September 28th, 2023 – One Issue to Bind Them All

[00:00:00] Intro: Welcome to the second reading podcast from the University of Texas at Austin.

[00:00:05] Intro: The Republicans were in the Democratic Party because there was

[00:00:10] Intro: only one party. So I tell people on

[00:00:12] Intro: a regular basis, there is still a land of opportunity in

[00:00:15] Intro: America. It’s called Texas. The problem is these departures from the Constitution, they have become the norm.

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

[00:00:33] Jim Henson: And welcome back to the Second Reading podcast. I’m Jim Henson, Director of the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin I am happy to be joined today by Josh Blank the Research Director of the Texas Politics Project How are we this morning Josh?

[00:00:50] Joshua Blank: I’m

[00:00:50] Jim Henson: doing pretty well So we are, you know, if you, if this sounds a little different than normal, and I bet it won’t, we are doing this remotely, um, for various kinds of logistical reasons, but I think you will probably not notice because of our crack crew in the, uh, audio studio in the College of Liberal Arts at UT Austin, so.

[00:01:12] Jim Henson: So today, while the governor hasn’t issued a formal proclamation of a special session of the legislature yet, of course, We’ve heard all about it and he’s made several comments Suggesting that this is going to happen and we’re all expecting it He broadcasts yet another kind of general save the date If you will during a visit to fox news in new york this week, and he actually made some news By mentioning that border security would also be on the agenda.

[00:01:42] Jim Henson: So josh, you know, I found this Pretty interesting. Now, this wasn’t a, you know, a bolt from the blue for any number of reasons, but I mean, the state Republican party had been urging, had actually issued a proclamation over one of the things that we’ll hear about in a minute. One of the, one of the aspects of this issue, urging the governor to do this.

[00:02:02] Jim Henson: And I, there had been discussion of it. So it’s not, Oh my God, they’re going to do border security. But it is, uh, it is pretty interesting and, and, and I thought that the, the venue was interesting, of

[00:02:13] Joshua Blank: course. Yeah, I mean, what’s interesting to me in some ways, it’s never interesting, I mean, it’s not interesting on its own that Governor Abbott would bring up the border.

[00:02:21] Joshua Blank: In fact, it’s sort of a, a set piece generally, but I think what was interesting was sort of the way that, you know, his announcement of it in New York, you know, sort of collided at the same time with the, you know, what’s kind of going on at the federal level. With, you know, Speaker McCarthy and a lot of, you know, sort of his allies turning their attention to the border, you know, at least significantly in messaging sort of in the lead up to what we expect to be a government shutdown.

[00:02:48] Joshua Blank: And we’ll get into some more of the details of how this is all playing out, but it’s one of those, you know. Is Texas’s politics getting nationalized or is, you know, our national politics becoming Texanized? And I, you know, it’s sort of interesting to kind of watch it play out. Yeah, I

[00:03:02] Jim Henson: mean, there was a real kind of gelling of a lot of different things.

[00:03:05] Jim Henson: And, and I would urge people to go find the interview. It’s on the Fox News website. He, he gave it in the afternoon on the Fox, one of the Fox afternoon shows on Wednesday afternoon. And when we post the podcast, if you’re listening to this on a direct via platform, On the posting that we’ll put up at the Texas Politics Project website Later today or early tomorrow.

[00:03:29] Jim Henson: It’ll be up by the time you hear this We’ll provide a link to that but we have a clip from that that I you know is just a an incredibly rich Semi, you know semiotically rich clip with all kinds of texts and subtexts here So let’s roll that clip and we’ll talk about it on the other side The first, importantly, so all Texans and Americans know, I signed a law SB4 that bans sanctuary cities in the state of Texas.

[00:03:57] Jim Henson: We’re looking for the application of that law to what’s going on in Colony Ridge. However, we’re taking this very serious and what we have done to make sure we have law and order in that area. I deployed the Texas Department of Public Safety to patrol the region. The Texas Department of Public Safety has special agents that are undertaking investigations about what’s going on there.

[00:04:16] Jim Henson: We deployed the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality to make sure that whatever’s going on there is not posing any type of environmental problem. And the state of Texas issued subpoenas to the company that’s in charge of all this to find out the financial background to find out exactly what’s going on.

[00:04:32] Jim Henson: And then, as you pointed out, in two weeks, we’re having a special session begin where the issue of Colony Ridge is going to be on that special session so we can look into it. And we know if it’s true that these folks don’t have social security numbers, texas drivers, I. D. What do we know about the people that are being housed when we have a special session and have bills proposed dealing with it, we’re going to have legislative hearings that will surface the information about whether or not those allegations are true or not.

[00:05:00] Jim Henson: And if they’re true, what we can do to stop it. Okay. So, you know, there’s so much to unpack in that clip. I mean, it’s pretty amazing. I mean, I think I’m going to go backwards a little bit in this. I mean, I, you know, but another, you know, another sort of reminder that we will have a special session in a couple of weeks that, you know, and, and we, we cut off the question to try to keep that clip of manageable length.

[00:05:22] Jim Henson: But one of the, the things that I noticed about that was that obviously there, you know, and again, we’re all adults here, you know, there had been prep for that segment, which was very friendly to, to the governor and to his points. And, and certainly the interviewer’s positions resonated quite strongly with those of the governor, shall we say,

[00:05:43] Joshua Blank: um, I was watching that clip.

[00:05:44] Joshua Blank: I mean, it’s almost, you could almost say, wait, who’s the politician here? I mean, there’s just sort of terms of the level, the level of, of. You know, intensity was so high on the interviewer side. A lot,

[00:05:55] Jim Henson: a lot of concern over, over the situation. But what I was going to say was that also the. You know, they set that up by saying, so, so you’re going to have a special session coming up, which, you know, I, I kind of doubt that the interviewers on a national cable show are really following the timetable of the special session, but a side point, but one that I thought was very interesting and does speak to the media environment and, and the use of Fox as a channel for this kind of message.

[00:06:22] Jim Henson: But I mean, you know, that clip had a little bit of everything in it. I mean, even going back to the Sanctuary Cities piece and, and we should say for listeners that had not heard about this and the situation in Colony Ridge, which is a development outside of Houston that has apparently become allegedly, allegedly, I think, yeah, allegedly, you know, something of a quasi colonia, but it’s some, obviously it’s some distance from the border.

