The Texan Podcast - Harrison Butker, Death of the Tea Party, and Texas GOP Chair Race: SMSS Ep. 3

Episode Date: May 28, 2024

In this episode of “Send Me Some Stuff,” The Texan reporters Brad Johnson and Cameron Abrams dive into the latest sports drama with Scottie Scheffler and Harrison Butker, the race for the Texas GOP chairmanship, the ongoing staffing issues with the Austin Police Department, an article detailing the death of the Tea Party movement, and drama in Congress between Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA-14) and Jasmine Crockett (D-TX-30).Want to send Brad and Cameron some stuff to discuss on the next episode? Email [e-mail]****Be sure to subscribe to The Texan for full access: https://thetexan.news/subscribe/

Then Jasmine Crockett says, please tell me what that has to do with Merrick Garland. MTG responds by saying, I think your fake eyelashes are messing up what you're reading. And just set it off. They were going after each other about how they look. People screaming out, strike that from the record, strike that. And it's so interesting that these types of things that are happening in our federal government. Well, this is not new. This name calling, you know, Thomas Jefferson's hit man in the campaign called John Adams a hermaphrodite.

Adams hit back that Jefferson wanted to legalize incest. Right. These personal pot shots are not new. Hello, and welcome in to Send Me Some Stuff podcast. I'm Cameron Abrams, reporter here at The Texan, and I'm joined today once again by senior reporter Brad Johnson. Once again. Once again. This is becoming a tradition now. Yes. One of my favorite things to do here at the Texans, for us to just sit down and riff on the news. Yeah. It's really fun. We've been getting tons of great feedback, been getting some great

emails from listeners, so keep that up and leave a review if you like the podcast. But before we get into it today, we had some breaking news. Breaking news that early this morning on Friday, this is what, May 17th. Yes. The weekend of the PGA Championship. Scotty Scheffler. Scotty Scheffler, number one golfer in the world. UT Longhorn. Oh, he's been arrested.

He was arrested. On his way to the golf course. I haven't looked at it. So what was he arrested for? So there was something to do with an accident outside the Valhalla golf course. Where is that? Where the PGA Championship is happening. Oh, it's in Louisville, Kentucky.

And it sounded like Scheffler, he was on his way to the course. His tee time was at 10 a.m. Okay. Of course, this is Eastern time. And he ended up in the back of a police car, not going to the driving range to get ready for his second round of the PGA Championship. Not ideal. Not ideal way to start.

He is, though, scorching hot in terms of his golf play right now. And so he needed something to bring him back down to earth. And this was it. Was there something going on behind the scenes? No. Other golfers trying to take him back down to earth and this this was it was there something going on behind the scenes no other golfers trying to take him down maybe maybe rory mcelroy saw this as his opportunity um but yeah there was just it sounded like there was a misunderstanding about the way traffic was going and um scheffler was trying to get in with the golfers um and the police didn't recognize him as one of the golfers. And so... He doesn't have a badge or something?

Like, even just your ID, like, hey, guys, you should know who I am. I guess not. And so he, yeah, they detained him and arrested him, and there's a... Mugshot. Mugshot, yeah. But as of now, he is currently playing. He got out in time, made his tee time, and maybe it'll be something like, you know,

hell hath no fury like a Scotty Scheffler scorned, you know? Well, we've had. He might play the best round of his life after this, or the worst. It's going to be one or the other. Well, John Daly, Tiger Woods. Yeah. Both have been arrested. Yeah. The memes have been amazing.

Amazing. The big dog Tiger Woods meme has been frequent on my timeline since then. So, yeah, it's just funny because it's like, first off, he was driving himself. You know, you think a huge event like this, you know, maybe get picked up by the PGA or an Uber. Nope, just driving myself to the golf course, play another round. And then the police not recognizing who he is. It's like, come on, guys. There was no alcohol in play from my understanding.

It's not like a DUI situation. Sounds like just a misunderstanding. Why arrest the guy over a simple misunderstanding like that? Maybe the body cam footage will come out. Well, yeah, it sounded like they had the road blocked, and he tried to get around and go with the other golfers, and that was not something the cop there was having at the time. But what a start to the 2024 PGA Championship.

Yeah, what a great start to the podcast, though. It's hilarious news. But we're going to get into the meat of it here. We are recording this on May 17th, like you mentioned, and we're going to be releasing this after the RPT chair vote. But there's been some big news. In the meantime, Matt Makowiak, he's made a late run at the chairmanship. He put out a Medium post where he sort of explained his reasons why he was going to run.

