Trump ought to respect Texas more
President Donald Trump trundled through Houston on Monday, ostensibly to support GOP Sen. Ted Cruz’s bid for re-election.
Some 20,000 Texans attended Trump’s rally at the Toyota Center, and I hope they enjoyed their evening.
Democratic voters in Texas have been having a lot of fun throughout the 2018 midterm election cycle. They were especially animated on Monday, the first day of early voting.
Thousands of voters convened at various locations around Houston to greet Cruz’s Democratic challenger, U.S. Rep. Beto O’Rourke, who is romping around the state this week rustling Texans to the polls. Some voters even camped out overnight at the Metropolitan MultiService Center on West Gray so they could be among the first Texans to cast ballots on the first day of early voting.
There were still hundreds of voters in line when I stopped by Monday afternoon, and the mood was festive.
By 1 p.m., Harris County voters had smashed the previous record for the number of votes cast during the first day of early voting in a midterm election.
After polls closed, Harris County Clerk Stan Stanart reported that turnout was commensurate with the first day of early voting in 2016. Similar results were reported all across Texas. And the trend continued Tuesday.
That doesn’t mean Texas will “turn blue” on election day. But this year’s Democratic challengers, like O’Rourke, have generated more grassroots excitement, for the most part, than Republican incumbents like Cruz. And Texas voters who support the latter have reason to be dispirited by the way GOP leaders have behaved lately — and, especially, since Trump was elected president.
Set aside your political beliefs, for a moment, and think about this as a Texan. This is the second-largest state in the country. It has 38 electoral votes, and an economy roughly the size of Canada’s. Trump, as a New Yorker, might not agree that Texas is the greatest state in the country. But he should nonetheless be able to recognize it as one that is crucial to his own fortunes.
A recession in Texas, for example, would take a toll on the national macroeconomic indicators Republicans keep touting. And Texas is more exposed to that risk than most states, because of Trump’s enthusiasm for tariffs and trade wars.
And as Republican U.S. Sen. John Cornyn put it at Trump’s rally on Monday, Texas is the GOP’s “firewall.” Texas voters are likely to play a crucial role in deciding whether Republicans retain control of the U.S. House come January — and whether they can still rely on Texas’s electoral votes in plotting out their path to the White House.
The president, however, seemed to think he was doing Texas a favor by visiting Houston. During the course of the rally, he disrespected us repeatedly.
Trump commended Cruz as one of his most helpful supporters in Washington, D.C., even though Texans didn’t send Cruz to Congress to be anyone’s lapdog.
The president was here in town to stump for Cruz. But the best he offered was dubious and tepid criticism of O’Rourke.
“He pretends to be a moderate but he’s actually a radical, open-borders left-winger,” said Trump, showing a strange lack of the imagination that usually characterizes his insults.
Trump also maligned Gov. Greg Abbott by claiming the governor begged for his help in the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey. Abbott may well have made such a call, but he shouldn’t have had to — and Trump shouldn’t have embarrassed the governor by pointing it out, if true.
The president also appeared not to know who is on the ballot in Texas this year. At one point, Trump encouraged the audience to vote for U.S. Rep. Ted Poe, who is retiring at the end of his term in the 2nd Congressional District. Trump should have named Republican Dan Crenshaw, a first-time candidate who is facing off against Democrat Todd Litton.
Worst of all, however, is that Trump once again maligned the many Texans who rushed to the aid of their neighbors with “little boats” during Harvey.
“Where do these people come from?” the president asked.
“They want to go out, and they want to go into the hurricane, to… show their wife how great they are?” he continued, incredulously.
Any resident of Houston knows how absurd this claim is. The crowd, in fact, seemed perplexed by it.
Still, the mood in the Toyota Center was otherwise exuberant. I’m sure the voters who attended it had fun.
But many Texas voters have tired of Trump’s show — and hundreds of thousands of them voted on Monday, which must have been fun, too.