[00:06:48] Jim Henson: But there’s a land development strategy, as the governor says, we’re going to learn a lot more about it. But if you go and you look, I mean, this is something that has been percolating out there. There are statements from, about this from the state Republican party. Um, but it’s been covered primarily in conservative outlets.

[00:07:07] Jim Henson: And I’ve not seen a lot of coverage and could not dig out a lot of coverage in mainstream outlets about what’s actually going on

[00:07:15] Joshua Blank: here. Yeah, I, you know, I sort of in, in hearing about this and digging into it, I was trying to, you know, like a lot of things I was trying to figure out, okay, what are, what are the facts of this?

[00:07:23] Joshua Blank: Let me just try to figure out, you know, I mean, obviously these things will be absorbed and sort of processed through, you know, partisan and political lenses and that’s to be expected. But I was just trying to figure out, you know, what is actually going on here. And you go and you, you start to look at what’s been written about this, especially in conservative outlets.

[00:07:41] Joshua Blank: And it’s hard to find. I would say, you know, really concrete facts. There seemed to be a fair amount of accusations. Characterizations. Characterizations. And actually, I think the Abbott clip is really interesting because I hadn’t listened as carefully to it the first time, but listening to it again, it really is interesting for him to say, well, actually we, we don’t know what’s going on there, but we’re going to, but we’re going to put, but maybe we’ll find out.

[00:08:07] Joshua Blank: And yet, you know, this is sort of this kind of, you know, new rallying cry, you know, all of a sudden, even though it’s sort of admitted, we don’t actually know if any of these things are going on here. We don’t know the extent of it. We don’t know, you know, I mean, really obviously. Yeah. Absolutely. Having, you know, being someone who follows this stuff closely, I don’t really feel like I, we know anything yet about exactly what’s going on there.

[00:08:27] Joshua Blank: Yeah.

[00:08:27] Jim Henson: And I think, you know, obviously, you know, I mean, some people do, but I, you know, I, there are some things I want to say about this, about that clip, but I also want to, you know, to the immediate point, um, you know, that you were sort of laying out before you went into the clip. We wrote a piece last week, I guess, about, you know, the, the governor’s ment, you know, mention of looking for, you know, mentioning that in his statement in response to the Paxton acquittal or the lack of conviction in the Paxton case that, you know, he looked forward to working with the attorney general on border security and in pushing back more against the oppressive federal government.

[00:09:07] Jim Henson: But I mean, we’ve really seen just more along those lines and the point of that piece. And I think one of the, you know, the thing we want to unpack here a little bit. You know, it’s just, you know, how reflexive is the way I think about it. It’s strategic, but it’s a strategic reflex, if you will, for Republican leaders and particularly Governor Abbott, I think it’s fair to say to fall back on border security and immigration issues during times of Republican division and intra party conflict.

[00:09:39] Jim Henson: Yes. And, you know, this is a pretty clear example of that. And, you know, one of the reasons that we See that so much, you know, and that we, is that there are, there are such, there are such a welcoming audience among Republicans at among among Republican voters as revealed by our polling.

[00:09:58] Joshua Blank: Yeah. And I’ll do this quickly.

[00:09:59] Joshua Blank: Cause I mean, if you’ve heard this before, you know, you’ve heard. You’ve heard this before, right?

[00:10:03] Jim Henson: Slide forward. If you’ve heard this before, which if you’ve listened to, we have, although we do have fresher data.

[00:10:08] Joshua Blank: Yeah. Well, just, just, just, just referring to the most recent data, you know, when we asked, uh, voters in August, you know, what’s the most important issue facing the state of Texas?

[00:10:16] Joshua Blank: 59 percent of Republicans said immigration or border security was the most important issue facing the state. So nearly two thirds of Republicans. So, so there’s no, you know, there’s no lack of audience for this. You know, we asked, uh, we asked voters about different. You know, sort of, I would almost call them existential threats kind of facing the country and ask them to, to, to rate them.

[00:10:34] Joshua Blank: And the one that was at the top for Republican voters in Texas was, was immigration. You know, they, 62 percent said that immigration was an extremely serious concern, uh, of theirs. And just to follow that up onto your point about, uh, got the governor’s statement in the wake of the Paxton acquittal, 56 percent said the power of the federal government.

[00:10:54] Joshua Blank: Was also an extremely serious threat. So that was sort of the second biggest, biggest threat that they saw, you know, but additionally this poll also found some things that, you know, maybe if not surprising were, were notable for their intensity, you know, even in our time series, which is pretty long established and finds lots of intensity, you know, 72 percent of Republicans said that the U S allows too many people to immigrate here legally.

[00:11:16] Joshua Blank: That was the highest share who’ve said too many, uh, going back to February, 2018. Additionally, a majority of, of, uh, Texas Republicans said that Texas is increasing Racial and ethnic diversity is a cause for concern. That’s the first time a majority of Republicans have said that in the poll. And a question we’ve asked a lot of times, 58 percent said that they disagreed with the idea that newcomers from other countries in rich Texas.

[00:11:43] Joshua Blank: And so, you know, we’re just, you know, and that’s even further and even given, even get a little bit further down the line here, we asked about a bunch of the, the states. Policy efforts to deter migration. We’ve had overwhelming support. We found 79 percent strongly supporting, you know, constructing and repairing walls and barriers plus 92%, 92 percent total support, 75 percent strongly supporting this is Republicans deploying, you know, basically additional state police forces, 73 percent strongly supporting placing buoys and barbed wire, uh, at, at the border, 62 percent strongly supporting paying to bus foreign migrants out of state.

[00:12:17] Joshua Blank: And so ultimately there’s just this. You know, essentially if you, if you want to know where it’s a bottomless well of support, I was, yeah, I mean, whatever analogy you want bottomless well, I was thinking a huge target. I mean, it’s just, you just can’t, you can’t really miss. It’s very hard to miss when you focus on the border, but I mean, it does.

