'Republican fatigue' in Texas? | What's Your Point?

When it comes to truly understanding Texas politics and the often stealthy forces that drive it, few, if any, can match the institutional knowledge, high-quality sourcing, and journalistic perception of Quorum Report editor Scott Braddock. Nine days out from the midterm, I asked him if Texas is on the cusp of the perfect political storm Democrats have been craving. This might not just be a wave election. It could be a realignment election. You remember, you know, what happened in 1994. When I say it's not necessarily partisan, what I mean is this. It means that people are in the mood to find out about the devil they don't know because they think the devil they do know isn't doing any good. And, you know, we have for the first time in a long time, Democrats looking at a shot at winning a statewide race around here, and not just because they're running pretty good races, but also because Republicans in a big sense are imploding. Panel Braddock pointing out that for the first time since winning the governorship in 2014, Greg Abbott is offering fellow Republicans very little in the way of down-ballot coattails. You know, Bill, Braddock said a couple of things there that's not inconsistent with what you have said here. Well, I do not think this is a realignment election. When you look at the polling, the Democratic Party still is 20, 25 points unfavorable in Texas. by the way just like the Republican Party is 20 or 25 points unfavorable this is not we love what the Democrats are doing this is like we're really just worn out with what the Republicans are doing the stupid sharia law and Chinese buying land and all the transgender nonsense when people are facing high prices the kids can't afford to buy houses and they're saying why are you talking about these issues that don't affect me that's where the Republicans have got off track but the Democrats are not offering anything. We're going to give away $1,500 free to every Texan. Who does that sound like? I don't know. I think this could be a clean sweep. I don't eliminate as a possibility in this election, but the Democrats will do exactly what they always do, which is they'll go do a bunch of stupid stuff that'll make everybody mad in the next election. And we're going to go back maybe to what we see on the national level, which is, which is the worst of the two evils I have to choose from in every election. All right, Steve and David, talk about or give me your thoughts on the concept of Republican fatigue. Yeah, I think that there absolutely is Republican fatigue. What you'll see, though, out of the election, if you're trying to look at what is potentially going to happen, I'm not going to go so far as to say it's going to be a clean sweep for Democrats in the state of Texas because it's a little too early to call. But in 2022, 67% of the total vote came out of early voting. In '24, it was 75%. Well, this election is looking more like a presidential year than it is a midterm year. And so I think that by the end of next week, exactly what you were saying earlier, by the end of next week, we're going to be able to see where everyone is sitting. And Republicans have to turn out if they really want to win. Greg Abbott had $100 million in his war chest. And I don't think six months ago you would have been able to convince him that he would have had to spend it on himself. All right, Charles, we're looking at a potential reset post-midterm. Republicans lose the House, at least. A battle between continuing along the MAGA path or a return to Reagan Republicanism. Are you hearing those conversations yet? It rumbles of them, but nothing too significant. I mean, I think the idea is that are we going to, like Bill said, continue to focus on these host of issues that I wouldn't even consider MAGA issues, just issues that have kind of gotten the party off track, Or are we going to focus on the issues that people are actually caring about and talking about like affordability and in school choice is obviously going to be a big one as we see a big adjustment in school funding and things like that this coming legislative session. But I don't think it's going to be a big decision between kind of what ideology the party is going to or the broader party is going to adopt. It's just going to be in terms of what direction we're going to go in terms of the day-to-day issues that we focus on. And I think we might start taking some lead from our local candidates and our local officials who are actually focused on those issues rather than the other ones who are focused on everything else under the sun. Ben, your picture is next to the definition of Reagan Republican. Yeah. So is that conversation going to start happening? I think so. And I think Trump will be a lame duck and people will start treating him as such. He will still have tremendous influence in Republican primaries, but not as much as before. J.D. Vance will pick up the reins and try to continue that. And then you'll have other candidates because we have a younger, deeper bench that'll emerge and have their own version of they'll call themselves MAGA, but it'll be closer to Reagan than it is MAGA. A lot of great candidates out there. So I think that it'll be the two years going forward will look a lot different politically than the two years that we just had. When we come back, the affordability crunch and onerous tax hikes by Harris County Democrats. Why aren't local voters making the connection?