know. Yeah. And you know, and you know what? CBS U

[00:29:27] Josh Blank: gov, NBC somebody, and it kind of looked like all the polling on Trump in a lot of ways.

[00:29:32] Josh Blank: Yeah. You know, in the sense, as you know, you know, you could kind of vector this through this particular instance, but when you looked at it as, I recalled one of them about, you know, was this serious? Is it political? Is it both? It’s basically about a third. A third, a third maybe. Maybe it’s 40. 40. Yeah.

[00:29:43] Josh Blank: That’s the, you got CS pulled. Yeah. And you know, and I bet, you know, you break that down bipartisanship, you know, you know what that graphic’s gonna look like. Yeah, right. Um, you know, independence. I bet, you know, I’d have to go back and like go back and look. But I can tell you, I’m just gonna guess cuz why not?

[00:29:55] Josh Blank: But I mean, I bet the independence were more on the both, right? Yeah. Because everything’s screwed up if you’re an independent. Right. But you know, having said that, you know, the conventional wisdom is probably not wrong. You know, in the sense that, you know, we haven’t had a presidential candidate, you know, under indictment in, you know, potentially three states.

[00:30:13] Josh Blank: You know, by the time, you know, he’s running for reelection, you know, is that a great position to be in? You know, and for the true believers, it’s fine. It makes no difference. Right, right. And for the sort of the people who are really the core of his base, you know, everything he’s, he’s telling them is, is a continuation of the same story.

[00:30:27] Josh Blank: And really what we’ve seen in the last few weeks is just evidence that he’s right. Yeah. You know, um, but if you’re someone who’s loosely paying attention to this, you know, you can already imagine the campaign ads with the riots. You know, you imagine the campaign ads with the boxes of, you know, state secrets, you know, and it’s like, yeah.

[00:30:42] Josh Blank: And I mean, you know, and just as sort of like a, you know, I mean, we sort of sit here kind of from a weird point of view on this, but you and I were both sort of ta struck, you know, in the indictment by, and I mean, I’m like, and I’ll just. Give you an honest reaction where, you know, you look at some of these pictures of these boxes like, you know, stacked up in a bathroom and you kind of like, and the third part of it is like, is this guy okay?

[00:31:01] Josh Blank: You know, like, I mean, it’s just sort of like, you know, I mean, the guy can’t afford a conference room somewhere, you know, I mean, like, you can rent, you can rent these spaces. They can, you can rent, you can, you know, I’m gonna tell you something. Florida has a lot of short-term rental spaces. Well,

[00:31:14] Jim Henson: and I would also say, you know, I mean, yeah.

[00:31:16] Jim Henson: And it’s just, I mean, you know, I mean, and again, we could. I’m not trying

[00:31:19] Josh Blank: to make, I’m not trying to make funny of it. No, no, no.

[00:31:21] Jim Henson: I just, I think it’s fair. I mean, it’s, and it’s another thing we could go on, you know, I mean, again, the optics of it, the amount of, you know, podcast time pixels, ink spent on trying to like, figure out Donald Trump’s psychology and cognitive processes.

[00:31:34] Jim Henson: Mm-hmm. You know, we, you know, it could be, it’s, it’s effectively infinite, you know? Yeah. But, but no, I mean, I think I, you know, I spent, you know, part of the weekend just reading every word of that indictment and. You know, some of it is just strange. Yeah. You know, I mean, his own lawyers are on the way, you know, to do the meeting, to certify, uh, the fact that he’s turned over all the docu, he’s gonna turn over all the documents and that they’ve seen what’s there and they’re turning it over, you know, and he’s like texting his guys to, you know, go throw the boxes in the bathroom or, you know, I mean mm-hmm.

[00:32:12] Jim Henson: You know, in, in like the, you know, in, you know, and as I remember the timeline, it’s like, you know, the lawyers are probably like driving over. Yeah. While these guys are frantically moving boxes. Right.

