Hey y'all welcome to Cross-Politik, one on one with the Waterboy No-Knocks, No-Toby, just me, it's good to be with you. Man, the November 3rd elections, quite the slack-in and especially in my home state of Texas. For 30 years, Republicans own Texas, like literally, like they had the House and the Senate and the governorship since 2002. But before that, I think Texas for 125 years before that was democratically controlled until Bush was elected in 1996 and everything. But then the Republicans got the House and the Senate after that by 2002. Tuesday night, Tuesday night's governors race flipped. The Senate flipped. Lieutenant governor flipped. The Attorney General flipped and the Democrats also took the House. A lot of people want to blame Donald Trump or the nation's mood or whatever is going on. I essentially lay this at the feet of Governor Abbott. I don't think Trump might have had a little bit of effect on Texas. The Trump effect had a little bit of effect on Texas, but ultimately I lay this at the feet of Governor Abbott. If you think about it, Governor Abbott was working for a fourth-termers governor, but let's compare him to Rhonda Santas. Rhonda Santas barely won his election the first time in the office. Barely won it by the time he was reelected. He increased his voting base by 20% in Florida, like significantly increasing his voter base. I followed Governor Abbott, I followed Texas I ate, like I said, I grew up in Texas. My guess might disagree, but hopefully I have some good clarification here too on this. Governor Abbott was really a soft governor. When a conservative Christian governor leads well, leads with courage actually really pushes thoughtful and very helpful conservative policies, you're actually going to gain more support. That's what Rhonda Santas demonstrated. That's why he gained more support. Governor Abbott for three terms, campaign, said I'm going to lower your property taxes, I'm going to lower your property taxes, I'm going to lower your property taxes, and never did it. By the fourth time he's campaigning about, I don't know if it came up in this campaign, but it shouldn't have because he never did it. He's campaigning on I'm going to lower your property taxes. No one believes him anymore. At that point, it's like you might as well vote for the Democrat. That's how voters think. He told me this one thing. He said you're going to do it and you never do it. So, Governor Abbott was so soft, you eventually just say screw it, I'm voting for the Democrat. Here's a problem I think with conservative leadership. Whenever conservatives have the house and the Senate like Trump did, they get nothing done. They couldn't even get the Save America Act done. They couldn't even get the Save Act done. When Obama has the house and Senate, they get massive socialistic bomb-a-care passed. They get massive legislation passed. What is going on? How come when Obama has the house and Senate, big things happen, but when Trump has the house and Senate, there's all this infighting and all this, John Theron sitting there lying or making excuses or whatever, can't even get the Save Act passed. It's insane. It just shows you. I said this for years. That Democrats are liars and Republicans are cowards. Time and time again, Republicans have proven that to me. That was what was actually refreshing about Donald Trump. He showed courage. He also shows recklessness. He don't want to confuse courage and recklessness. He showed courage, which is like why I think he won a lot of America's conservatives, even though he came out of the Democratic, even though he was a Democrat forever. He started showing courage and a lot of people voted for him because of that. I want conservatives to think more like Charlie Kirk here. Charlie Kirk, there's two ways to lead. You can lead by pushing, hey guys, let's all go this direction. Hey guys, let's all do this. Hey guys, pushing or you can lead by polling, getting out in front and polling. What I mean by that is that you want to be the Christians men particularly need to be kind of leaders where people get behind them and follow because they're a healthy, courageous, wise leader. That's why God bless Charlie because Charlie used to be sympathetic or whatever to the LGBT crowd. And then over time he grew in a theology and realized that it was a sin. And by the time before he died, him and his wife Ron Stade is talking about headshipping submission at their conferences. Like Charlie grew in the Lord, grew in theology. And what was interesting was Charlie was a strong leader in his out front leading. Well, the homosexual community still backed him, still supported him. Like a bunch of desperate communities still got behind Charlie. Even though he might have been a little, but everyone knew where Charlie stood. Everyone knew that Charlie was going to have hard conversations with Donald Trump and then he was going to have hard conversations with some of his donors that wanted him to support Israel more. Everyone knew. So Charlie was out there leading and people were getting behind him as opposed to guys like Governor Abbott who's sit there and just trying to make the political calculations to keep himself in office for four terms. I want to end here. Oliver Wendell, home said, this is famous quote, some people are so heavily minded that they're no earthly good. So I'm talking to Christians now. Specifically to Christians. Some people are so heavily minded they're no earthly good. And they got the flip side of that is you got Christians