I'll read a little bit from it here so the listeners can understand. This was towards the end of his post here. He said, quote, the cold reality is that RPT is inexplicably and unacceptably unprepared for the most important election in our lifetime. It does not have to be this way. A serious state party with serious people running it would raise $5 million in new money, hire 35 more staff, partner with our nominees, statewide officials. He goes on and on here. He ends it by saying, quote, one thing is abundantly clear. It is time for change at RPT. President Donald Trump needs it. Senator Ted Cruz needs it. Texas needs it. America needs it. The time is now. So really hyping up the moment, saying it doesn't have to be this way it's the most important election of our lifetime really building it up and then he

actually made his announcement on Mark Davis that he will be running so before we get into the actual news and maybe you can give some insight on the different candidates once you just explain a little bit about why the RPD chair is so important? Why has this been so hyped up? Yeah, well, I guess it depends on who you ask why it's so important. You know, the current chair, Matt Rinaldi, has taken a position that he's really going to focus on legislative priorities and retribution for Republicans he feels are insufficiently conservative. He's gotten very involved in especially the House Speaker's race against Dade Phelan, various other incumbent elections against the incumbents in the Texas House, really has taken an antagonist position towards the body he used to be within.

He used to be a state rep. And so there's a constant fight. This thing's been going on for years. This is not new. This is just the latest chapter. A constant fight over the direction of the Republican Party of Texas. You have one faction, this is broadly speaking, you know, there are many individuals who, you know, fit along the

spectrum one way or the other between these two poles. But on one side, the faction that thinks the Republican Party needs to basically be a hammer against incumbent Republicans who don't meet their standards policy-wise. And then you have this other pole of individuals who think that the party should focus more than anything else on electoral functions, getting out the votes, flipping seats from Democrat to Republican, and not engaging in these inter-party squabbles electorally, staying out of primaries. And that was something he said on Mark Davis' radio show today, that the party should be like Switzerland. They should be focusing on the endgame of November, not March or these May runoffs. And that is the actual responsibility of the party.

Raise money, help get Republicans elected. And that's essentially it. Some room to wiggle on that either way. And then, you know, those of Rinaldi's stripe would say, you know, we want to win elections too. We want to win the general election as well, flip seats. But that is not the only responsibility. There is a responsibility to ensure that elected officials are passing conservative things.

And then you have the elected officials that would say, well, we did pass conservative things. We passed the heartbeat bill, banned abortion, passed constitutional carry, all these things. It's a constant fight of where's the line on the acceptability standard? And then you have just personal grudges in the middle of this. You know, Rinaldi, he tore into Makoviac when he announced. He told me that I think Karl Rove and TLR were unhappy with their chosen candidate, so now they're looking for Makoviak to replace Dana Myers as their standard bearer. He tore into him, calling him a grifter and a self-promoter, all those things.

And then Makoviak hit back at Rinaldi, saying he's basically run the party into the ground financially. And a lot of back and forth on this. It's just no- know, no holds barred political fighting. Yeah. And it's interesting because for the RPT chair, the two different directions you sort of explained. One, the fundraising aspect, getting people out to vote, and then the other side targeting maybe moderate incumbents and trying to put more conservative people in those positions, really focusing on individual races. How much bearing does the RPT chair really have an ability to point policy in a certain direction? Because there are certain party platforms that Republicans

are adhering to. Does that really sway elected officials when they're actually in office? I think the biggest pull that at least right now the party chair has is influence on the grassroots channeling their anger in certain directions. In this case, you know, against Speaker Dave Phelan. They're like the captain on the ship, like controlling the rudder. Exactly. Yeah. And, you know, the other side would argue he's done that, Rinaldi's done that at the expense of making the party a massive, well-funded political electoral operation. And that is going to come back to bite Republicans. Who knows? We'll see in May, later this month, and then in November, but these are two entirely different worldviews in terms of the party,

its direction, its responsibilities, and there's really no bridging the gap between those. Yeah, and we are recording this before the vote happens. It's going to be released after the vote happens. So why don't you kind of run through so just people understand these two polls, where some of these candidates line up on these polls? Because it's a big field now. Yeah. You know, I think they all fall somewhere along the spectrum. None of them are in one camp or the other entirely, you know, based on responses that have been made. Ben Armenta, Dana Myers, both kind of in Makoviak now fall more

towards the electoral function. At least that's where the emphasis needs to be. Abraham George, who is Rinaldi's handpicked successor, he falls more in the use the party as a hammer against elected officials. He ran against the state rep before he jumped into this race. He's very much in the Paxton camp, retribution against the House and Phelan for the impeachment. I'd say Mike Garcia is kind of in the middle there. You know, Mackenzie and I talked about this race generally a lot in the last, what is that podcast called? Smoke Filled Room. I'd say, yeah, so we have generally, I think, the Abraham George camp,

and then you have all these other candidates that are vying for the vote of delegates that are anti-George, defend Texas liberty, Rinaldi. You know, those are generally the two camps right now. And the delegates are the ones who vote for the rpt chair yes it's quite a bit complicated yeah and when mckenzie and i recorded we we didn't know the rules explicitly well like didn't explain it very well and we're frankly wrong about how it's elected so i guess i'll just say it now even though it's going to be after the fact so you have senate district conventions 31 of them the delegates in there they will vote both for a nominations committee member and then for a nominee for chair.

