State Attorney General Greg Abbott’s Relevancy for 2014
With Rick Perry, one of the longest serving state governors
in American history, officially out of the running for the next Texas
gubernatorial election, the fight to the Texas Governor’s Mansion will be more
competitive than it has been in over a decade – at least theoretically. Premature
political speculation is often pretty far off, especially without Nate Silver
style statistical analyses, and especially when it comes to Texas. Nevertheless,
I think that Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott has already achieved ubiquitous
enough name-recognition and a massive enough campaign war chest to eventually
secure the Republican nomination – and no Texas Democrat candidate, including State
Senator Wendy Davis, is going to win the state’s Governorship in 2014.
Josh Brodesky’s Answer to the Abbott Question
Perhaps time will prove my speculation to have been far off,
but one thing is for sure: right now there is a strong enough possibility that Abbott
will win the Governorship that it’s worth asking ourselves what an Abbott Governorship
may look like. Columnist
Josh Brodesky does just that in a recent op-ed published by the San Antonio
Express-News. Like many left-leaning observers, Brodesky, answers the Abbott
question with an unbalanced argument settled from the title onward: “New
candidate, familiar story”.
Even as a relatively left-leaning Texan observer myself, I have to say that Brodesky’s
analysis is pretty substance-less and that a Governor Abbott would be noticeably
distinct from his predecessor.
In his analysis, Brodesky mentions
that Attorney General Abbott has sued the federal government 27 times during
the Obama Presidency, including to defend the state of Texas’s “freedom to
pollute and the freedom to restrict voter registration.” Brodesky goes on to list
pretty legitimate-seeming political contradictions in Abbott’s history as a
Republican supporter of big government for only certain “freedom” causes:
- Greg Abbott’s fight for the freedom
of religion in public spaces is a fight against the religious freedom of the Texas
public.
- Greg Abbott’s fight against the
Environmental Protection Agency is a fight against the Texas air. (Sorry
Brodesky, but this point can’t even be stated as a supposed political
contradiction.)
- Greg Abbott’s fight for voter ID
law and redistricting is a fight to disenfranchise minority voters.
- Greg Abbott’s for budget cuts to
family planning and preventive care services is a fight for unwanted
pregnancies and abortions.
Right after this list, a Governor
Perry statement supporting Abbott’s fight against Planned Parenthood is thrown
in, and then Brodesky quickly wraps up the article declaring “it’s still the
same old story.”
Texas Bestest’s Argument for the Abbott Possibility
Given the evidence he provided, Brodesky may have been justified
in concluding that Greg Abbott often used the office of the Attorney General
for conservative activism rather to defend the laws and constitution of Texas.
However, Brodesky’s observations do not follow from the evidence presented: he suggests that Abbott’s career is one of political inconsistencies and that an Abbott Governorship would be substantially similar to the Perry Governorship. An overview of my observations is listed below:
(1) In reality, the very definition of political conservatism suggests that the
aforementioned Abbott “fights” were politically consistent. (2) Abbott’s political
actions and stances are distinguishable from Perry’s, (3) and Abbott is a well-established
Republican whose foothold in the party base simply predates any serious far
right organization. Over the next few months, (4) that simple fact, coupled
with mounting political involvement from the small left will allow Abbott to safely inch
a bit closer to the center of the political spectrum in a pattern that would
probably (5) be replicated in his hypothetical and politically distinguishable Governorship.
(1) Abbott is politically rational as a political conservative.
I completely acknowledge that there do appear to be glaring contradictions
whenever an advocate for smaller government fights to use governmental power for
disenfranchising voters, interfering with women’s rights, and the other
examples Brodesky lists. However, I also think that Abbott’s political actions are
actually rendered completely coherent when contextualized within the framework
of political conservatism. Political conservatism has actually been defined as
the political ideology that favors the governmental regulation of individual
behavior for ordered liberty while disfavoring the governmental promotion of
equality.
By definition then, the conservative Texas Attorney General’s actions were
politically consistent. In other words, Brodesky’s catalog of Abbott’s
contradictions is probably fallacious at best and worthless at worst – it does nothing
to substantiate his claim that an Abbott Governorship would be another round of
Perry Governorship.
(2) Early indicators suggest Abbott may be less politically
conservative.
There are several glaring indicators that Abbott takes less
politically conservative stances than Perry. The most readily-visible indicator
of this is literally in the differences between Abbott and Perry that the Abbott
campaign has already emphasized. Voters know that Abbott does not support Perry’s
business-over-people approach of using tax subsidies to lure businesses to
Texas. Voters know that Abbott does support increased transparency and that, as
Attorney General, he actually required Perry to disclose government documents on
at least two occasions. Another indicator that Abbott is taking and will
probably continue to take different political stances than Perry is in the very
fact that it is hardly five days into his campaign and Abbott has already
managed to begin trying to distance himself from his would-be predecessor. That
is, Abbott knows that Perry fatigue has grown strong enough that a little
ideological distance and freshness can only be healthy.
(3) Abbott has absolutely no pressure to appease far right
voters.
Greg Abbott is actually well-positioned to moderate his
politics during the gubernatorial race. Abbott has such a strong foothold in
the Republican base that he is practically immune to pressure from its far
right tea party faction. After all, he has already been able to assemble a
formidable campaign marketing team that’s effectively tapped into social
media platforms coupled with a powerful funding operation that’s raised over
$20 million in such little time. It’s no wonder the Mr. Attorney General is
already widely considered the gubernatorial favorite and it’s no wonder that
even his only credible GOP rival so far, Tom Pauken, refers to Abbott as the “anointed
one”. Forget the tea party political pressure wave that Abbott helped U.S.
Senator Ted Cruz appease – Abbott’s campaign is more likely to end up
scratching its head at the concentrated but surprisingly high political pressure
from a newly activated, left-leaning electorate.
(4) Abbott will moderate his politics during his 2014
campaign.
This is the point where I become truly speculative about Abbott’s
political future. I predict that State Senator Wendy Davis will enter the
gubernatorial race because her famous pro-women filibuster has obviously
resulted in the name-recognition and heavy funding (over a $1 million in just a
few days after the filibuster) conducive to the Texas Democrats’ only hope to win a run for the Governorship. Of course, this hope will more than likely prove to
be just that – hopeful thinking in the red state of Texas. Even if Davis races
for a statewide office other than the Governorship, the legacy of her
filibuster will still affect Abbott’s race in almost the same way: his already relatively moderate campaign will encounter
an additional, noticeable leftward pull by only-recently activated sectors of
the Texas electorate. In 2014, Davis will count her losses and then leverage
her post-election popularity to be propelled onto the national political stage –
but that’s a story for another day and another blog post.
(5) Abbott will continue to moderate his politics in office.
Someday a few months from now, Greg Abbott’s astonishing
fundraising engine and his relatively moderate campaign promises will earn him
and his wife Cecilia a bed in the Texas Governor’s Mansion. Of course, the
Texas version of “relatively moderate” is still “pretty darn conservative” and it
definitely will not be a day of celebration for liberal Texans. Perhaps more liberal
columnists will detail rants like “The Most Self-Contradictory Texas
Governor Ever” and perhaps more college students will point out that said
columnists seem to be fundamentally unfamiliar with the academic concept of “political
ideology”.
What I can say with more confidence than all of that though,
is this: even if a “pretty darn conservative” Greg Abbott is elected Texas
Governor, his time in office will definitely NOT turn out to be that of a “Perry level
conservative” – the political realities of Greg Abbott’s time are just too
different from what Rick Perry’s were. During his considerable tenure, Perry managed to rip
$4 billion out of education funding, appoint a young-earth creationist to manage
the textbook approvals decisions for Texas public schools, and reject billions of
dollars in readily-available federal Medicaid assistance for citizens in a
state with more uninsured people than any other. Those same tax subsidy
incentives that Abbott opposes are what Perry used to win cronies’ political
favor before turning around to ask them for campaign donations. Most recently, Perry
called for a special legislative meeting to pass a law that can effectively put
doctors out of business and increase unwanted pregnancies by the hundreds until
a federal court strikes it down anyway.
There is simply no way that Abbott will be able to relive
this line of conservatism – Texas politics have simply changed too much since
an ambitious Texas Lieutenant Governor assumed the chief executive office in
late 2000 when his predecessor left to become the United States President. I
predict that Governor Abbott will not be able to lock in a single reelection if
he exercises the line of conservatism that Governor Perry did during his term.
As a matter of fact, Governor Abbott’s tenure will be marked by the restoration
of a relatively respectful relationship with the Texas Legislature, because Governor
Abbott knows that pointless political provocation will only spawn more Wendy
Davises and unlock more passionate, left-leaning sectors of the electorate. Abbott
will be a man who won against Tom Pauken because he was more attentively attuned with the
direction his electorate is taking, and he will not be a Governor who forgets the
value of such attention.
Or perhaps Abbott will head strong into 2014 before this entire blog post is rendered void when a major skeleton makes its way out of his closet, leaving his reputation too damaged to hold its own against the Democratic nominee on election day. After all, one never really knows when it comes to Texas weather or politics.