who are so carnally minded they're using the playing tactics that are falling right in the same hands. Okay. We want to be the kind of Christians who were spiritually minded and I don't want to say this in a way and I want to say this, let me put it this way, we reject narcissism. So I'm not saying this in a nostic way, but we want to be the kind of Christians who were spiritually minded that everything we do here on earth is impacted by us. We want to be like Christ when the leper comes and touches Christ, Christ doesn't get leprosy all over him. Christ heals the leper. That's the kind of Christians we want to be here in our cities, in our country, in whatever areas of leadership God puts us in. My buddy Joseph Backholm, I've said this on the show, I don't know how many times because it still haunts me. He was a political consultant in Oklahoma, excuse me, Seattle Washington, not Oklahoma. Seattle, I mean I five corridor and he said, and you know Seattle, it's a liberal stronghold. You know Seattle's got socialist on the council, that's how crazy it is. But he said if 80% of the church in Seattle would get out and vote it would be a Christianized city council. And we're talking like a liberal stronghold, like untouchable liberal stronghold and what that shows you is, and he knew the stats, he knew the numbers that was his job. And what that shows you is that the church is so checked out. You know, heavily minded, northerly good, whatever, whatever's going on in the church is so checked out. Their pastors are so impotent and unthinking pastors that we have a church that can actually turn the election in Seattle to a conservative election, but they just aren't involved. Even in this election, the evangelical vote dropped by 6, 6, 7%, to 17%. And so I'm convinced that if the church would just man up, if the leadership in the church would just disciple their people, if the church would repent of its apathy, of its cowardice of all the stuff that kind of basically goes on in the Republican Party, I think we would, God would bless that and we would start restoring America to a true godly form of what leadership should look like in a country. That's my thesis is that the church is what's wrong with the voting block in America. The church is absolutely responsible for it and we have the numbers and they don't show up. We don't show up as the church. So with that said, I want to bring in my guest. He's a Republican state representative for Texas House District 2. Since January 2025, you're actually a Greenville native. I didn't know that Greenville. I have some friends out in Greenville. Sixth generation Texan, the attorney, title company owner, reelected November 3rd, just got reelected this next go-around. Just on November 3rd, over Democrat Fatima Luwan Mews. Oh my gosh, I probably butchered that. I mean, I mean, Texas. Come on. Welcome, Brent. Money to the show. Brent, thanks for joining. Cross-Paltic 101. Love to be here. Thank you for having me. So you got to hear me in my monologue and my thoughts here. I just want to start there. My thesis is basically, it wasn't the Trump effect. It was Governor Abbott who's responsible for what happened in Texas. And he's responsible for Texas basically flipping so blue. It wasn't just like a barely blue thing. I mean, if John Corrin was running, he still would have lost, too. I mean, Paxson didn't matter. Paxson John. It was Governor Abbott. And his very soft 12 years of leadership where the voters were like, screw you, you're so soft, I'm just going to vote Democrat because we're talking Texas, man. No one cares about Telefrico's trans comments. They are voting for him because Texas is not pro-trans. That's obvious. Right. In fact, all the economic votes, meaning like the city taxes, property taxes, the levies, so many economic votes actually were shut down in this election by the voters. But they still voted for the leftists because they're so tired of the kind of the apathy and Governor Abbott's, I mean, he was the governor over COVID. He was basically a Democratic governor over COVID kind of stuff. So that's kind of my thesis. I know it's a little harsh, but I think it's correct. It would love your response and initial thoughts on that. Yeah. So thanks for having me on. I think that you are in many ways spot on. I do think you undervalued the Trump effect to some degree. But I think that I think if it had been one or the other, we would have survived, but we had both. And so, and I think, you know, any state should be leery of having someone running for their fourth term as governor. Like that's a bad idea. A third term as governor is a bad idea. Because it is nearly impossible unless things are going so well to tell the voters that you're going to be even better this time when you have as much power and control as a governor or a lieutenant governor in a state. And one of the things, one of the very few things I think we might be able to get bipartisan agreement on this next legislative session is term limiting the governor and lieutenant governor going forward. That's something that I think is desperately needed. And I think both parties will probably agree with that. And so, you know, I think there's just a politicians where people out eventually and especially when they have that much power and they're running statewide, promising the same things over and over. Let me talk through a little bit of the things that happened in Texas that I think are factors. So first of all, Ken Paxton, I think is the best attorney