[00:32:20] Josh Blank: I mean, it’s boxes of state

[00:32:22] Jim Henson: secrets. Well, you know, and, and even, you know, and just to, to your point about like, kind of what goes on is said, and that’s the thing.

[00:32:27] Jim Henson: It’s not even like, okay, here’s the state secrets box. It’s just, yeah. You know, all this crap. Right, right. I mean, you know, the ki and look, I’ve got a ton of this crap. Yeah. You know, one of those spilled boxes is like newspaper clippings and some files and some photographs and some top secret documents.

[00:32:43] Jim Henson: No, I mean, you know, it’s just very

[00:32:45] Josh Blank: strange. My, you know, my, my mom was a divorce lawyer for years, which is not a great, if anybody’s thinking about getting a divorce live, it’s because you don’t do that. But like, you know, and part of what you do in Divorce Law, it seems to me, is you basically become an accountant for people.

[00:32:56] Josh Blank: And so it seemed to me that like throughout much of my life around my mom has just bo. Banker’s boxes and banker’s, boxes of stuff that you’re just kind of moving around because this stuff is gone. And that’s kind of what it looked like. It looked like a messy divorce. And there’s just all this stuff everywhere.

[00:33:09] Josh Blank: And again, just, you know, as someone that, you know, I mean like, and I’m just like, I’m not saying that anything matters because, you know, it’s just, it’s, it’s in terms of

[00:33:16] Jim Henson: like, you know, changing people’s minds and fundamentally shifting, I think. Yeah. But

[00:33:20] Josh Blank: ultimately currently Republican attitudes, but, you know, but at the same time, you know, the idea that like, you know, you’re having.

[00:33:26] Josh Blank: You know, a very kind of clear narrative here about what’s been going on with, you know, these top secret documents and you’re applying for the job again to be like in charge of the nuclear weapons. It doesn’t look great. Yeah.

[00:33:38] Jim Henson: You know, and I, well, I mean, I, you know, it, it’s funny we talk, you know, we have, we talk so

[00:33:42] Josh Blank: much about, it also neutralizes a little bit the argument that Biden’s senile.

[00:33:45] Josh Blank: I mean, just as an aside, I mean just, you know, I mean in the sense that you’re kinda like, I mean, you know, you can go tit for tat on that at some point when you’re looking at the boxes tilting over in the bathroom of all the stuff that he took out in the White House,

[00:33:55] Jim Henson: you know? Well, you know, yeah. There’s a broader question there about.

[00:34:00] Jim Henson: The candidates that our political system is throwing up,

[00:34:04] Josh Blank: throwing up, isn’t it for,

[00:34:06] Jim Henson: for leadership. And we, you know, you and I had this discussion during the 2020 primary, but I, you know, it, you know, it’s worth noting. It’s like, okay, these are the poli that the two leaders right now, but that’s another, you know, conversation perhaps for another time.

[00:34:20] Jim Henson: But I think, uh, it, it does, you know, There’s a couple different directions of Governor Z as we get low on time. I think what I would say about this though, at this point is that also if we wanna circle back to Texas and to be as myopic as we can for the moment, you know, it does shift things on the ground here a little bit.

[00:34:44] Jim Henson: Given the Paxton situation. I mean, you know, one of the things that happened, you know, early in the process of the Paxton impeachment and even, you know, previous was. The way that Donald Trump and his allies, you know, not entirely, but largely I think as. Through the agency of Lieutenant Governor and the Lieutenant Governor, and frankly, the Attorney General’s close relationship with Trump as at least political relationship.

[00:35:15] Jim Henson: Right. You know, I mean, I don’t think anybody, including the speaker himself had any illusions that when Donald Trump was criticizing Dad Fielden a few months ago, that that was not because Donald Trump gets up thinking about Dave Field and the speaker of the Texas House of Representatives. Yeah, I don’t think so.

[00:35:31] Jim Henson: Right. There is a conduit for that kind of criticism and you know, Trump and his allies, you know, criticize the Paxton indictment or the Paxton impeachment. Right. You know, that dynamic is different now. Yeah. You know, I don’t think it’s night and day. And look, you know, if, if anything we know that the Trump.

