June 22nd, 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 a 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. Happy to be back and joined again today by Josh blank research director of the Texas politics project. We were just talking about how busy the summer is. Josh. Are you surviving?

Well, yeah, I mean, I’m surviving fine. I just think it could be a little, I think it could feel a little more summary than it’s not hot. Wow. I don’t, I’m not leaving the house much because of that. So I guess maybe so. Yeah, that’s right. But no, there’s, there’s a lot going on. There’s a lot. We’ll we’ll see.

Let’s, let’s talk about it. So, so I, as on the last show we did last week that Josh and I, uh, were together for this, uh, today we have a couple of different subjects to dig into. Uh, one generated by, you know, pretty recent news, uh, a couple of items, and then another digging into the context of some political events late last week.

Um, let’s, let’s start with the current events. Shall we, um, Texas legislature continue to get more publicly involved in the continuing reaction to the mass shooting in Aldi that, you know, took place now almost a month ago. Yeah. Wow. Um, the house. Investigative committees had three, I think mostly executive session meetings.

Although yesterday they, they made some national news. They had an executive session meeting. They had been in Aldi. They came back to Austin yesterday. Um, but they had school district police, chief, uh, Peter AR. Testify on Tuesday, an executive session. And there was, you know, uh, given the media attention to this, I, you, you don’t really watch national news much, but there was, you know, lots of Ted footage of Arto being ushered into a capital of, into a capital elevator and ushered.

Ushered was the word I thought would be well ushered by, you know, Well, I was gonna say something CRAs and I won ushered by, shall we say several though? Non not specified, not specified number of Texas DPS officers. Mm-hmm , uh, forming a, a cordon around him. Um, the Senate committee, uh, or William or, or well, or, well, like, you know, named, uh, Orwellian Lee Orwellian.

Or William Lee named the Senate committee to protect all Texans had a long day of public testimony yesterday. They went for a little more in 12 hours, which included probably most notably testimony from DPS director, Steve McCraw and te head Mike AFF. Now, also in kind of linked to this. I think in some ways, certainly, uh, the national bill that we talked about a lot last week on the podcast, uh, that John Cornin has been instrumental in, in putting together in response to Aldi and other recent shootings looks like it’s gonna move by all current indications.

Um, The 80 page bill called the bipartisan safer communities act would enhance background checks, give authorities up to 10 business days to review the juvenile and mental health records of gun purchasers who are under 21, uh, and direct, uh, uh, a. Pocket of, of some decently, I guess one can debate this, but yeah, certainly millions of dollars towards helping states implement sofa.

So-called red flag laws, um, with all of the kind of caveats that we talked about last week, and that can come up again, as well as other mental health intervention programs. Now, you know, this is a, you know, I, I. Think we’ve referred to it publicly as a minimalist bill. I think I did in the mailer last week anyway, but oh, but it sounds like us, it it’s a, it’s a pretty minimalist bill.

I think in a lot of ways though, there is, you know, by, by all reports, this it’s gonna happen. I mean, there is, you know, the Democrats in the house cannot vote against this of. Cornin has rounded up 14 or 15 Republicans, uh, doesn’t seem to be any democratic dissension in, in the Senate worth mentioning. So the bill is gonna move.

Yeah, it’s interesting. You know, if you look at sort of the, the provisions and the money, which you kind of come away and say, boy, that’s a lot of money for Medicaid. Yeah. And that’s really, I mean, when you really say this is, you know, a little bit around, you know, the, the current, the existing laws, which is kind of what we suspected, you know, we can enforce these laws a little bit better, uh, but then a lot of money to, to medicate, to deal with mental health issues.

And I think, you know, if you’re Democrats at 0.1, you take what you can get and you can’t vote against seven and you can’t vote. Something Democrats have no, you can, the mental health piece, something Democrats have wanted separate from all of us. Well, and that’s the interest. You can’t vote against it, even if you might say like, Hey, it’d be nice.

If we could appropriate somebody to mental health that didn’t totally associate at all with violence. Yeah. And there’s a, but you know, there’s a general sense here that, you know, everybody, you know, needs to say they’ve done something, right. Yeah. uh, including many of the, you know, the Republicans who will vote against it.

Right. And again, we should say, you know, there are, there’s still a lot of, uh, opposition to this spill most, you know, as, as a group, Republicans are more opposed to this spill than they are supportive of it. Well, and I think that the, the important point is, is that, you know, we can say, you know, there’s a lot of mental health dollars, uh, in this bill, but, you know, The sticking points around these provisions about, you know, expand what they call the boyfriend loop poll.

Yeah. Uh, you know, the red flag law incentive, like those things are still gonna be very controversial to a large number of Republicans in the caucus. Well, and, and, and it’s the reason then, you know, it will be their public rationale for voting against it. Right. And that includes some pretty, you know, uh, you know, Prominent from the perspective of Texas, uh, that includes Ted Cruz and, and lots of other Republicans.

He’s prominent everywhere though, though, you know, interestingly enough, um, uh, Mitch McConnell is voting for it though. You know, other sort of people on Corning’s tier per what I’ve read this morning are not voting for it. You know that John th and I’m still suspect on this. Yeah. But we’ll, I mean, you.

