June 15th, 2022 – 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. Must’ve female Senator raise her hand or her voice to be recognized over the male colleagues in the room.

And welcome back to the second reading podcast. I’m Jim Henson, director of the Texas politics project at the university of Texas at Austin. Glad to be joined again today by Josh blank research director for the Texas politics project. How are we this morning, Josh? Yeah, we were you up late watching election returns.

I was actually up late watching a us soccer game that nobody cares about work. Did they win? They tied. It’s soccer. So they tag us. So, so, so do we interpret that as a win or not? I can never call. And the under the circumstances it was in El Salvador, the field was terrible. There’s a lot that happened. So I think the, the tie was a pretty good takeaway because again, it’s, it’s soccer go USA.

That’s our message go. USA would just say we’ve really hit our sports quota for the year. I think we’re now actually we’re a little low. I actually, I think could, we can cover some of that in the next year. Say we might talk about gambling at some point, so, well, that’d be good. There’s that we haven’t hit our gambling credit.

So we record this Wednesday morning. We were, you know, kind of prepped up to talk about. One thing, which is sort of the, which we offer, God’s called the strange case of John Cornyn. But we’ll come back to that. We’re still going to talk about that, but you know, the kind of leading political news in Texas, To the extent that there is something like this this morning is the special election that concluded yesterday.

Um, there were various election, some primaries all over the country, you know, lots of narratives around those elections. The main one. How successful was Donald Trump yesterday. We’re going to set that aside for now, but there was a special election in congressional district, 34 in south Texas, centering Cameron county yesterday that had been getting a lot of inside baseball attention in the state.

If not, as we see from turnout, you know, really there much of anywhere else from the voters, not from the voters, but certainly from, from those of us and people listening to this. Um, you know, and, and that was, as I think was pretty widely anticipated. One by, uh, the Republican candidate may reflect pres who won with, you know, a little fourteen hundred seventeen, seven hundred and eighty votes to give her just over 50%, almost 51%.

Um, and she bested the, the leading Republican Dan Sanchez lean Democrat, or I’m sorry, the leading Democrat Dan Sanchez by. Yeah, seven and a half points or so he had 12,560 votes, 43% of the vote in that a couple of, uh, other more or less also rans though, they do kind of enter into the story. Uh, another Democrat got a little over 4% and other Republican got about a percent and a half, um, in a, in an election that had a tr in which just under 29,000 people voted.

Just to put that in a context that’s about. 20% of like, let’s say midterm turnout in CD 34. If we look at the last midterm and it’s about just a little over 7% of registered voters in the district. And so, you know, this story now feeds, you know, a, an ongoing discussion that’s come up in this podcast and that is.

You know, somebody is omnipresent in discussions of Texas politics, um, and, and national politics for that, for that matter. Right? Yeah. I mean, you know, you know, looking at the coverage today, to the extent that, you know, this Texas and the national coverage and this race is sort of, kind of down below the fold, if you will, of kind of looking at what happened last night, there’s a quote from, uh, Elise, Stephanie, uh, Silvana Sophonic rev New York who basically said, you know, Maya, there’s a quote, Myra center, resounding message to the democratic party in south Texas and across America.

Democrats do not own the Hispanic vote. And this is like a really nice. Encapsulation of kind of the ongoing message. The other more offensive version is, you know, Republicans are on the March in south Texas, and this is like, you know, the example example, one we’re extra real example to, I suppose the 2020 election was an example one and here is the continuation of this.

And so, you know, that’s kind of the framing, you know, the Democrats are pushing back against this a little bit, but not very much because they didn’t put much money into this race. Right. So Democrats, do you know, one of their typical. One or the other, it seems to me, but they, you know, in this case it was, they swung on the lowering chronic lowering of expectations piece.

Not without reason as you were about to go. No, no. That reason I’d also say, you know, there’s, you know, I thought you were going to say, you know, the, her democratic thing is either like, all right, we’re going all in. We’re just going to spend a ton of money outside groups or whatever, or there’s the Democrat.

No, we’re not going to do this. And then the last minute, well, we are gonna put some money in because we don’t want to lose too badly here. Now nobody wants to get blamed. Nobody wants to get blamed. Although. Dan Dan Sanchez was very clear and blaming Democrats actually for not helping him. Yeah. But anyway, you know, I think there’s a couple of ways to look at this.

