Late-Term Abortion, Latino Voters, and Texas Progressives' Blind Spot

Our former colleague David Freddoso has an insightful piece at Conservative Intel on how the recent debate over late term abortion plays in various communities:

Liberals are so blind to how far out they are on this late-term abortion issue compared to the average American (and importantly, the average Hispanic voter) that they think it’s a plus. They don’t see how it could possibly bite them in the rear. They’ve talked themselves into the idea that their principled opposition to a bill that splinters their own coalition and receives support from 62 percent of the state’s voters is part of their path to victory. They don’t see the analogy they are creating to rightward Republican drift they are constantly decrying.   - See more at: http://conservativeintel.com/2013/07/16/hb2-and-demographic-change-texas-liberals-dont-see-the-danger/#sthash.sXyLSz4i.dpuf

Liberals are so blind to how far out they are on this late-term abortion issue compared to the average American (and importantly, the average Hispanic voter) that they think it’s a plus. They don’t see how it could possibly bite them in the rear. They’ve talked themselves into the idea that their principled opposition to a bill that splinters their own coalition and receives support from 62 percent of the state’s voters is part of their path to victory

....

They seem quite content choosing abortion after five months of pregnancy as the hill they will die on. They don’t seem to understand how this could frustrate their fantasy that demographic change will automatically make them dominant because Hispanics will always vote the way they expect them to vote.

....

Both the Democrats, with their demographic triumphalism, and the Republicans who talk of immigration as their party’s death-knell, are underestimating Hispanic voters’ intelligence and open-mindedness in how they cast their votes.

Read the whole thing here.

Liberals are so blind to how far out they are on this late-term abortion issue compared to the average American (and importantly, the average Hispanic voter) that they think it’s a plus. They don’t see how it could possibly bite them in the rear. They’ve talked themselves into the idea that their principled opposition to a bill that splinters their own coalition and receives support from 62 percent of the state’s voters is part of their path to victory. They don’t see the analogy they are creating to rightward Republican drift they are constantly decrying.   - See more at: http://conservativeintel.com/2013/07/16/hb2-and-demographic-change-texas-liberals-dont-see-the-danger/#sthash.sXyLSz4i.dpuf

Liberals are so blind to how far out they are on this late-term abortion issue compared to the average American (and importantly, the average Hispanic voter) that they think it’s a plus. They don’t see how it could possibly bite them in the rear. They’ve talked themselves into the idea that their principled opposition to a bill that splinters their own coalition and receives support from 62 percent of the state’s voters is part of their path to victory. They don’t see the analogy they are creating to rightward Republican drift they are constantly decrying.   - See more at: http://conservativeintel.com/2013/07/16/hb2-and-demographic-change-texas-liberals-dont-see-the-danger/#sthash.sXyLSz4i.dpuf

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Judge Tim Sulak Kept Dead People on Texas' Voter Rolls

After yesterday's travesty, this ruling from last year isn't surprising:

Texas officials were temporarily barred by a state judge from ordering county election officials to purge presumably dead voters from registration rolls because the initiative may violate the election code. 

The ruling came in a lawsuit filed yesterday by four Texas voters who were told they would be purged from voter-registration lists as deceased. They asked state court Judge Tim Sulak in Austin to stop the state from striking about 77,000 names from the rolls, arguing the plan violates the Texas election code and the U.S. Voting Rights Act. 

The secretary of state is “restrained from further instructing the counties to remove any other names from the voter rolls,” Sulak said in his order. “Plaintiffs are entitled to temporary injunctive relief.”

In other words, yesterday wasn't the first time Judge Sulak abused his office to protect governmental entities from citizen inquiry.

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Reader can contact Judge Sulak via his campaign Facebook Page.

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Judge Tim Sulak Demands $15 Million Taxpayer Ransom

"Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted."
Eighth Amendment, United States Constitution

Cahnman's Musings spent the morning at the 353rd District Court of Travis County, Judge Tim Sulak presiding.  We were there to observe the Travis County Taxpayers Union's (TCTU) lawsuit against Austin Independent School district (AISD) we've discussed previously.  To quote Wendy Davis, we witnessed a raw abuse of power.

Judge Sulak ruled in favor of the district.  That wasn't surprising.  The outrageous part was the shackles Judge Sulak put on a potential appeal.

