 Good evening everyone. Thank you for being here tonight. My name is Karcee Mitzner, and I am the chair of the future forum, and I'd like to welcome you to the LBJ library and for those of you who are not members of the future forum, I just wanted to briefly tell you that we are a bipartisan public policy discussion forum, and we'd really encourage you to join and if you have any questions about our membership, we have a table over here with our upcoming events and you can ask anyone with a little name tag on. That's going to be a board member who will be able to tell you what all we are about, and just to let you know, our next event is a members-only tree lighting party, and we'll have an after-party at the Townsend, which will be really fun on December 3rd. And we have events coming up next year, a New Year happy hour, a future of Texas event with discussion with legislators about the upcoming session. We'll have a national security event and a women in leadership event. So I really hope to see all of you at those events, and for now, I'm going to hand it over to our board member and the Texas Tribune's editor-in-chief, Emily Ramshaw. Hi, I'm Emily Ramshaw. As Karcee said, the editor-in-chief of the Texas Tribune, and although the future forum is a bipartisan group, I've brought you a fleet of conservatives here who had pretty disparate views on this last presidential cycle. They are here to forecast the future of the GOP for you this evening. I'd love to introduce them. On the right is Erika Greeter, conservative writer and author of the Texas Tome Big Hot, Cheap and Right. Next there is Tamo Munoz, the chairman of the Federation of Hispanic Republicans, and he was on Jeb exclamation points Texas leadership team. Deirdre DeLisi is a GOP political consultant and longtime advisor to former Governor Rick Perry, and Jason Johnson is a political operative, and he was the chief strategist for Senator Ted Cruz's presidential bid. So as we were planning this conversation, I really thought we were going to be taking a different approach. Yes, I know the media and everyone else got it wrong. I thought we were going to be having a conversation about, you know, how the GOP was able to rebuild itself after this very historic election. It has turned out to be a historic election for a very different reason. I mean, I'd like for my first question to be what the hell, but I think my first question should actually be, you know, how do you all look at the party going forward? How do you think the Texas GOP fits into this equation? I mean, when you're looking at Washington right now, you know, how does the Republican Party that you all are familiar with, acquainted with, sort of recalibrate after this election? And anybody who wants to jump in, Jason, why don't you kick us up? Oh boy. Yep. You're wearing your elephant tie. Yeah, it was 1250 at Nordstrom Rite. So I agree, you know, that when we first visited about this, I was one of those who thought the world would look a little different. Though there were some conflicts in my mind, we can maybe discuss it another point. But, you know, I think the way I have thought about this even before Trump is that there are a lot of people who were already very, you know, quote, concerned about the future of the Republican Party go back to 2012 when President Obama was reelected the whole autopsy coming out. The demographic changes, the historical lack of appeal, right? And so I think all of that was true before last week, and it remains true today. It's just there are some more unique challenges that we may face going forward. The other issue that I thought more and more about particularly since May is if there are a lot of people who are saying that the Republican Party is dead, for example, I hear that a lot, is the Republican Party dead. And if you step back in and look outside of when they are in the House, they're in the Senate or in the White House, and just think about presidential elections and the historic role that parties have played in that nominating process, I think it's fair that a lot of people have criticized what role the traditional opinion leaders did or did not play. People can have reasonable arguments on both sides of that equation. However, from my perspective, when I think about this primary cycle and everything that occurred, frankly, it did prove that as one book that's been written, the party does decide. And it did decide. In some cases, people always talk about endorsements, a lack of endorsements, or a lack of a rejection, if you will, was in and of itself an endorsement of the ultimate nominee. So I mean, go forward. I think all of the challenges that existed before exist today, that's without knowing anything that may unfold once President-elect Trump is inaugurated. But, you know, I think so much will be determined in the next 12 months, starting in January. Dirdre, is Trump emblematic of any of the Republicans you know or of the Republican values that, I mean, no, you did vote for him in the end. I did. I voted for him. He's an anomaly. He's been an anomaly this entire election cycle from the moment he declared in Trump Tower that he was going to run for president. And his whole campaign has been completely atypical. I don't look at him in the sense of a conservative. I see him as a populist. And, you know, I think, as Jason said, we don't really know how this is going to play out at this point. There's a couple of indications that we're going to watch for. Who is he going to surround himself in the White House? Who is he going to appoint to key cabinet positions? And what's his relationship going to be with Congress? You know, I think Donald Trump had a luxury in this campaign cycle that traditional politicians don't have, which is he's never done this before, right? And so he was able, as I like to say, he was able to write checks with his mouth that he can't cash. A traditional politician says, okay, I can't, you can't say you're going to build a wall across the whole Mexican border. That's impossible. Forget the policy implications. It's just not feasible. He was never constrained by that. And people responded to it like, oh, it's a breath of fresh air. This is so different than a traditional politician. So it's going to be interesting to me to see how people respond to what he is able to accomplish, particularly in the next 12 to 18 months, in the lead up to the next midterms. And I think to go back to your original question, I think that has some significant implications for what's going to happen in Texas. I mean, never in a million years that I think on election night, Donald Trump was going to do better on Ohio than he did in Texas. We saw some real fishers in the Republican Party in Texas. We saw some urban problems really magnify. And so I think 18 could be a potentially a very interesting year in Texas as well as nationally, depending on how Trump responds to the challenge of leadership and governing in the next year or so. Tamal, I'm looking at the primary process this time around. Did the Republican Party lose control of itself? I mean, Jason was talking about where the party that we wanted to be, the party, the Republican Party in the end determined what it wanted to be. Did you all lose control? I personally called for the head of Ryan's Previous on Buzzfeed and that really got me into a lot of big timers in the GOP. You're not going to have any friends in the White House. Yeah, I won't. But we'll be all right. They're going to need us. But looking at where the GOP is at in the primary process, I think we have a lot of room for improvement. I agree. It depends on what Trump does in the future, especially when it comes and that's all I'm about at this point is Texas, where we're going to the future when it comes to the Hispanic vote. I'm a grassroots guy. I started out supporting Alan Keyes and built my way up to supporting Jeb at the national level. And I'm looking at Harris County, for example, where I'm from. And the truth of the matter is we lost it by 160,000 votes. And I'm watching all the party leaders, including Paul Simpson and these guys, discussing between us what happened. They're all like, what's going on? What's happening? Well, I ran Gilbert Pena's Racing in House District 144. And in 2012, we lost by six points. In 14, we won by 152 votes against an incumbent. She had a quarter of a million dollars. We only had $13,000 and we won because of grassroots. And now we got blown out by 21 points. 