I think one, we say, you know, why shouldn’t we make too much of this result first, just, you know, we say this all the time. It’s true in Texas, through other, other places, special elections are strange. Creatures. And they’re not generally predictive of future outcomes really lend themselves to overinterpretation themselves to extreme over interpretation, just as a pollster, just example here.

Right. You know, we say, okay, our registered voters, you know, in a certain area representative of all adults, we say, well, not really, there’s some differences, but they’re not too far off are likely voters representative registered voters. Well, not exactly. Too far off, usually you are the people who turn out in a special election in June, in Texas representative of registered voters or likely voters.

Not really. Right. And I think there’s a really, here’s a good point to make this as is, you know, uh, flora has got 51% of the vote. The Democrats combined got about 47%, but if we look at redistricting CD 34 was a plus for Biden district before redistricting and it’s plus 15 and a half after redistrict.

And if you take those numbers and update them. So this is a seat that is widely expected. To be held by the Democrats. It’s low turnout. Uh, you know, Republicans really made a show of trying to win this race. Uh, but the general election, uh, democratic candidates then should take Gonzalez, did not run. Who’s also a, long-tenured incumbent from a neighboring district with a lot of money and a lot of resources to put in the race significantly more than, than the Democrat.

I can’t hear. Screen with him when they redrew this district. They actually, yeah, they were definitely a screw to them. And then also, I mean, but I mean, he obviously also made a tactical decision not to run the special election. I should also say like, you know, this is something that happens here in Texas, kind of regularly because of the nature of our cycles and, and everything where we do have end up with these kinds of races for someone to represent a seat for like a few months.

Yeah. Now why should we pay each one? It’s not that like representing that seat is valueless. I mean, this is sort of a political science thing real quick, you know, she could start using the state. Yeah, she will get to run in the general. You’ll have to run again in the general election. And she gets to runners and incumbent.

She gets to run as an incumbent and there are advantages to rent a car. She can send mail to the district. So these little things do, they are helpful. Right? I think it’s another example, you know, the things, political science, not wrong about the advantage of incumbency. So I would also under sort of the heading of why we should pay attention.

You know, that’s another example of Republican attempts to make inroads in south Texas and more, more broadly, although maybe not, we’ll get to this with Hispanics. Yeah. Right. So this is, you know, part of this ongoing narrative that I think overwhelmingly Hispanic district. Oh yeah, no, no. It’s overwhelmingly Hispanic.

I mean, this is a theme and we can go into this round half too, but it’s an overwhelmingly Hispanic district. It’s uh, it’s overwhelmed. Poor district. I mean, the median income in that district is about half the statewide median income. I mean, you know, significantly less college education. And I mean, it’s a, it’s a rural, it’s a rural district, but I think that’s actually the point here we got to get to in the however.

You know, south Texas is not necessarily representative of all Texas. Number one, Texas, very urban state. We’ve talked about this in sort of our podcast a little while back, which you can check out about sort of, you know, thinking about the Hispanic vote here, but ultimately, you know, south Texas, uh, not super representative of a state that includes some of the biggest cities in the country, Houston, Dallas, Austin, San Antonio, like, I mean, this is a very urban state, not to mention the fact that, you know, the whole idea, you know, in that quote, that what I read, you know, Democrats are not on the Hispanic.

Just to point out the Hispanic vote in a, in a rural county like this in south Texas, while, again, even in this county, extremely democratic is not necessarily representative of where the vast majority of Hispanics live in the state of Texas, which is basically in and around the state’s urban areas where Democrats keep making gains.

So this is an ongoing discussion. We’ve talked about this, we’ll come back to it, uh, for sure, but, you know, just to kind of put this all into context, I think, you know, There’s a, there’s a desire on the Republican side to say, you know, this is, this is indicative of so much more. And I think, you know, on the democratic side, there’s also to some extent, you know, I think a desire to maybe go in the other direction too much, just say, oh, none of this matters.

It does matter. I mean, ultimately Republicans are picking up a lot of low hanging fruit in south Texas and around the Rio Grande valley where they really have not campaign. And the same thing I’m going to talk about for, uh, Mark Flores. Good candidate, right? I mean, it seems to be a good candidate.

Well-funded, you know, has a good message. You know, she can play into some of these current, you know, discussions. We can go to another time if we want to, but know. Ultimately that makes a difference. And it was a, you know, it was a well chosen target of opportunity for Republicans. I mean, there’s been people talk for a long time about, you know, Cameron county is a good opportunity for Republicans based on some specifics and things that have happened there.