And after that happens, it'll go to the nominations committee. I think to be considered by the nominations committee, you have to win three Senate caucuses. And then from there, the nominations committee will vote. And if nobody has 16 Senate districts in the first round, those nominations committee members will then be untethered from whomever it is that their Senate caucus voted for. And then it'll basically be elimination. So if no one gets to 16 after the first round, then you'll remove, I think, the lowest vote total candidate. And then so on and so forth until you have someone that reaches 16. From there, it'll go to the floor and you'll have the delegates there overall

give an up or down vote. And usually they'll say yes. So really it's one in the Senate caucuses and in the nominations committee. And what kinds of people make up the individuals in these delegate positions, caucus positions? Are these former elected representatives? Are these just activists? All over the place.

All over the place, yeah. So you'll have state reps that are delegates. You'll have political operatives, consultants that are delegates. You'll have just regular activists that are delegates. It's all over the place. Where would you say, like, finger in the air, like, where are the winds blowing in terms of how delegates are sort of feeling the type of person they want to run the RPT chair? Because they're coming out of a Rinaldi chairmanship.

Yeah. Are you sort of getting the vibe they want to continue in that direction or do they want to go somewhere in the middle? Do they want to go to the other poll of? Well, I think it's telling that none of the candidates have explicitly taken the position of just focus on elections and nothing else. That tells you where the activists' opinions lie on this. They want some involvement.

How much, that varies, right? But there's no candidate that wants explicitly a party to stay entirely out of the legislative business, entirely out of primaries. Well, McCovey, I could say the party should stay out of primaries. Well, McCovey did say the party should stay out of primaries. But he tinged it with, you know, you have to respect the will of the voters on this and just let it be. But regardless, no

one really is representing that poll explicitly. But generally, I think it comes down to the George camp, and he's got the backing of Rinaldi, Paxton, arguably two of the biggest influences in this sphere right now, the party activist sphere. But then you have other candidates. Myers, who's the current vice chair. You have Mike Garcia, who's been in and around this business for a long time.

Ben Armenta and Weston Martinez around this business for a long time. Ben Armenta and Weston Martinez have both run for statewide positions before, have never won or come close to winning, but they've been in it. They have name ID. Yeah, they have some level of name ID. Question is, how much name ID is there among delegates? Yeah. I don't know.

Well, people listening, they might just come out of next week and see someone got elected, right? And so just to give some insight, how much jockeying goes on behind the scenes? Oh, so much. Well, talk a little bit about that. Like, is there, like, what kinds of things are being discussed? Is it explicitly about the direction of the party? Is it about who's going to endorse who? Who's going to, in upcoming races? What does jockeying behind the scenes sort of look like?

Probably varies based on the constituency that that given person is talking to at the moment. But generally, right now conversations are happening where they're trying to recruit their supporters to pledge to nominate them in these conventions and then second that nomination. Then recruiting delegates in those conventions to vote for, not only vote for your candidate but then whoever you get recruiting someone to to be the nominee for the nominations committee and getting them to commit strongly yeah to your candidate rather than when it's untethered if it gets there jumping for another candidate you know you want your strong ally in that position, especially on the nominations committee. And so there's that, you're jockeying over personalities, of course, is always there. You know, whether Abraham George is, you know,

quote, going to doom the party, or whether, you know, Dana Myers is going to let Republican elected officials do whatever they want and never hold them accountable. Those are the accusations that are flying all over the place right now. Right. So overall, though, it's a bunch of different campaigns being run at once in a very short amount of time, and there's not a lot of money in this right now. You see these house races, and the amount spent is insane um you know i think the i tweeted out fundraising numbers

for these candidates yesterday and the most amount raised was like 21 000 wow um one candidate martinez i think loaned himself 75 000, like, this is small potatoes in terms of campaign money. So we're seeing, you know, delegates getting texted constantly with messaging. We're seeing mailers put out. It's just a free-for-all. It really is. Yeah. And I think one of the interesting things, we're going to be at the RPT convention, and something I'll definitely be keeping my eyes on is that jockeying on the day of the vote.

Yeah. Friday is the day, Friday morning. Because, at least for me, everything leading up to the vote, at some point, will not matter at all. Yeah. You know, deals will be made on that floor when the vote is happening. So I think that's something I'm really going to be paying attention to, is who's talking to who, like who's the first person to drop off maybe, who endorses. So it'll be interesting to watch, and this will be my first experience at an RPT convention.

It's crazy. Okay. It's not even just this race you know it's just the whole spectacle yeah it is really fun to watch and be in the middle of yeah um it's just wild stuff wow so i mean you know last time you saw john cornyn stand up there and get booed by the delegates right i don't know if that's going to happen this time, but just chaos. Chaos. Well, something we wanted to touch on as well is

because Matt Makoviak, he's really Austin, Travis County based, right? He's the Travis County GOP chair. Yeah. He's also been involved in Save Austin now yeah not involved he created started it started it and I would I went and checked out one of their meet and greet events and a lot of what the Save Austin Outback was talking about was the homelessness issue here in Austin and something we talked about constantly and we talked about on the

weekly roundup is APD they just released their five-year strategic plan and we touched on a little bit of their staffing issues that have been going on but they actually just released their chief job description and kind of raised some eyebrows as it got circulated around because it has sort of you know it has some of the typical stuff you know overseeing day-to-day operations including policies and procedures stuff you know normal stuff like that bachelor's degree in criminal justice but there was a couple things that were mentioned in this job description that I thought would be worth talking about. It says in the job description,

they must also have 10 years of progressively responsible work in police administration. And with at least five years as a bona fide law enforcement officer. It's like, okay, the inclusion of the word progressively responsible, it's like, okay, what does that mean? Later on in the post, it says that the police chief in a large city with, quote, issues that are similarly complex to those in Austin, they will also have ability to forge relationships with Austin's many diverse communities and should have a, quote, sound understanding of the history of institutional racism in policing.

