Christopher Hooks

It would take a two to three times polling error for Republicans to hold control of the House.

I'm glad that you mentioned San Antonio because, Elliot, the Texas journalist Christopher Hooks published this tweet today and he said in catching up with Texas Republicans this week and the theory and the things I'm hearing about their internal polls are absolutely demented that was the phrase that he was absolutely demented shocking like I can't bring myself to believe them and would feel irresponsible repeating them there is a small chance we're going to see a category 5 freak show result

yeah Category 5, like a hurricane? A political hurricane? Yes.

Yeah, I mean, you know, people ask me about pulling air all the time.

But now, blessedly, that era appears to be waning.

Patrick has lost touch with the changing Republican base, as Chris Hooks wrote for Texas Monthly.

And except for the hardcore GOP faithful, most people have grown sick of that shock jock style and the mean, corrupt place that it's taken our country and state.

We want a government and elected officials that work for us.

Someone has just recorded him chatting shit about Trump and sent it to somewhere like The New York Times, and it's just nonstop.

So I actually, um, a friend of the pod, Christopher Hooks, wrote about this yesterday for Texas Monthly.

I think these are all coming from the same person, from sort of the same what was supposed to be off the record discussion.

But what this person has done is, like, every day for the past week, it started with a leak to The New York Times- Of, of, well, it was last week, of an audio clip, and then a couple days later, a leak to Politico of another snippet of the audio clip, um, that I believe on Wednesday they gave another clip to Axios, and then th- like this morning, on the morning we recorded, I log into Twitter, and the first thing I see is another clip that was given to the Texas Tribune.

Love the Texas Politics Project

... disapproval rating.

So yeah, neither of these guys are, uh, got many friends.

Jim Henson, Jim Henson would be a great interview, actually.

See that link in the show notes.

So what's with all these leaks coming from the Paxton camp these days? Christopher Hooks at Texas Monthly got curious about that, too.

He says that this new benefits cut bit is the fourth sequentially leaked recording from a private Paxton fundraiser held on September 24th, adding to recordings of Paxton complaining about Donald Trump's Dallas convention's impact on the race, Paxton's lack of control over his own campaign and the economic consequences Texas is suffering and thus his prospects are suffering financially.

Due to Trump's war with Iran, these clips seem to have appeared in a carefully timed manner in major Washington political publications, raising questions about who is behind the leaks and whether they could possibly be coming from a Republican insider unhappy about the massive amount of national GOP money being poured into Paxson's floundering candidacy.