34% increase in the Hispanic community Democrat voters, 34% increase. This is a 75% Hispanic district. That's what Republicans need to pay attention to come into the future when Texas goes from 16 points to nine points. I look at California and as a proud Republican conservative, I'm worried that we're coming across the same trends in Texas. And already, I was asked about Trump and Hispanic outreach. And I said, look, I think to the future, if Trump doesn't do a good job when it comes to immigration, I think the future leaders who are running 10 years from now are going to be asked whether they supported Trump or not. And already, a good friend of mine, Tom Echler, chairman said, well, I think we're doing well with minorities. That's the problem right there, that we really got to pay attention to what's happening in Texas. And when you have party brass, you have donors, you got leaders who don't pay pay attention to what happened in California, and it's slowly happening in Texas as a conservative, that's what keeps me up tonight. So can I can I just say one thing as the old timer in this group? I did my presidential campaign in 1996. And I did in one in 2000, in 2012. And it wasn't involved in this one. It to go, but the process has become crazy. The process is out of control. I saw it starting in 2012 with the irony of it. We called it at the time the sort of reality TV show approach to nominate. It was like American Idol meets Survivor. And that was carried into this. You're not going to make a dancing with the stars, your friends, come on. Although, let's have a dance off. And it was sort of carried into the cycle. I mean, seeing how we used, you know, the 96 process and the 2000 process, a very serious minded approach to talking about policy and talking about issues. And what defines each candidate is like completely out of the window. And I think ultimately it hurts us as a party. I mean, you know, what are we becoming when our debates become these discussions of hand size? And I don't think there's no problem. Just verify that on red state today, right? On red state today, they were talking about Kanye West running for president in 2020. And red state, a contributor was a conservative wrote now it's possible because of what happened with Trump. Well, I mean, y'all are acting pretty calm for people. Ted Cruz called Trump a narcissist and a pathological liar. Rick Perry called him a cancer on conservative conservatism. We all know the like unbelievably horrific things Trump has said about women and minorities. I mean, Erica, how does the party get behind then somebody who's, you know, peddled these kinds of ways? I ask the question. I am not qualified to ask because I cannot imagine how anybody got behind this candidate, especially from a conservative point of view. I mean, even setting aside, even setting aside the xenophobia, the bigotry, the misogyny, there's the fact that he's, for example, against NAFTA. If he proceeds with those plans, that would be catastrophically bad for Texas. It would be a huge disruption, be wrenching. I was looking at some data from Houston today. Houston was already at risk of slipping into a regional recession, which could bring the state into recession when we were all assuming that Clinton would win. Now, you think about how leveraged that city is. I mean, how much investment they put into infrastructure for the expansion of the Panama Canal and so on. I mean, if we are going to do more protection of stance, that is going to be horrible for Texas and for the Texas Republican Party. Looking at this campaign, which I covered from August after we finished the last session and kind of did the best and worst and wrapped it up, I recognize Trump early on as a variety of a phenomenon we've seen before in Texas. You know, the sort of conservative who comes and casts himself as an outsider speaking truth to power and, you know, standing up to the powerful interests, the elites, the establishments, the media. And, you know, it's a kind of, I have very learned about it back last August because I've seen this playbook before. And it works because you sort of, when you say that you're speaking truth to power, and power includes like the media, the Fourth State, and people in your party, and the other side of the aisle, then you're making a kind of non-falsifiable claim and anything like the Fourth State says back is taken as proof that, oh, see they're cursing me, I told you they're out to get me, they're out to get me. So there's this kind of, you know, you've become in this sort of fact-free zone where you can make whatever claims you want. In Trump's case, often very ugly claims, very divisive, very polarizing claims. I think it was sort of in a sense like a freak accident that's happened. I mean, he's been threatening her president for, what, 30 years and now he finally did it. It was a crowded field. I, having covered Senator Cruz closely since he was first elected the Senate, I felt that given the mood of the electorate, the anger at the establishment, the anger at the elites, after eight years of a Democratic president, you often see a shift to the other party. I thought it was going to be either he or Cruz in the end, but the primary just dragged on so long with, you know, Rubio staying in the race, Kasich staying in the race, that by the time people realized that he had been the frontrunner all this time, the field was so split, it was tight to stop him. And then at that point, you have two major parties in a country and he was one of their nominees. So that's why he won. So in that sense, I don't think it tells us anything dispositive about the American character or even the Republican voter's character. I wouldn't judge a Trump voter for having voted for Trump, so we can still be friends if you want to. He was their nominee. I mean, so if he wasn't, if he wasn't okay, why would he be the nominee in the first place? But now, I mean, you have this sort of nationwide gaslighting where we're all kind of expected to just move on, like we didn't see this happen, like, and we didn't hear this happen, and we didn't hear all these ugly things. And I think Republican leaders would like to do that, would like to kind of treat him as though he's a normal president. And as an American, I pray that he will do well. I'm rooting for him to succeed. But I'm not going to tell anybody that they didn't just hear a year and a half of abuse from somebody who's now president-elect. I had friends call me in tears this week, and like, I've had a busy week too, but like, friends call me in tears, just, you know, feeling unsafe and welcoming their own country. My dad's an immigrant. I