And who’s there. Um, so, you know, I, I guess the, you know, we needed to comment on this at least a little bit. It’s the big news. I mean, I think we’ll no doubt come back to this. I mean, it does underline this interesting dynamic of, you know, we’re, you know, we were talking about before the podcast, we’re in this constant position of saying, Hey, this isn’t just, you know, this doesn’t mean nothing.

Right. It’s not completely idiosyncratic, but context is really important here. And I think there’s still a lot of unmanned context in terms of not just Republican efforts, which you mentioned that, which I think are important and, and have been done in a, in a very strategically and tactically smart way, as you were saying before.

I mean, it’s. You know, it’s, you ha you know, in, in a case like this, you get not only the win itself, but you get the discussion of the wind and the way that the, that the messaging and the substance of it kind of you’re mutually supporting. Um, and what gets lost here is that I think to some degree in, in explanation wise, is that the Democrats.

Are really having to retool in a system that they’ve taken for granted for a long time. And that is very in a lot of ways dysfunctional in that part of the state. Yeah. And I mean, just to, you know, we were talking about before and I’ll just rephrase it, I’m just rephrasing something. But I want to say, cause I liked the way I said it.

So I’m gonna say it now, which is, you know, it’s one thing to have a narrative and it’s another thing to have a strategy to execute it. And you can see with Republicans, they are doing both. Now the fact that the narrative is obviously, you know, sort of blown up a little bit and kind of expansive, I mean, that’s politics.

So there’s no reason to hate on that. But I think what you’re seeing is, you know, Republicans are delivering on the strategy is you’re right. You know, Democrats right now don’t really have a counter to the narrative, whether they need a counter to the strategy, you know, it kind of depends on what district you’re talking about.

Right. And, and, but, but even so having said that, I think Democrats are in a tough spot right now because what do you do? Just say, well, look, we’ve got the, I mean, this district is a great example. You know, this is nearly, you know, plus 15 democratic district. Do we really need to fight this narrative so aggressively, you’re really just giving, you know, the challenger now the incumbent we are right.

All this extra oxygen, all this extra energy to even bring this up right. At the same time. I don’t know if you know this, the strategy of silence is really going to work multiple cycles down the road. The Democrats haven’t figured it out. No, I don’t think in terms of the, how to talk about it and how to, you know, let alone the strategy, you know, but I mean, I would add to that just the last bit that, you know, what the Democrats.

But Democrats have frequently said in the past is kind of, well, you know, this is exceptional and like, this really is like our thing. Yeah. And that’s part of the problem, so, well, you know, because you know, you don’t really don’t want to start digging into why it’s their thing in. So neither do that, right?

Exactly. Um, yeah, the you, I meant them. So the California ism, I guess right now, the other big story that sort of intersects Texas, that we want to talk about is, uh, Senator John Corden’s leadership and trying to get a bill passed by the Senate that can be seen as a response to the mass shooting and you’ve all day.

And I say, you know, trying, I mean, on one hand, I think. You know, the odds seem to be getting better as this unfolds, but it, you know, it’s still kind of a long shot. You know, the basic math of this is, you know, Cornyn has been, uh, involved in bipartisan efforts to craft some kind of a bill that will attract enough Republican votes to make it filibuster approved.

So he need, they need baseline 10 Republicans without losing Democrats, any Democrat. Right. And so. As a result of that, you know, fake ass on the bill by obvious design does nothing to directly affect access to guns or to direct the supply of guns direct directly. And so it’s got enhanced background checks for those that are under 21, which, you know, you could argue.

Has some effect on access, but I know, and we’ll see, I mean, of all the things I think has the least chance of making it to the finish line. We’ll say that, but you know, at least it’s in there right now, funding for mental health funding for school safe, federal funding for mental health, federal funding for school safety.

In both of those cases, I think that would be money that would filter down in large part to the states and then funds for states with, you know, quote unquote red flag laws. The Cornyn has been very quick to point out that there’s no pressure on states that don’t have red flag laws. And he was very clear about saying we are not trying to promote these laws in any way or subsidize them or push the states around.

And there’s sort of quasi hysterical, even further to emphasis on this. And he’s quick to point. Well, I think he’s going to almost even a little further, even almost to say, and if we are in that space, we are going to have to make sure that we’re protecting the rights of people who do have guns, which really kind of tells you that if, if, if the federal government does get involved in state level red flag laws through this mechanism, expect it to be a very, very constrained set of circumstances.