So the inclusion of the institutional racism in policing. This has been a constant talking point that has kind of turned some people off, not just officers, but people just viewing APD from the outside as regular citizens, is why has APD continued to have this explicit focus on whether it be, like it mentions, institutional racism or DEI initiatives? We've seen police officers here as part of APD leaving the job. I sort of think to myself, is this the best direction to go if the job of APD or police in general is to resolve investigations, deter criminals, and address crime in a city.

And it's just the interesting direction, especially in a blue city like Austin, many blue cities across the country, is in the wake of George Floyd's 2020 riots, there was a distinct move in many of these blue cities to defund police, restructure how police operates in a city, whether it be not being as tough on certain crimes or even instituting alternative actions to addressing certain crimes, not sending police officers out there, but sending maybe counselors or encouraging people to call 311 instead of 911 for certain issues, right? Encouraging them because they don't have the staff to respond or answer the phone calls. Yeah, and it's just an interesting direction for me um something i'll mention is um it is

uh police officer awareness week something along those lines um and i came across this very interesting fbi statistic that they put out i'll read straight from it here said last year alone 60 law enforcement officers were feloniously killed on the job, according to a report released today by the FBI. The officers killed and assaulted in the line of duty 2023 special report, which is compiled by the FBI's criminal justice information services division, also shows that from 2021 to 2023, more officers were feloniously killed, 194, than in any other consecutive three-year period in the past 20 years. So it's interesting to see these different

approaches in this sort of milieu of rising deaths of officers. We're seeing homelessness in the city of Austin. We've seen a surge in opioid crisis, yet APD wants a police chief focused on an understanding of institutional racism. Is that going to help solve the problems that Austin is currently attempting to address? It's just a matter of perspective, I guess. There's lots of experts out there that when it comes to the homelessness issue, they talk about housing first. That was a big initiative in not just Austin, but, you know, where I come from in California. And lots of reports that say that does not work.

You know, if you give people housing without services attached, then people just continue abusing drugs and alcohol. Well, the city of Austin has dealt with this firsthand. They have spent well over $500 million to build basically hotels for homeless people to live in. And few of them have any real stipulations. The ones that do have stipulations are these private entities or like nonprofits. Well, that's something too that we could go and have an entire podcast on is this coordination between the NGOs and these activist groups and local government and state and federal governments is what people might not understand about these NGOs is they are run by activists who are incredibly skilled in the bureaucracy of government. And so if they identify an issue like homelessness, the way these groups get money

is by applying for grants. And those grants come from local, state, and federal governments. Well, the pyramid structure of these NGOs, the people at the top are getting paid large sums of money as part of their salary. People can check out the book San Francisco by Michael Schellenberger. He details this, how the homelessness population in the homelessness industrial complex, he calls it, in California has absolutely been wrecked by these NGOs is because, let's say a homelessness organization is identifying homelessness as an issue. Well, if people are getting paid to attempt to solve the homelessness issue, they want to keep that money flowing in. And so maybe some of their strategies isn't going

to ultimately solve the problem because they want to keep that money train flowing. So all that I say because there's so many issues here in Austin, staffing with APD, overdoses, crime, the FBI statistics about officers being killed on the job, maybe people would be, it would be good to maybe take a step back and reevaluate and see, okay, we tried some of these ideas for a few years. Maybe there's an alternative way to do things, whether it be identifying certain populations of people that might make good recruits or alternative strategies of services first instead of housing first, addressing crime with maybe a different strategy other than, you know, writing tickets, but maybe being a little tougher on certain issues.

So just for our listeners, I think that provides a little bit of background on sort of what's going on here. Yeah, it's a mess in Austin. And whoever they hire as the next police chief will have their work cut out for them. Yeah. You know, we've been through, first it was Brian Manley. He got the ax. And then he was asked to resign, basically. And then you had Joseph Chacon.

That's the interim. They hired him. Then he lasted maybe a year or two. I think it was two. And now they're back to square one. The city council has a very pointed posture towards the police department. There is very little love lost between the two. You ask rank-and-file officers what they think, and they'll tell you, first of all, they can't stand the city council, at least most of the body, the body overall.

And usually there's only one, Mackenzie Kelly, that they like. And then you have the effects that that has caused on recruitment and then that is just kind of snowballed. And over the years you have guys that are paying money to retire early because it's so bad. They don't want to be here anymore. You have, even with pay, with the pretty high pay you get in Austin and good benefits, they can't attract officers from other places. So you have guys working double overtime to fill shifts. You have specialized units cannibalized into just beat patrol because they can't make up for that.