general we've ever had. He did a fantastic job fighting against Biden during the Biden administration. But he is not a likable figure amongst the non-political independence. So hardcore Republicans like me see him for what he is and appreciate his fight. He has a almost unblemished record conservative wins both as a legislator and as in the treaty general. But he comes with a lot of personal baggage, particularly marital baggage. And I think even because of the marital baggage, he was open to the accusations of corruption, even the ones that he had beaten in court and had been found not guilty of people are like, yeah, but you probably did it. And so I think that we need to remember character does matter. And that obviously all of us are flawed. All of us have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. There never has been a politician, never will be a politician who is who is perfect and blameless. And we should leave room for people to repent and come back after that. But people like him openly involved publicly and in adulterous relationship during his run for senate is a bad look. And I think that that that hurt. Especially contrasted with Tallerico who talks a nice game. And we could talk with Tallerico in a minute, but to get back. So we, Paxton had that baggage. We talked about the baggage just being there for so long and not delivering on a lot of the things. Dan Patrick had been there just as long as Abbott. And I think became increasingly out of touch with the people of Texas. And this last session, the big things that he pushed were a big subsidy for the movie industry to move to Texas. Taxpayer subsidies for the movie industry. And a taxpayer funded basically state level NIH. We're going to bring in and have a big government funded research on cures for Alzheimer's. Look, nobody likes Alzheimer's and dementia and almost everybody has been affected by it. But that is not a government role. And we shouldn't be taking taxpayer money away from people to handle that. And thirdly, THC. So I'm against THC. I don't think that people need to be intoxicating themselves in those ways. And especially we need to protect it with kids and all of that kind of stuff. But going on the war path there, it really hurt our veterans and some other kind of court constituencies. At the same time, in addition to prices going up in the national level due to Iran and due to other things, I don't think terrorists had that much of an effect. But beef prices are high. So what was the answer from the administration? Let's import a bunch of Argentinian beef. Just crushing our farmers and ranchers here in Texas and throughout the United States. But ranching is a big industry here in Texas. And so right before the election, we just tell all of our Texas ranchers, we're going to bring in a bunch of beef from Argentina. And they're like, what in the world? And they said, don't worry, they're going to undercut you in price. Like, what? Like, that's killing us. And so we've had the wrong answers to real problems that people have. And that doesn't mean that Texas Republican leadership hasn't done some good things over the years. But I think most of the big wins that we have had, and I'm a new legislator, I'm about to finish my first term. But most of the big wins that we've had, let's say during the Abbott-Patrick era, have been stopping the worst things that the left was trying to do. And there's value in that. I'm not saying it's not a good thing that we try to go after abortion, although not the right way. We can have a whole podcast on that again. Stopping LGBT issues, DEI, more gun rights. We've done some good things. But as far as affordability and making it easier for a young couple to buy a home, for a family to be able to afford groceries and a vacation every now and then, we have, starting a small business and being able to invest capital and believe you're going to get a return on that. We've done a poor job of those things. There's a couple of things that I'm thinking through as you're talking. One is always, I'm not against term limits. I'm not for it. My pastor's been my pastor for 20 years. I don't want him to stop being my pastor. This is a good guy. He's a godly dude. He's trying, you know, he's faithful. Right. Versus like, I get a governor like Governor Abbott, and I got a similar governor, governor Little and Idaho. He's very similar to Governor Abbott and how he governs. Who's a corporatist? He's not really a conservative in terms of actual courage. And I mean, like the property tax thing is like such low-hanging fruit for him to get on board with and try to usher that through. Like that's, that's conservatism 101. That's like so basic. And so when I see that you don't do those kind of things and this is most conservative governors, we've gotten so far from what it means to be conservative. So yeah, I want term limits on governor Abbott, but if there's a governor I really like, I'm like, he's a good, he's gifted. He's the right, my pastor will keep him doing it. You know, I trust him. He's been, he's been getting policies passed that are conservative. He's actually making a dent as opposed to Abbott literally just, I greet you that there is a Trump effect that that still was part of the part of this equation. But I think Abbott was way bigger because even Ron DeSantis passed off the governorship to a weaker governor for sure. He is down. And he's still one, but he won because Ron DeSantis had done such a good job creating a strong basin in Florida. Yeah. Go