[00:35:51] Jim Henson: You know, Trump’s intervention and these kind of things can seem, you know, slightly at odds with what would seem to be the reality of the situation. But I, but I, you know, it’s hard for me to imagine that, you know, the value of Donald Trump. Sticking up for Ken Paxton. The value proposition there is different now.

[00:36:13] Jim Henson: Now look, as you’ve said there, there will be, you know, at some point, and it’s probably already happened and I just haven’t seen it. There is a sense of connecting those two in a way that exploits the attitudes you were talking about. Look, they’re always going after our guys Look, they’re going after Trump, just like they’re going after Paxton.

[00:36:30] Jim Henson: They’re going after Paxton, just like they’re going after Trump. But the different piece of that on the Tex, on the in Texas is that, you know, a lot of Republicans voted to impeach, uh uh, uh, Ken Paxton. And in the same way that. There are calculations going on nationally right now among Republicans going, okay, is this the time that I, you know, that we abandoned ship or do we do the Lindsey Graham and Double Down?

[00:36:59] Jim Henson: And you know, Lindsey Graham was on uh, ABC Sunday show this week, you know, and became kind of in, you know, at least for a couple of news cycles. News cycles being short now. Yeah. Kind of the poster child for. You know, semis hysterical defense of Trump. That is just throwing everything up there. What about Hillary Clinton?

[00:37:18] Jim Henson: What about Joe Biden? What about Hunter Biden? Mm-hmm. You know, this is not, you know, you know, he is not, you know, it’s, it’s ob. I mean, this was, I thought the funniest thing, but it worked. I think to a certain degree. He’s like, you know, there is no evidence that, you know, he conducted, that he committed espionage and that, you know, for, well, the espionage Act.

[00:37:35] Jim Henson: Doesn’t mean Yeah, you’re meeting a guy on a dark street and handing him documents. It’s a whole collection of things that, you know, cover the, the, the, yeah. Potential violations of law here.

[00:37:45] Josh Blank: Well, I think, you know, and you raised, there are two porn points here. I mean, one is, you know, the way this process is gonna play out is going to, in Bo and this process say including, Both the Paxton process and Trump’s, you know, sort of process going forward, the process is going to play to their advantage.

[00:38:00] Josh Blank: And that’s because the legal process is slow. I mean, in the case of Ken Paxton, that’s gonna go relatively quickly actually. Well, I

[00:38:06] Jim Henson: mean, because he’s been at it for, because he’s been going, he’s actually been de deflecting this longer than Trump

[00:38:10] Josh Blank: has. Exactly. And so the Paxton thing, you know, will go relatively quickly.

[00:38:14] Josh Blank: But even that’s gonna, even that there’s a lot of time for Paxton to, to go out and, you know, present, present his case in the court of public opinion. And when you do that, you’re not bound by anything. Right. I mean, so ultimately you can, you know, so Lindsay know, in the case of Trump, Lindsay Graham can go, it’s like, well, he didn’t commit espionage, so this is bs.

[00:38:28] Josh Blank: And it’s like, that’s not. That has nothing to do with anything here. Right, right. But it doesn’t matter. And

[00:38:33] Jim Henson: that’s, that’s just part of the delay. Deflect.

[00:38:35] Josh Blank: Yeah. And that’s the thing. We know that there’s a, there’s an advantage to delaying these things out because all kinds of, I mean, in the case of Trump, you know, he could become president and then essentially give himself immunity potentially, or just tell the Justice Department to stop or whatever.

[00:38:47] Josh Blank: Right. Yeah. You know, but also in the case of, you know, when you’re not really trying to fight on the actual charges, which I think is interesting. Which is the one, you know, one very notable similarity in both the case with Pax and and Trump, that nobody is coming to their defense necessarily on the marriage and saying, well, no.