We’ll see you mean whether it actually happens or that, that more Republicans won’t go for it? Uh, whether it actually happens. Yeah. Well, you know, you’re kind of on the record, is that, so you might as well stick with it to the end? Well, no, but you know what, you know, what’s great. I’ve learned this a long time ago, being in the position I’m in.

I can change my mind anytime if I couldn’t, if I couldn’t say things that turned out to be wrong and just admit it and move on, then I can’t really do this. Right. But I’m still, I’m still here. I’m still on it. I, and look, and I’ll say context can change. Situation can change, but still those, those sticking points are still, yeah.

Very. Sticky. And the thing is they move very fast, which I think helps them. But as the other side really starts to ramp up and start to talk about what it is specifically, that a couple of those provisions are gonna do. And again, it’s not a lot, but it’s enough, you know, there’s me a lot of pressure on those other Republicans.

Yeah. That’s all I’m saying. That’s all I’m saying anyway. Well, um, but I think it could still pass my, my percentages have changed. Yeah. I mean, I, you know, it’s certainly looking a lot more, a lot more likely now than it did a week. Yeah, absolutely. Certainly to me, but absolutely. You know, and as we started this, you know, for summer there overall, there’s a lot go, there’s a lot going on.

So, you know, that is all happening. And I guess the one, one more on that beat as you kind of alluded to that I should have mentioned, and they are, that does look like they are in position to do this very quickly. Yeah. That’s um, they, they ran the procedural vote through the Senate last in the evening. Uh, we’re recording on Wednesday.

They ran it through on Tuesday night, had 64 votes. And I can’t remember who it was. It was another Republican Senator who was pledged to vote for it. That couldn’t make the. Yeah, but strategically they have to move fast. Right. And, and the house is saying that they may even stay a little bit, you know, late if they have to that they think they won’t.

We’ll see, as you say, how much trouble the re you know, the Republicans were against this make, and you could see Republicans trying to delay this in the Senate, just despite the house. Um, yeah. Uh, you know, wouldn’t be the first time, right? So, as you’re saying for summer, there’s a lot, there’s a lot going on in general.

Um, you know, the, the. The cue R Flores primary race on the democratic side in Texas 28 was finally settled. They’ve scenarios. Recounts done. Qura Cisneros. Oh, I’m sorry. Qura Cisneros. Thank you. Yep. Um, A, and that is so, so that’s settled. Um, and then there’s lots of action in the legislature. You know, state affairs committee is meeting as we speak and we’ll have two days of hear in the Texas house.

We’ll have two days of hearings on interim charges related to the electric grid. Um, and this, in addition to hearings of. Both of the special committees appointed at the behest of the governor. As we’ve, as we’ve mentioned, they’ll be meeting, uh, in a special joint committee in the house Thur, and then there’ll also be a meeting of a special joint committee in the house Thursday, which has more legislative, uh, uh, capacity here.

Um, That is a, is gonna be a very interesting, long meeting. I would urge people to look at that agenda in it’s a real grab bag with a lot of different people, testifying, including, you know, members of these, you know, sort of gun safety advocacy groups, um, who will also get, uh, uh, I think a slot today. And.

Probably late. Yeah. Very late. Like at the very end would be my guess, there’s even a meeting of the 1836. There was even a meeting of the 1836 project advisory, uh, committee that was created by legislation in the last session, which we were fortunate enough to catch a little bit before the podcast. I, I, I can’t help, but say to people that I think are likely to be listening to this, you really haven’t lived until you’ve heard.

Sherry Sylvester, Jerry Patterson, Kevin Robertson, Dickie sey sort of kick around whether to credit many Fernandez of the New York times or the Lieutenant governor with a particularly tasty quote about Texas culture. That happens, I think about 15 or 20 minutes before that committee adjourned. So if you have a little time and maybe you’re having a cocktail late in the evening, I would go and listen to that.

It’s it. Pretty entertaining. I appreciated the discussion that was trying to define Jim Crow. Yeah. Anyway, it was also very interesting and enlightening. So, so, uh, lot, lots of, lots of good action in that committee, which, uh, you know, appears to be, you know, uh, moving very quickly. And then they, it was sporting.

They promised, they promised documents, you know, the, the documents and the, the some work product soon. So keep an eye out for that ought to be good. So let’s go back. You know, Josh, I went to the, I went down to the Senate for several hours yesterday and watched some of that hearing. I know you were watching, you watched most, if not, all of it on, uh, you know, on.

On the, the internet. Um, and you know, we should say these Senate hearings continue today. So, you know, the way that they divided the subject matter, lots of talk yesterday about education and technology, uh, today will be mental health. And gun safety. So I don’t, you know, I don’t want to jump too far into this, given that we haven’t seen what they’re gonna do, but I’m, I’m curious what your impressions were yesterday.

Well, I mean, I think the first thing is it’s hard not to come away with, you know, I think that the headlines that, that led. Right. Which, I mean, I think, you know, the, the quote that led was, was cross saying that the response from police was an abject failure. And I think, you know, just as an initial reaction, I mean, it was sort of shocking.

I mean, it’s, you know, someone who’s been watching all this very closely from the moment it happened and sort of reading the accounting of it and, you know, and throughout it, there have been this sort of. You know, these, these sort of niggling points where people would say, well, if this then why this, or, you know, is this really what was going on?