Judge Sulak ruled TCTU must post a $15 million bond ($15,000,000) to protect the district before an appeal could proceed.  Obviously, TCTU doesn't have that kind of money.  In other words, a Democrat judge made it prohibitively expensive for a citizens group to petition their government for redress of grievances.

On one level, this isn't surprising.  Judge Sulak and AISD are part of the Travis County's progressive mafia (Sidenote: This is the same progressive mafia that is protecting Rosemary Lehmberg).  On the other hand, demanding a fifteen million dollar ransom to allow a citizens lawsuit against a governmental entity to continue is (to our knowledge) unprecedented.

In announcing his ruling, Judge Sulak admitted that, even if he disagreed with it, TCTU made a reasonable case against the district.  Judge Sulak's ruling was designed to protect AISD from having the case heard in front of judges who aren't in the pocket of big education.  This isn't over....

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Readers can contact Judge Sulak via his campaign Facebook page.

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Update: More from Fox 7 Austin:

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On Texas Democrats favorite Abortion Talking Point

One of the Democrats favorite talking points during the current abortion debate is that the proposed legislation is opposed by the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, the Texas Hospital Association, and the Texas Medical Association.

At first, it sounds important.  These are groups with 'credentials.'    The real story requires digging.

First up, the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists supported Obamacare:

The American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) has long been a proponent of comprehensive health care reform and this weeks' enactment of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care for America Act extends health insurance coverage to an additional 32 million Americans. "Ob-gyns see first-hand the devastating effects that the lack of health insurance or underinsurance has on our patients," noted ACOG President Gerald F. Joseph, Jr, MD.

ACOG credits the President and House and Senate Democratic leaders for including many critical elements of ACOG's Health Care for Women, Health Care for All campaign that will greatly improve women's health, including guaranteed maternity coverage; eliminating pre-existing coverage exclusions for women who are pregnant, have had a previous cesarean, or are the victims of domestic violence; eliminating gender rating that causes women to pay more than men for the same insurance coverage; creating coordinated care centers for women and ensuring direct access to ob-gyns; expanding family planning services for low-income women; and providing access to vital preventive screenings including mammography and Pap tests.

This bill (HR 3590), however, leaves several critical issues unaddressed, including medical liability reform and repeal of the Sustainable Growth Rate (SGR) used to determine physician payments in the Medicare program. "As ACOG embraces the many positive features of this legislation that will improve the health and well-being of our patients, we will continue to press for national medical liability reform and repeal of the SGR," says Dr. Joseph.

In addition, during the 2009 debate over Obamacare, ACOG recommended rationing of Pap Smears.

Next, we have the Texas Hospital association, who support Medicaid expansion:

“Hospitals agree with the governor that the Medicaid program is flawed. Below-cost reimbursement to providers creates an access-to-care problem for the millions currently enrolled, and there have been legitimate concerns about whether the program can sustain the millions more who would be able to enroll under PPACA,” said Dan Stultz, M.D., FACP, FACHE, THA president chief executive officer. “However, without Medicaid expansion, many will remain uninsured and therefore will seek care in emergency rooms, shifting costs to the privately insured and increasing uncompensated care to health care providers.”

In addition, THA supported last fall's Hospital Tax Increase in Travis County. 

Moving on, Texas Medical Association ALSO supports Medicaid Expansion:

The Texas Medical Association, which represents physicians across the state, announced on Saturday that it would support the Medicaid expansion if lawmakers can devise a way to give Texas “the flexibility to change the plan as our needs and circumstances change.”

“You have the two major entities that represent the delivery of health care in Texas saying this is something that we definitely need to look at,” said Dr. Carlos Cardenas, vice president of the TMA board of trustees, adding the organization recognizes “there are issues within the present Medicaid program and that the Legislature is in a position to come up with some reforms to shore up the system.”

BOTTOM LINE: Three organizations with long histories of supporting progressive legislation are opposed to conservative legislation; sorry Texas Democrats, that's not news.

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Burnt Orange Report's Stunning Pro-Abortion Admission

The Burnt Orange Report is a 'group blog' with close ties to the Democrat Party of Texas and the Travis County Democrat Party.  In a post from last Wednesday, Burnt Orange Report's Ben Sherman actually appeals to men to support abortion to protect their own sex life.  Yes, they actually said that.