Okay. So, you know, the bill is getting tons of attention and political analysis in the national and state press. We probably don’t have to delve into it very much, but, you know, we don’t get overly parsed the bill probably, but the politics of it seemed apparent. And you know, it raises an interesting point from the perspective of being on the ground in Texas politics.

Um, and a point that we’ve kicked around a bit, that’s driven by both. Pulling data and the arc of, of Cornyn’s career in the arc of Texas politics, you know, and that is, you know, w we started out what we’ve re we’ve referred to over the years as the strange case of John Cornyn, which is really have to say he’s referred to as pulling numbers.

I was going to say it comes up in discussion, right? Every statewide poll we’ve done as an under-performer in terms of public opinion, he’s in his fourth terms, a us Senator yet is almost always lesser known than other Republicans elected statewide. All of whom at this point have currently searched statewide for shorter time than he has.

And perhaps more totally. He’s less popular than these other Republicans among the most dedicated Republicans and conservatives. Right. And so what does that data tell us what that data looks like a little bit. Yeah. Let me just paint this picture real quick. You know, and we’ve been asking, you know, job approval numbers about all of the statewide office holders in both senators for quite a while now.

So just to sort of pick out kind of where we are. Paint this picture. So, you know, for example, the, the lack of sort of familiarity with Carmen as a first sort of strange thing here since 2018, no more than 18% of voters have been unwilling or unable to give a, a rate, a job approval rate for Ted Cruz example.

Whereas at least 22% can not provide a rate of recording and on average, close to a third. So I mean, the idea, again, that he’s been in office for it for decades, you know, he’s been involved in the mix has been leadership positions. You know, yes, Texas voters, you know, do you approve or disapprove of the job, John cornerstone, nearly a third on average.

We’re like, yeah, I don’t know. So that’s sort of the first kind of strange, you know, thing, then we can look, you know, among Republican, uh, Republican voters who really are determining, what’s kind of the leadership and direction of the state. Right. And so we can look it over. All jobs are proven. We find is that, you know, Really, you know, tops out at about 70% overall job approval among Republicans, Greg Abbott, that usually is, has been about his starting point is about 70% or above.

Cruz’s normally around 80% and Trump never was below 80%. So there’s at least a 10 point gap or more between the Texas Republican, but now our universal benchmark and our university. But then we can go on, you know, the other thing is, you know, we’ve been talking a lot in this podcast about, you know, the.

The wait that, you know, Republican primary voters carry in, you know, sort of Republican politics and then turn in politics in the state. So we can look at strong Republicans. We also, and conservatives, we also look at intensity of improval, right? Cause ultimately, you know, you can say, I approve, I strongly approve a somewhat approve.

And one thing that’s interesting here is that this is where we really start to see the gaps. So we look at strong Republicans. So people will say, I identify as Republican alligator adviser, Republican. I’m a strong Republican. The share who’s strongly approve of John Cornyn is 25%, one in four for Ted Cruz, 63% 38 point gap among conservatives.

So just people who identify as conservatives, 17% strongly approve of Cornyn 49%. For Cruz, a 32 point gap now among extreme conservatives. So that people say I’m conservative, that I’m extremely conservative. The share strongly approving of corn goes up a little bit to 20%, but for it’s 62%. So it’s a 42 point gap.

So, you know, this is kind of the broad thing and, you know, you’d notice it at one point he said, oh, that’s interesting. But then. Over and over again, through election cycles and through events and happenings. Right. And it’s still there. And so there’s some other, just more general trends. I’ll just lay out here that we, that we noticed, which is, you know, coordinated.

Yeah. Whereas I’ll say once people learned about Cruz and especially Democrats Cruz’s numbers stayed pretty stuck where they were for the most part, I’d say the same has been a pretty clear profile, pretty early. Yeah. Abbott had a little bit more bouncing around, you know, over the course of his governorship.

That’s a whole other story, but over and again, that’s mostly having to do with Democrats, but over time, you know, he’s climbed up and the idea is he kind of just. Sits where he is and kind sets in the met Cornyn is that he comes in and out of people’s consciousness. Right. And it’s sort of, you know, the election and I, and I, and I shouldn’t say this, I’m not saying this in any sort of critical or cynical way.

