Given Texas' weather-induced power outages and Sen. Ted Cruz's related optics blunder, MSNBC Live host Stephanie Ruhle wondered on Friday how he manages to get elected and if Texans will be dumb enough to keep supporting Republicans in the aftermath of the crisis.
During a conversation with progressive Texas political analyst James Moore, Ruhle wondered, "Then if this is just Ted Cruz being Ted Cruz, why does he keep getting elected? What does that tell you about Texans?"
According to Moore, it tells us that his fellow Texans are stuck in their ways, "We keep electing these people that give us problems like what we've experienced. We have conservatives in Texas who simply think that not just less government is better, but almost no government."
Like Ruhle on Wednesday, Moore accused Texas of putting profits over people, "So, its wildly disingenuous of the governor and Ted Cruz and everybody else in the conservative movement in Texas to come back and say, 'oh, we're going to fix it, we're going to solve this problem.' They knew it was there. They simply ignored it because it's profitable to ignore."
This led Ruhle to wonder if Texans will wise up in the storm's aftermath or "are Texans going to forget about this and go back to the way they were?"
According to Moore, just like when Donald Trump failed to stop a virus that has affected the entire world, the record-breaking winter storm debunked conservatism, "I think that's the big, big important question, Stephanie, and what I'd like to believe is that this is a kind of seismic event that the COVID and the coronavirus have been for Donald Trump. I think that this may be the moment that has peeled back the covers on what conservatism is all about."
Moore concluded by declaring "my hope is that this incident has unveiled what's really going on in Texas, and people like Ted Cruz and Greg Abbott will pay a price for it and the people in the state will realize if you want infrastructure that works, if you want roads and good schools and highways, and mass transportation, you have to pay for it, just like you do everything else."
Ted Cruz is hardly the first politician to have an optics blunder, but voters in New York and California don't have to worry about the media questioning their intelligence over their choice of senators or governors or using once-in-a-century events to discredit their beliefs.
This segment was sponsored by Dove.
Here is a transcript for the February 19 show:
MSNBC
MSNBC Live with Stephanie Ruhle
9:44 AM ET
STEPHANIE RUHLE: Then if this is just Ted Cruz being Ted Cruz, why does he keep getting elected? What does that tell you about Texans?
JAMES MOORE: Well, It tells me something rather disturbing as a guy who's lived his entire adult life. We keep electing these people that give us problems like what we've experienced. We have conservatives in Texas who simply think that not just less government is better, but almost no government. In fact, the governor today is complaining about ERCOT, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas which screwed up the entire grid when the storm hit, and he's talking about reforming it and fixing it. But he's culpable in this thing. He has known for years that the grid has not been hardened against catastrophic weather events. There were recommendations about ten years ago that the grid and the generating plants be upgraded in a way that would protect them from huge weather events like storms and freezes of this nature and they ignored it, because we have their own grid, we are not susceptible to federal regulations because we contain it inside our borders and if you spend millions of dollars to upgrade, you're cutting into profit, so it never happens. So, its wildly disingenuous of the governor and Ted Cruz and everybody else in the conservative movement in Texas to come back and say, “oh, we're going to fix it, we're going to solve this problem.” They knew it was there. They simply ignored it because it's profitable to ignore.
RUHLE: Knowing Texas as well as you do, when we get past this, when
the sun shines again, when things warm up and people are safe in their homes, hopefully, are Texans going to forget about this and go back to the way they were?
MOORE: I think that's the big, big important question, Stephanie, and what I'd like to believe is that this is a kind of seismic event that the COVID and the coronavirus have been for Donald Trump. I think that this may be the moment that has peeled back the covers on what conservatism is all about. In this state we are ignoring Medicaid. There's $100 billion that Texas has sitting on the table for ten years if we expand Medicaid. But no, we don't want government to come into the state so we have four and a quarter million people who are uninsured including 625,000 children. We don't raise our gas tax, since 1991 in Texas. And consequently what happens is, we bring in companies to build toll roads and we pay a tax that way. It's a shell game and we've got -- although we have no state income tax and they brag about that we have bond and indebtedness that approaches like $60 billion. And they hide it so the politicians can say, hey, I didn't raise your taxes. But my hope is that this incident has unveiled what's really going on in Texas, and people like Ted Cruz and Greg Abbott will pay a price for it and the people in the state will realize if you want infrastructure that works, if you want roads and good schools and highways, and mass transportation, you have to pay for it, just like you do everything else.