From the post : Bro-Choice: How #HB2 Hurts Texas Men Who Like Women; money quote:

Forcing women to adhere to the anti-choice attitudes of state legislators forces men to do the same, and will have serious consequences both on men's lives and lifestyles.

....Your sex life is at stake. Can you think of anything that kills the vibe faster than a woman fearing a back-alley abortion? Making abortion essentially inaccessible in Texas will add an anxiety to sex that will drastically undercut its joys. And don't be surprised if casual sex outside of relationships becomes far more difficult to come by. [Emphasis Mine]

In other words, they just admitted their support for abortion stems from a desire to protect consequence free casual sex.

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Update: Williamson County Conservative has more here.

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Texas Democrats Strange Definition of Women's Health

One of the great frustrations of the ongoing abortion debate in Texas is the callousness with which Democrats throw around the terms like 'women's health':

Senator Wendy Davis (D - Trial Lawyers Ft. Worth):

Senate leaders “chose to push through their red meat, partisan political agendas, sacrificing women’s options and endangering their health in the process.”

Senator Kirk Watson (D - Austin):

Many Texans are “afraid, genuinely afraid, of how this Legislature treats women,” state Sen. Kirk Watson, D-Austin, said before the final vote on SB 5. He said the bill would create obstacles to safe, legal abortion services and “creates a back room process to negate women’s constitutional rights over their own bodies.”

 Congressman Lloyd Doggett (D - Austin):

Governor Perry's war on women's health advances, and as I told this reporter, it's not another “oops” moment, but another of many “ugh” moments so typical of Rick Perry’s wrongheadedness.

Cahnman's Musings finds getting your insides scraped out by some abortionist to be a strange definition of 'women's health.'

Read more here: http://www.star-telegram.com/2013/06/19/4949916/texas-senate-passes-tougher-abortion.html#storylink=cpy

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Texas GOP History: When John Cornyn Replaced Phil Gramm

Cahnman's Musings just had an epiphany about when the GOP descended from the (relatively) principles-based party of the 1980's and 90's to the rudderless mess it is today.  We think it came during the midterm election of 2002.  In Texas, that was the year John Cornyn replaced Phil Gramm.

(Author's note: 2002 was also the year Bob Dole's wife replaced Reaganite Jesse Helms in North Carolina.)

First elected to the United States Senate in 1984 (following three colorful (party switching) terms in the U.S. House), Phil Gramm was a key Congressional Lieutenant for President Reagan.  Over his quarter century career, Phil Gramm helped launch and maintain the quarter century Reagan boom.  In 2002, he retired from public service.

John Cornyn, by contrast, was a close confidant of Karl Rove.  Rove helped launch Cornyn's career in the 1990's.  Over his decade in Congress, John Cornyn's record speaks for itself.

The mess in today's Republican party has many origins, but replacing a principled Reganite like Phil Gramm with a Rovian jellyfish like John Cornyn explains a lot.

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Can Obama's Organizing Army Take Texas?!?

New information on Battleground Texas from the American Prospect

• Why Democrats should be extremely cautious:

 Republicans have continued to gain congressional and legislative seats over the past decade, even as Texas’s Latino population has swelled....Bird and Brown cite Colorado, New Mexico, and Nevada as models for turning out Latinos. But none of those states has more than 516,000 Latino citizens total—which is fewer than the number of Latino citizens in Houston’s Harris County alone.

•  Then, we get into nuts and bolts:

The initial focus will be to create a massive network of Democratic organizers and volunteers across the state....A full-scale plan for “getting that started” won’t be rolled out until this summer. But Jeremy Bird offers a few more details. In the next couple of election cycles, Battleground Texas will target “battleground zones”—races that organizers believe could either be winnable or could help Democrats build infrastructure by training new candidates and registering voters. A battleground zone could be a city council race with a promising young Latino candidate in Waco or a state House race in a heavily minority district in Houston. The idea is to seize every viable opportunity to build new Democratic networks around the state, creating new voters along the way.

•  Recent examples of when this sort of thing has worked(*):

The leaders of Battleground Texas say there’s reason for optimism—partly because there is some recent history of grassroots politics working in Texas. During the 2010 midterm elections, Austin Democratic Party Chair Andy Brown selected 21 largely black and Latino precincts where turnout had traditionally been low and pledged to run the type of hardcore turnout campaigns usually reserved for the wealthier, whiter parts of town. With a paid field staff organizing volunteers, the Travis County Democrats knocked on every registered voter’s door in those precincts two or three times and called each one at least twice. The effort paid off: Although 2010 was the worst year in history for Texas Democrats, 18 percent more ballots were cast in Travis County and the number of straight-ticket Democratic voters went up 54 percent. “There was nothing fancy about it,” Brown says. “It was a really well-run field program.”

A similar strategy has also worked wonders in Dallas. In 2006, Democrats in Texas’s oldest Republican stronghold bucked convention by spending as much on phone-banking and door-to-door campaigning as on media ads and mailers. The results were stunning: Democrats swept all 47 local offices, including 40 judgeships that had previously belonged to Republicans.

 (Author's Note: We were lived in Travis County during the 2010 election and it was not clean.)

• The Bottom Line for both parties:

If Democrats can galvanize Houston’s nonvoters, they will [Author's Note: could] be well on their way to turning Texas blue. But all those years of ignoring minorities will make it a formidable task. 

 The whole article is worth a read, but it doesn't change anything.  Conservatives across the state of Texas need to build up from the local level.  And we've already had some successes.

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Update (6/11/2013): Agendawise calls this a bluff.

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Travis County's Drunk Driving Democrat District Attorney

Two weekends ago, Travis County (Democrat) District Attorney Rosemary Lehmberg was arrested for Driving while Intoxicated. Given that we were arrested for DWI in 2008, Cahnman's Musings held off on commenting.  Two new details have emerged about the arrest, however, that point to a serious breach of the public trust:

1. Lehmberg had AN OPEN BOTTLE OF VODKA on her passenger seat; yes, you read that right.
2. Lehmberg blew a .239, nearly three times the legal limit.  As a point of comparison, when I was arrested, I blew a .12.  When you reach .25 (slightly above where Lehmberg was), you're at the point where: "All mental, physical and sensory functions are severely impaired."

This is serious.  You don't blow a .23 AND have an open bottle of Vodka in your passenger seat if you've only had two drinks (which is what Lehmberg claims).  The only way you get to .23 is with substantial consumption over the course of several hours.

As for the open bottle of Vodka in the passenger seat, that one speaks for itself.

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ACTION ALERT: Battleground Texas Launches Statewide Tour

Battleground Texas has announced a statewide recruiting tour.  We humbly suggest conservatives show up to welcome and engage them.  Here's the tour schedule:

Corpus Christi, March 16
Laredo, March 19
McAllen, March 20
El Paso, March 25
Dallas, March 25
Fort Worth, March 26
Lubbock, March 26
Waco, March 28
Austin, April 2
Killeen, April 3
SAVE THE DATE: San Antonio, April 4
Houston, April 6
Brownsville, April 6
Longview, April 7
Not headed your way? SAVE THE DATE for an online meeting on April 3.

Details for each event are also available at their website.

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Julian Castro SCANDAL: This could get interesting!!!

Oh baby, the Texas Democrats' little golden boy might not be so golden afterall:

In an official response to nine Sworn Complaints, the Texas Ethics Commission (TEC) has notified most members of the San Antonio City Council they are being investigated for multiple campaign finance violations.

Mayor Julian Castro, Council members Cris Medina and Diego Bernal had the most alleged violations at over 200 each.

The Sworn Complaints allege 41 instances of accepting donations from corporations. Corporate donations are, if done knowingly, a 3rd degree felony offense. All nine complaints alleged these offenses. Well known names include MacDonalds, Inc., Holiday Inns, Inc. and Texas Associaton of Realtors.

 Ouch; read the whole thing here.

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Texas Tribune: Battleground Texas Reveals Their Weaknesses

The Texas Tribune had an interview yesterday with Jeremy Bird, the director of Battleground Texas.  In the interview, Bird tips his hand on strategy.  Some highlights:

Dems plan to boost turnout (and, even though they don't say it out loud, fraud):

Bird contends that Republicans' confidence is based on elections in which only about half of the state has turned out to vote. “We’ll see what happens when we start to get 60 or 65 or 70 percent turnout. It’s going to look very different,”

 This is a point conservatives would do well to heed.  The Obama campaign made it a priority to register marginal voters and get them to the polls.  There's no reason to believe they couldn't make headway with a similar effort in Texas.  The caution to Democrats, however, is that this is a double-edged sword.  There are dozens (if not hundreds) of people who don't vote in every Church across this state.

Bird reveals their timetable:

Part of the reason that [the Obama campaign] won Florida in 2012 is that we had had a grassroots program running for six years with all the components — digital, communications, field, data, analytics — all of them put together into a 21st century modern campaign that worked for people's votes.

Six years from today would mean that Democrats intend to compete statewide around 2018.  That's not impossible, but it does mean there's plenty of time between now and then for events to intervene.  Personally, we think the global economy will collapse before Battleground Texas has time to execute this plan; when that happens, it will reshuffle the deck of domestic politics in a way Battleground Texas doesn't anticipate.

The specifics of how they plan to boost turnout:

We have to do that here. And it can’t just happen in one part of the state; it has to happen across the state. We need to touch places where we’re getting 25 percent of the vote and get 32 percent of the vote. It’s not necessarily about winning all those places, but we have to compete there. And then we have to have higher turnout in places that have already gone blue.

The point about going from 25 percent to 32 percent in hostile territory is an interesting one Cahnman's Musings had not thought about.  That's a good strategy in a vacuum.  However, like we said earlier, it's a strategy that cuts both ways.  We live in Austin, and there is an untapped pool of potential conservative voters right here.  Both sides are going to work overtime to boost turnout.

Then, almost as an afterthought, Bird lets the cat out of the bag:

In order to do this right, we’re going to have to raise the money, the grassroots money to do it and then ultimately transition that into a 21st century campaign with real organizers in neighborhoods working for every single vote.

If you only take one point away from this post, make it this one: the left doesn't (yet) have the money to pull this off.  The ONLY WAY they will get the money they need is if Republicans expand state government for them.  That's how the left took over Colorado.  That's why School Choice and Medicaid are such important fights.  The left will only acquire the resources necessary to swing Texas if Republicans give them a bigger government from which to siphon money.

Finally, Bird closes out with a cryptic (and bizarre) statement:

There are millions of kids in this state who are currently being denied access to health insurance because of the current governor.

We have no idea what Bird's talking about, but our educated guess is that he's talking about Rick Perry's refusal to expand Medicaid under Obamacare. That's bizarre; Medicaid is a failed program that exploits the vulnerable.  If Battleground Texas wants to make expanding substandard Health Care their central argument, go for it!

Bottom line: The Left intends to get more of their people to the polls than they have in the past (which will also make fraud easier).  Cahnman's Musings expects them to pull that off.  What the left cannot control, however, is turnout on our side.  There are plenty of untapped potential Conservative voters in this state; Cahnman's Musings goes to Church with hundreds of them.  The challenge for conservatives in Texas will be to increase engagement among folks who already agree with us but don't necessarily vote.

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Push Junction: Carpetbagging Hipster Leads Battleground Texas

The San Antonio Express News reports on an early meeting of Battleground Texas:

Jeremy Bird, the former national field director for President Barack Obama and the driving force of Battleground Texas, could have picked anywhere in the state to begin the group's launch tour. He chose San Antonio not because it's the “best city in Texas,” as Julián Castro proclaimed, but because — as Medina noted — this is where the political firepower is located.

Like many successful political organizers, Bird is a hipster nerd: a skinny, bespectacled, coolly analytical veteran of the game who also sees that game as an inspiring civics lesson. The product of a suburban St. Louis trailer park, he has no roots in Texas, but tried to make up for lost time by twice expressing his enthusiasm for tacos.

Above all, Bird might be the best representation of the strategic revolution that Obama (via Howard Dean) has wrought in American politics. While the GOP has made great sport of Obama's background as a community organizer (and it's certainly debatable how valuable that background has been in the White House), that experience made Obama unusually receptive to the concept of grassroots political organizing — and unusually aware of the modern-day limits of TV advertising.

....

Bird and Jenn Brown, executive director of Battleground Texas, said the campaign will be relentless. It will center on local, precinct-by-precinct drives to tap into the large number of unregistered Latino and African American voters, and the use of state-of-the-art data collection and analytics to get those voters to the polls. And it'll rely on plenty of money.

It all sounded strikingly similar to the ethos that drove the Obama campaigns of 2008 and 2012. Obama campaign leaders generally paid little attention to polls. They believed turnout was everything — that they had the votes to win; they just had to go out and get them.

(h/t Push Junction)

 There isn't a lot of new information in this article.  That Battleground Texas intends to win through aggressive micro-targeting isn't exactly news.  That being said, when they say: 'that they had the votes to win; they just had to go out and get them,' Cahnman's Musings considers that statement interesting, considering that Julian Castro is up for re-election in two months.

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Why Colorado Turned Blue (and the future of Texas) -- The Missing Link

"Colorado, what kind of pansy girls have you become?!?....We need some MEN in Texas."  Glenn Beck, Radio, March 5 2013, Bottom of the First Hour.

Last night, this diary on Redstate made the rounds.  It is a warning to Texans that Democrats can turn Texas blue the same way they turned Colorado blue in the mid-2000's.  There is another aspect of this story, however, that Texas Republicans would be well served to remember.

In 2002, National Review named (then) Colorado Governor Bill Owens America's Best Governor.  At the time, Owens had established a track record as a conservative reformer and he was re-elected by the largest margin in Colorado history.  At the time, Colorado had a strict spending cap known called the Taxpayer Bill of Rights (TABOR); more on that in a minute. Then came the budget battle of 2003 and, specifically, a fight over school finance.  During that battle, the left savaged Governor Owens.

Following that budget fight, Bill Owens lost his nerve.  In 2005, Bill Owens sold his soul to the Democrats and backed Prop. C, which gutted TABOR.  Gutting TABOR opened the floodgates of big government, and Colorado has since been hopelessly blue.

So, what does this mean for Republicans in Texas in 2013?!?

It means that money matters.  Beyond the obvious flaws, big government is also a money laundering scheme for the Democrat party.  When Colorado Republicans caved to the grow-government crowd, they signed their death warrant.

Ten days ago, we outlined big-ticket items for the 83rd Legislature: Texas Budget Compact, School Choice, Medicaid, Transparency, and Margins Tax Elimination.  The reason these five reforms are big ticket items is that, over they long-run, each keeps money in the hands of citizens and out of the hands of government.  Credit where its due, Texas Republicans had a good start to the week.

The key is to stay on public-policy offense.  If Texas Republicans do that, they'll be fine.  If they don't, they'll deserve what they get.

Update: A longtime Texas Political Observer writes in to add:

It's good to have outsiders such as the folks from Labor Union Report writing  articles, if only to create a sense of urgency for action. However:

 1) Unlike previous Democratic efforts in Texas that were built around remnants of Martin Frost’s congressional operation, Battleground Texas is almost entirely  out-of-state talent. Texas’ political culture is unlike DC or virtually any other state. If you don't understand the history and the nuances, you're going to make a fool of yourself. Even a couple of weeks in, it's obvious that these folks don't get Texas.

2) The Right already has the seven capacities in place in Texas. In fact, once we saw what the Left had done in Colorado, our side immediately moved to ensure that those seven capacities existed in Texas. Colorado was their proof of  concept, Texas is ours.

3) Texas Republicans have done far better with Hispanic voters than the party in most other states. If we can hang on to 35-40% of the Hispanic vote going forward, we'll be fine. Plus we're beginning to develop a good bench of Hispanic Republican officeholders throughout the state, including in heavily Hispanic regions.
 
4) To become the majority, Democrats have to make up 17 points at the statewide level, pick up 4 Senate seats when the only vulnerable one is theirs, and flip 21 House seats when their only real opportunities are in the cities of Dallas and Houston, which are declining in influence compared to their suburbs which are heavily Republican. They’ve maxed out in Austin, San Antonio, and El Paso, and the rural areas north of IH-10 are wholly conservative.
 
5) The Democrats have won zero statewide races since 1994 and have zero infrastructure outside the urban counties. Heck, there were close to 20 counties last year where they didn't conduct a primary because they couldn't find anyone willing to have their name listed as a county chairman. (The Republicans had primaries in all 254.) And the potentially viable statewide candidates in the Democrats’ pipeline can be counted on one hand.

6) The latest survey data indicates that 47 percent of Texans have “strongly unfavorable” opinions of the President.
 
If conservatives totally mess things up, Texas could turn purple in 2022. But it would have to be total. 

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