[00:12:36] Joshua Blank: You know, sort of, it’s hard in this moment not to say, why are we talking about this? I think it makes a lot of sense why we’re talking about this, but if we allow ourselves to accept the fact that, you know, these are all sophisticated players, you know, considering what’s going on in the broader environment, it’s notable, this sort of very quick ramp up, honestly.

[00:12:55] Joshua Blank: And sort of talk about the border, you know, it’s sort of kind of to your point. I mean, you, you noticed it last week in his, in Abbott’s statement, uh, about Paxton that there was a sort of, oh, okay. You know, we’re not going to really, we’re

[00:13:06] Jim Henson: not going to say very little about this. And what we are going to say about this is really is going to be about border security and border protection.

[00:13:11] Jim Henson: The federal

[00:13:12] Joshua Blank: government, right? And then to go from there to, you know, and we knew that we knew a special session on vouchers was coming up or public ed. We’ll see. But then to within barely a week of that. Oh, and by the way, I’m going to go on a national outlet. And also, we’re going to be talking about the border during that special.

[00:13:27] Joshua Blank: I mean, that was news, I think, to a lot of people. And that’s a pretty big, you know, sort of ramp up, you know, just going from sort of rhetoric to, to, to reality, to policy here in

[00:13:36] Jim Henson: a, in a short time. And look, not to, you know, I mean, to, you know, to ground this dynamic a little bit or to ground the, you know, the discus I put it this way, to ground this discussion and, and, you know, I don’t know, I was going to say to be fair and I don’t know if it’s fair or not fair or whatever, but I mean, it does speak to the larger dynamic here in which there has been a resurgence of migrants at the border.

[00:13:56] Jim Henson: It was a very big story and over the last couple weeks that after something of a lull that, you know, and, and these lulls tend to be short term, I mean, you know, if we look at the, the much longer term, the flow of migrants at the border ebbs and flows over time in ways that are, you know, sometimes predictable, sometimes not, but, you know, we have seen a resurgence of, of, of migrants in the border.

[00:14:21] Jim Henson: Eagle Pass was really, uh, In the news because Eagle Pass was small and quickly overwhelmed, but we’re hearing similar things from El Paso and from other counties on the border. And it does speak to the piece that this is a recurrent, a perpetual perennial, call it perennial problem that has been, you know, immune to any kind of solution but not immune to lots of gestures in response.

[00:14:50] Jim Henson: And that has made it very good, you know in the current Political configuration of, you know, Republicans in the majority in Texas, a Democrat in the White House and to bring up the national point and border security and immigration still sort of churning in the same way at the national level. So, you know, we’ve seen funding for border security programs at the federal level now implicated in.

[00:15:21] Jim Henson: The mess in congress and and primarily in in the house at the national level As we seem to move inexorably towards a government shutdown Border security has been inserted into republican politic into politics at the national level in that and it’s You were talking and you know, we were talking before the podcast and it provides both, you know Similarity and contrast in ways that I think are really illuminating.

[00:15:48] Jim Henson: Yeah.

[00:15:48] Joshua Blank: I mean, it’s interesting to me sort of from the public opinion standpoint, sort of sitting here at the moment and watching sort of these, these three, there’s sort of three things that I kind of can identify taking place at the same time. And I think, you know, we’ve been watching this for a long time.

[00:16:00] Joshua Blank: So the idea that. You know, a Texas politician is going to raise the issue of the border in sort of seemingly unusual circumstances is not that unusual. And we see it over time in various ways. But here, what’s sort of interesting, just in the moment we’re in, is that we’re seeing the border get raised in very different context.

[00:16:18] Joshua Blank: But in a lot of ways, it seems to me for similar purposes. So just the three examples at the moment, you know, we have this special session coming up on vouchers here in Texas. And vouchers are a challenging program. And we can go into some of the specifics of this. Um, We’ll just lay this out first, you know, it’s a challenging program because it’s not a priority for a lot of voters because most voters are not going to be impacted by vouchers, you know, directly, indirectly, what have you.

[00:16:44] Joshua Blank: It’s very important to small groups within the Republican primary electorate. And that’s who, you know, and it’s campaign promise to kind of advance this thing.

[00:16:50] Jim Henson: But to go back to you, I mean, just to amplify that before you go into the, I’m holding your, that you’ve got three things, but when we look at the most important problem facing the state, the absence of a school voucher program is not moving the needle.

[00:17:02] Jim Henson: Yeah, exactly.

[00:17:02] Joshua Blank: I mean,

[00:17:03] Jim Henson: this and you know, either overall or even within the science of educational. Yeah. And that’s the point about that

[00:17:08] Joshua Blank: last week. Yeah. And if someone wants to say, well, yeah, of course he’s like, yeah, fine. But even when we say, let’s just talk about educational priorities, vouchers are pretty far down the list for people compared to like school safety.

[00:17:18] Joshua Blank: Teacher pay curriculum concerns are just not even among Republicans. It’s about half the level of salience is, say, curriculum concerns, which is getting curriculum concerns about the kids in the public schools. The vast majority of students, right? Yeah. And so on the one hand, you kind of look at this and you go and everybody knows going into this that this is going to be a tough one for the Republican majority to move.

[00:17:41] Joshua Blank: So then, you know, just again, we’re, again, we’re all adults here. We love politics, you know, whatever, but then to bring in something significantly more popular that significantly unifies every Republican, you know, kind of makes sense, right. Just in terms of both, both, both in terms of, you know, I think making the process.

[00:17:58] Joshua Blank: Maybe maybe helping the process out. I’m not sure it’s going to really help the process, but maybe at least making for, you know, we can be, we can cooperate over here. Why can’t we cooperate over here? Kind of vibes, let’s say, right? But also even just optically, right? Because this isn’t important to a lot of voters in Texas.

[00:18:12] Joshua Blank: It’s not important to a lot of Republican voters, but the border is. So let’s, let’s talk about that, right? Then at the national level, as you pointed out, you know, we’re, we’re heading towards. It’s, We’re heading inexorably towards a government shutdown, uh, basically because, you know, Republicans in the house can’t come to an agreement about a spending bill that again, they can all agree on.

