Three Takeaways from Governor Abbott's Endorsement of President Trump

Topic: Elections

The political world is saturated with turmoil and rapid change, so much so that it is very easy to lose track of context clues telling us something about the future.  Few noticed, or made much of, Texas Governor Greg Abbott’s endorsement of Donald Trump for President last week.  Trump appears to be headed to a blowout win in the Republican primary, so what exactly is the big deal?  I’ll be straight with you here – I had thought that Abbott was on Trump’s shitlist after his name was missing from Trump’s Texas leadership team in an announcement posted this spring ahead of a rally in Waco.

There are two big reasons, and a few minor ones, why I would have that opinion.  First, I figured Abbott, in his third and final term as Texas Governor, would seek to promote himself to the presidential arena and join the ranks of tenured Republican executives looking for a moment in the sun, a good book deal, some publicity, and maybe even a nice old-fashioned John Kasich-themed dining tour.  That alone would earn Trump’s ire, especially since Abbott was slow to exhaust all possible options, including outright defiance, to plug the hole in Texas’s 1,254-mile border with our mooching neighbor to the south, Mexico.  Second, and perhaps most damning, is Abbott’s refusal to have engaged with the corrupt Speaker Dade Phelan or exercised any moral leadership in the Paxton witch hunt, which sought to plunge the Lone Star State back into the total grasp of the Bush clan.  Now that that effort has failed, do not be surprised if the Republican establishment mimics Arizona’s McCain Republican wing by breaking all the toys and going home, and elevating Democrats since they themselves can’t rule the roost.

Abbott started out well, masterfully riding the fence between Bush establishment politics and grassroots populism.  We can’t fault everyone for having been a Republican in the Bush days, and Abbott had a very successful first term and was highly regarded by grassroots leaders, who had an open door with him during that term (2015-19).  Admittedly, it is hard not to like the guy, and he has overcome a lot after being partially paralyzed and confined to a wheelchair as a much younger man.  Texas’s prosperity under George W. Bush, Rick Perry, and Abbott has brought about the unfortunate consequences of ease and affluence in that its cities are now bustling with West Coast style expansionism, urban blight, criminality, and suffering under the hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens occupying each of Tarrant, Dallas, Travis, Bexar, Harris, and El Paso Counties.  Additionally, the failure of Republicans to combat registration and election fraud, going as far to limit Attorney General Paxton’s ability to fight said fraud, has the state on trajectory to produce 40+ Democrat electoral votes no later than 2032 if current trends persist.

If not attempting the White House himself in 2024, I figured Abbott would throw in with one of the establishment choices, Nikki Haley or Ron DeSantis, hence my pleasant response when I read these words last week, spoken from the (near) border city of Edinburg:

We need Donald J. Trump back as our president of the United States of America.

Here are my three main takeaways out of the Abbott presidential endorsement of Donald Trump:

I.               The Writing on the Wall

Not all longtime elected office holders are thick and obtuse.  Consider Glenn Youngkin, Governor of Virginia.  The Republican establishment has been trying to parachute him in since Haley and DeSantis are taking on water and nearly scuttled, and he isn’t taking the bait.  He, a young and popular governor, is keeping his powder dry for another day and realizes he would simultaneously alienate Trump’s populist base and undercut his own governorship by running prematurely.

Abbott, if indeed he has presidential aspirations as the three-term governor of the flagship red state (for now), could be waiting for better conditions in 2028, and is wise to think that way.  More than anything, however, Abbott’s endorsement is a signal that Trump is not going to be taken out by the shenanigans occurring in the corrupt judiciary.  Abbott could have stayed out of this endorsement race for some time, ostensibly up until the Texas primary on March 5; instead, he threw in with Trump early, and stands to lose substantial backing in party circles if he is wrong about Trump’s legal fate.

If I am correct, the primaries are over – and they would be even if Trump sat in a cell somewhere.  Trump is the safe pick, and Abbott is in before most Republican governors and can make the claim that he has been among the most supportive – which feeds into the next point.

II.             Cabinet Position – or More

Abbott is absolutely thinking strategically, and in his final term as Texas governor, needs to figure out what to do next.  I wrote recently about Vivek Ramaswamy’s utility in exposing establishment players without Trump needing to get his own hands dirty, and Ramaswamy’s obvious play for a cabinet position of some sort; the same is likely occurring with Abbott’s play last week at the border.

I had originally felt Kari Lake was the most dynamite choice for Vice President, made possible by the outsider Trump’s own election in 2016, but since she has announced a run for U.S. Senate, the position of running mate is still up for grabs.  Kristi Noem definitely knows it, and while a female contrast to Trump seems logical, we all know Trump didn’t get where he is today by going with the grain.  Texas’s lifeblood, oil, makes leaders from the state top-tier choices for Secretary of Energy, but more and more, I think Abbott is going to wind up on the shortlist for Vice President.

You may not like it, and this is not my endorsement, but Abbott is popular with suburban voters, Hispanics, and rank-and-file Republican establishment voters, and would also absolutely guarantee Texas doesn’t get Georgia’d in 2020 (Texas was won by an artificially shortened 5.6% margin in 2020).  With North Carolina continuing its Republican registration trend, upholding voter ID, and running the uber-popular Mark Robinson for Governor, Abbott as V.P. pick would all but ensure Trump’s starting point is 235 electoral votes, making 270+ possible by picking up Georgia andPennsylvania, or Georgia plus Arizona plus Wisconsin.

III.            The Pulse of 2024 and the Future of Texas

Politicians don’t like to take unnecessary risks - if they’re willing to take risks at all.  That is why the great leaders of all time are great – because they do the hard things (hat tip to my good friend Steve Cassell who says, “heroes do hard things”).  Today’s bureaucrats say poll-tested, canned things, and are rightly criticized for being mostly inauthentic.  You can bet your bottom dollar that if the Governor of Texas, standing just miles from the Rio Grande, endorses a populist immigration hardliner who once said Mexico would pay for a border wall, that said hardliner is polling at inconceivably high numbers with Hispanic and other minority voters, who live not only in the former Nueces Strip, but in the large metros holding millions of swingable votes.  President Trump won Zapata County, a border county not Republican since 1920, in the 2020 quasi-election, and was within points of flipping several others.

With Trump blamed for the leftward shift in Texas, it doesn’t seem that Governor Abbott sees throwing in with Trump as a reason for concern and a risk to seeing the state produce Democrat electors for the first time since 1976.  The future of Texas populism relies upon immigration control, combating human and drug traffickers, protecting the energy industry from radical environmentalism and trade agreements, and making the state the shining star of America First economies.

Conclusion

Abbott may be a political man, but he knows which way the wind is blowing, and is punching his ticket on the Trump train early enough to make a difference in a potential Donald Trump 47^thPresidential Administration beginning in 2025.  Texas is key to the America First agenda’s future.  It is most likely that the governor sees a pathway for inevitable Trump victory next fall, and nearly certain that he doesn’t believe Trump’s judicial troubles will spell the end of the comeback story taking place before our eyes.