Texas is a hub of hyper-partisanship as American politics grow ever-more divisive – Houston Chronicle
WASHINGTON National politics in 2020 pushed partisan lines further than theyve been since the Civil War, and Texas is expected to play an outsize role in whether things get even more polarized as Democrats and Republicans vie ever more fiercely for money and support.
In a year shaped by the pandemic, Americans still cannot agree on how serious it is, or on basic coronavirus protection measures, such as masks. We are still arguing over who won a presidential election a month and a half after it ended. The disagreements are stoked by politicians who increasingly speak to the extremes of their parties, often encouraging their followers to ignore basic facts. Increasingly fragmented news boosted by social media feeds offer up whichever reality their users want to believe.
Even for a country thats been increasingly polarized over the last decade, the last year stood out as exceptional ending with President Donald Trump falsely alleging the election was rigged against him and casting President-elect Joe Biden as illegitimate the first time in U.S. history that a sitting president has so resisted the transfer of power.
The last year also saw growing calls from the left for socialist policies such as universal health care and for defunding the police that at times had Biden playing defense against elements of his own party as he campaigned for the presidency a preview of whats likely in store for the Biden administration over the next four years.
One side has one reality and the other side has another and both of them kind of regard the other as something between evil and ill-conceived, said Dan Diller, director of the Lugar Center, a D.C. think tank focused on bipartisanship.
Theres maybe no state thats going to have a bigger impact on the direction of American politics in the next 20 years than Texas, said Diller, who tracks the increasingly divisive nature of politics. Its just the most important state in terms of the transition of American politics were going through right now.
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A Lugar Center study released earlier this year showed Texas is among the most politically polarized states in the U.S., and its congressional leaders are more partisan than those of any other populous state in the nation.
Several Texas lawmakers were rated by the Lugar Center as among the most partisan in the nation, including U.S. Reps. Chip Roy, a Central Texas Republican who rated as the third-most partisan member of Congress, and U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, whose record in the Senate is less partisan than those of just five other senators since 1993.
Experts say the upcoming Texas legislative session is likely to highlight those divisions in 2021.
Recent polling by the University of Houston showed more than 58 percent of Democrats in Texas believed the pandemic was the most pressing public policy concern facing state lawmakers returning to Austin in January.
Fewer than 27 percent of Republicans agreed.
And even as the country struggles to recover from the economic havoc the pandemic brought, only 4 percent of Democrats in Texas called economic development a top priority, compared to 31 percent of Republicans.
Were starting to see these extreme cleavages between the parties just like we do at the national level, said Renee Cross, senior director of the Hobby School of Public Affairs at the University of Houston. Some of the differences are staggering and I honestly dont know of a period where youd see 50 or 60 point differences between people of different parties.
The divides nationally this year were stark.
According to Pew Research Center, Trumps approval rating has been more sharply divided along partisan lines than that of any president in the modern era of polling. And as the presidential race escalated in October, Pew found that the vast majority of Trump and Biden supporters 77 and 80 percent, respectively fundamentally disagree with the other side on core American values and goals.
Data, meanwhile, suggests Congress is more polarized than it has ever been.
Sean Theriault, a University of Texas at Austin political scientist who studies polarization, said looking strictly at how lawmakers voted, the Senate was 42.6 percent as polarized as it would be if every Democrat always voted against every Republican. Thats the highest that measure has ever been, after climbing eight percentage points since 2010.
The Houses average was down some overall, which Theriault attributed that to more moderate voting records among Democrats who won swing districts in 2018. Republicans in the House, however, had more partisan voting records than ever before.
Theriault says the data shows that, at least in Congress, certainly the last 10 years has been more polarized than any decade since the Civil War.
And Donald Trump has clearly lit a match, he said.
On the other side, left-wing Democrats are calling for universal health care, free college and other socialist policies that would wipe out decades of cuts to entitlements, saying they will increase taxation on the wealthy to pay for them. Biden has pitched $5.4 trillion in new spending over the next decade, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis.
And even Biden, who campaigned as a moderate, is seeking to end the nations reliance on fossil fuels, which means job losses in Texas a Republican attack line that Biden only reinforced with statements he made late in the presidential campaign.
Historians say theres no equivalent for Trumps response to his loss.
Trump has spent the weeks since the election trying to undermine the results, claiming without evidence the election was stolen and repeatedly calling Biden an illegitimate president.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxtons failed attempt last week to convince the Supreme Court to overturn election results in four battleground states was widely supported by the states Republicans, including both Gov. Greg Abbott and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick .
Stephanie McCurry, a Columbia University historian specializing in the Civil War and Reconstruction, said the moment parallels the response from white southerners to Ulysses Grants election in 1868.
Southern Democrats never accepted Grants presidency as legitimate because they believed it was based on Black votes, she said. That same view was taken toward newly elected Black senators, congressmen and members of state legislatures. The Republican Party was viewed as the enemys party, she said.
Its like what were hearing now that the vote was illegitimate, she said. This is what worries me now. What happens now? Were heading into a period thats looking increasingly like theres a chunk of the population that wont concede the legitimacy of the election of Joe Biden.
Russian President Vladimir Putin beat many Texas Republicans to acknowledging Bidens win, including more than a dozen Texas congressmen and Sen. Cruz, who had agreed to argue Trumps case before the Supreme Court.
Its important to let Trumps legal challenges play out in court before declaring Biden the victory, said Cruz, who scoffs at those accusing Trump of chipping away at the foundation of our democracy.
Its almost like theyre persecuting heretics, Cruz has said of the insistence by Democrats that Republicans in Congress individually affirm Bidens win with public statements. They scream at you, Youre undermining democracy. Thats nutty. No, democracy means if there are legal challenges you resolve the legal challenges.
Texas political observers expect the energy Trump has stirred up after losing the election to translate to the legislative session, which is just weeks away. The last decade began with the rise of the Tea Party in Texas after the election of Barack Obama, the last Democrat to hold the White House, Jim Henson and Josh Blank of UT Austins Texas Politics Project point out.
There can be little doubt that the effects of Trumps commandeering of the Republican party by inflaming the most reactionary grievances among his base, demonstrating the yields of that approach to other GOP officials and hopefuls, and then refusing to accept his loss, has reenergized some of the same forces in the Texas GOP that surged in the party a decade ago, they wrote in a recent blog post. If the politics of 2011 are any guide, there is a lot of potential for a familiar ugliness fueled by an activated reactionary base to creep into the Legislature next year.
In Washington, meanwhile, Biden has said repeatedly he believes he can bridge the divide, something he campaigned on as he showed some success winning over Republican voters though they were by far the minority of the partys supporters.
And early signs are theres little change on the way to Washington.
Even as she said she believes Biden will be able to break down the polarization in D.C., a top aide to the president-elect had harsh words for Republicans.
Mitch McConnell is terrible, Bidens deputy chief of staff, Jen O'Malley Dillon, said in an interview with Glamour. She later apologized, but the comments were swiftly seized upon by Fox News and other conservative outlets.
When Biden said in December that he planned to sign an executive order on day one to require masks to be worn everywhere I can, he received a taste of whats to likely to come from Texas Republicans.
U.S. Rep. Chip Roy, R-Austin, responded: On day one I will tell you to kiss my ass.
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Texas is a hub of hyper-partisanship as American politics grow ever-more divisive - Houston Chronicle