wonder if he feels I'm welcoming his own country now. And so I think that I'm not sure if there's a way to, for those of women to be acknowledged, but I think them not being acknowledged is going to make it hard for us to move on. It crows our trust in each other and ourselves. Plus, at the policy level, you now have a president who's a populist, nationalist, and a speaker of the house, Paul Ryan, who's a conservative in the same sense I am, like a classical liberal. So I think it's going to be very, very difficult for eight years. I'm curious, what did we learn about the Republican Party in Texas via this election? I mean, obviously the margin in Texas was not nearly as wide as it was some other places. I mean, are we seeing the same sort of populist streak? Is it muted here? Was there more concern among Hispanic voters? Maybe more concern among women. What did we learn about Texas this cycle? The urban communities? I mean, are there, are there red flags for you? Are there, are there symbols? I mean, the urban vote is what's the most concerning to me. I mean, every major urban area outside of, outside of Tarrant County is solidly voting Democrat now. Now, it's in a presidential election. You may not see that. You don't see that same kind of turnout in a gubernatorial year. But you know, the trend, that plus Trump getting what, eight and a half percent of the vote, winning by eight and a half percent margin down from Romney 16 and McCain's 12, you know, that's concerning. And, you know, it makes you think that, it makes me concerned that if there was a Democrat, if the Democrat Party could ever manage to find a candidate who could be somewhat credible in suburban Texas, they would have a fighting chance. And I do believe this. They could have a chance in 2018, depending on what happens in Washington and also what happens in Austin. We're going to be in a difficult legislative session. And if you have two bad situations going on at once, there could be a shot. I think it's a long shot, but, you know, I think there's reason. I don't think Republicans in Texas should be sitting back going, everything's great. This is not 2000, 2002. What do you think about that, Jason? I agree. And I think it's even worse, frankly, because here's the way I process Texas. So, I genuinely believe in the truth of the matter is, I did throughout the entire election, I just couldn't bring myself to accept it through the summer as certain things unfolded. And, frankly, things, none of them were surprised because different versions of all of those things that happened. But you look at Texas, and 2016 was a year when the Republican was going to win. You said most of the time, since the 22nd Amendment, it's only happened once, that we've given the White House to the same party three terms in a row. It was going to happen. And so, then you look at Texas and say, but wait, in Texas, the margin closed. So, okay, what is it about Trump? What is it about her? But I think if you then look out to the other states, I think the answer, and Eric, you said another thing, you said, I don't view people who voted for Trump, or at large, this is some reflection of our character at large. That's something I've struggled with, but I agree in the end. The real issue, I believe, is here in Texas, as we know, and a lot of great work you guys did in the past, the economy. And I believe this is an oversimplification, but that's the way I've been thinking about it. Why did I have so much time and feel so burdened and the responsibility to think about what a Trump candidacy means for our culture, for our parties, for my children, et cetera. Let's just be frank, because I have that time and I'm blessed economically. And I think for those of us, and it's not to say you don't think about those things if you're worried about your job or et cetera, but here in Texas, there are more of us that don't worry as much about putting food on the table, if you will. And as such, that gives you, it's much more realistic and a priority to say, wait a second, I'm not okay with that, because I'm not. But if you're in Michigan or you're in Pennsylvania and a part of the country that's been left behind, I don't believe the vast majority of those people were okay with it either. But they made a choice. They said, I can't go on. My children can't go on. My grandchildren won't have opportunity if we continue, whether they're right or wrong, if we continue with these policies. And so I think that's a part of the gap. And frankly, personally, it's encouraging to me, because people step back and say, you know what, I'm not going to vote, or I know people who said I'll vote straight ticket because I can't, I didn't vote at all. I voted, but I skipped the presidential. But I'll be very honest about it. I mean, it's like, well, gee, what a sacrifice, you're in Texas, you know he's going to win. And in July, I think it was after the convention, I started thinking more about if I were in Florida, if I were in Pennsylvania, and every time I landed on, no, because I'm not okay with this. But it was always lingering. And I always struggled with it. And I think that happened by and large, because you're like, you know, I don't like the way he talks. I sure as heck don't like it if he actually did these things. But for me and my family, I can't continue with these policies. The postmortems on this race have been fascinating, particularly when you go into the state by state analysis, and Wisconsin have just been obsessed with because when they called up, you know, I'm sitting there watching TV with my kids like Hillary Clinton's going to be president, right? And then they called Wisconsin, all of a sudden was like, maybe Donald Trump's going to win this thing. And they've gone back and they're talked to all these voters who were two time Obama voters in a place like Wisconsin, which Hillary Clinton just didn't even compete on. She lost by double digits to Bernie Sanders in the primary, and then never once visited the state in the general election, pulled her advertising money off the off of Wisconsin, because they were trying to compete in Arizona. They're trying to pick up a random delegate in Nebraska. I mean, the spending in Texas when she wasn't spending. Yeah, she was trying. She was spending more time trying to expand her map rather than focusing on on the Obama coalition. And, you know, these are people who were saying, you know, this they did an interview with a woman, a white woman, you know, two time Obama voter who said, I voted for Trump because he's the guy that's going to bring the change. That was all it was about for him, for her. She voted for Obama because she saw him as a change agent and didn't really see too much change and too much opportunity for her family. And she said, I voted for Trump because I hope he mixes things up, but I hope he doesn't go too far. And so I think that is a prevalent, prevalent attitude out there. Tim, I'm curious. I mean, what does this mean for for Latino outreach among the Republican Party? I mean, how did this move the needle backward? What did this do for the quote unquote sort of sleeping giant? I think it did. You know, I listened to what Jason's saying, you know, one of the issues I had with Ted Cruz, I told him to personally, when he ran for Senate was he raised the issue, legitimized it, legitimized the issue of in-state tuition for illegal kids. You know, and I'm hearing through our own party that might become an issue here in this legislative session. Once you add that on top of what Trump said during the campaign, it's