ahead. Go ahead. The next model is exactly what we should have been doing and it ties in here well too. The Texas voters had an opportunity to dump Abbott after COVID in 2022 after his second term, including COVID. And we had two really well, you know, more well-known challengers and a third. I mean, so he was up against some good people and he won resoundingly. That's a Republican primary voters fault. And so now as a result of that, I think Abbott actually his best term in governance was his third term, but it was too far gone. I think that he had lost so many people in the middle. And I won't say just Trump, but I would say the Washington effect. So maybe not just Trump, but the fact that the best things that Trump did do, sealing the border, dealing with illegal immigration, those kinds of things were not codified by Congress, dozing, the doge not codified by Congress. The, you know, the save act, we can't even pass the Stink and Save America act. So I think people, even people that aren't mad at Trump just kind of threw their hands up and we're like, forget it. Let's give somebody else a chance. And so I would say that's, you know, it's not fair to put it all on Trump. I would put it on the cowards in Congress as well, particularly the Senate, particularly the Senate. But, you know, if you look at the 12 years that Abbott was governor, the state budget in the state of Texas increased per capita about 4% every year. And that's not adjusted for inflation or anything, just in hard numbers. And Florida, it was 2%. So Florida was actually really when you put inflation, Florida has been cutting their budget for 12 years. And Texas has been growing its budget for 12 years. And that's, real people feel that. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, I guess the, to me, it's like to, to be a good governor, the bar is so low to me now. But it's just so low. And it's, it's our, this, this old guard leadership that I'm really struggling with. And I'm not that excited about the new Republican leadership coming up either. I think they got their own problems. But the old guard leadership who has really had so much power over the years, especially in Texas. And the thing always, the easy thing always point to is the national debt. We're $40 trillion in debt. Ted Cruz hadn't said it. The only time, Ted Cruz says something about it is when it's like clinically advantageous to do, you know. The, you know, lowering probably everyone knows in Texas, property taxes are crazy in Texas. It's like a mortgage payment night of home, almost. But that, that property taxes are in Texas. And, and those, and everyone knows they've been a problem forever. And it's like going and being conservative and changing. Like the low bar that it is, and you can't do it because the Republicans, I think Republicans, both Democrats and Republicans want power. But Republicans want power to turn everything into a country club. And Democrats want power to turn everything into actual agenda. Right. I can't, you know, I, I guess. And so, you know, I, I mean, Texas to me, I, I, I preach the sermon at a church in Texas years ago. And before I was doing some research just on Texas for the sermon. And I found out that there's basically about 25,000 Christian churches in Texas. It's a lot of churches. I don't know how many people that amounts to. But a state of 30 million, 25,000, where there's a lot, you know, if Texas would have actually lived out its real conservative Christian values over the last 12 years, I mean, I think Governor Abbott would have grown his face more than Ron de Sanctus did. I think Texas would have actually been a state that would have enacted change across the nation because of what they should have, should have accomplished as conservative as a conservative state. Instead, Texas is getting the power. And this is what happened with Congress and you pointed out with Congress and Senate. They get into power and then they kind of start infighting. They get power and they, you know, John Thune makes excuses about the Save Act or, or the Doge stuff. And, and, you know, likely the Doge stuff never really came into place because half the Republicans are 50% of the money revenue coming off Doge anyways. Democrats are 50% and they got the other 50% or whatever. So Republicans don't really want reform. And so I don't, and Texas to me is like, it should be so responsible for the, what it should mean to be a conservative movement. And I don't see, yeah, I don't know if this is really a question, but it's just like, it's just the lack of responsibility and concern when Texas had the House and the Senate and the governorship for less basically 30 years, 20, 20 something years. It just seems like there, you know, no one holds Republicans accountable. And then the Republicans, the, the, the, the, the, the ones that have the true kind of leadership and authority end up screwing the Republican base and turning it over to the Democrats. That's how, you know, blind they are. And they deserve, I mean, Abbott deserves every, you know, the attorney general, Lieutenant Governor, they deserve everything they're getting and more like, like they should, they should honestly, like own this in a serious way. And they're just going to retire off into the sunset and it seems like there's going to be no accountability here. Let me say one more thing along those lines and then maybe we can look, look forward as to where we go. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Stop it. Yeah. Yeah. It's your show. But I think that one, one part of this that has to be said is the, the idea that it's really easy for any government leader at the local level, at the state level, at the level to talk about business growth and bringing in jobs and all of that. And for I think 13 years in a row, Texas has won the Governor's Cup for best state to do business by CEOs and whoever votes on those sorts of things. Texas is great environment for business, 13 years in a row. We have brought in the headquarters of huge companies. I mean, fantastic, wonderful, big Fortune 500 companies. And I think that it's a fair question to ask how has that improved the lives of the people who lived here before all of that happened? Have our wages gone up? Not particularly. Our property tax is sure have. Our traffic is worse. Our crime is worse. Our voting is worse. Where have we gotten better? When you look at the demographics and this is, you have, I think, almost 20 percent, the last thing I saw was about 18 percent of people living in Texas right now were born in a foreign country. Yep. A lot of the people that have been brought here and that, that, that, Abbott has particularly reached out to or people from India. And they voted 80 percent Democrat on Tuesday. So, so we brought, you know, we brought them in to share in the Texas miracle and they voted against the Texas miracle, whatever that miracle is. And so we have got to quit importing people that don't like us, don't agree with us, have different ideologies, different philosophies, different religions, different culture. And some of that was, a large part of that was the Biden administration, the Obama administration. But Republicans have to take blame for it as well. Texas should have asserted its sovereignty when the border was open and said no, we're closing it. Texas should have said we're not going to reward companies who use foreign labor to undercut Texas jobs. And our failure to do that for a generation has led us into a position where we, it's not the same Texas that it was when you lived here. Yep. Yeah, no, I mean, I, you know, to that point too, I mean, you can look at what's funny is about Republicans is, is in a lot of ways like Mitt Romney led the way for Obamacare. I mean, he created Massachusetts care. Yep. And then that's a great template for Obama. I'll take that and I'll make it nationwide. You know, and so there's so many things that Republicans do that aren't really conservative. They just aren't thinking or they're too caught up in the influence or the money from India or the power that comes with whatever. And it's, I mean, the older generation of Republican leaders has basically over time. So, gotten, gotten us into some, so some pickles. Now, last kind of question along those lines, but it's still going to start turning positive. I agree with you, you know, the two things about the election. One was I kind of looked at the stats of the last three elections and Governor Abbott, particularly roughly, and had the same voter amount in last couple of elections. It didn't change much. But then the Democrats gained two million votes in a selection. Yeah. So last election, Governor had something like 4.5 million votes around that. Governor Abbott still had roughly around that for this election. But the Democrats gained two million votes. Now I heard in Texas that you can register to vote without a license, all this stuff. I don't know if that's true or not. And that there's like three million, a growth and three million voter registrations in the last four years. So I mean, I'm just skeptical for voting already, but you have any thoughts on that? I'll say this, everyone is skeptical about the integrity of our elections. There are things that we could have should have done better on that. And I know that there are citizen watch groups and others looking into the claims that you're talking about. And they need to be looked at seriously. What I would say is we need to do that while also taking a good look at things that we could do better and should do better. I don't want, so in other words, I guess I don't want to scapegoat. Oh, this was a voter irregularity issue or a fraud issue or that issue. I do think, I just mentioned 18% of people living in Texas right now were born in a foreign country. I would like to know how many of them are voting. I think that's a fair question. And so you have to have voter ID to vote. In order to get a driver's license, you have to prove citizenship kind of, but we definitely need to do more to shore that up. And we may have missed our window. And that's the problem about voter integrity is that if you don't get that right, then eventually the people who don't want to get it right are in power and they'll flood everyone in and let them all vote. And then you'll never get power back. And so, well, and that's the question is like, is Texas ever going to become right again? Yes. I, man, I truly believe so I think this was a, I think this was a repudiation of Washington and Republican run Austin as it is by voters that don't disagree with us. They're just sick of us in a lot of ways. And you mentioned it, I think, but I mean bond elections went down in flames. I mean, people showed up and said, I want to vote for education supposedly voting for Gina Hanna-Hosa and James Talleriko who both have an education background. And so I want to vote for education. And then they turned around and voted against the bonds because they don't want to pay for it. I think that voters, if you look