[00:18:33] Joshua Blank: And it really does mean that they all have to agree on it. If speaker, if. The McCarthy is going to remain in the speakership and sort of, I think it was notable that at the end of last week, uh, there were a fair number of articles talking about the message shift that was going on from McCarthy and, and other sort of in leadership to say, Hey, you know, if you want to know why the government’s getting shut down, it’s because of Joe Biden’s open border policies.

[00:18:55] Joshua Blank: Right now, has Joe Biden asked for extra money to secure the border? Yes. Is it in, you know, the, the clean Senate bill that’s coming through? No. Do all Republicans in the house want to put this border money in? Kind of hard to tell. I know that doesn’t make any sense, but that seems to be sort of the answer at this point.

[00:19:14] Joshua Blank: And that might be the part of that is strategic. I think they all would, but I mean,

[00:19:17] Jim Henson: there’s a strategic. Well, I mean, yeah, I mean, the thing is that gets us into something that’s a little off top, but not, you know, I mean, the problem is that there is a core of Republicans that don’t want that have never voted for a continuing resolution.

[00:19:28] Jim Henson: Right. And have made it clear, they’re not going to vote for a CR. So whether, you know, whether border security is in there or not is kind of, you know, you can put it in there and they, they’d like that. And they, and I’ve read, there’ve been interviews with a couple of those particular actors saying, no, it’s great.

[00:19:43] Jim Henson: It should be in there. I’m not voting for it. Well, this is,

[00:19:46] Joshua Blank: but it should be in there, but you raised the important point here right again, which is why is this still similar to the voucher situation? Well, it’s still similar to the voucher situation because there is a small but committed share. I think of Republicans in the legislature and also probably Republican voters.

[00:20:00] Joshua Blank: For whom the debt and deficit are big, big issues now. I mean, this really peaked, you know, sort of in the tea party wave, we’d say like in that 2010 11 range, and it’s still been a current in the Republican Party, but the difficulty is, is that, you know, in all reality, you know, it’s, it’s not popular politics to cut popular programs, right?

[00:20:20] Joshua Blank: And when you, when push comes to shove, you know, like most governments, the federal government spends a lot of money on. You know, a lot of things that people actually like, you know, like healthcare for the elderly, like military spending, a bunch of stuff that really, you know, really takes up the vast majority of the budget so that when the deficit Hawks kind of, you know, starts saying, well, you know, it’s time to, it’s time to start making big cuts.

[00:20:42] Joshua Blank: The obvious question that a lot of people ask, including moderate Republicans is what do you want to cut? And this is actually where this all started. I mean, if you go back a couple months to kind of where these were discussed, you know, there was this whole thing about, you know, okay, everybody wants, you know, everybody in the majority wants to cut.

[00:20:56] Joshua Blank: They just need to agree on what they want to cut and they’ve never gotten to any point of agreement on that either. And so what you have is, is you have a small share of Republicans here in this case who say, no, we want to cut at all costs. We’ll shut the government down if we can’t cut the government, if we can’t cut debts and deficits.

[00:21:11] Joshua Blank: Not popular, just not broadly popular. And so again, the shift of, well, you know what this is really about. This is about the border, right?

[00:21:20] Jim Henson: And whether that works or not. In the face of a lack of resolution and pitched conflict and the impression of not being able to govern. Right. I mean, you can almost look, you know, if you go back to Governor Abbott’s previous announcement, you know, stateside on the, before he traveled to a foreign country of New York, you know, his last big messaging on this came on vouchers and what he essentially said, I’ll give you guys two sessions.

[00:21:47] Jim Henson: To pass something. If you don’t, we’ll let the voters decide. Well, the interesting thing, one of the interesting, you know, sub elements, as you’re saying is dropping border security or, you know, border security issue in there is that they probably will be able to pass something on this. It may be something, you know, who knows, you know, and again, depending on just.

[00:22:09] Jim Henson: what the level of antipathy and lack of cooperation is between the House and the Senate. You know, it’s not impossible to envision them saying, okay, we’ll pass this border security bill for all the reasons that we’re talking about that overcomes even the deep antipathy between the two chambers right now.

[00:22:27] Jim Henson: Even as vouchers are not getting resolved. And, you know, it’s one of those questions where, you know, everybody can dust off their hands and exit the field and declare a victory on that. And then say, we just have to work this other thing out. And to your point, if the other thing is less salient, other than.

[00:22:46] Jim Henson: To activists in a small group of primary voters. Well, all the better, you know, so, so here we’re going through the list. Your other two

[00:22:53] Joshua Blank: things, maybe one more thing, one more, one more sort of saying, you know, we’re looking at sort of, you know, the, the border is sort of, you know, I, I think ideally in some ways sucking most of the oxygen out of the room.

[00:23:06] Joshua Blank: For a voucher debate, that’s going to be pretty ugly locally. Nationally. We’re looking at an attempt, I think by, by Republicans at the national level to, to elevate the border above and beyond, you know, the impending and probable government shutdown. And again, that’s going to be Heavy lift. And I think the third kind of obvious one, but I just want to throw it out there in terms of thinking about it, similar dynamic is the 2024 election, right?

[00:23:27] Joshua Blank: I mean, ultimately this is really about pegging Joe Biden with basically problems at the border and trying to make that the primary and salient issue for voters. And the truth is, I think this makes a lot of,

[00:23:37] Jim Henson: certainly, especially

[00:23:38] Joshua Blank: Republican, especially Republican, but I also, it’s not even Republican primary voters in this case.

[00:23:42] Joshua Blank: I think this is actually looking ahead to the national election. You’ve got Donald Trump who’s lost two national popular votes. Right. And he’s really. Strongest in some ways on the border, right? In the sense that if you think the border is a problem and you want to know who is going to go hardest at the border, we know who that is.

[00:23:59] Joshua Blank: And so I think, you know, given the idea that Trump might be problem, you know, a difficult candidate, you know, let’s say, you know, in terms of terms of his electability in the national environment, to the extent that, you know, I think Republicans at any level, but especially anyone who’s thinking about the national campaign, 2024 can try to put.

[00:24:17] Joshua Blank: The border front and center in front of voters and especially independent voters and Republican voters who may not be as apt to turn out for Trump for a third time, this would be the issue that you would pick if you could pick any issue. And so I think these things are all reinforcing themselves. Well,

[00:24:31] Jim Henson: this and, you know, given the weirdness of people’s perceptions of the economy.