very difficult to go to Hispanic communities and knock on doors and go on a mission to the mundo and sell the GOP. It's it's it's nearly impossible. I invite anybody who's a Republican, I dare them to go to any restaurant or any workplace and just do it anecdotally. You know, from an anecdotal standpoint, don't don't don't look at the polls just just try and sell the GOP. And I think we do have an issue we got to address, but I also agree with Deidre that, you know, Trump could could really, you know, the same way he sold the opposite, he can do he can improve vastly. I've actually heard a lot of the people I've talked to, pastures and community leaders, Chamber of Commerce guys, they heard from Trump over the weekend from a 60 minutes interview, a little a little bit of hope, like they said, is he softening the guy commands national attention, and he could flip you can change the brand within hours. So, you know, yeah, I'm hoping for a lot from Trump right now. I guess the desperate position I guess you could say you're hoping he's unpredictable. Well, yeah, you know, you look at picks he's doing, you know, Paul Ryan, Ryan's previous these guys, the guys he's leaning on, some of them have great positions on immigration. And then you have other guys like badden and you have, you know, Chris Kobosh, rumors floating around. I think he's a guy that doesn't have much of a grasp on policy. He allows people to fight in the room for what should be the ideal position. For me, that's that's a good thing, you know, at this point. Did you vote for him? I did not. I voted for Ed McMillan, only 659 people did in Harris County. So yeah, but again, it was a Mormon guy, a Mormon that led, you know, I grew up evangelical, some of you God, and I hear conservatism, classical liberalism. And it was, I was taught as a child that I, and I, you know, and look, this, we all probably have things in our past like that. I was taught that the Mormons were a cult and, but it was a Mormon who held the anchor for conservative values. And I voted for the guy because, you know, I thought, wow, what happened to our conservatism? What happened to the Big Ten approach? Compassionate conservatism, you know, society of ownership, you know, points of light, all that that brought me to the party. I remember 2000, we had at the convention, I wasn't there, but I saw a lot of my friends on the old videos on C-SPAN. We had a famous Mexican mariachi singer named Vicente Fernandez singing at the National Convention. And all the Texas delegates in the very front, because of Bush, were waving their hats and singing, you know, and then 16 years later, I'm at the convention, and I'm hearing Trump attack NAFTA. I got up and left there and NAFTA because I'm like, I'm from Texas. We're making money in Texas, you know, cash money, and it was kind of strange to see that flip. So from an Hispanic outreach, a grassroots guy, I've run a lot of campaigns, one campaigns. We have a real issue, and I think we're gonna wait and see a sort of phase here with Trump to see what he does. Eric, I want to ask you about the Texas legislature getting ready to go into session. You know, obviously, a GOP-led legislature. Now we've got a GOP-led Congress. We have a GOP president in theory, and we're going to get a Supreme Court justice conservative leaning, we think. Yeah. Maybe Ted Cruz, although that's looking less likely. What does this mean for the legislature? I mean, do they have sort of carte blanche to do whatever they want? Can they act without fear? Can they, you know, pass policies that they don't have to worry about getting overturned? Well, they were doing that regardless. I mean, there's this sort of oppositional, I know it may be funny, but I think that they're probably, like, I think if you're someone like, Greg, I have a better day in Patrick, in a way, it's better for you to have Obama as the sort of, you know, the kind of constant figure that you're always going against Obama. You're always suing DC and so on. I think I think it's like the priorities we've heard cited things like bathroom privacy, women's privacy, you know, that's not a priority for Trump. So I mean, I guess it's not even a priority for the state. It's a state of 20-something people. We've got more than 5 million kids in public schools. We've got infrastructure needs. We're going to have serious economic problems ahead of us in the next year. I think any priorities that are these sort of minor, objectively minor issues, if we're going to have, like, long debates about those, that's just going to further, further, further erode the public's trust in our government. I think, you know, as far as, I actually did think the state was going to be more competitive than people expected. I've, you know, I've wrote this a number of times. It was a bigger margin than I thought it was going to be, frankly, partly because it's a conservative state. Like, we have every kind of conservative here. So if you're a conservative who's serious about being conservative, you know, like, you have ample reason not to vote for Trump. So the amount of defectors, and we did see Democrat turnout come up, too, but it was really the margin error because of defectors. People who cared about the issues, cared about the principles and values they've always said they cared about, who were just, at the end of the day, going to say, you know, maybe because, you know, it was sort of not a swing state, but just at the end of the day, we're going to say, I'm not going to do this. I can't support this person. Like, my fellow Texans are not collateral damage. I'm against, you know, dismantling NAFTA for no apparent reason. But yeah, I think it's going to be a tough session. And tell me why you think it's going to be a tough session. Because they don't have Washington to beat up anymore? Because there's widespread doubt in the leaders. The most credible leader at this point of the big three is Joe Strauss. And he will do his best. This is probably his last session. But already last session, looking back at that, you know, you have this weird sort of House versus Senate dynamic. And there's this kind of conception on the, you know, in the conservative grassroots that Joe Strauss is the enemy, that by dealing with Democrats at all, he's a traitor to the cause. When in reality, Strauss is, I think, more conservative on fiscal issues and more conservative in the class of the liberal sense than Governor Patrick is. So, I mean, we'll have a tighter revenue estimate, which in a way I'm almost happy about because there's less money to fight over. But we'll see this sort of personalized politics where, you know, if the House is trying to stand against an effort to scale back or repeal in state tuition, that it'll be cast as, oh, Joe Strauss, the rhino, it's squish, you know. When in reality, in state tuition has been good for Texas, it doesn't cost us anything. It's, I mean, it's not a, it's just a smart thing to do for a workforce. It was smart when Governor Perry signed it. I mean, it doesn't won. So. I want to get a sense from you all. Let's talk about our current state leaders and who might end up in Washington in a potential Trump administration. Let's start with, let's start with Cruz, obviously, a very vocal opponent of Trump. He's currently probably not on Trump's best friend list. He has been talked about as a potential Supreme Court appointee. Where do you think Cruz is going to end up? Is there a slot for him? Truly don't know. Truly, truly don't know. Well, there was just a report this afternoon that he was in New