at exit polling, they still agree with us with Republicans on a bunch of the core issues. They're mad about the economy. It's the economy, stupid. Why? And so, and that's why I think also you saw like in some, in some blue run states, the Republicans did better than usual because they're just looking at who, who's in charge. I'm mad at them. Yeah, right. So yeah, so I mean, I guess, you know, what, where do you go from here? It looks like these next four years isn't quite the fight because you guys don't, the Republicans don't have the executive office and you don't have the legislator, but you do have the Senate. So that dynamic going to shake out over the next four years. Right. I would say that we are probably looking at two or four years of legislative gridlock. Justice has a bicameral legislature. We have a house with 150 members, a Senate with 31 members, neatly arranged by the number of songs and number of proverbs. I would point out. But we have, so the Republicans hold the Senate pretty comfortably right now, 18 to 10 at the moment with some people, you know, that need to, anyway, but a pretty solid majority. And the Democrats hold a pretty solid majority in the house. So very little is going to get done that we can both agree on. And that's probably good from our standpoint. All of their worst ideas and instincts are not going to be able to turn into law. And we're going to have to show a way forward. I think one of the things that voters who maybe aren't as ideologically and politically interested as you and I are got tired of is that every election season, it seems like Republicans are just screaming about how bad the Democrats are on all these issues like transgenderism and abortion and guns and all this kind of stuff. But we haven't done a great job of pointing out what their, how their lives can be better with us. And so we're going to have to change some of our messaging, pointing out how bad they are, but also offering a positive alternative. We need, we need to do that. And two years from now, when, when we have a 2028, a presidential ballot, I think we'll have a good chance of taking the house back, but we don't get a chance to take the governorship back until, until 2032 or 2030. I mean, and so that's what we're looking for. Yeah. And so what do you think? So in Idaho, one of the interesting stats in Idaho was basically all the counties had increased in blue a little bit in Idaho, except for Laytaw County, which increased in red. And we're in, and we still have a liberal city council. It's just tracking, you know, kind of what was the increase in vote in red or blue kind of thing. The end of percentage. And just to be clear, Laytaw County is your county, correct? Yeah, that's my, that's my county. And it's for the same reason. It's because of demographic change, right? You have a lot of people moving in from that are conservative minded and they're having a lot of children. Well, and my brother's kids are voting. Right. Yeah. So it's like people who've lived here for 20, 30 years is like where our kids are growing up, and now they're voting where the leftists don't, their kids don't grow up and stay here if they have one kid. Right. Kind of thing. So, um, but the strategy here is just been keep plotting away, keeping faithful, keep growing in the Lord, you know, educate your kids, pull them out of public schools, you know, that kind of stuff. And it's a long-term play. Um, it's a generational play. It's not a quick fix. Um, but it's, but it is going to be a long-term fix once it happens. Yeah. You know, kind of, so how do, how do you guys like, what's, you know, what's, what's, what's your kind of your, your positive strategy? Kind of some of the ideas you're thinking like, how do we not only just like, try to take back Texas and make it red again, but like, how do we like really make it real, you know? Yeah. Well, I think, I think we need, we need better candidates. We need better message. And we need to, and we need to convince the, the voters that we, uh, that we really can and, and will do what we say we would do. So, uh, I think some of the bright spots, if you look, um, Brandon Gill, who was a first year, I mean, first term congressman running for re-election. His district, he won by double digits. And James Talleriko won that exact same district by double digits. So, I mean, there are a lot of people that voted for James Talleriko and Brandon Gill. It's insane. But what, what, once again, it's not a repudiation necessarily of the policies of the right. Um, it's a, it's a repudiation of the, of the people. Yeah. Yeah. You know, and so, um, it's real, it's real easy for those of us who are very political to think everybody is political. But one of the things I learned this session, this, this cycle, is that most people don't pay attention to politics until it slaps them in the face at election time. And even then, a lot of times they don't care. And so, uh, I think we got to do a better job of discipling people year round in general, um, and doing all the things that you're talking about, having a lot of kids, trading up in the fear and admonition of the Lord, teaching them good political philosophy, economic policy, those kinds of things. And that's a long-term generational play. In the meantime, over the next two years, we've got to recruit better candidates, develop better messaging, um, and, and do the hard work. One of the things that the Democrats, I think, beat us in this time, is just on the ground organization and turning vote