It’s just the nature of the way he. Approaches the office, but as you get closer to the election, you know, he starts kind of, you start seeing a little bit more John Cornyn and the public, he starts seeing a little more tweets, a little bit more activity, a little more, you know, and the content begins to look a little sharper, a little more elbows, and then his numbers start to rise.

I mean, we saw this during the last cycle, he was reelected. You could see his number, start to pick up among Republicans. These are getting up and then it just, as soon as. Sure if calmly the water recedes electrical elections over warranties, and it kind of goes back into this. I was like relative obscurity, you know, compared to sort of the other people.

And so this is kind of what we’ve been watching and, and it does sort of lead this question. I mean, cause we’ve been talking about again, the, you know, Far to the right, the Republican legislature has gone. And in some ways, you know, you almost look and say like, it’s somehow like crack the code on this. I mean, we’re, we look at Republicans in the scene and say, you know, a lot of what we’re seeing is really driven by the politics of Republican primaries.

And then you look at John Cornyn and you say, Interestingly, this guy had like a Bulletproof vest somewhere for the, you know, the that’s actually a terrible analogy, but for the oncoming that he gets, you know, for some of the, some of the stuff that he’s willing, but I’ll say, and this is kind of where everything gets very complicated for me.

I’m gonna pass it back to you because I think there’s too many things going on here, but it allows them to either, you know, do do these things in areas like gun control that either he’s willing to. But then I would also say. Able to and it’s, and we don’t, you know, and I don’t know. Yeah. I mean, you know, one thing that I think we have to make sure we put on the table here that it’s, I think it’s easy for us to forget is that there is a baseline institutional factor here, right?

The Senate is designed to provide for this model. Right? Right. You have the law, you know, six aside from, aside from the lifetime terms of judges, you have, you know, the longest political term of federal officials. You know, the, the, the longest term limit, you know, uh, you know, the limited, uh, time in office.

And so look that, you know, he’s behaving the way you expect to Senator, to, you know, or at least if the, if they don’t have an, you know, and that’s where the cruise contrast becomes interesting, right? Because one might say, well, you know, well then why doesn’t Ted Cruz just do the same thing. And, and, you know, if you wanted to be a little nasty about it, you could say, You know, whenever I think of John Cornyn, you know, he’s an institutional player who has gained institutional power and, you know, does, in some ways what a classic Senator wants to do, which is, you know, if you want something from the federal government and you want something from Congress, John Cornyn is going to be like a stop.

You got to make in a way that cruises not. Well, the obvious explanation that is that, you know, Cruz’s ultimate goal is not the Senate when she’s made. Casting aspersions on something that he’s found McConnell, didn’t tap Ted Cruz to lean these negotiations. Exactly. And I’ll say, and when, when, when Mitch McConnell tapped John Cornyn to lead the Republican side of these negotiations, I think part of the deal was clearly, I mean, everyone started yesterday, like, oh, McConnell’s on boards.

Like yeah. McConnell was on board. If he could get 10 votes. Right. I mean, that was part of that or nine. Right. I think that was part of the deal. I think it’s become pretty clear that. Yeah, I burning policy concerns outside of things for Kentucky. Isn’t not really what drives Mitch McConnell. I think that’s, again, I think there, I think that’s fair to say without seeming so funny that you say that because on my walk this morning, when I’m thinking about what we’re going to talk about today, I saying, how do I say this about Mitch McConnell in the right way?

I was going to say, he’s driven if not primarily driven by, you know, power politics and, and, and, you know, Very well to a very much more partisan environment and then helped further that environment. So, you know, I mean, on one hand it’s like, duh, you know, John Cornyn like does his thing and then as re-election comes on, because, you know, and again, this is an artifact of the.

But seems to have the job he wants looking to go to higher office. I mean, he obviously, you know, pretty clearly would like to move. I think he would like to move up in the Senate, but that’s that’s sub job. Right. So that’s a good point that I just wanna, I mean, we don’t have to sit on it, but. And this is sort of also the strange case of John corner pieces.

And I think, you know, for people who don’t know, I mean, I think some of that’s kind of important is, you know, leadership positions in the Republican caucus in the Senate are term-limited right. So John Cornyn worked his way up the leadership structure as far as he could. As long as Mitch McConnell, didn’t leave.