It's just, it is an absolute mess. And really it's on former Mayor Steve Adler, now in Congress, Greg Kassar. You know, they had these ideas of ways to change policing, including cutting $150 million and I think it was 150 patrol positions. Well, we've seen local businesses even hiring private security. Because I walk the streets of Austin and I don't see that many cops, but I see private security out in front of businesses. But then on the flip side, you have, you know, we talked about Makoviak,

and he was behind, he and Save Austin now got two ballot props on the ballot, one reinstating the camping ban, and that passed. Yeah. But then the other one was to set a minimum staffing level with the police department, and that went down overwhelmingly. Now, his argument would be that the electorate in that is not reflective of what the actual city wants. I think that's probably true. But they're not voting, right?

Like, these are the ones voting. So at least those, the ones having influence on the city are the ones that at least generally hold a closer opinion to the city council on policing than Save Austin Now does. Well, and I think that sort of ties into the discussion we were just having a little bit ago about getting voters to the polls to vote on certain ballot propositions, right? If a minimum standard for staffing goes down, well, then the people who want that minimum number standing need to get to the polls. And who's driving people to those polls? Well, the issue is there's no minimum standard, I't think and so they were trying to set one yeah it's a mess man overall you know also it should be noted austin is a safe city that doesn't mean it's not getting worse because it is yeah um compared to chicago or houston and the crime levels are not even close.

But it is definitely trending in a bad direction. And it's made even worse by the lack of the ability for the police department to patrol the city. That's not good. It's not good for anybody. So it's spiraling. And it has been for a while. This is not new. But it's spiraling and it has been for a while. This is not new, but it's getting worse. Yeah. Well, it'll be interesting to see who they hire in this new chief position,

especially with, like we mentioned, the explicit focus in the job description about being trained and understanding institutional racism. The people selecting who the candidate and eventual nominee for that position will be, will they, that same mindset, or are they starting to see the issues and say maybe we want someone with a different approach? It's just something we'll have to find out. We'll have to live through it. Yeah. We'll move to the next story here. You actually sent me this.

It was a story out of the Distabatch here. Yeah, Jonah Goldberg. He wrote a story called The Tea Party Movement Died with a Whimper. And very interesting piece, sort of going through how different aspects of libertarianism, Tea Party movement, people are kind of turning away from that now. They might like some of the policy positions, but they're electing people who are signaling those positions, but then they just really want someone to maybe wreck the system. Yeah. Right. And so he pointed out some interesting things in here. I'll read directly from the article here. He said,

the media and Democrats figured out how to convince people that the Tea Parties were actually racist and fascist and all that. And I think that helped radicalize a lot of Tea Partiers, causing them to embrace things like nationalism and status power politics. I'm here to write about a different cautionary tale, but I should at least acknowledge another. The elite's media moral panic over the Tea Parties succeeded in helping to destroy the movement, but what replaced it was far worse. I've lost count of the progressives who simultaneously tell me they're nostalgic for the libertarianism of the pre-Trump right and rejoice in calling conservatives hypocrites for abandoning it.

Maybe if they responded in good faith at that time, it would have endured. That reminds me of the classic, you know, newfound respect in, like, specifically in this regard, presidential candidates, you know. George Bush was the worst thing ever to the left. You know, this happens on the other side, too, right? Like, but it's really pronounced on the left, I'd say. George Bush is, you know, literally Hitler. Until you have Mitt Romney there, then he's literally Hitler. And the, you know, women in binders and all that stuff.

But then when you have Donald Trump, he's the worst thing ever now. And those guys, they long for the days of when those guys were, you know, it's, it's rank politics and hyperbole, which happens all over the place, but it's just funny to see, you know. Well, I think talking a little bit about the media's aspect in this, because like you mentioned, this isn't a new phenomenon of labeling maybe conservative right-wing candidates as literally Hitler, fascists, whatever it may be. But in the advent of more activist media, with the proliferation of social media, everyone has access to information on their phones these days. And politics has now become much more personalized than it was maybe before. Just the fact that people might not reach out for information from traditional outlets anymore.

They have their favorite alternative outlet. They may have their favorite commenter. And the media barriers aren't necessarily there anymore, for good and for bad. And so it allows the media to put out those hyperbolic statements much more easily and reach people much more easily. And so I think that's an interesting aspect of this, how you can change people's perspective based on the type of information. We've already known that, but we're just in a new information sphere

with how personal things have gotten the access to it. And I think it was interesting as well in this article that he touched on someone like Thomas Massey. He said here, so this was sort of leading into because FreedomWorks had said they were going to be shutting their doors. So that's a little bit of context here. So what does this have to do with the end of FreedomWorks? The libertarian populism of the Tea Party era died because the animating passion wasn't really libertarianism in the first place. Tim Carney beat me to the punch by quoting

Rep. Thomas Massey's Tea Party replacement theory, quote, all this time. Massey explained in 2017, I thought they were voting for libertarian Republicans, but after some soul searching, I realized when they voted for Rand or Ron Paul and me in these primaries, they weren't voting for libertarian ideas. They were voting for the craziest son of a B in the race. And Donald Trump won best in class. So that sort of touches on the idea that people want to wreck the system now. They're completely fed up with the status quo. But it's also funny because the view of the status quo shifts.

Like, what is the status quo, you know? The assessment of the realities behind it, it shifts constantly. Everyone has a different idea, right? And, you know, establishment is a slur now, but at least when he was in office, you know, who the establishment was? Trump. Trump. At least in large part, you know, he filled all these bureaucratic agencies, you know.

I think that's— He controls the Republican Party right now. He's the most powerful endorsement in Republican politics at the moment. Absolutely. Absolutely. Absolutely. And I think when Trump was in office, being someone who was an outsider to elected office, he might have relied on some bad advice, let's say. And there was also issues with the bureaucratic nature of federal government where they were you know lying to him in some instances about issues so there I think the idea about what Goldberg writes in what I just read about people wanting the craziest son of a bee in the race is

people are much more aware now of the quote-unquote deep state. You can think it's real. You can think it's fake. But as we've seen, there is things happening behind the scenes, whether it be we've seen with the Twitter files, we've seen with how large and out of control many of these bureaucratic agencies have gotten, they're not being held accountable economically, for instance, like we just touched on with the grant funding and things of that nature. So I think when you put all that into context and people wanting to just vote in someone that is going to say, I'm going to

fight against the system, you can empathize with that perspective. Because if people who have been consistent, constant Republican voters, but they've just seen the country move in a more leftward direction, they've seen the bureaucratic nature of the federal government continue to bloat. They see taxes continuing to rise in different instances, and maybe their living standards are changing, not in the right direction. They just throw their hands up and they say, I want someone to go in there and fight instead of playing bipartisan games. So I just thought I would maybe contextualize some of those voters' perspectives, why they want to vote for those crazy, quote unquote, crazy people. Because in their eyes,

they see them as, well, they're going to be fighting for me. I don't have a voice. They can be my voice. Yeah. You know, it shows that Connie, our founder, she came up with the Tea Party. That's how she became politically relevant at all. And, you know, I remember my dad talking about I was way too young to vote, really pay attention much at all at that point. But I remember my dad talking about it. He went to a couple of rallies. And it seems, Goldberg's point, argument here is that the ideological principles that were voiced during the Tea Party movement were really just window dressing.

That this was in the underbelly the whole time. And I think that's what Massey's getting at as well in this. But I don't know that's exactly correct because there was a real shift and there were some real policy accomplishments made by Tea Party candidates. Sequestration is probably the biggest. You know who put the final nail in the coffin of the sequestration? Tell me. Donald Trump. So I don't know if it's that this was there all along

or if things really shifted. Priorities shifted from ideological principles, limited government, low taxes, eliminate regulation, that kind of thing, to now just being pissed off, you know, and cage rattling at the system. To me, that seems more likely than they just took off the mask and this was them the whole time. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. What do you think?

Well, I think you bring up an interesting point is where the, like you were saying, a movement away from principles and ideals to just rattling the cage, was that always there or has it been a deliberate shift? And I think it is a deliberate shift. Okay. For the reason is you get swallowed up in the system as an elected official. You can listen to congressmen and senators. They will tell that they get to sit down at dinners with lobbyists and they say, you got to do this or do that,

or I'm going to send money to your opposition, whatever it may be. And those who hold chairmanships or who are majority party leaders, they kind of are steering the ship of how people vote. And I think there was a deliberate move by these newer officials to say, we're not going to do that. We're going to be loud and fight against what they call the uniparty, is people kowtowing to big lobbyists, the big bureaucracy, the leaders in the party. So people should also understand it doesn't have to remain this way either. There needs to be a plan for after. So it's a transition period where if you're going to be that person who rattles the cage, tries to bring awareness to certain issues,

then what's the follow-up to that? What's the game plan? What's the game plan? To get things done, right? Well, and so going back to where we started with these different polls of the RP teacher, it's, again, these polls are exemplified in who's getting elected to office at the federal level. And is it a transition where we need to elect these rage rattlers, cage rattlers, so people become aware and then we can then vote the right people who will be principled in their ideals? Or is the end game just to break everything up?

Well, the two arguments that are kind of jockeying for position here is that you can, well, we have to govern ourselves into doing nothing or doing things that are entirely antithetical to what we ran on in the first place. And then on the other side, you have, you can throw grades enough, a grenade, enough grenades to where you find yourself in the position now where you have governing responsibility. And what do you do with that? You realize it's a lot more difficult.

Look at, look at the Texas House and the school choice fight. It is a lot harder to get policy across the line than anyone thinks when they're running a campaign. You can't just snap it into existence. It takes compromise, which is not a fun word right now for most party activists, on either side. Everyone's just wanting to throw grenades. But in order to get things across the line, votes are the votes. And unless you can persuade enough representatives

in whatever body we're talking about to support whatever policy it is you want, you get nothing. You get nothing. And that's the the issue here help at the same time you try and avoid compromising yourself into supporting something that is entirely antithetical to what you ran on you also have to be willing to compromise in order to get anything you want done yeah but we see that the two extremes of the

parties kind of running things right now, at least from a PR perspective, I think. Yeah, and I think what's interesting is we're talking a lot about tactics here. But I sort of see things, there's the tactics, what we're talking about, the grenade throwing. There's the strategy, like, do you have to be bipartisan do you have to make compromises but then there's also the vision is what are you ultimately trying to get to and this article is talking a lot about the tactics but it's also talking about uh the strategy and the vision is there's lots of disagreements over what it means to be conservative. What does it mean to be a Republican? And I think until you get someone who can clearly lay out and articulate what is the

vision for a Republican these days, you're going to constantly get these low-level tactic battles. Because it's something I've continued to explore in my newsletters. I talk about it constantly in the office, is there's so many disagreements about what it means to be a Republican. And it's not just ideas on policy. It's ideas on principles and ideals themselves. And I think, like I said— And priorities. And priorities. What's the top—what's the priority list here?

You know, everyone disagrees on that. Yeah, and I think whether it be an elected official at the top of the ticket, like Donald Trump, is he going to be able to lay out a vision for the country or is it a group of powerful congress members or senators that get together and say this is what we're about is it think tanks and activist groups that get together and say this is the future of the republican party but there needs to be some clear vision so people know what direction things are going to lead to so i think i think we beat that dead horse enough yeah but it it's politics is a constant tug of war yeah it always will be and it always has been yeah so let's touch briefly on a couple things I had here is the Harrison Bucker speech. Oh, yeah. That set the sports world ablaze.

Yeah. So Harrison Bucker, kicker for the Kansas City Chiefs, he gave a commencement speech. Do you remember the name of the college? It was Benedictine College University. It was a Catholic university, I believe. Benedictine College in Atchison, Kansas. Okay. And he caused quite a bit of stir because he talked about the importance of motherhood, the importance of being a wife. He also talked about...

By the way, he's a very Catholic person. Very much. Very vocal about his his faith and these aren't new things that he said either you know you can go back everyone has known where he stood on things for a long time but i think what was really interesting about what he said too was he talked about the ideas of masculinity and i'll read directly from his speech here he said be unapologetically and unapologetic in your masculinity, fighting against the culture emasculation of men. Do hard things. Never settle for what is easy. You might have a talent that you don't necessarily enjoy, but it glorifies God. Maybe you should

lean into that over something that you might think suits you better. So touching on ideas of masculinity, motherhood, the importance of being a wife, things some media outlets push back against, let's say. And so there was actually a comment from the NFL that came out that said, Harrison Bucker gave a speech in his personal capacity. His views are not those of the NFL as an organization. That came from the senior vice president, Jonathan Bean, the league's chief diversity and inclusion officer. The NFL is steadfast in our commitment to inclusion, which only makes our league stronger. And then GLAAD, which is a LGBTQ organization, also issued a statement calling Butker's speech a clear miss and woefully out of step with America about pride, LGBTQ people and women. So we saw right after the speech, though, as all these media hits were coming out, you showed me jersey sales. Oh, yeah.

He shot up to number one. Both in men and women's categories. Right. Yeah. So his speech really landing with regular people. At least a large amount, enough to jump in. To go out and buy his jersey. Not landing much with the media.

Or maybe some... I think I've seen this story before. I think I have too. But, yeah, I just thought it would be important to mention that despite what the media might be portraying his speech about, might be about, they say it's about misogyny you know whatever but in reality he's just talking about the importance of motherhood the importance of masculinity really doing the best you can with within your own personal capacity yeah these are

not really controversial positions um at least among especially the average football fan. Right. You know, the sport that's the closest thing we have to gladiators. You're right. Also, the things that are said in locker rooms, in these football locker rooms especially, but take any sports locker room. Yeah. I've been in them in high school.

Imagine when you have the best of the best in the room together. Yeah. This've been in them in high school. Imagine when you have the best of the best in the room together. Yeah. This is cake. This is tank. Compared to what you would hear in there. Yeah. But also, it's, you know, this is the viewpoint of a large portion of individuals. You know, whether you agree with it or not, this is not outside the Overton window

that we like to talk about so much, even though a lot of the media would like it to be. The fallout from this was hilarious. There was something, he had some pointed language in there, calling working a distraction, or it can be a distraction, depending on what your priorities in life are. But overall, this is pretty tame. The reactions were, as usual, unhinged generally,

but there were also some pretty funny ones. Okay. So, you know, first of all, you have people talk about how, you know, the NFL puts out a statement against Bucker here. Yeah. But then they allow, like, they give Ray Rice a, what was it, a six-game suspension for knocking out his girlfriend. Or who was, yeah, that, and then there was another running back.

Yeah, Kareem Hunt. Kareem Hunt. Yeah. It's been an issue for a while. Yeah. That's an image problem the NFL's been trying to clean up for a while now. Yeah. And then on the flip side, on the other political spectrum,

you have people talking about how the NFL's not going hard enough on Butker, and they basically blackballed Colin Kaepernick for making his position for statements on, like, especially BLM, that kind of thing. So they're just throwing bombs at each other. But the funniest thing was the Chargers. So the NFL schedules got released. And when that happens, teams usually do like a video and it's funny to unveil their schedules. There was one from the Titans a couple years ago.

I saw the Titans one. Yeah, that's the greatest one. They're asking random people in Nashville on the street. They're showing them, like, the logo of the team and asking them to name who that is so they can unveil it as their opponent that week, and they go week by week. And it was – every single one was wrong. opponent that week. They go week by week. Every single one was wrong.

The Jaguars logo, no one could get it. No one got it. There was one where two people called the Colts the Cowboys. They were so sure about it. That's definitely the Cowboys. No, the Cowboys is the one with the star, not the horses not the, you know, the horseshoe. But in that, at the tail end, they had a couple, throughout the whole thing, they had some nuggets. Like Taylor Swift was in it. It was the Chargers. It was Sims related, the video game. And they had Taylor Swift, the Kelsey brothers doing their podcast. But at the end, they had Aaron Rodgers being afraid of cell phone towers.

I didn't see that. In 5G, yeah, that was right after the Butker thing. And having a radioactive baby. But then with Butker, they had him in the kitchen. Because of course, people were taking his statements of running with, oh, he just wants women to be in the kitchen. But the Chargers were, that was hilarious. The fun they poked at him and a bunch of people on it. But overall, like this is going to go away. This is not going to, this is a day story, maybe a week story because nothing else is happening right now in the NFL.

But no one's going to care. Like he's the best kicker in the league. But no one's going to care. He's the best kicker in the league or one of the best three, two or three. Yeah. He's on arguably the best team in the world. They just won the Super Bowl. Well, I think it exemplifies the stratification that's sort of going on. We talked about the media. This isn't something new, going after certain opinions

and then not really going after others. But we've really seen a large defense of what Bucker said by a lot of media outlets too, a lot of individuals online coming to his defense. All this talk and none of it's about football. Right, right. Well, we have just a little bit of time left i thought it'd be fun to touch on mtg aoc jasmine crockett they got into it oh at a house oversight committee here i

would like to say i'm surprised but i'm not so there was something they were just going back and forth at one point there was comments here i'll read from i'd like to know this is from mtg marjorie taylor green i'd like to know if any democrats on the committee are employing judge merchant's daughter um just then jasmine crockett says please tell me what that has to do with merrick garland uh mtg responds by saying i think your fake eyelashes are messing up what you're reading and just just set it off they were going after each other on about how they look people screaming out strike that from the record, strike that. And you could just see people.

This is, I'm sure people will come across it. Just look at everyone else at that committee hearing, just shaking their heads, closing their eyes, like, please make it stop, please make it stop. Because it's so interesting that these types of things that are happening in our federal government. Well, let me add something. Go ahead. I made this point on something totally different in the fourth reading newsletter this week.

Okay. This is not new. This name calling, you know, the example I use all the time is John Adams or Thomas Jefferson's hit man in the campaign called John Adams a hermaphrodite, you know. Adams hit back that Jefferson wanted to legalize incest. Right. These personal pot shots are not new in politics. It's definitely not good, right? Right. That's a side aspect of this. Yeah. These two getting in a fight, you know, it's not new.

We can both be kind of astounded this happened and understand it in perspective, right? Yeah. I just thought it was hilarious, you know, having it caught on film, people sharing it around. It makes for a hilarious story. it makes for a hilarious story it makes for a hilarious story um but there's precedent for this yeah people maybe they did a in a slightly different way maybe they use some different language some better prose maybe and uh not

really just insulting each other bring back the eloquent insults. Bring it back, people. Not just saying, oh, your eyelashes are fake. Yeah. Let's have some real pros behind our insults we're lobbing, you know? Right. Well, maybe Marjorie Taylor Greene will sit behind her computer and really type out a nice eloquent response to what happened.

And Jasmine Crockett will do the same. And we can enter a new era of political disagreement. Back and forth papers. I don't think that's going to happen. I'm not very hopeful about that. Sorry to rain on your parade there. Yeah. Anything you want to mention before we leave?

We are going to be headed to the RPT convention, like I mentioned. This is coming out after. The Monday after. The Monday after. Which is also the day before the runoffs. Day before the runoffs. So we didn't talk about that much at all, but we're in a in a lot of coverage of that tons of coverage coverage of the convention it's this is like the last gasp of craziness in texas politics for the moment before we hit the summer lull

there's just gonna be a lull there always is in the summer everyone goes on vacation everyone's tired of politics. It'll pick back up in late August, early September. But, yeah, glad you're along for the ride. Yeah, it's going to be fun. Always is. More than enough to cover and plenty to work with, that's for sure. Well, I think that does it for the third episode of Send Me Some Stuff.

Thank you, everyone, for listening. And if you ever come across articles and you want us to talk about it, send us some stuff. We'll check you out next time.