out, where we kind of, airmailed it and tried to, tried to win it with TV ads and mailers and text messages. You've got to have boots on the ground. You've got to have people that knock on the door and talk with their neighbor and have walk parties and, and, and listen to the concerns and get involved, um, on, on a grassroots level. And, and we can't just do that, um, we can't just do that in October. We have, uh, of even numbered years. We got to do that year round all the time, um, just being salt and light in our communities, uh, in a, in a meaningful way. All right. Last, last question here, national question here. Um, who do you think is going to run for president, uh, on the Republican side, um, for the two years. Um, what are our chances? I mean, it seems like based on how bad the Democrats whoop dust up, it seems like it definitely, it seems like an uphill battle. Um, the luck can happen in two years, but it just, you know, based off this election, it seems an uphill battle to win the presidential election. Who do you think is going to run? What do you think is going to happen? Yeah. I think, uh, first of all, I'm not, I'm not like a, a great, uh, national, uh, election pundit at all and, uh, probably less so even now that I'm more focused on state stuff. But I will, I will say this. I think, um, I think we still have a deep bench of really good candidates. Uh, I think two years ago, Donald Trump won the popular vote in this country. And people thought, wow, how will the Democrats ever win anything ever again? And here we are two years later. And it, we're going galley. How can Republicans ever win anything ever again? The, the, the, the voters are as a group, pretty fickle. And, and it's going to be based on how's the economy doing? You know, what are the vibes? And so, uh, people that I think will run, um, without really saying whether they think they should or not. Um, I think, I think JD Vance will run. I think, um, Ron DeSantis will run. I think that maybe somebody like Glenn Youngkin, uh, will run. I think Ted Cruz will probably run. I think Tom Cotton from Arkansas might run, um, and there may be others. Uh, and I think we do have a deep bench. I love, I love Rubio. I don't think he'll run. I think if he does, he'll do something with, with Vance. Um, and, uh, but I, you know, I don't, I don't think he's, I don't think he's going to run against Vance. He's said over and over and over again that he will not. And, and I think he's a man of his word. I don't think it's just political speak. Um, I think, I mean, people have talked about Pete Hegseth running. So I think there's a, there's a deep bench of, of kind of, Jinx and Millennial guys that I think would be really good candidates. Um, we just have to see how the next year-ish plays out. Yeah. Well, very good. Well, thanks, uh, Brent. Appreciate you. Appreciate you coming on the show. Of course, appreciate your working Texas man. You know, Idaho and Texas are my home states. I've always, you know, um, Texas has always been my home state. And as I've moved and lived up here in Idaho for 20 half more than half my life now, um, uh, Idaho and Texas have just become my home state. So, um, I appreciate the efforts in Texas and, uh, hope you and your family are doing well and hope this next legislative session. Um, you're able with wisdom maneuver and be able to accomplish what we, what we need to accomplish to keep Texas healthy. Thank you. We need all the prayers we can get. I'll also tell people if you want to follow me, I'm on at Brent at Brent money on x. I'm also on Instagram and Facebook, but I don't know what those are. Um, but anyway, uh, I use all the, all the help and prayers and encouragement we can get. Okay. Thank you guys for joining CrossPolitik 101. Uh, make sure you share the show, especially with your Texas friends. Uh, I think there's a lot of help there in what Brent had to say in, and help us think through some of these things. Um, you know, praying for Texas, love Texas, and, uh, you know, uh, I think, uh, you know, we want to be the kind of Christians who are concerned about politics and concern about who's elected, but we aren't anxious about it and we aren't putting all our trust in it. You know, some trusted Terry and some trusted horses, but we trust in Lord our God no matter what happens. And, and so we want to be concerned. We want to be, we want to have, we want the good for our state for the good of our nation. All those things are good, but don't put your trust in it. Don't put any fear in it. Don't put any anxiety into it. Um, uh, put the, put your trust in Lord God and, um, and, and part of this is too is like, you can't control the fact that, um, governor, habit, governor, the way he did. You can't control the fact that governor, habit, um, didn't get elected. You can't control the fact that, you know, all these things that are outside of your control, like, give it over to God. Like, be involved, be dedicated, do what you can. But, you know, you can be in control of what God has given you responsibility over, direct responsibility over your family, your house, your, your job, your neighborhood. Those are the areas where you should spend the most of your energy, the most of your thought process, the most of, um, where you have, you know, direct responsibility over. And so that's how you need to be thinking about Christians and all this. So, um, hope the show was helpful. Make sure you share it. And we'll see you next week on cross-bots with one alone with Water Boy.