York and met what the president led. Truly don't know. I truly don't. What about Rick Perry, who has been very vocal on veterans issues? I think both Rick Perry and Ted Cruz are too much of a threat to Trump's ego to be cabinet appointees, which is a shame, perhaps. Someone like Rick Perry think would be great at DOD or at VA, but I think that, I mean, Trump seems to really prioritize loyalty. And so, Sid Miller, perhaps, I mean, if you can stop using, yes, inappropriate words for female genitalia. That doesn't matter though. Why would that matter? Right. That's why would that matter? It didn't stop him from becoming, you know. Yeah. It might be a badge of honor. Yeah. Yeah, it's a feature on a bug. I, Governor Abbott was at the meeting today in New York also with Cruz. Is, I mean, potentially Governor Abbott could be a SCOTUS pick. But yeah. I mean, I think one of the reasons I love working for Rick Perry, he's a big, he's a big go big or go home kind of guy. I think Trump would have to offer him something really fantastic. And to Erica's point, I don't know if that really fantastic offer would come down. Because, you know, he's had a long political career and long career in public service. He doesn't need a job in the administration. You know, I think probably the two Texans that maybe have the best shot of some role in the administration. Well, Don Willett's name was on the list. So, you know, all reports are that for Supreme Court that Trump is going to pick a name off of that list. And then potentially a Michael McCall in a Homeland Security position. I mean, he's terminated it out of his chairmanship. So, you know, there are a lot of really great members of Congress who could serve in great capacities. We'll just, we'll just see how it plays out. I want to be a little bit self-critical. I mean, how, how did the media, how did the pollsters, how did the pundit class get it so wrong? Oh, we all got it wrong. Right. How did we all get it so wrong? I got it, I got it less wrong than I think a lot of media did because I've been covering it for, you know, it's actually, and to be fair to everyone else in the media, it was like, I think that in Texas we were better because we've been covering Republican primaries so much. The polling was also better here than it was virtually anywhere. Yeah. And also as Texans, we knew Ted Cruz's record better than the national media did. I mean, you know, I went to DC in April I think and I was talking to some friends who were journalists there and they're, you know, smart, thoughtful, conservative journalists and they were like, he's the worst. And I was like, you know, I actually can kind of see that. Like, like if you're, if you've been in DC and your sources are all in Congress, since as a Texan, you know, I voted for Ted Cruz three times, like specifically to go to DC and cause problems. So I was like, you know, I can see why you guys think he's causing problems because that is why we sent him to DC to do that. That's, of course, a more general problem. There's not very much, I mean, this is a problem for the whole primary. There's not that many journalists who are not based in DC and New York or on the coasts. So I think that's really like Charlie Sykes in Wisconsin, kind of what a voice he was and how important he was because there's not that many of us who are not outside the coastal centers. I think that beyond that, you know, part of the problem is that a lot of quote unquote media elites come from an elite background. They don't have ties to the white working class. There also is, I think, the problem of this sort of, I mean, we keep using the word normalization. Maybe it's not the right word, but there's this, I think, effect where if you have cable news on the background of your day-to-day life or you put on morning show and you're making your coffee, then you see this kind of person who has like funny hair and is kind of like a funny 80s caricature but like is being treated as though he's normal by these adults who are normal, you know? Then you're kind of desensitized. You get this mental callus. And so you wouldn't think when he declares his candidacy that he's as extreme or as kind of valuable and strange as he's proven to be because you have this idea that he's a successful businessman. He's got his name on buildings and stuff. I don't watch cable. So I was like, you guys. But yeah. Jason, how were we this surprised? Were you surprised? I'm just going to let him hang here until he answers the question. I'll add that I was, what I got most wrong was I got white women really wrong, which is straight. The what? White women. Don't save Jason. Save me. We have a lot of rough here, I think, but no, you know, I am a white woman. And so I think that if you look at the exit polls, like a majority of white men voted for Trump, a majority, a smaller majority of white women voted for Trump in the state of Wisconsin. This is huge, right? I think I thought that white women would have the same reaction to Trump's misogyny, at least, that women of color. You know, I think part of it, it was such a off the wall campaign. He didn't do any of the things that you're told and you grow up thinking that you have to do an order when a state rep writes, much less the presidency, there was no grassroots organization. There was no, you know, super cool Obama style, Silicon Valley, you know, skunk works coming up with cool technology to help, you know. And so I think that all kind of lulled us into a sense of this isn't a real campaign. Well, let me speak. That's how I felt that this wasn't really real. This was a force of personality thing. And that without those fundamentals, you just can't compete in these states. And I think that's one of the reasons why I got lulled into the, well, of course Hillary's gonna win narrative. That it just, everything I've learned and grew up in politics doing, he did none of it and still managed to win a very convincing victory. I like to think that there's a basic feeling amongst the American people that when they're disrespected, they strike back. I remember with Rush Limbaugh, he had Operation Chaos where he wanted to rig, I guess you could say, the Democrat primary, Democratic primary. You could say that. Yeah, he wanted to rig it and he asked voters to vote for Obama, right over Hillary. And we got Obama and he won in eight years. And I feel like the media at this time, same thing with Trump, you know. They wanted to push him and there's a figure out there, $2 billion and earned media, you know. And I think a lot of people out there were like, you know, I think Americans, at the end of the day, they know when something's being pushed and they're being trolled sort of and they strike back. And I was asked about, you know, what's happening with American democracy. I think all the people I've seen come from the Trump camp, good people. I mean, some of them, like 20%, maybe I can say, I don't really agree on their extreme views, but a lot of them are just normal guys who have been out of the loop when it comes to politics. And they finally got involved. And they're just like, yeah, I'm gonna go with Trump. You know, it's like just, yeah, this guy just, in the instinct, you know, and these guys have been out of the game. They don't go to precinct chair conventions or state conventions. They're not listening to talk with it all the time. These are just normal people who have to pay bills and are in debt. And what I'll notice is, you know, when they feel like they're being played, they will speak up. And, you know, I agree with that. And I think also there's so few people who can credibly push back against that. So one thing that was really kind of poignant covering the primary was that, if you look at the states that Trump lost, it's like Ohio, which had its governor running and campaigning as if Ohio's the most important state imaginable, Utah, which has a very strong tight end Mormon communities and had Mitt Romney come out and say, you know, I'm gonna vote for Ted Cruz and then you can go back 50 points. You have, of course, Texas, Cruz's home state, Oklahoma, which is adjacent to Texas. All the caucus states, and Cruz won all of them besides Minnesota was Rubio won. So it's like anywhere there was somebody who was there to kind of cut through the noise to say, I'm your neighbor. I'm your governor. I'm your friend. I care about you. I've cared about you since before Trump showed up. I'm not lying to you. I'm not a cable news person. I'm not somebody you can easily just dismiss as media or the establishment or a backer of Jeb. Like when there was somebody who was saying credibly with earned trust, I'm not gonna go for that. You shouldn't either. That's when Trump was stopped. And so it's sad there weren't more states that had such leaders. So the reason I pause is because I want to be very careful because I remember the morning after 2012. I was, it was like seven in the morning and I had a horrible headache. And I really do believe it was a sinus infection. But I mean, really like bad, like I've never had before and I was sitting on a panel and it was 7 a.m. the morning after. What just happened? And I could literally hear the pulse in my head. I was hurting so bad. And so I'm just trying to make it through this. And even in that fog, I was like, wait a second, the guy who sort of does what I do who's a Democrat and this journalist, they just said the exact same thing, but like in the exact same way. And it was like the narrative is set. And then the autopsy comes out and there's nothing wrong with this. It's natural. When we look at particularly in politics a process and say, well, what went wrong? Or why were we surprised? The look back analysis tends to be more of a, an act of persuasion to impact it next time to conform to the things that I want. And I just think that's important to say. And it's an important part, in my opinion, of what happened this time. In my opinion, while everything that he mentioned earlier is spot on and true about the challenges that the Republican Party faces among the Hispanic community, many other communities, all of those things are true. They're not necessarily in a given year the reason for victory or defeat. And they can be true while other things are true. All of that to say, think about the amount of time and energy that then was distributed through all channels. But most importantly, if you're a Republican primary voter, you pretty much get your information from one place, and that's Fox News, as to why we lost in 2012. And none of them mentioned the truth. We lost because he was always going to win reelection, given GDP, given his approval, given the fact that when the American people elect someone, it's almost always an eight-year contract. But we were told all of these other reasons, and so you talk about being punked or trolled. There was some of that reaction. You're told over and over and over again, you have to vote for someone. The only way you can win the presidency, take an issue as to be for amnesty, and not to get into debate about what that means, but I'm just using it as an example. And so there was so much pent up demand for a victory, demand to undo these policies, et cetera, et cetera. And I saw this in focus groups where there were very... I remember this one lady from Iowa who was, I would say, a constitutional conservative. And she, through the session, I'm just taking notes, I was learning a lot about how to talk about things, and then it got to the very end. And the panelists asked the participants, well, do you think that a actual conservative can win? And to a person, this is in Iowa. They all said, no, can't happen. That's what I want. That's what I know, a classic liberal or constitutional conservative. Those are the ideals we need put into action, but we can't do it. We're a minority. And so fast forward to the end, the last poll we took in Wisconsin, 60, mid-60s, 60-something percent of those who cast a ballot for Ted Cruz, said they thought that Donald Trump would win the nomination. And all this to say, people just wanted to win. And all they've seen from a partisan perspective and much more, by the way, but from a partisan perspective, we haven't won. We've got to win. There's this media mogul. And towards the end of the process, in the primary, at least everybody said, he's going to win, and that became reality. I agree with the comments that have been made about why were we surprised. Some of us just don't, as I said earlier, I'm not okay with this. But all of that, I believe it started in 2012 and all of those streams of information and you wake up and hear y'all. Well, we're about to open it up to questions, but I just want each of you in a phrase. What would you say to your Democratic friends who are feeling grave despair right now, not just sort of the Hillary loss, but at this idea that white nationalism has sort of risen to the surface as this toxic element of this campaign? You've got somebody like Bannon who's going to be in the White House. What do you say to your despairing Democratic friends? I'm assuming you have some. That was bad to be moved. Yeah, this is, I actually, there were President Obama's comments, I believe in Greece, was it yesterday? There were many things he said that had me scratch my head, but there was one thing that he said that I thought was very important and it was, as he often does, just kind of looks back and talks about it from this higher level. And I think in this way it was appropriate. He said, history takes many twists and many turns and it's important for us to remember that. Beyond that, I absolutely believe in conjunct history takes many twists and turns, but love does prevail over hate. It absolutely does. I wouldn't want to offer any advice that I actually think is good on what they're doing wrong in reaction, but I do believe that. And I would hope that they would take some comfort and that there have been many people throughout this process who have gone against their own financial interests. They've put their reputations on the line to stand up on those particular issues and say, I'm not with that, I'm not for that, that is not okay. Because it's not. Anybody else? I mean, I'd say our country is bigger than one person. You know, this is not dissimilar to conservatives who were thought of what the world was coming in when Obama was elected president. The country is bigger than one person, the institution is bigger than one person. And there's plenty of checks and balances in the system that I got to think that at the end of the day, anything that is, there's not a system set up for really crazy policies to proceed. And I personally take comfort in that. I would say, in my opinion here in the United States, out of conflict and competition comes growth, it's good to have two parties that are healthy and competitive and put together good ideas and we battle it out. And I would recommend to Democrat friends is look at what happened with the election and encourage your party to be more transparent. What I'm talking about is Hillary, I think one of the emails that came out where she said she had, I don't know if I'm phrasing it right, but I think she spoke out with some bankers or something in Brazil and she said, there's something you present to the public and then there's this private sort of this noble lie. You know, I think the Republican party has the same issue in terms of conservatism, you know, the noble lie, classical liberal thing. You know, look at the liberty movement, right? That I'm a part of as well. I feel like there's a yearning for transparency and just being real and being true with people about how things work and what's really going on. And I think both parties are getting to that point. So I think Hillary got hit a lot because of this, what she presented to the people and what was really going on. And it was all pulled back because of weak elites. I would recommend to Democratic friends is make your party more transparent, making more for the people. And you know, and we'll do the same on Arning. Well, I've been saying to my friends who are upset that it's still our country. We all still belong here. That I'll be here. I'll still be fighting for it and with my friends and with my family. And in Texas, I said to my friends that I think in 2018 there are gonna be candidates. There will be some good candidates. And I think some of them can win. So in the state at least, I think especially in the state, because the thing we saw in the Rust Belt, the upper and west states of Ohio, those states might not change, but we actually can change. And it could be important that we change by 2018 because by 2020, who knows where we'll be. So, thank you. All right, we're gonna open it up to questions. Yes, sir. Can we talk about the future of Texas kids? Use that mic, please. And questions, not comments, go. Can we talk about the future of Texas kids just recently to report early child intervention cuts are harming children. Kids with disabilities are losing access to their therapist due to budget cuts. The Texas Education Agency has been found to be conducting a practice to effectively cap kids going to special education far below the national average in the CPSs and chaos. Are we looking at, and every one of these things can be traced back to Republican-led appropriations decisions. What's up in next session? Are we gonna cut more franchise taxes or try to restore some of the things and invest in these kids? Well, I think the leadership has already made CPS reform and adding additional funding to CPS a priority. I think that will undoubtedly be done. It is the hardest issue to deal with. It's the hardest issue I had to deal with when I was in government because the real solution to that problem is parents loving their children and the governor can't mandate that. But that's been made clear as a priority. You've got Strauss already talking about the special ed issues. Next session is gonna be a difficult session because there will be a tight budget circumstance. In many respects, it's easier to write a budget when you don't have a lot of money. But it is, and that was my experience in the legislature, working with the legislature. But what's gonna make this session harder is that not only do you have that difficult budget situation, you have these very weighty issues on top of them as well, like school finance, like education reform, like CPS reform. And that's gonna be competing for oxygen with some of these more social conservative issues, like a revisiting of the voter ID bill, a revisiting of House Bill 2, the bathroom issue. I mean, we could go on and on. So I think those are all gonna be priorities and my experience has been that in tough budget cycles, the lawmakers do a much better job of divvying up the funds. And so I am cautiously optimistic on those issues that have already been identified that there will be progress made. Yes, sir. Trying to reach out to minority groups, to the urban voter, et cetera. How do you do that when your leadership, still as was made very clear yesterday in Governor Patrick's 10 priorities, is still playing to that very, very, very small minority in the Republican primary. And not to the general voter, and not to the voters at large. This is running again on 10 priorities. And he's not talking about CPS. He wasn't talking about education reform. He's talking about vouchers. None of his playing, he was talking about windstorm, tart reform, et cetera. None of the issues that he's raised are the type things that reach out to that urban voter or to that Hispanic voter. So how does the Republican party then make inroads with any of those communities, given those kinds of priorities? I think it's sort of the tragedy of the comments where everybody knows the growth and opportunity project, Autops Report did that with Ryan, sat down with him. Everybody knows the issue. Immigration is a problem. Everybody knows the problem with Hispanic outreach. The problem is who's going to do it? Who's going to do the outreach? If you look at candidates who run for office, they have to focus on winning their race. If you look at legislators, they got to represent their districts. If you look at the party mechanism itself, they got to raise money and throw conventions. So who are the guys that do the actual outreach or who brings in new voters? That's really the issue with the Republican party is everybody knows we got to reach the Hispanic community, but institutionally, I don't know if there's anybody out there or a machine or a mechanism that can do it. We're going to need the donor class to step up and just do it from an altruistic standpoint or find another reason. But I don't expect Dan Patrick to be that guy. When Rick Perry was in office, I was stunned when SB 1070 hit in Arizona and Rick Perry stood in front of the TV and said, it's not going to happen in Texas. I was like, awesome, because now I can go to a new mission and I can say, well, you know what? Rick Perry is our leader and he's speaking for our Republican party. No matter what Steve King says or Chevrolet Joe or a pile, that was awesome. And we were able to make inroads. We need more of that. People who are willing to risk political capital and just look at the future. But you know, I don't know if Dan Patrick's that guy, but I know Rick Perry was. And we really appreciate that. Hey, guys. So my question's kind of about, I think the whole point of this was kind of to come and talk about a party in disarray after their election loss. We spent a lot of time talking about the Republican party here, but no talk about sort of where the Democratic party goes after this. We saw, you know... That'll be next week. Future of the Democratic party. But I just want to kind of see if anyone has an opinion about kind of what, you know, who leads that, who leads that party going forward? What does it look like? Does it move one way or the other? In a lot of ways, it's kind of, that's the big surprise. It's sort of almost as much turned upside down as people sort of expected the Republican party to be, I think at this point. Let's take that one. But I'll just comment in kind of also in response, if the questions and the issues you laid out, I didn't see Governor Patrick's 10 points yesterday, but the piece where you said, if this is true, I'll just give you this, that in your opinion, you know, it's all tailored to a very small, you know, population. So I think put another way, you're saying activist within the Republican party. The same is true for the Democrat party. And I think that that is their major issue go forward, particularly when they went into this election with a firm belief that we have a blue wall. And why do we have this blue wall? And the early moves that I see them making, there doesn't appear to be a course change at all. I mean, when I'm out of Texas, I talk about, you know, how amazing it is and how encouraging and how healthy it is that I know actual elected Democrats in Texas who work with Republicans and vice versa. And it's rare that the end product is not better, right? Believe this or not, I think I'm crazy. There ain't a lot of that in Washington, D.C. And it's not just on one side. And I think go forward for the Democrats, I mean, they accomplished a lot, things that I disagree with, I assume we all disagree with, but you look at the rhetoric, the organizing, and unless you fit into a certain category, and all of those categories are great, but it's just, it's a message, ironically, about we're hope in the future and open to everyone, but there sure seems to be a lot of exclusion. And if they, I think the best advice they could take would be go back to James Carville, it's the economy student. I mean, I think in Texas, it's weird when they make gains, they don't seem to capitalize on those games in presidential years and capitalize it into gubernatorial elections. So weird, it's like there's just been this cycle that, thank God they haven't figured out, that we're just going to put all of our chips on some cultural or media phenomenon to, this is going to be the person to lead our party out of the doldrums. It was the dream team in 2002, last cycle, it was Wendy Davis. This time, I know I'm throwing it way back. Wendy Davis, now it's the Castro brothers. It's like this, they want to pin it all on personalities, but there's really no structural, they're not building the foundation for long-term success. So, I mean, I know I'm sort of contradicting myself because I just said earlier, 2018 could be their year, they could elect somebody, but God, they make it hard for themselves. I don't know who that is because I turned on the radio last week driving down to Corpus Christi, and it's all about, is Wendy Davis going to run against Ted Cruz? Is the memory that short? It'll probably be a Castro brother. Yeah, it'll probably be a Castro brother. Yeah. Do I have any women in the audience who have their hands up? Yes, ma'am, right there. Okay, so the Republican Party has long criticized the Democratic Party for running on identity politics. Do you think what Donald Trump did was running on identity politics, and do you think the future of the GOP will try to capitalize on the white vote? Yes, I think he did run on identity politics, and it is a classical liberal conservative. I was disappointed by that. Usually someone like me in my position would just not say anything because Trump just won, but I think if we're going to talk about the future of the GOP, we got to learn, especially in Texas. I do believe that, and again, I'll do respect to Jason. I just speak what I look at and what I observe. I believe Ted Cruz was one of the first guys to start the trend. I remember in D.C., there was a march for jobs where he had African-American pastors who were out there, and he told them that illegal immigrants were taking the jobs of young black Americans. I'm a Kato Institute guy. You look at all the data, and that's unproven, but it's a powerful weapon when you do divide by class. I was really sad to see my party conservative women go that route this time. Donald Trump is not a conservative. He's a pure political animal that did what he had to do. He's a businessman. It was a vehicle. That's the only hope I could come up with, that he was not a true conservative that participated in that type of politics. But I do see Paul Ryan out there. I see he's a Jack Kemp guy. To me, he's a young guy. He's part of that new movement. Look at Mike Lee, Ben Sass. These are guys that are stepping up and really pushing the party towards what should be, to me, the standard. And I think you're going to, I believe, just looking at how things are playing out from a spectator standpoint, I think you're going to see them influence Trump, and I think we're going to be surprised. Even though he's engaged in a lot of rhetoric that was horrible, I think we're going to be surprised to what he's going to do in the next 18 months. Take one more. Yes, Paul Stoeckler in the back there. Can you stand up, please, so we can hear you? I'm curious about the coming internal battles that might happen among the leadership. Erica, you said that Strauss is going to be, probably this will be his last speaker time. I've heard interesting rumors. Maybe they're silly about McCall, perhaps challenging Cruz in a senatorial primary. And are there other primary challenges likely to happen before the 2018 race among the Republican candidates? Are there other likely primary challenges? I would say that Governor Patrick's been raising enough money to suggest that he's going to run for either reelection or for a higher state office in 2018. He has said he doesn't want to run for governor. Maybe he's raising money for reelection, but he can't transfer those funds to a Senate campaign, so I don't think it's going to be a primary challenge to Cruz. But I think that, I don't think we'll see a challenge to Strauss's speaker as we saw last time. I mean, I suppose if Sid Miller is still there, then somebody might actually be a priority. There has been a lot of talk about it. There will be a primary challenge to Ken Paxton if General Paxton is still the AG. I think that depends on what happens in his court case. Yeah, and so that, I mean, if he's gone, then there won't be, but if he's still there, I've talked to some very, very frustrated conservatives who do not think that it's good to have a kinder indictment be the Attorney General. Is Cruz anticipating a primary challenge? Has he had any conversations with McCall about this? Not to my knowledge, but absolutely, you should always expect a challenge. And it's cliche as that sounds, it's true. I'm sorry to interrupt, but Ted Cruz is great. He did something that was really hard, and he wanted to be the president, and he came so close to it, and it didn't happen. And he came back to Texas. He must have been exhausted after that presidential. That was a long presidential cycle. He came back to Texas, and he started running around the state, like he was running, like he was on the ballot this time. And- Well, he sort of was on the ballot. I mean, he'd angered a lot of folks in this party. Neither here nor there. He wasn't on the ballot this time. He's on the ballot in two years, and maybe that's why he did him, maybe not. But to his credit, he did it. Not a lot of people did that. And I think that's the type of kind of attitude we need to have in the Republican primary or the Republican party going forward, that you shouldn't just run when you're on cycle. I read some article where he was in some sugar land. He was like- He was like facibly tipping cows in West Texas. I mean, that is really hard to do after going through a really tough, and being at the highest peak of politics, and to come back and do that. And you know, that's the type of thing that all these guys and women, who are in leadership in this party, should be doing in Texas, because I don't think we can thank him for granted. You better be careful. It sounds like Deirdre wants to work for Ted. I'm not a politics. I'm sure it does. All right. Well, we're going to wrap up here. There are going to be cocktails and appetizers following this, but thank you all so much for joining us, and thanks so much to our great panelists. Thank you.