Because that’s not exactly, you know, what protocol would be and kind of so on and so forth. And at the same time, as you know, these questions are going, you’re also hearing this kind of narrative emerge from the state. And I think it’s also been well covered that that narrative has been. Either, you know, however you wanna look at revised or debunked or debunked and revised, you know, repeatedly, you know, sort of in the immediate aftermath and, and to be fair, and I wanna be, you know, I like to be, try to be fair always.

Yeah. Which is just to say, you know, I think in the immediate aftermath that, of, of an event like that, it’s not surprising that everybody didn’t have all the facts, you know, there’s something, I mean, and this is a weird comparison point. Like it’s kind of like elections, right. You know, there’s this expectation that we’re gonna have millions and millions of people I’m just talking about in Texas vote.

And then that night we’re gonna say. Here’s the results, right? And it’s like, you know, it’s a process it’s difficult. And some people just said like, for the, in the case of elections, you know, we should just say, we’re not gonna report the results for two days three, just so people can cool off and just kind of, you know, and just a temper expectation.

So when you’re a day late, but I think the same thing is, you know, applies here is that, you know, the, the, and this is a very, this could, people could say this is a very charitable interpretation and there’s reasons to believe that, but the rush to run out and give a response to what happened and try to describe something clearly.

You know, looks pretty foolish in the moment. Yeah. I mean, that’s kind of my, my first kind of takeaway, I would say, because to have sort of the real description yesterday of what went on in that school was, you know, very shocking and not shocking from any sort of like, you know, oh, like a, I know what the best police protocol is, or I, you know, whatever, but from like a moral standpoint and we talk about adults being around kids, you know, I’m a parent, you know, like, and as a parent, you’re kinda in a situation where like, when you see other kids around and there’s nobody else, like you’re kind of responsible.

Yeah. You know, and so just from a moral, the moral standpoint, there’s such a moral failing there that I think, you know, the legislature, the legislators really, you know, Well reflected or not so well reflected in channel cases, maybe, you know, I mean, it kind of depends. And so that’s sort of where I think we pivot.

Right. Which is, you know, okay. So now we kind have a better sense of what happened here and then we kinda get into the, so now what, and that’s where we kinda get to like the legislative reaction. You have a little bit more of a reaction to the legislative reaction, I think. Yeah. I mean, As I’ve said, I think we, I wanna reserve judgment.

I wanna see what happens in today’s hearings, but, you know, I found a lot of yesterday, you know, on one hand, you know, I admire your fairness in this. I really do. I mean, it, you know, you have to allow legislators through human reactions. . Yeah. And I think the universal human reaction here, you know, uh, that, that, that the director McCraw is definitely channeling, but I would say also planning on, yeah, it seems like it , um, You know, it was a certain amount of just outrage and shock at just the CA you know, you and I were texting back and forth the cascade failure that seems to have happened here.

Right. And I think it’s fair to say that, that, yeah, I agree. That’s a, I think it’s a great way to failings just continued to trigger and build on what another and follow and rapid succession as this event unfolded. And the end was really, you know, obviously, and that, and that’s part of it being in favor.

That’s like a social science concept, this cascade, but I think it’s important to like, and I was trying, you know, I’m trying to think through this and hear the same, you know, but you get to a point where you say, Why, you know, widen someone’s sense, like, because in a situation that we know this from all kinds of psychological research, you know, there’s a certain, you know, it’s not a bystander effect cause you’re not bystander police, but ultimately you go along with authority, you go along with, and if, basically somebody, you know, if there’s a reason to think that somebody’s in charge and is doing something for a reason, and that rationale keeps you from running into a room full of bullets.

Yeah. That’s pretty human. Right. And so, you know, yeah. I mean, there’s a lot of cross cutting. Yeah. A lot of things, different ways to look at this. I know things going on here, but I mean, in terms of the legislative, you know, setting there, I, you know, Uh, loss of clear efforts to cast blame on people. You know, the shaming of the cops that were there, the outrage at the situation with the mismatch between policy and the infrastructure for implementation with the matter of, you know, The policy being all teachers should lock their doors in a school where you apparently you cannot lock the doors to me inside.

Right. Which is basically, I mean, just as an aside, like if you, again, if you have kids in school, they practice right. Multiple times a year getting, you know, basically hiding and locking the doors. This is what a lock down is supposed to be. And the fact that again, the school infrastructure wasn’t even in place, right.

Is, you know, and so, you know, you know, I mean the reaction to what one was hearing yesterday, you know, had to be. You know, a sense of, you know, ne you know, had to be very negative, right. Had to be very shocked, but I mean, there’s a certain amount of table pounding and, and raised voices from some of the senators, um, that I found a little theatrical and, and also, and this is where you have to be fair and see what happens today.

Right. But there is a broader context to this problem in which we’re, you know, focusing and casting blame fairly downstream. Mm-hmm for the failure of policy and practice to respond to a situation that those who have stewardship of the policy environment on guns right now, right. Have to have some responsibility for and what we’re seeing in the politics of this.

And it really enters into, I think, you know, Your read of what’s going on in the national bill, is that, that is just not happening. No, I mean, we are not having a straightforward, direct conversation thus far. Mm-hmm, about the impact of gun policies in the state and in the country for that fact. And, um, You know, I think that’s reflective in the bill.

We’re seeing nationally it’s reflective in a very, you know, that I found by the end of the day irritating and a word, I find myself using a lot more lately dispiriting way. Mm. Yeah. You know, as I’m sitting there kind of watching the senators have this discussion and you know, it was parti and that’s why it’s useful to be down there sometimes.

Yeah. Watching the reaction, watching who’s coming and going, um, you know, Does not give you a lot of faith. And, and this goes to other conversations we’ve had and basically the, the legislature and more broadly speaking, the political system’s actual capacity to really deal, you know, at least not even deal with it, at least even confront this problem in a broad.

Intellectually honest to use the word you even moral way. And I, I think it’s pretty disconcerting. Well, yeah, I mean, I, you know, I can’t, I mean, you know, again, I we’ve, we’ve talked at length here about the fact that, you know, depending on your partisanship, you look at these mass shootings and you just have a very different perspective.

You have a different perspective on the role of guns and the role that guns play and access to guns, play mass shootings, whether they are more likely, you know, to lead to mass shooting. And their likelihood to, you know, lead lead people, uh, to stop them. But, but it is despairing, I think, you know, is a great, it is a great word.

Right. You know, because when you sort of sit there and watch and you think so, okay, what are we doing? You know, to get ready for next week, year? Well, so far we’re making sure that the custodial staff are checking all those 300,000 plus doors. Right. And it’s kind of like, okay. And I mean, to me, I’m just sitting here thinking of, and again, like I’m not some, I’m not a, I’m not a.

That’s not a bad, I, I mean, no, it’s a great idea, but here’s, I, I guess what I would, what I would ask is if, you know, if I show up with a semiautomatic weapon, like the one that the shooter in you’ve already had, and I decided to start shooting at the door. Yeah. Does that make a difference? Are those doors Bulletproof?

Can I just start? I mean, or also as they pointed out, you know, again, very quickly yesterday, a lot of those doors have a bunch of glass pains next to them. Yeah. You know, it doesn’t take a genius to open, to basically break a glass panel and open the door. Right. So, I mean, there is just sort of like from on either side, well, on either side and that’s why it’s sort of like, well, Are we even like, I mean, we’re still having these same conversation.

I’ve been here long enough now, longer. Like we’ve had these conversations before. Yeah. And the policies happen and the things, and there’s been analysis of the policy and it hasn’t really advanced. There’s not a there’s, we don’t have an army of school marshals at the, you know, 3000 campuses in the state.

And it doesn’t seem like we’re going to, so, you know, I mean, so it’s sort of like, it is dispiriting in the sense of we’re having the same conversation. And just one thing I’ll says, and the committee hearing even started that. Yeah, right. The chairman came up and said, Hey, look, you know, we’ve actually, we’ve, we’ve had these hearings actually a couple different times and they produced reports.

So like, you know, we don’t need to tread over all that ground again. And it’s like really well, but that exactly. Yeah. All evidence of the contrary, notwithstanding. Um, yeah, I mean, I, and, and I think, you know, there was a,

you know, and look, I mean, one doesn’t want to, you know, shouldn’t be naive about this, but the pervasive CYA. Yeah, kind of dynamic yesterday as, um, you know, people piled onto, you know, the first responders and at the, at the, at the, at the local level mm-hmm, in particular. And again, not to say that, you know, he didn’t make some pretty big kind of clear mistakes.

It would seem based on his own narratives and that he’s not been forthcoming about the narrative. It would seem, you know, particularly chief Odo and, you know, look, here’s a person that you. Unless we. The narrative really changes and we get a lot more different facts in, did not make, you know, didn’t make a lot of great decisions.

Yeah. And has not been completely forthcoming about those decisions in the interim. And I say that just, you know, without being indirect about it, he gave an interview to the Texas Tribune, which is good. Get for them. But several elements of that have not held up to subsequent right. Facts that have, that seem to be in evidence.

Now, all that being said, you know,

To the extent. Director MACRA did a pretty good job of establishing a narrative. That narrative was already being questioned before the committee had even adjourned right. In a city council meeting in Uvalde last night. So I would also point listeners to that. Well, yeah, to that council meeting, which is available on YouTube, I think I tweeted it out at some point, but it’s gonna be easy to find, you know, And that city council meeting gives you a very, very interesting perspective that is not completely different, but certainly sheds a different light on the testimony that we saw in the Senate.

And, and just in terms of the, going back to the human element of this also revealed a great deal of frustration. Yeah. Um, on the part of, uh, on the part of locals in terms of both. The lack of communication from state government after the initial high profile response. I mean, right. The mayor claimed repeatedly at that meeting that he’s not been able to get state officials on the phone for a month for almost a month now, you know, since June, basically the day or two after the shooting.

Right. Um, And, and you know, what the mayor was pretty Frank in describing is, and he used the term explicitly as we have here, as you know, massive CYA on the part of state officials and, and seemed particularly unhappy with, with the DPSS Macraw, but he also had really choice adjectives for the Senate hearings.

Overall he’d clearly been watching during the day and, you know, thought that what he heard. Not good. And it’s interesting. I mean, again, you know, I watched his, his, his comments and full and, and, you know, it does, it is interesting sort of juxtaposing the two, right. I mean, on the one hand, you know, you’ve.

McCraw, just, you know, basically discussing, you know, clearly a cascade failure. And I think, you know, one of the most interesting questions that he responded to, to my perspective in the context of these two versions of it was from a Senator Goodier I believe who said, who asked him, you know, so what, what, what matters here?

You know, command, you know, basically command protocol, who’s in charge of the scene, active shooter protocol, engage the shooter immediately. Don’t wait. And he said, he’d paused. And he. Active shooter protocol. And then you take that and you look at the Uvalde mayor point out, you know, there are nine agencies in that, in that hallway, right.

You know, pretty much almost immediately eight or nine, eight or nine. It was eight or nine. Uh, I think it was eight. And then later it’s nine and basically says, you know, he went and he lists through all them and he does it in the reverse order going through from the top to the bottom where the bottom is basically.

The school district police department, which has, you know, I think six employees and no dispatcher. And it’s just made the point here. Like, yeah, it’s pretty easy to point the fingers. This point. It’s not like there’s not blame to be had, but there are a lot of people. There’s just why I can go back to the term moral failing.

Cuz ultimately I think anybody there, it seems like who’s been trained, which they all have apparently would know that, you know, it doesn’t matter what this person’s saying at this point. There’s still shots being fired. There’s still 9 1, 1 calls. so, yeah, it’s, uh, I’m not sure that, you know, at the end of yesterday we come out with a, we come out with a clearer picture, but it’s also muddy in a different way now.

Right. Right. I mean, I think we have, you know, yeah. I mean, I think we have more Infor, you know, we have more facts, more information, more details, but you know, but. To speak to the dispiriting nature of it though. I mean, you know, I can just sort of see this now that you say, okay. So, but now what we do is we go, what we always do, which is we have a mass shooting, we say, well, what were the, what were the, the absolute very, very specific particulars of that situation let’s look exactly, you know?

Yeah. Did was the shooter playing violent video games, you know, was the shooter on social media? You know, did they get the guns, you know, from a family man. And, and then basically any law that comes up that doesn’t fit, that exact fact pattern becomes well, that wouldn’t have stopped, then it’s like, yeah, But that’s so disingenuous in terms of what you’re talking about, the dispiriting nature of the conversations, which is because the more we focus in on these kind of minor details about exactly what happened and who was it false.

It’s not that it’s not important. It’s very important. Say like, I think it’s important for tax and it’s important for America. It’s definitely important for the victims’ families and also people to get to the bottom of what happened there. Yeah. , but from a, the perspective of like a policy response, it’s like saying like, well, we want less murders.

It’s like, what happened in that murder down the street? We should basically Gar you know, gear our, you know, punitive justice system towards, yeah. This type of murder. It’s like somebody killed in a carjacking. Yeah. And you say like, well, let’s make sure we’d never have anyone killed in a carjacking again.

And it’s like, yeah. But like people die lots of ways. Yeah. And just, you know, I mean, the lack of, um, you know, the lack of any fundamental. Shifts in thinking about this yesterday. I, you know, I mean, I don’t, well there’s no, there’s, I’m not gonna name anybody in particular. No, but there’s no desire to think of it at a system level outside of the way that it’s been talked about in the past.

No. And the way that they’ve tried to address it in the past and have been unable to do so well. And, and just the, you know, the depth of the cliche responses to, you know, I mean, Again, I, you we’re gonna attribute anything directly to anybody, but, you know, arranging from, you know, somebody saying, well, you know, the bottom line here is broken families, right?

To, you know, questioning of asking medical professionals. If they’re talking to trouble, kids about God, right. Um, you know, without questioning, you know, people are gonna have their frames of reference. But at some point, some new frame of reference would seem to be necessary here. And I’m just seeing zero evidence that well, and I mean, you know, and again, without naming anyone in this doesn’t matter, cuz you could look it up.

But I mean like, you know, again, cliche frames of reference, you know? So I said, well, someone could go in there with a baseball bat and do this in an hour. And I was like, yeah, but you know why the police officers didn’t enter the room. Right. Because he had more fire power than they did. Why? Because he was legally able to buy that fire power.

The second he turned 18 and he did. And so the cops said, Nope. So clearly that wouldn’t have happened with a baseball bat, but that’s sort of, I mean, speaks, I don’t wanna say it’s disingenuous, but it just speaks to the fact of, you know, these frames are just kind of, again, I’m not, I don’t know. What’s anyone’s heart disingenuous would even I’s charitable, I think.

But anyway, anyway. Yeah. So you’re now talk, you spend most of the time talking about this. No, we can do it. Well, we were gonna do, we were also gonna talk a little bit about the state about the, the state convention held by the Republican party of Texas last week in Houston. Speaking of frames of reference, um, you know, the content of the proposed platform report, which we should say is yet, you know, I think this has dropped out of a lot of discussions, which is yet to be formally adopted pending.

It probably will. Right? Yeah. I mean, I, yeah, I mean, I think. I would be, there may some things that get dropped, but I doubt it. Right. I doubt it’ll be much certainly the things, not the things that we’ve liked. right. Um, now the content of this is, you know, is not specially surprising per se, despite, you know, what we’ve now become used to is the, oh, look at those crazy Texans coverage in the national press.

I mean, I’ve joked often with New York times reporters about out, right. You know, they have an application that they. They just, you know, open it on their phone and it writes us, I know those crazy texts in story. Right. Um, you know, and, and, you know, again, to be realistic about this, historically, it’s a time honored tradition for candidates and office holders in Texas, as well as national to pick and choose among the platform and that this happens in both parties.

So, you know, no one should expect any party candidate at any level to be bound to any and everything in a platform. You know, but you know, this does give you an indication of where the activist wing of the party is. Right. Um, and, and I, you know, I, I think as we’ve gone through this, yeah. One of the things that we’ve concluded is that there is something a little different this year, right.

In the sense that, you know, while there are plenty of boutique items in the platform that. Many, a lot of retention Republican voters would either agree with or find important or have any opinion at all about, um, some of the most prominently flagged items that, you know, that have been showing up in national coverage.

And, you know, people were still writing op-eds about this recently is yesterday. I think, you know, do enjoy widespread support among Texas Republicans. I mean, the thing that I think probably got. The the most coverage was the plank that says Joe Biden was not legitimately elected president of the United States.

Right. And that’s something where, I mean, you know, obviously I think the juxtaposition between the January 6th hearings going on on the one hand and the Republican party of platform of Texas, like literally in the, in the middle of this things chat. Yeah. I mean, it’s hard not to look at it on top of the usual Texas thing.

And, you know, but this, you know, at polling we’ve found, you know, we’ve done not too long ago, found 67% of Republicans saying that Joe Biden did not win the election legitimately. So this isn’t like a fringe view within the party. This is actually, and the national point’s pretty close to that. Yeah, exactly.

And honestly, you know, we found 73, uh, Percent of Texas Republicans saying that, you know, the official, uh, results of us elections are inaccurate. So I mean like those sorts of those sorts of attitudes are, are widespread in the party. I mean, sometimes one of the things I’ve been saying when people have been talking about this is like, it would almost be odd for the party.

Not to acknowledge this sort of ever presence kind of trope because it is ever present. It hasn’t gone anywhere. It hasn’t changed. The president is obviously continuing to push. And if anything, you know, maybe the January 6th HARs even made it more necessary for them to include it because in some ways it is something that’s sort of, you know, I think it’s almost a set piece of the politics, this point.

I mean, you know, it’s interesting. I, you know, it’s, it’s funny in a, not funny haha way, but maybe, maybe even a little, but. You know there, you know, it’s, it’s almost as if, you know, there’s, there’s, you know, there’s outreach by this, you know, the, the, the, the base is caught up with a party on this. Yeah. And I think that, you know, as, as we’ve talked about this and thought about it more, I mean, I think, you know, what’s interesting here is that.

You know, Republican party platforms in Texas in particular, but you know, for time immemorial, at least in, you know, in the post new deal America in the post new deal political system, um, you know, has always been, you know, Republican party has been more about, you know, whether you called them states rights, but you know, critical of a strong federal role wanting to limit the role of the federal government mm-hmm

But, you know, I, you know, I think we’ve crossed from, you know, the federal government is overbearing, right. And there are, you know, unsound, constitutional interpretations out there, distribution of rights, maybe, right. Balance between the two. To the federal government is illegitimate, right? Yeah. Right.

That’s different. Yeah. And there’s an intersection. I mean, there’s sort of two things. So that, that’s, I think one of the key things to kind of take outta the document and the other one, I think is sort of, you know, the summation of kind of what you were saying in the lead up, which is, you know, on the one hand look, you know, the Texas Republican party platform, having some proposal is a draw national tension.

Not surprising. Yeah. Cause it kind of is, is that’s not unusual. It’s also not unusual for that platform. Not to have like a ton of downstream effect. I mean, you know, kind of thinking about it, you know, occasionally it’s used is a, is a, is a little bit of a, is a little bit of a whip. Yeah. You know, by like county parties to kinda like C officials who maybe take a vote, they don’t like, but even then that’s only, or, or for primary or for primary for primary candidate.

Yeah. It’s it’s but I mean, it’s kind of, it’s sort of more criticism. Yeah. But either way, I mean it’s power is more of a, an internal kind. Playing the game piece of it usually than it is like directive of policy. Now, part of that is because it has, you know, basically represents all these interests of, you know, sort of, I would say various, uh, single issue, constituencies that make up kind of the people who I think participate in a lot of these, you know, participate in this process.

Um, and so, you know, on the one hand, it. I think it’s easy to sort of see this and say, yeah, this is another one of these things. People are gonna pay attention to it. And then we dismiss and don’t worry about it for a while. It’s not, it’s only point, oh, whatever percent of the Republican. And it’s not like, and it’s not like a bunch of counties are gonna go and start, you know, let’s say Cing their text sledge members because they didn’t, you know, put up a bill to succeed.

Right. Okay. Although, although, but there is a provision in this platform, but I mean, or a bill that would have a popular election on secession. No, exactly. Well, no, that’s what I’m. So I’m specifically referring to that, but I’d say, you know, whereas historically it’d be easy to say, yeah, that’s not gonna happen.

And now again, that one in particular, there’s lots of reasons that probably won and shouldn’t happen, like practical reasons, but. Because of the last session and because of, you know, I would say, you know, the way that the governor and the leadership in the legislature has oriented itself towards the electorate in particular, the Republican primary elector on these issues, you can’t say without fail that these are like, you know, that some of the most extreme provisions are dead on arrival because ultimately a lot of things that were extreme even in 2019 pass in 2021 things that were extreme at the beginning of 2021 pass in 2021.

Yeah. And so. It’s not as easy now just to dismiss this and I, you institutional carry for a long time was seen a as a fringe, fringe interest, totally fringe idea recently. And so you take that piece, the fact that like, you know, well, none of this is totally dead on arrival with the, with again, what you’re highlighting here through the.

Anti-democratic, you know, let’s say, uh, thread. Yeah. You know, the kind antis, small de democratic. Yeah. Anti small de democratic thread that goes through it. And you say, yeah, this is a little different, right? Yeah. I mean, there’s something that is galvanized there, you know? I mean, there’s something we know.

I mean, I, I should be more specific about that. I mean, the path that the Republican party has taken in the last decade, catalyzed by Donald Trump. Rise and election as president, which legitimized a lot of these things that were formerly seen as fringe. Uh, you know, and we should also say, I mean, this is not, we’re not saying.

You know, I mean, I, I’m not arguing. This is a, an interesting coalescence of anti-democratic small de democratic ideology, just because they’re denying Joe Biden’s election. I think that’s bad enough, but I mean, there also, I mean, it also picks up other streams that have been percolating inside the Texas Republican party and inside the conservative movement, for example, you know, I mean, This is not the first time that the call for a return to, or, you know, uh, moving away from the direct election of us senators and a return to the model by where they are chosen by state legislatures.

That’s been in there for a while, but it takes on a different kind of flavor. Right. You know, when it’s, when it’s now supplemented by this sense that, you know, It’s the official position of the Republican party that the current president is illegitimate right now to some of the wording where, you know, I don’t know if you notice, but there’s a couple of spots in the platform where they, they wanna refer to the president.

They refer to the current occupation. Yeah. The current occupa of the white house. Yeah. Right. That’s just like, you know, I mean, I think there’s often we saw some of this by some people on, you know, some, you know, Texas people on Twitter where. The national press runs. These stories. Everybody goes, Hey, come on.

Like, this is just, this is not the Texas Republican party. Certainly not Texas, but I think that argument is a little harder to make. Now. It is a little hard. Yeah. I mean it’s, I mean, it’s some, yes. Yeah. I mean, that doesn’t mean that the hyperbole and, you know, look, I mean, there’s plenty of, I can’t remember, you know, somebody wrote a column in the New York times, government, the poet, one of them in national papers, you know, kind of saying, Hey, thanks, Texas, cuz you made my crazy state.

Like you make my crazy Republican party, quote, unquote look less crazy. And I think that is sort of, you know, those things are actually playing that for lap actually misses something important. That’s going on. Let’s put it that way. Yeah. I mean, one of the things is just, you know, another piece of polling context for this that I think is kind of useful.

You’re talking about sort of the, the degradation of you. I don’t even know, you know, whatever gonna call it. I mean, I always say, you know, there was a positive attitude towards the Al girl, but as you’re right. You know, the changing nature of sort of the way that, you know, relationship is thought of in terms of one about, yeah.

You know, basically where does the 10th amendment, you know, kind of where where’s the water’s edge on state’s rights or state autonomy versus federal authority and all that kinda stuff. And we, you know, and a lot of the battles for a lot of years have been about where that line is, right? Yeah. Not that like the federal government is illegitimate to even like act in a lot of, you know, or even an illegitimate entity.

Another thing I was looking back at and, you know, we asked, you know, occasionally about, you know, attitudes towards the federal government state government, local government, and obviously not surprisingly right now. And we ask about the federal government, uh, it’s gonna be very negative among Republicans.

But when we ask about during, you know, the Obama administration incredibly negative during, among Republicans, but when we asked about during the Trump administration, Very negative among Republicans. And I think that’s kind of like an important thing. It’s something, you know, we often tried not to attribute everything to Trump because a lot of things were there and he just sort of, yeah.

You know, but the fact of having a Republican in the white house who basically was sitting there saying, look how terrible government is around me all the time. Yeah. And talking about the malfeasance and talking about how basically any, any mistake was because it was the entrenched bureau, you know, the deep state, I mean, all that kind of stuff.

The entrenched bureaucracy, ultimately, you know, If Republicans feel that even with Republicans in control of government, they can’t trust government. Well, then there’s never a time to trust government. And that’s kind of, I mean, that’s kind of the, well, and there’s a critical mass of this. I mean, I think that, yeah, remember before the George W.

Bush, which right. And, and, and I, well, and, and I think that, you know, I was thinking even farther back, I mean, you know, Ronald Reagan had a lot of bad things to say about the federal government. right, but they also used it. Mm-hmm now, you know, Republican sense him have too, but you know, the other piece of this is that there’s a, you know, we’re talking about is kind of a largely, not entirely, but you know, sort of systemic institutional.

you know, embrace, you know, belief in the system and allegiance to the system. In some ways that’s being into pro into democratic processes being abandoned. But the other piece of that, that’s also very present in this document. And that is, was also, you know, catalyzed by Trump. Yeah. Even though he did invent, this is also the notion of.

Citizenship belonging. What the collective identity identity, the country in orientation of government is vis Avi. The, the culture of the country and the citizenship of, and membership in the community, shall we say? And this is also pushing back hard on that in various parts of the platform, in terms of, you know, immigration, you know, views on immigration.

Um, You know, the, uh, desire to view views on transgender, the voting rights act of 1965 equal rights amendments. Yeah. Things on elements of the equal. Right. You know, so there’s a lot of that at work here too. And those two things together. I mean, I think, you know, one at a time, you know, the traffic will kind of bear, I suppose.

Right. I mean, I don’t want to downplay the, the anti, you know, the institutional part of that. Cause I think it is. Critical that that is changing. And I think you do have to have that, but I think one of the things that has made this so powerful and, and. You know, striking is that you have a major American political party, which we always thought of as coalition parties competing within a broad consensus on the system, right?

Consensus on institutions has broken down consensus on. You know, the, the vision of the community, however much it was sort of reluctantly or slowly accepted in the past has also broken down in all in one, one of the two major parties. Yeah. I mean, there’s two third things I think about as you’re talking about, then one is, you know, you talked about sort of attitude to the federal government, and I think it’s important to acknowledge here that this is.

In the context of a broader decline in trust, across society for most of the institutions that we consider to be like fundamentally American. And you can think this is on both sides, right? So you look at the federal government, but you also look at the police, you look at public schools and you see, you know, sort of groups where we traditionally had a consensus of, you know, positivity.

And now it’s sort of, you know, even libraries. Right. Even public libraries are now sort of FLA. I mean, this is you’re laughing, but it’s true, right? No, no, no. I, so I mean, I mean, and I think, you know, and every, every public institution right now is a grounds of dispute. Right? And, and, and I think, you know, hinging that on this idea of, you know, culture, belonging, and identity, and this discussion about that.

And we’ve written about this in our, in our native, in a piece on native and the Republican party that I think really brings out some of these attitudes we wanna talk about here. Um, You know, to me, you know, what, what I’ve been thinking about a lot, especially sort of, you know, looking at, in both of these stories, looking at Uvalde and sort of the response to, to sort of a mass shooting, looking at the Republican party of, you know, Texas a platform and sort of the comments from the people who were there.

And it’s hard not to see that sort of belonging culture. And I didn’t even think about, you know, the role of the information environment that we’re in now. And, and the point is, and it’s not that it’s an information environment, information environments, and that the fact that there are information environments where, you know, I think one of the writers, I think it was, it was from a local, it was from a statewide.

And he basically, you know, screws that the convention said, you know, not a lot of Fox news viewers here, mostly, you know, kinda one America. Yeah. You know, think I was in the Tribune coverage. I think I was in the Tribune coverage. And I thought, you know, again, I don’t wanna over interpret that kind of man on the street piece of this.

But the point is, is that to the extent that, you know, the parties, both parties are consuming more media that does not. Really cohere or have some sort of consensus about what needs to be covered and what the basic facts are. Even if the subsequent coverage kind of varies. I mean, it leads to, I think this idea, you said this lack of consensus, this lack of trust, and also, I mean, to let’s wrap it all up this dispiriting attitude that we’re able to even respond to even horrific incidents.

right. And so, you know, we, and we’ve been talking about that offline and talking about it with colleagues, that’s come up in here and they came up earlier today. I mean, you know, there there’s something to be figured out right now about you. And I, and there’s gotta be a lot of political science on this.

That’s just not top of mind right now, but about, you know, declining, democratic process and, and declining governmental capacity to govern. Yeah. And to, and, and not just to govern, but also to, to administer, to, you know, including problem, solve, address, problem identification, and solving public policy. The policy process suffers.

Right. And the two then begin become, you know, sort of mutually, uh, you get a, in a sort of a SP a downward spiral. Yeah. Reinforces the view that it’s not effective. Yeah. And you shouldn’t trust it. Right. You know, it’s hard not to feel like we’re in that downward spiral now. And again, you know, at the national level, I mean, you know, Joe Biden just announced.

You know that they want, you know, they, they want a three month, you know yeah. Gas tax holiday and, you know, nearest from what I’ve done as of today, it’s dead on arrival in Congress. Yeah. And so what, you know, why are, you know, anyway, that’s a tactical decision and strategic decision on the white house.

And also since it seems like we’re probably picking on the Republicans today. I mean, that is just. That is just a massive political and yeah. And policy failure. Yeah. It’s well, it’s a bad, I mean, it’s a, and political malpractice. It’s lower level. It’s not a good policy and it’s not good politics and it’s who thought it was.

Right. And how did whose idea was to go ahead and announce this with no. Note. Yeah. Anyway, no. So that’s a, you know, a smaller, a smaller example of a big thing. So, all right, with that, uh, you know, say longer than average podcast. So thanks to Josh for being here and for the good conversation. Thanks to our excellent production team in the audio studio in the liberal arts development studio at UT Austin.

Thanks for listening. Remember, you can find all the data we’ve referenced today and a lot more at the Texas politics project website. That’s Texas politics dot U texas.edu. Thanks again for listening and we’ll be back with another second reading podcast. Next week.

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