Not term limited and it’s majority leader or minority leader. So Mitch McConnell has been in that position. According moved his way all the way up. He was the whip, which is, you know, the vote counter, which is why he has, you know, is still maintained. And as someone they can go to because he has a lot of relationships, but also, I mean, I think a good point is like, you know, in a, in a different world without Mitch McConnell, or if Mitch McConnell retired or whatever, you know, John Cornyn is someone you would say just one of two or three people that are positioned to be the next guy.

And look, he does. You know, he does leverage incumbency effectively when it comes to fundraising, scaring off potential opponents, as you, as you’re saying, advancing in the caucus, you know, and for all his seeming, you know, vulnerabilities, whatever we call the strange case, he’s never been in danger of being outspent by an opponent in either a primary or a general election.

Right. And I think other than for fundraising purposes, there’s never been a sense. That you know, Cornyn was in trouble. I was going back and getting ready for this. Um, and we should fly Abby Livingston wrote a great story, uh, kind of a great profile on, you know, assessment of Corbyn’s position for the Texas Tribune and how to use the, until very recently the Washington correspondent for the Texas Tribune that kind of, you know, made, uh, you know, drew a good portrait of that.

And when we post the podcast, I’ll put a link to that in there. And again, and this gets to sort of. Looking at this from another perspective or from another set of data or another frame, you know, our sense, you know, Ted Cruz puts John Cornyn in an interesting light. I mean, nobody would ever confuse John Cornyn for a liberal, unless you’re a far reactionary, right.

Republican trying to cast aspersions on him. Yeah. I would say, you know, I mean the one thing about corn and the, I would say that benefits them is yes. No one would confuse him for a little. However he does, you know, I would say, create a profile for himself that. Fits a different era, right? I mean, in some ways, you know, I’m coming, you know, if I’m, I’m originally, I’ve been in Texas for awhile now.

And I came in really when Cruz came up and, and he really was coming up and after the tea party around and after the tea party wave, we’re coordinating, you know, increasingly anachronistic, but coming from the Northeast, I was like this guy, I mean, besides the boots and the way he talks, this guy could be a Republican in, you know, what we used to call a Rockefeller Republican.

He would, well, he very much excellent. Now I, you know, so I, you know, so you raised the history piece. I also think that, you know, when you look at Cornyn’s rise and you look at, you know, how he’s positioned, you know, we were talking again before the podcast about one thing that’s interesting about making this argument is that, you know, we kind of put this in the context of the Texas Republican party becoming more.

You know, and, and I’m going to qualify this in a second, but you know, from 30,000 feet more conservative, then you adjust that and say more dominated by the far right. Conservative wing of the party, you know, but you know, one of the things that’s interesting about that, and we’ve talked about this on the podcast before, is that, you know, when we went and we, a few months ago, when we compiled.

You know, ideological identification, party, uh, identification trends over time within each party. One of the remarkable things is that at least as long as our data set goes back to 2008, there’s not been that much movement. I mean, it’s like the Republican party has increased drastically in the share of people that identify as conservative in the way that the democratic, the Democrat party has on the liberal side.

Right. It’s just, you know, Fairly consistent over time that, you know, there’s a huge amount of people, but it’s the nature of that conservatism perhaps that is changing. And that has changed under Cornyn. And remember quarter’s political career, doesn’t start in 2002. When he got elected to the Senate, he was a judge before that he served the term as attorney general.

And then with the support of, you know, a state level ally George W. Bush and his political team and the. What do you want to call it that faction within the Republican party that was fairly dominated at that moment. Um, as politics began to shift in Texas, under Rick Perry, with the, you know, the burgeoning rise of Republicans, as they get adjusted to power, the nature of conservatism changes.

And we’re going to talk about this historical trajectory, but it also, we can double back. And it also informs this question of the nature of conservatism, because one of the things that happens to conservatism. In Texas and elsewhere as it becomes more intensely anti-institutional and that’s Cornyn’s issue here, right?

I mean, Cornyn is. The institutional Republican. Well, in terms of don’t tell anyone, well, I mean, but see, the thing is, what we’ve just described is that they know, yeah. I guess that’s right. They know, well, some people know some people, I mean, well, you know, the people in that gap between the Ted Cruz approval level among extreme conservatives and the John Cornyn approval, those are the people that know, you know, what’s interesting.

I think that’s a big part of it. Yeah. There’s something about the ideological trend discussion that I was thinking that. The, you were saying that it made me sort of think of something else in our data, you know, and when we were looking at sort of the last, the last big upheaval, you know, if you will, if you’re thinking about, you know, ideology as a sort of thing, that’s kind of filled with these various, you know, components, there’s a lot of thinking about ideology, but let say it’s filled with these various components and salients and issues and directions and whatever.

Right. But the last big one, I would say sort of upheaval was the tea party way before Donald Trump. And the interesting that we used to ask this question, you know, about tea party identification. And we also used to ask this other question that I think is really. I think it’s helpful here, which is, you know, basically, you know, regardless of, you know, whether you’re thinking of yourself as part of the tea party or not, you know, basically, you know, do you basically, you think the tea party is a good influence, like you think they have more influence in the legislative process or less.

And what’s interesting is even the people who didn’t identify with who were Republicans, who didn’t identify with the tea party expressed an overwhelming amount of tacit approval of the tea parties influence on the party. And here’s what I’d say. Direction did not go the other way probably. Right. So it wasn’t as a tea party members were looking at sort of, let’s say that other wing of Republicans, the business, right.

Whatever, and say, yeah, no, we’re cool with what you guys want to do too. It’s like an agreement. It was, it was a one directional piece. And I think we’re seeing that repeatedly. Right. We kind of see that with third, the disintegration of the business wing of the Republican party, a little bit, the continued fighting between sort of the center.

Right. And the far right for agenda control and those pieces in the center right. Is certainly stayed. Mostly in the driver’s seat, although that’s kind of, you know, coming apart a little bit, but in some ways, you know, I mean the other thing, I mean, the piece to this is that, you know, even for those really conservative Republicans who don’t really who look, look a skew at the business, swing at the center, right wing, and they’re having a party.

And I always say this. They’re not voting for Beto O’Rourke they’re not voting for a Democrat. So ultimately, yeah, they can express all this sort of discontent throughout, you know, the five years after the five years after John Cornyn was elected again. But once we get around to the election year, it’s not hard to bring them back in the fold and say, Hey look, you know, we agree on more than we don’t.

Yeah. I think what that underlines is, you know, one of the things that, you know, we grappled with a lot, we grappled with it just compositionally when we’re writing about things, but there’s a conceptual issue here about, you know, I think there’s almost like a. Reflexive. You know, sort of conceptualization of the, you know, the ideological space here and the labels we impose on it.

Like, I mean, like when you said like, center right in far, right. I’m kind of like, well, it’s, you know, and again, we’ve gone through this a bunch, it’s sort of like, you know, the distance between what we’re calling w what in the, you were just, you know, on the cuff, but what we often just try, you know, to. Used language wise as well.

There’s like the center right in the fight. You know, there’s not that that distance is not uniform. In other words, if you look at the Senate, if we were to take a seven point scale, the difference between, you know, the distance between extremely conservative or, you know, And somewhat conservative. It’s probably not as broad as one might think and that, you know, and we were, we were grappling with that and the tea party thing and the, you know, this notion of like passive versus active support or identification and all of that and grabbing this and the tea party thing.

And I think in a similar way that we’re kind of grappling with now, which you you’ve walked up to this discussion, which we seem to keep talking about, which is, you know, what is the content of conservatism? And I think there’s an idea that, you know, when we simplify it and think of it as being in one sort of one dimension is what we’re talking about.

It’s not. And they have distances. We can place them. You’re saying, yeah, it’s on the right side of the, of the middle point of line, you know, this sort of quote, unquote, whatever you want to call it as closer, you know, moderate, you know, Senator right. Business, whatever chamber of commerce, isn’t that far from sort of the extreme.

Right. But the interesting thing I think is that, you know, with the tea party wave with Donald Trump, you know, what you’ve seen is you’ve seen, you know, the content of, you know, what it means to be a conservative, at least the emphasis of what it means to be a concern. Shift or maybe consolidate new this a little bit less variance.

And so what I think of in the analogy is like, well, it’s kind of like the line shifting a little bit. And the idea is, is I think, you know, a lot of us kind of look at this and say, oh, well, now the line, you know, the line is kind of shifted on its axis in a way that like, you know what now represents the far right of the party’s really happy with.

But surely that means that they must be even further away because they’re in another dimension. Right. We moved them up. They’re not, they’re not only on the line. We moved the line ups and other, I was just going to say, it’s another D you know, the problem is dimensionality. I think the point I was like, he’s like, there’s no evidence.

In any of these upheavals that this sort of, you know, again, this center, right, this market, wherever you want to call it sort of band of Republicans are like off the line. Now, like they’re still on the line may have shifted in terms of the content of, of what the emphasis is, but there’s no indication in the polling for you only, you know, that like, Getting, you know, in the other direction, let’s say on some of these issues still directionally, they still agree on most of this stuff.

So it’s sort of like, yeah, but, and that’s the thing about Cornyn is it allows him in some ways to sort of still be a representative of that wing of that party. But then step back without too much difficulty, right? Yeah. I mean, I, you know, I think, you know, what what’s just occurring to me right now is it’s almost, I mean, it looks, it’s a sign of a few different things.

It may be a sign overall, the biggest possible sense of the effects of. You know, more intense polarization, ideological polarization, but you know, it’s also maybe assigned to some degree of the success of that, of the far right. Of the Republican party that we internalize their critique of somebody like Cornyn as, oh, he’s an institutional player.

Well, he must not really be conservative. Yeah. You mean, you mean the guy leading the gun negotiations is basically guaranteed that, I mean, it’s fine. I mean, look, and this is the thing, I mean, corner, this is a space he’s comfortable and he’s been here before and that’s part of the thing is that he knows he can go in and basically kind of it’s like, yeah, we didn’t add any restrictions.

We just made sure that the restrictions that we already had are being enforced the way that they’re supposed to do a little bit better. Right. And we still, you know, I’m sure people have done work on, you know, Trying to, I know they have the, you know, breaking down the dimensionality of ideological content or whatever, but I think for practical purposes in this moment, we are trying to grapple with a shift in that, and it’s helpful to identify like what, what they are.

Right. And Cornyn does. And as we watch, you know, cause, you know, as this unfolds to bring it back to current events and, and watching it, you know, corn is going to use to try to push this bill. Yeah. There’s a question. How intensely cruise is going to oppose it and with what profile, and as I was working on this piece, we’re trying to do, to write this up.

It’s also occurring to me that if you look at what’s going on in state politics, you know, it’s remarkably similar, but in a different institutional context, right? So. Ton of difference between the approach that Cornyn is taking and the approach that the governor is taking right now, in terms of trying to channel this in the direction of mental health facilities, enforcement of existing laws and enforcement of existing law.

The governor, you know, on one hand, the governor and Lieutenant governor probably, you know, closer to, you know, this is a bad analogy, but I’m gonna use it anyway. Yeah. They’re closer to the ground fire from the far. Right. Um, but they also have the institutional advantage of really right now being able to just rather than have to do something legislatively to actually use the legislature and the bureaucracy to diffuse, you know, the urgency of action.

Well, not to be too blunt about it. They wait. Attention to fall away and for something else to come up, you know, uh, for the next podcast, that’s something else that’s probably going to be border security and immigration, but there, you know, but it could also simply be take advantage of, you know, a decline in attention and salience and resist.

Our regular programming. I mean, one thing I just, you know, I think we should close this out here pretty soon, but you know, one thing, I mean, I think, you know, going through this whole discussion, I know, again, we’ve sort of talked about this off and on over the years and stuff, but, you know, I kind of come away from it, you know, putting all your thing, like, you know, John, corn’s pretty impressive politician.

I, and you think about all the change that’s gone on around him and, and, you know, sort of the, the, the factional, you know, the factions that have moved, you know, uh, and moved on. In the Republican party and he just chugs along now, he doesn’t shut along. Like, you know, one of the most high profiles, Republic, policy events, you know, of recent memory happens here.

He is in the middle of it. Yeah. And you know, I mean, it’s all the more, I mean, we were talking about this and I, you know, it’s all the more, you know, striking, given. You know, the roots of his political career. I mean, you know, you know, as we talked about this, I couldn’t help noticing that, you know, as, as George P.

Bush goes down to none other than Ken Paxton, his self and other version of this discussion, you know, it kind of leaves John Cornyn is the last Bush standing. You know, if not in name, certainly in his political roots in affiliation, I think on that. I’ll thank Josh for being here. Thanks again, as always to our excellent production team in the audio studio in the liberal arts development studio at UT Austin, you can find all, all the data we’ve referenced today and much, much more at the Texas politics project website.

That’s Texas politics dot U texas.edu. Uh, thanks for listening and be well, and we’ll be back next week with another second reading podcast. Second reading pod. Is a production of the Texas politics project at the university of Texas at Austin.