[00:24:37] Joshua Blank: Yeah. Well, yeah, that’s, well, I mean, that’s a thing, you know, there’s two, there’s two ways to look at. I mean, if we want to keep this and make it really consistent, what I would say is, is, you know, on the other side of this, you have Trump’s legal problems. And the idea is in the face of Donald Trump’s legal problems that are floating around out there, the idea that we could say, no, but look at the border, that’s the real issue.

[00:24:53] Joshua Blank: Right? Again, it’s another, I’m not even going to say it’s diversionary because I do, because like it’s not diversionary when 60 percent of the party here thinks it’s the most. It’s plain to comparative advantage. Yeah. It is playing a comparative advantage for sure. But in all cases, it’s actually kind of a similar situation, which it’s a comparative advantage, both, you know, relative to all the other issues, but also relative to what people might be focusing on if we weren’t instead trying or maybe even being successful at focusing on

[00:25:20] Jim Henson: the border.

[00:25:21] Jim Henson: But, you know, as we’ve talked about before, the, you know, I mean, it’s, it’s trying to keep the, you know, the potential general benefit, general election benefits you’re talking about because of. Or put, you know, independent views, some, you know, some, you know, the, the way that the border does, you know, in immigration play with some Democrats, but there’s also this, you know, a challenge to doing that because once you start playing to the deeper impulses, we were talking about among the Republican primary electorate and really among Republicans writ large to be fair.

[00:25:55] Jim Henson: It’s easy to start going in a direction that tests that proposition when you’re in the primary environment. My example of that would be last night at the Republican debate. Ramaswamy was questioned directly by the Telemundo moderator. About his pronounced desire to end birthright citizenship or at least limit it And you know, he doubled down on that.

[00:26:22] Jim Henson: He softened it slightly But he doubled down on it and then when it kind of went to some of the other Candidates to, you know, to either, you know, have an opportunity to compare and contrast. They kind of pussyfooted around it without completely agreeing with him. Now, you know, we have numbers somewhere in the archive that I suspect you’ll have access to that, you know, talk about birthright citizenship as perhaps more popular ending birthright citizenship, perhaps more popular than one might think.

[00:26:55] Jim Henson: But I do think that that is one of the discussions that begins to move a little bit further than Republicans might want to be. In a general election and that doesn’t mean that they’re not you know It’s easy to shift gears and I doubt ramaswamy is the candidate, you know, although you know who knows But it was another example of how you know, this is just gonna this is just gonna It’s going to be a very significant issue again in the 2024

[00:27:19] Joshua Blank: election Yeah, I mean, I I think the difficulty is is that you know, given a lot of things, right?

[00:27:25] Joshua Blank: I mean given sort of again the nature of the electorate the nature of you know the information environment and especially sort of you know, the The information environment, which voters receive, you know, these kind of communications, there’s not a lot of guardrail, you know, and given, you know, and so, and given this sort of, you know, again, really kind of widespread support for, for almost anything, you know, I think what we found at least in our polling, you know, here in Texas and looking at Republican voters is that, you know, you don’t really hit a guardrail until you do.

[00:27:53] Joshua Blank: And, you know, I think it’s one of those things where the, the one upsmanship that is sort of inevitable here, I think is going to create, you know, problems in the, you know, could be again, creates problems in the general election. I mean, the birthright citizenship thing is a good example. I mean, the parties in America are what we call big temp parties, right?

[00:28:09] Joshua Blank: There are, you know, the idea is you need to bring lots of people out, you know, on your side and to the extent that, you know, you’re basically saying essentially the rules that have governed how we, you know, establish citizenship in this country need to change right now. You know, that’s probably going to strike, you know, again, the people who that’s going to strike positively are already on your side and the people who, you know, there’s a lot of people who maybe haven’t thought about these issues all of a sudden, you know, that’s probably going to be problematic.

[00:28:33] Joshua Blank: I mean, I think, you know, another one we think of, I think about is, you know, the debate over, you know, sending the military into Mexico. I mean, it’s amazing how consistently we can find a lack of desire among the public to send our military almost. And yet, you know, here we are saying, well, maybe we should just send them across the border to the south.

[00:28:55] Joshua Blank: I mean, look, I think that I’ll play okay, again, again, within the people for whom almost anything will play okay. But I think there’s a lot of implications to that as a general election strategy if your goal is deploying the US military to Mexico.

[00:29:07] Jim Henson: Well, and I think, you know, the, the blurriness of those boundaries, I mean, to bring us full circle, to go back to the Abbott interview last night in a, in a segment that we don’t have excerpted.

[00:29:16] Jim Henson: But one of the other things that the governor said last night is a, is an example of the political creativity that is at work here. I mean, I think two months ago, the, you know, the buoys in the Rio Grande river were, and, and the concertina wire on the shores. Really seemed to be a, you know, a new innovation and pushing the border.

[00:29:42] Jim Henson: If you look at that segment last night, and again, I urge people to look at it. The discussion of the concertina wire and the buoys is very normalized. I mean, not to use a, you know, too fancy a concept, but you know, I mean, to the extent that, you know, what. The governor proposed in the Fox interview last night, and I don’t think it’s the first time he’s proposed this, but I’m not sure, to be honest, was, you know, that the plan now, you know, even as they’re in the midst of fighting the federal government over the presence of the buoys he has now, he floated the policy idea last night of deploying, you know, I believe The term was to paraphrase hundreds of miles of the buoys in the river because they were more cost effective than building the wall, even though he did underline the fact that Texas is also, you know, working on, on strengthening the wall too.

[00:30:36] Jim Henson: So from a very neutral, you know, almost absurdly neutral point of view. The progress of policy innovation just marches on in this area. You know, and I, and even as there are all kinds of institutional and political barriers to this, I mean, this has been a pretty pronounced court fight that has not generally gone well for the Abbott administration and federal court.