[00:39:01] Josh Blank: What he did was finding Lindsey Graham was the closest right to saying it’s fine. Um, well,

[00:39:07] Jim Henson: could Lindsey Graham be like, yeah, you know, he probably made some, you know,

[00:39:09] Josh Blank: mistakes were made, mistake mistakes were made, right? Of course. But then the other side of it’s, I mean, to what you’re saying before, you know, In in a situation like this, I mean, what I’m watching, and again, because I know public opinion’s gonna be very slow to move if it moves at all.

[00:39:22] Josh Blank: But what I think, you know, the point that you’re making here is that, you know, politicians are calculated actors and they’re, and they are, you know, regardless of what you think of ’em, they are strategic and they are intelligent about the things that they know about. Right? Right. And generally to be someone like a Lindsay Graham, To be a Rhon DeSantis, even to be a Chris Christie, mind you.

[00:39:38] Josh Blank: Right. You know, but also to be, you know, a member in the Texas House of Representatives for, you know, five or six terms. You have to have some sense of what, of what kind of trade offs you’re making. Yeah. And what’s interesting

[00:39:47] Jim Henson: is to be a, how about to be a Senator Nichols or a Senator Scher. Sure. Right.

[00:39:52] Jim Henson: Just to pick a couple

[00:39:53] Josh Blank: of names outta the hat. Just pick a couple names outta the hat. Right. You know, you, you’ve seen some things, you know, you make some calculations and the one thing about all of these people, and I’m not saying this is a negative, it’s a reality, is like they are transactional for their political careers.

[00:40:06] Josh Blank: Right, exactly. You don’t get that successful if you are not. And so I think, you know, the, one of the things that you notice is whereas. You know, there’s a lot of wait and see going on with Trump. And I think, you know, I read something that described it this way. You essentially have Lindsay Graham as one example, who’s kind of going full on, he didn’t do anything.

[00:40:20] Josh Blank: You’ve got kind of the Rhon DeSantis approach, which is is saying, I’m not really talking about what he did, but the process is all messed up. The justice department’s a problem and kind of going on those themes, right? And then you’ve got the, you know, the Chris Christie Asa Hutchinson’s of the world who are saying yoga, this is her problem.

[00:40:33] Josh Blank: And what I’m watching is what does the balance of that look like as time goes on, you know, do the Chris Christie, the Hutchinson, does that get bigger? Does it get smaller? Because that gives you a sense of, again, what do, what do elites with a really invested calculation in this process, how do they view it?

[00:40:46] Josh Blank: Now, compare that. To Texas where the reality is, you know, if you’re saying, you know, I mean, I don’t wanna be mean again, but if you’re looking at, you know, so who’s lining up behind Pax and outside of Trump and outside of sort of these other vectors, you know, who’s lining up behind Paxton? It’s a lot of the dissidents, you know, who we kind of started talking about in the McCarthys.

[00:41:04] Josh Blank: It’s a lot of the people who’ve been on the outside in this chair of the Republican

[00:41:06] Jim Henson: party, the Defend, Liberty pack, the, you know. Right. And

[00:41:09] Josh Blank: you said, wasn’t the chair of the Republican party mainstream? Said no. No. Yeah, just full stop. No, that’s not the mainstream Republican view in Texas. That is a very, you know, the Republican party of Texas, the platform, the people running that are very much a reflection of the people who show up Yeah.

[00:41:23] Josh Blank: At primaries and who, and now they show their primaries. But when they say, Hey, do you want to come to like the nominating caucus later? They say, yeah, I’ll do that. These are the most, some of the most intense partisans that exist. But what’s interesting is outside of those, those guys and gals, right? You come back and you look at the fact, and what makes us different in the fundamental way is that, you know, Majority Republicans in the house that voted to impeach him.

[00:41:44] Josh Blank: Most of the Republicans voted to impeach him. And so to me that doesn’t say like, you know, there’s just a natural, this is different than that because of the fact that this is, you can’t say, well, these are Democrats on a political witch hunt, because that’s just factually inaccurate, right? It’s just not, it can’t be

[00:41:57] Jim Henson: true.

[00:41:57] Jim Henson: Well, what they’re do, although what they’re doing is saying that, They’re connecting it with the argument that the speaker of the house is too Democrat

[00:42:04] Josh Blank: friendly. Right. They’re, well, they’re quiet of Democrats or rhinos, whatever. Again, we’re, we’re, we’re, you know, on the heels of two of the most conservative like, legislative sessions in Texas history.

[00:42:13] Josh Blank: So that’s, you know, again, just in terms of the, it’s a pretty, it’s

[00:42:15] Jim Henson: a pretty good opportunity for a pushback on that. I mean,

[00:42:17] Josh Blank: for the, from, and I think the, the speaker has done that largely, but from the perspective available. Policy output approach, you’d say, well that seems, that’s just not, again in evidence.

[00:42:26] Josh Blank: So you go back to what I’m saying, which is, you know, these are elites looking at, looking at the writing on the wall, looking at the information, making calculations. In the case of Paxton, there’s clearly a decision we need to cut this guy loose. You know?

[00:42:38] Jim Henson: Yeah. I mean, I think it’s, you know, I mean people are being quiet about this to some degree.

[00:42:43] Jim Henson: I mean, the governor’s not said much. The lieutenant governor is saying, you know, I’ve gotta be responsible cause we’re presiding over this in this environment. Where negative, again, negative partisanship is so powerful. Mm-hmm. And the com, the political system is so, You know, non-competitive at the general election LE level.

[00:43:07] Jim Henson: I take those as pretty clear signs that people are moving sideways mm-hmm. Away from Paxton. Yeah. And the decision now that are trying to be made and certainly the, the most important decisions are in the construction of these rules. Mm-hmm. Yeah. I mean, and the senate for the trial is, you know, How can we do this with the least political damage?

[00:43:27] Josh Blank: Yeah. And I think if you’re a house member, I mean, especially, I’m just talking about a house Republican, I, you know, you don’t want to touch us with a 10 foot pole. You don’t wanna be the face of, you know, the Ken Paxon prosecution. But I think, you know, if you kind of basically took a vote for impeachment, you can probably go back to your, you know, to your district and say, Hey look, there’s a lot of stuff that went on there.

[00:43:44] Josh Blank: And I think, you know, that’s the sentence job to kind of poke into and figure it out and they’ll, you know, and ultimately it’s a, you know, we talked to, look, you know, they can, you

[00:43:50] Jim Henson: know, the. You know, the, the far right packs can make all the noise they want on Twitter about how well we’re gonna primary challenge all of them.

[00:43:59] Jim Henson: You know, everybody that voted, you know, for his impeachment, it’s a Republican gets a primary challenger. Well, you know, you got enough money to spread that. Across that many races while you just go right ahead. Well, yeah, and I mean, I don’t think they have the resources to do it. They don’t have the res, even if they could get ’em, as you’re saying, I think if, you know, if he winds up getting tried and removed by the Senate, I, it’s just, you know, attorney General Paxton is just a.

[00:44:27] Jim Henson: A not great candidate to become like the cause celeb for the Republican. Right?

[00:44:32] Josh Blank: No, and the thing is, and just even this whole thing, I mean like, you know, those seems groups have been really, really unsuccessful in primary challenging people. Yeah. I mean, and that’s when they’re being much, much more selective and who they choose to primary challenge.

[00:44:44] Josh Blank: And that was at a time, you know, I would say honestly, you know, three or four sessions ago when the House and Senate were producing even less conservative legislation than it’s producing now. So it’s, it’s, you know, It’s, it’s sort of like, okay, fine. But I mean, you know, we’ve seen this play before and ultimately these groups have not really ex, you know, right.

[00:45:03] Josh Blank: They’ve not really shown the power that they seem to say that

[00:45:06] Jim Henson: they have. You know what I, you know what I’ve say to people about this in a lot of ways that, in the way I think about this is that you have to, you know, it’s helpful I think to understand the psychology of most members and not to cast aspersions, but.

[00:45:20] Jim Henson: You know, there is really no happier elected, elected legislator than one that finds out on the registration deadline day that they don’t have a challenger. Yep. Yeah. You know, that is like, it’s like mm-hmm. Christmas. Mm-hmm. And they’re staff too. And so, right. And so, and so if you, you know, so in that way the odds are a little bit in favor of, you know, These otherwise not largely successful.

[00:45:52] Jim Henson: Mm-hmm. You know, headhunting expeditions by the far right, you know, they can, they can exploit that fear because the fear of, you know, the discomfort and the, you know, the aversion to having a challenger is disproportionate probably to the reality of that happening. But since nobody wants to be contested at all, even if it’s a crappy opponent or you know, you’re gonna have a fundraising of.

[00:46:15] Jim Henson: Advantage. They just don’t want it. Yeah. And that’s why, and they’ll go, they’ll go pretty far to avoid it. But everyone’s having to refigure the math because the Paxton thing is pretty egregious. And the house, you know, they did a good job. You know, the leadership in the house, those that wanted this to happen in the house, did a good job of rallying their troops and wrangling, you know, we were talking offline about McCarthy County, you know, they counted votes pretty well on this.

[00:46:38] Josh Blank: Yeah. I mean, and then that’s the thing, I mean, I think, you know, That’s, that’s exactly right. But what that does lay out there then very clearly is the fact that, you know, knowing that these guys more than anything else want a nice, clean primary in which they’re not running against anybody because the general election is, is pretty much determined for almost all of the members right.

[00:46:54] Josh Blank: At this point, especially this close to redistricting. You know, it shows, it makes you wonder about, You know, in an interesting way, the calculation that was made among so many of them to essentially invite a topic that could be, yeah. The impetus for a primary challenge. Yeah. Now that either now you can look at it one of two ways.

[00:47:12] Josh Blank: I mean, one can be that the thought is, you know, well Ken Paxton has done so much that, that, you know, once more of this comes out, we can’t be associated with this, the other side of it. And I think both of these are in place. Yeah. These dissident groups always say they’re gonna primary us if we don’t do what they want.

[00:47:26] Josh Blank: Yeah. And you know what? It’s not working. Yeah,

[00:47:29] Jim Henson: so, so the expectations have been, have been discounted, I think, and so, you know, we’ll see a little bit, you know, it’s gonna be a little bit, you know, of time. I, I kind of suspect that it is gonna be interesting to see. How much we start hearing about the rules and won’t be next week, but in the week after that, and as we get closer to the, to the Senate adopting those rules, I mean the,

[00:47:49] Josh Blank: you know, I always say like, you know, we always, I always joke about expertise and hearing stuff and say how, you know, it kind of stinks to be an expert or whatever, but the only thing you can say right now is, well, the rules are gonna matter.

[00:47:57] Josh Blank: Yeah. And it’s like, that’s it. And that’s all we can say right now until we see what they are. But a lot of, you know, I’m like one of those people, you know, there’s a lot of like breathless speculation. Well, you know, they might decide that none of this evidence can be, can count, or it’s like, yeah, they might do anything but you until

[00:48:09] Jim Henson: you know, well, you know, we’re gonna, we’re gonna, we’re gonna, you know, split hairs on whether, you know, the rules will require them to re.

[00:48:16] Jim Henson: To not, you know, require some of these members to not be there, whether they will recuse or not. I mean, there’ll be time to split those hairs a little bit. Yeah, we can, we can,

[00:48:23] Josh Blank: we can figure out the meaning of that when it happens. But at this point, anything that’s kinda like speculating is just that.

[00:48:30] Jim Henson: On that.

[00:48:31] Jim Henson: Thanks to Josh for being here. Happy birthday again. Thank you. Thanks to our, you’re welcome. Thanks to our excellent crew in the audio studio, uh, here in the Liberal Arts Development studio at the University of Texas at Austin. Uh, thank you for listening. We’ll put this post on the website with some supplemental material, maybe some of this polling we’ve talked about.

[00:48:55] Jim Henson: And we will be back next week with another second reading podcast.

[00:49:03] Jim Henson: The second reading podcast is a production of the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin.