Name: Tilove: Shackled to Trump, Abbott must long for Obama
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Tilove: Shackled to Trump, Abbott must long for Obama

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Jonathan Tilovejtilove@statesman.comView CommentsIn October 2016, a month before Donald Trump was elected president, I wrote a for the American-Statesman that holds up pretty well today. It was headlined, “Why Texas Republicans would be better off with Hillary Clinton as president.”It wasn’t a blazing insight.Modern American political history is replete with evidence that the worst thing that can happen to a party politically — at the state and local level — is to have that party occupy the White House.Barack Obama’s presidency especially decimated the ranks of Democratic governors, senators, members of Congress and state legislators, flipping one state legislative chamber after another from blue to red.The Obama years especially were the golden age for Texas Republicans and most especially for Greg Abbott, who, as attorney general, defeated Wendy Davis for governor in 2014 by 20 points.As I wrote in that blog four years ago:“The real hero of Greg Abbott’s big victory in 2014 was President Barack Obama, whose presidency gave Texas Republicans absolutely everything they could want to run against.“In fact, the central mantra of Abbott’s campaign was that, as attorney general, ‘I go into the office, I sue the federal government and I go home.’“Now, just suppose John McCain had been elected president in 2008, or Mitt Romney had been elected in 2012?“What would Abbott have run on?“ ‘I go into the office, work hand-in-glove with the federal government, and I go home.’“That’s no good. No good at all.”With Trump, forget hand in glove. Think handcuffed.At a most unfortunate moment in American history, Abbott finds himself shackled to a president who is proving reckless on matters of race and feckless on contending with a coronavirus pandemic that he scarcely concedes is a crisis even as it envelops Texas.And yet, Trump remains so rock solid with the party base that virtually no Republican official can dare to even try to slip the cuffs that bind them.According to the results of a University of Texas/Texas Politics Project poll conducted in late June, Texans remain where they have been, . His Republican numbers in Texas have only dipped from 88% to 83% approval since April.But slipped to 49% favorable and 39% unfavorable in June, down from 56% to 32% favorable-unfavorable in April, mostly because of the erosion of support from that minority of Democrats who still think Abbott has some feck.To his credit, Abbott continues to be the bearer of increasingly grim news in midday and evening TV news appearances at stations across the state from his Austin studio.Originally an end run around the Austin press corps, the interviews mean he must now daily confront questions from local newscasters who come across more as surrogates for viewers than gotcha journalists.“Everybody is watching their local news every night in Texas — and the local news is where most people get their information — and every newscast is starting with the death count and the infection count in their county, or news about how their hospitals are overloaded,” said Jim Henson, director of the Texas Politics Project.“To be fair, it’s a problem unlike anyone’s ever faced,” Henson said. “Rome is kind of burning, and the usual fiddling, not so good.“On racial issues, Trump almost daily throws gas on the fire, and it is on race that Texas Republicans may miss Obama most of all.Obama did all the work, just being Black and liberal and bearing the name Barack Obama.In the blog, I urged LBJ biographer Robert Caro to begin work on “Donald Trump: Means of Descent.”It was a play on Trump’s famous descent on the escalator at Trump Tower when he announced his candidacy on June 16, 2015, but could now describe how, with his defeat of Hillary Clinton, Trump set in motion events that might ultimately lay low the mighty Texas Republican Party.View Comments

Jonathan Tilovejtilove@statesman.comView CommentsIn October 2016, a month before Donald Trump was elected president, I wrote a for the American-Statesman that holds up pretty well today. It was headlined, “Why Texas Republicans would be better off with Hillary Clinton as president.”It wasn’t a blazing insight.Modern American political history is replete with evidence that the worst thing that can happen to a party politically — at the state and local level — is to have that party occupy the White House.Barack Obama’s presidency especially decimated the ranks of Democratic governors,...

Tilove: Shackled to Trump, Abbott must long for Obama

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