[00:31:00] Jim Henson: They haven’t lost out. Right. They’ve been appealing, but you know, it’s not, I’m not

[00:31:04] Joshua Blank: sure it hasn’t worked out for them. I think they’re winning. Well, politically it’s certainly worked out. Yeah. No. Well, look, I mean, From a policy standpoint, none of this matters because none of this matters. I mean, just, I’m sorry, but like, you know, well, I don’t know if I’d go that far, but well, I mean, I’m just going to, I mean, not in the, in this, in terms of where you started in the sense of their seasonal flows to migration, these go on throughout administrations.

[00:31:25] Joshua Blank: It doesn’t matter whether they’re Democrats or Republicans, the white house, we see a massive inflow of people to the extent that it’s going up over time or dropping or changing a little bit, still within the context of a lot of people, right? I mean, I don’t think you can ignore that. I think, you know, there’s a.

[00:31:40] Joshua Blank: A sense we’ve talked about this before that, you know, to the extent that we can boil the whole issue of immigration as an issue and migration as an issue down to what happens along the Rio Grande River is a big benefit to the politics of Texas and to the extent that the federal government is put in the position of opposing efforts that Texas is making to secure the border, no matter what you think about those efforts, it allows that to go on TV like he did on Fox News and say, We’re at war with the federal government.

[00:32:06] Joshua Blank: Yeah, and I think he, I think he actually used that word here, the federal, or, I mean, no, he said the federal government’s at war War with, with us.

[00:32:11] Jim Henson: Yeah. I think that, yeah, I mean, this is only a slight paraphrase. As I recall, he said, you know, he, the way that the, the governor pitched it was, There is a war going on at the border and it’s almost like he’s waiting for the other beat, but he says and it’s between Texas and the United States, right?

[00:32:28] Joshua Blank: And to the extent that, you know, if Texas and I, and here’s the thing, if Texas government, and I think, you know, to these, and we talked about this before the public, you know, the public opinion context of thinking about, you know, buoys with razor blades on them and barbed wire floating around. It’s like, you know, there’s a, there’s a, an impending political problem.

[00:32:47] Joshua Blank: Which, you know, basically is going to be some children getting caught up in this barbed wire or, you know, some horrific images that again, if we extend this more people, it’s just kind of law of numbers, it’s going to happen at some point to the extent that the Biden administration has seen is, you know, and been portrayed as, is not being a partner at all this, when that happens, you know, the obvious response, and I don’t, I’m not, I’m not, I’m sure this is what it’s going to be is, yeah, you know, whose fault this is.

[00:33:13] Joshua Blank: This is Joe Biden’s fault. However, so If it were the case that I think, you know, Texas were successful in its efforts and the, you know, the court said, no, you should go ahead and do this. Well, then Texas would own it. You know, Texas would own the policy a little bit more. So in some ways, you know, the, I mean, we’ve talked about this a lot, you know, but and it’s just different, you know, different variations on the same thing, but the continuation of the conflict in and of itself.

[00:33:35] Joshua Blank: Is valuable here.

[00:33:37] Jim Henson: Sure. Sure. Yeah. And then, and in that sense, I see what you mean by it doesn’t matter, but I mean, you know, the, the, the fight is the point, right? The fight is the point, right? I mean, I think particularly, you know, again, in this configuration of. Of national and state politics for the democrat in the white house, but even It was not so much during the trump administration But certainly in previous, you know, even in the bush, you know republican administration There was not a lot of shyness on the part of texas to pushing back against the white house Even when there was a republican.

[00:34:10] Jim Henson: I mean look it’s there it’s more muted, but it’s not and part of this is just historical time. I mean, I think if there was a, if there was a clear sign that the Republican party in Texas was no longer the party of the Bush dynasty, it was when you did start to see friction between the feds and state government during the Bush administration, when Rick Perry was governor.

[00:34:34] Jim Henson: Now, you know, people, insiders in Texas politics will be quick to point out there was no love lost between Perry and Bush, et cetera, et cetera. And those Personal things are fair, but it did, it did signal a transition and it did show that just how deeply rooted this Texas kind of pushback against the feds on immigration and the border, how deeply rooted it is.

[00:34:58] Jim Henson: And, you know, almost to the point of feeling, you know, structural in a lot of ways. Yeah.

[00:35:02] Joshua Blank: I mean, I, I don’t know. I mean, you know, You’re slightly older than I am, so you’ve been here a little bit longer, but I mean, I’d also, I guess, ask, you know, or I’m going to, I’m going to posit something. You can do what you want with it.

[00:35:15] Joshua Blank: You’re going to pose. I’m going to pose something. But basically, I mean, you know, I’d imagine there was a lot more heterogeneity in both parties towards immigration at that point in time, right? I mean, Bush was kind of interested in a guest worker program. I mean, there’s much more of a sort of a corporate kind of, how do we, you know, how do we think about immigration?

[00:35:28] Joshua Blank: How do we think about the legal system and all that kind of stuff in the, in that part? I think the Democrats were a little bit more. Heterogeneous on sort of immigration and border issues. And they’ve become now kind of spurred on by, you know, sort of, sort of identity politics and sort of things that they’ve, that they’ve embraced a lot more, uh, in recent years.

[00:35:46] Joshua Blank: It’s clearly like polarized the parties on this issue in a way that like, you know, is just not, you know, is just, is just the, the de facto state of being now. And I should point out, I mean, one of the things I was gonna say also was just, you know, and it’s worth pointing out, you know, we’ve, we’ve talked about this before, but.

[00:36:03] Joshua Blank: A big part of what allows this is the fact that the Democrats don’t actually have a real and consistent and unified response. To the border and that creates the space again. It’s part of the advantage set. And I think Biden, you know, honestly, from a political standpoint is probably, you know, is probably making the right decision in a context of bad decisions by trying to be more serious about the border and border security, whether or not anyone’s listening or buying it or whatever, you know, his tone towards the border has been significantly, his don’t even policies really are attempted policy has been significantly more restrictive than I think the rhetoric we see in democratic circles around these, these issues.

[00:36:41] Joshua Blank: But, I mean, ultimately, until the Democrats say, well, this is our border policy, or this is what we’re going to do, it really is just, they’re left to being characterized.

[00:36:49] Jim Henson: Yeah, well, and I, and I think that the, there are certainly a few examples, at least, of this. The Democratic approach to this has been more multidimensional and more long term to localize it than their predecessor.

[00:37:04] Jim Henson: Mm hmm. In other words, so there’s certainly… The Obama administration’s was, and so is the Biden administration in terms of saying, look, you know, we have to try to figure out ways to staunch, not to be too, you know, mechanical about this, but to address the sources of my, you know, the sources of migration in their geographic sources, right?

[00:37:25] Jim Henson: Negotiations with other countries, trying to figure out how to get cooperation. And that’s just not, that’s just not going to play. Well, you know, in, in, in, in contrast with what the Republican approach is, it’s a much again, I’ve been thinking in these terms a bit lately, I guess, for various kinds of reasons, it’s a much hotter approach.

[00:37:45] Jim Henson: Yeah. Well, I mean, you know, on the Republican side, then, uh, you know, the Democrats sitting down, you know, let us reason together and look at the sources of immigration and the longterm arc. And, you know, meanwhile, it’s going. Yeah, you guys are cutting the concertina wire that we put there to let people in.

[00:38:00] Jim Henson: It’s just a different approach to the issue.

[00:38:02] Joshua Blank: Well, yeah, and what it does is it relies on differences in people’s abilities to process information that are important. And we’ve talked to, you know, and, you know, look. When you’re talking about system level things, which is what the Democrats are talking, we’re talking about, you know, well, what are the, you know, what, what’s the, what’s the status of our current legal immigration system and how does that play in with, you know, economic considerations in Central and South America and let’s look at the maps

[00:38:27] Jim Henson: with arrows

[00:38:28] Joshua Blank: and seasonal patterns and what about climate change and all this stuff.

[00:38:31] Joshua Blank: And it’s like, look. That all very well. We were trying to figure out, you know, the whole context of this is, is probably the right way to go about it. You know, I think, because I’m a, I’m a nerd. So yeah, I’ll just say probably is at the same time. It doesn’t have nearly the same power and impact as. You know, an image of a thousand people standing under a bridge at Eagle Pass.

[00:38:54] Jim Henson: Yeah, and again, I use the term kind of semiotics pretty deliberately in that Fox. Right. Talking about that Fox segment. I mean, just look at the way that that is, is edited from beginning to end and what the imagery is. I mean, you were mentioning the baby. I mean, you know, very early on in that segment, there’s.

[00:39:11] Jim Henson: Blurred face photo of an infant who was supposedly dropped over the wall and caught by border patrol agents or something like this. And

[00:39:20] Joshua Blank: something like that is just so much more impactful to most people setting it on average, then it’s sort of a discussion of, again, seasonal migration trends and You know, economic conditions, conditions in Venezuela,

[00:39:32] Jim Henson: right?

[00:39:33] Jim Henson: So before we, uh, you know, we’re sort of close to the end. I want to go back to that segment and point out a couple of other more Texas specific things that I, I thought we, I, you know, for whatever reasons, it’s a six minute segment that I’m. Now preoccupied with but it you know, there were a couple other things a little more specific to texas that connect with things We’ve talked about in the podcast and I think one major theme or one major subtext of the way that governor abbott handled that interview and and the Things he said were you know when he talked about the colony ridge issue He was very quick to say Look, we’ve got TCEQ looking at the environmental risks here.

[00:40:17] Jim Henson: Not something you hear, frankly, Governor Abbott talking a lot about or something you think of as his go to agency about other kinds of investigations, you know, two, two or three different kinds of state entities. It really did speak to. The degree to which the governor, you know, any governor can, you know, has the executive branch somewhat at his disposal, at least rhetorically, and the facility with which Governor Abbott will just say, no, we’re, you know, we’re using the power.

[00:40:46] Jim Henson: We’re doing this. It’s us and the executive branch investigating. And then, you know, I, I think adjacent to that, And I don’t want to overplay this, but you know, the degree to which he sort of said, you know, he followed up with his, you know, quasi newsy announcement about adding this subject to the, to the special session call.

[00:41:06] Jim Henson: But the way that he sort of informed the host about how the legislature works and, you know, look, we’ll be having committees look at this. It had a little bit of a, uh, I’m in charge feel to it. I think it’s fair to say now again, it would be almost political malpractice for him not to do that. If he’s on a national outlet where people don’t know anything about, you know, the Texas and for all anybody knows, yeah, the governor is in charge of the legislature.

[00:41:33] Jim Henson: I don’t know, but the tone of that, those things together, for me, it was hard not to plug that into the, something we’ve been talking about a lot, which is. Governor Abbott’s occupation, use, deployment, and augmentation, if you will, of the public image of, of the governor and the, the institutional resources at his

[00:41:56] Joshua Blank: disposal.

[00:41:57] Joshua Blank: Yeah, I mean, if it weren’t just such a, such a, uh, like a t ball to say, hey, well, they’re, they’re going to look at this because obviously given the opportunity, they definitely are. I mean, they’re not right. I mean,

[00:42:07] Jim Henson: he’s not, yeah, he’s not going to be contradicted in that. And

[00:42:11] Joshua Blank: no, but, but it’s hard not to, but it was, it was tonal.

[00:42:14] Joshua Blank: Well, in the moment that we’re in, I mean, I’m just, you know, and you hear reacting to you in real time, referencing that and thinking about it. It’s hard not to imagine at a time when, you know, there are maybe too many cooks in the kitchen and too many cooks with different ideas, you know what I mean? Just, we’re already at a point right now where we’re going into a special session with this idea.

[00:42:31] Joshua Blank: That we’re trying to see how the legislative bodies react to, to the leadership in each chamber. And what that looks like and the idea that the governor is going to come in and somehow sort of, you know, provide, you know, some sort of clarity of purpose to the legislature is we’ll see. Well, it underlines

[00:42:50] Jim Henson: a situation that I, you know, I kind of think it’s misread a lot to be honest, you know, I mean.

[00:42:58] Jim Henson: You know, there’s always this like, well, if the legislature ignores the governor, it must make the governor look weaker. Well, I would say that this governor has cracked that code. Oh yeah. I agree. Because this governor has just become very good, you know, saying on the front end, I’m making the legislature do this.

[00:43:14] Jim Henson: And then on the back end, if they don’t do it for whatever reason going, yeah, they suck. And

[00:43:19] Joshua Blank: if they do, and then if they do, he says, well, you know, you have to thank.

[00:43:23] Jim Henson: Yeah. Right. And I, you know, he’s gotten, he’s good at that. He’s very effective at that. And I think that in this moment, there’s all, there’s been a very interesting manifestation of that.

[00:43:33] Jim Henson: I mean, I think, you know, the stuff I’m flagging in that segment are pretty straightforward, but I think worth noting, but also as we, you know, I think we mentioned this last week or maybe when it’s come up today, the idea that he will stand up and say, I’m calling a special session. You got two special sessions.

[00:43:52] Jim Henson: And then anticipating the fact that they probably won’t do it and then say, and then if you don’t do it, then we’ll, you know, we’re going to just sort it out in the primaries pretty much saying, you know, it’s pretty much the embodiment of that and, and, and, and shows a confidence in being able to say. You know, look, I, you know, I know you guys probably aren’t going to do this, but I’m going to make you try.

[00:44:14] Jim Henson: And then when you don’t, well, you know, we’ll let God sort it out or the

[00:44:18] Joshua Blank: primary voters. Well, you know, it’s an effective strategy, uh, for, for this governor absent, actually having a more effective strategy of. Impacting what happens in the legislature, right? Talk about this. I mean, throughout his, his tenure, this has sort of been faded and it goes back to the fact, you know, Rick Perry, you brought him up earlier.

[00:44:36] Joshua Blank: I mean, he came through the legislature clearly understood those dynamics, you know, a little bit more clearly than Abbott who came out and more of a deal for it. I had more of a, yeah, definitely had more of a feel for it. But I mean, you know, the story, you know, in a lot of ways, the inside story in a lot of ways about, you know, this governor and, and the, and his relationship with the legislature over his tenure has been one of a lot of kind of.

[00:44:55] Joshua Blank: Yeah. Missteps and in some cases, you know, bad feelings, you know, and so people are very quick to sort of bring up and I don’t think it matters as much as the people who bring this up the extent to which the, you know, the, the governor has left like house members out to dry a number of times in the past, but that’s why, but that’s what, yeah, pre K is a, is the clear example, but that’s why this is such a good strategy because it does sort of allow him to both seem like he has all this control and power.

[00:45:21] Joshua Blank: And then if it happens, he gets to sort of reaffirm it. If it doesn’t, he says, well, you know, these guys.

[00:45:25] Jim Henson: Right. And I, I think another, you know, this is a very much a 30, 000 foot observation, but I think it does get lost. I mean, Governors learn from experience and particular games. Yeah, exactly. In particular in, in repeated games with the legislature.

[00:45:41] Jim Henson: Look, you saw that with Rick, you know, I mean, you know, I mean, our conversation of that in retrospect, we think, Oh, you know, governor Perry had a better feel for the legislature. He had been there. Well, you know, his first couple of sessions went pretty crap. Lee too. And he had a learning curve and he had a, and he had, and he had a long time.

[00:46:00] Jim Henson: In office. And, you know, Abbott has now been in office a while. And, you know, I think it’s fair to say that they’ve developed some chops, you know, and I’m not saying he’s omnipotent or he’s great at it or whatever. But I mean, I think there is a real, you know, uh, sometimes a quickness to declare Abbott not very good at doing this or, you know, and in particular, you know, there’s the tension and the contrast of lieutenant governor.

[00:46:27] Jim Henson: But I mean, I, you know, I mean, I think he’s figured out. You know, where the levers are in the office he’s in and in figuring that out has also tried, you know, to strengthen the areas where he has, you know, a natural institutionally defined comparative advantage and and create some new

[00:46:44] Joshua Blank: space. Well, to your point, I mean, there’s probably no.

[00:46:47] Joshua Blank: You know, normative obvious, like you’re good at this. You know, and it’s all context dependent. And he’s playing within a certain context in which, you know, there’s a clear conflict between the house and the Senate. Whether you wanna think of that as a conflict between the leadership or, or a conflict between the chambers or, or a conflict between, you know, whatever.

[00:47:05] Joshua Blank: However you, you know, however you wanna, however you wanna phrase it. The reality is, is, you know, Abbott has figured out, you know, from his seat, how to navigate those conflicts pretty well for him. Yeah. And this is in truth. And, and I mean, just to, you know, in some ways I think we’re getting to the wrap up and this is a really good example of that, right?

[00:47:22] Joshua Blank: I mean, in some ways, you know, he’s doing all the things at once. I mean, you know, he’s on, he’s on the net, he’s on Fox news, he’s on a national broadcast. There’s a lot going on and you know, he’s in New York using, you know, the powers at his disposal. It’s all. In multiple ways, right? Is the governor being able to use the bully pulpit in the state, out of the state, but then also he’s using his ability to his institutional ability to call a special session, determine the topics to, you know, essentially direct the direct, direct the political, the politics of the legislature.

[00:47:53] Joshua Blank: And to do so in a way that whether, you know, they come out in the end with what he wants or not, he’s still going to be the winner here,

[00:47:59] Jim Henson: right? And at a really micro level, human level of what happens in, in Austin, frankly, he’s got everybody waiting on him right now. Everybody legislature staff lobby are all like, okay, well, we figure this is going to be probably in the second week of October, but he’s just, but he’s not, he hasn’t, he hasn’t told everybody yet.

[00:48:20] Jim Henson: And so he’s got everybody waiting on him. And, you know, That’s, that’s what you do if you’re governor. So with that, thanks Josh for doing this. Thanks very much as always to our production team in the audio studio in LA ITS at the university of Texas. Thanks for, you know, helping us out with the platform and helping us out with the clip.

[00:48:41] Jim Henson: We really appreciate you all. Thank you all for listening, and again, we will have links to data. We’ll have a link to this Fox clip that we’ve, uh, you know, interpreted to death today on a post at our website, Texas politics dot u texas.edu. Thanks for listening and we’ll be back soon, if not at a fixed time at this point with another second reading podcast.

[00:49:10] Jim Henson: The second reading podcast is a production of the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin.