Texas Politics & Government: Ideas and Institutions

Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. Moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue. -Senator Barry Goldwater I would not normally quote Barry Goldwater (although when I was a 2 nd Lieutenant in pilot training, I did run into him in the men’s room at Andrews AFB in 1964, but that’s another story for another time). Today, Memorial Day, however, I’m proud to quote him. Not so much for the first sentence—but for the second. It seems to me that the pursuit of justice (in the broadest sense) is what is missing in contemporary politics. When I think of my friends from the Air Force who died while on active duty—John Banks, Tom Fiedler, Jim Goodman, I know that they would want both the defense of liberty and the pursuit of justice. Their lives lost were in vain if we don’t work tirelessly to achieve both. May God bless all veterans today.

With the decision by 43 Catholic organizations to challenge the Obama Administration's rule that contraception must be covered (see here ), I think that an earlier piece that I wrote originally as a letter to the editor of the Austin American-Statesman (but never sent) may be appropriate here. So here it is: The controversy over the Obama administration’s ruling that access to contraceptives must be provided in healthcare plans offered by religiously-affiliated colleges and universities, hospitals, and charities provides an interesting insight into the conduct of contemporary politics in the United States. The rule was established based on state law in California and New York. According to the Guttmacher Institute, in February 2012, 28 states “currently require insurers that cover prescription drugs to provide coverage of the full range of FDA-approved contraceptive drugs and devices.” Two of the states exclude emergency contraception and one state excludes minor dependents from...

I know that some of you have already voted in the primary election through early voting, which started on May 14 th and continues through May 25 th . This coming weekend is the only weekend available to vote; so if you haven’t voted in the Republican or Democratic Party’s primary (you have to choose one), then go to the polls this weekend or next week. In this post, I want to continue with a consideration of polarization of the public, and especially the active citizens, in Texas . I’m going to present two articles (I’ve edited them) to illustrate what’s happening in the Republican Party and then comment on the articles. First, a blog post on The Texas Tribune Web site ( http://www.texastribune.org ) by Jim Henson, a lecturer at UT-Austin. In the blog post, he projects the ideological composition of the likely voters in the Republican primary, based on the responses received in the February 2012 UT-Austin/Texas Tribune public opinion poll. The Very Conservative Core in Te...

Continuing in the same vein as the last post, consider the following information, which I drafted as the beginning of an article on partisan polarization in Texas. In these tables, I have divided independents into pure independents and leaners. I'll have more to say about leaners in a future post. In their recent book entitled Unconventional Wisdom: Facts and Myths About American Voters , Karen Kaufmann, John Petrocik, and Daron Shaw argue that “On balance, most partisans have centrist views; Republicans are more conservative than Democrats on most political issues, but neither party’s mass base holds extreme viewpoints. If anything, . . . partisans were still fairly moderate and . . . they agreed more than they disagreed.”   If this is true for most Americans (which I don’t believe), is it also true for partisan Texans? The following results from an August 2008 Texas Politics Poll allow us to examine this question. Several normative questions from the survey allow us to compare ...