Mediaboss Marketing

This August, hes been laying the groundwork for his re-election bid by holding town hall meetings around his district. The first took place on August 6 at a packed Dairy Queen in El Paso. Hurd stood in front of a line of confused locals queuing for Blizzards and offered a master class in the rhetorical skills many Republicans are going to need this cycle, a collection of talking points hes been repeating throughout his district. If you face an unhappy electorate next year, here are a few things you can learn from Will Hurd:

1. Emphasize that youll always, always shoot straight.

The people like an independent thinker, an iconoclast. They like when the Straight Talk Express comes to their town. We might not always agree, but Im always gonna be honest, Hurd tells the Dairy Queen crowd. Im gonna come out here and tell yall why Im doing what Im doing. Im gonna stand tall in Washington, D.C., and work on behalf of the 23rd District.

That sounds great. Now, lets get ready to hear some tough talk on the issues of the day the stuff that matters.

2. Quickly skate past the stuff that matters.

Washington, D.C., is a circus, Hurd says. And, uh, but, look, we havent been able to sort out the issues with health care on the individual market. We havent been able to come up with a strategy to counter covert influence so that we can stop what the Russians tried to do in 2016. In September, were gonna have to deal with a debt ceiling increase. There are still a lot of problems that were gonna need to solve.

Thats it. No solutions to the problems. Can we at least get a pithy, feel-good closer? Hurd: We cant just focus on our own jersey, whatever team were on. Theres way more that unites us than divides us.

3. Duck.

A high school teacher stands up to ask a question. Hurd, the man begins wearily, voted to repeal Obamacare nine times. He also voted to end the Obama administrations protections for Dreamers, and hes against net neutrality. Oh, and why isnt he speaking out about the administrations gutting of the EPA while representing a district with serious pollution and water quality problems?

Hurd runs through his rebuttals as quickly as possible. The man had conflated Congress vote to allow internet providers to sell your browsing history with the issue of net neutrality. Net neutrality has nothing to do with privacy, he says. Its about ensuring that everybody continues to have the kind of access to the internet that they need.

Its about tiers, the man says, trying to get his congressman back on track. Exactly, tiers, thats what net neutrality does, Hurd says. Moving on.

Some of the bills that came through to repeal Obamacare, yes, I voted for it. This time, a new bill came, a new thing, I voted against it, Hurd says. Ive always said, with health care, you gotta do a couple things. One is increase access, and one is decrease cost of health care. That bill didnt do it, so I voted against it.

In other words, Hurd voted to detonate the American health care system nine times because he knew Democrats would prevent the dumb bills he supported from becoming law. The minute he was faced with the possibility of the thing he had said he wanted to happen actually happening, he flipped. That passes for normal behavior in Congress now.

The EPA? We, people, are having an impact on our environment, Hurd says, boldly. So we gotta make sure that we leave our kids and grandkids the kind of environment that we have.

Ok. The Dreamer thing? The issue, Hurd says, is procedural. The Obama administrations method for protecting undocumented kids from deportation was improper. It should be in Congress purview. The obvious follow-up, unasked: Would he, as a member of Congress, push for that policy advocate for the many people in his district it would protect? Well, no, hes always been wishy-washy on the issue, offering verbal support for some kind of modest immigration overhaul while not actually supporting any of the major efforts to accomplish it. But he declined to even talk about that.

4. President who?

Trumps name doesnt pass Hurds lips. The closest he comes to being forced to address the White House and its occupant is when Alma Castillo, a 63-year-old who came to the U.S. at age 3 and later became a citizen, tells Hurd about the rising fear in the immigrant community.

When she misplaced her naturalization papers and sought replacements, she had been threatened with deportation, a memory that nearly brought her to tears. Tell Mr. Trump, let him know, what hes doing to this country, she says. Were all Americans, but he has divided all of us. its a horrible feeling.As Castillo is telling her story, an irate woman who says shes German-American interrupts to tell the room that she, a white person, would have been treated the same way, and that Castillo hadnt experienced racial profiling. It was an ugly moment, and provided Hurd an opportunity to express some of that political independence national observers have praised him for so lavishly. Instead, he walked over and gave Castillo a hug then offered something tepid about the economic benefit of immigration. Weve benefited from this reverse brain drain for many years, he says.

Stories about Hurds town hall tour have often played up his disagreements with the president, but theyre not substantive differences theyre dodges. Instead of Trumps big border wall, Hurd wants a smart border wall, with cameras and sensors. Hes been planning it with the help of Palmer Luckey, a Silicon Valley far-right-winger who secretly funded pro-Trump memes. The idea of the smart wall has been floating around for a while and has some Democratic support, but it also allows him to walk a wire strung between the build-the-wall and the ban-the-wall crowd. Similarly, he offers platitudes on immigration because he cant be seen to identify with a camp. Then, hes lauded for his bravery.Hurd recently told the Texas Tribune that he doesnt believe the Democrats can make Trumps toxic cloud stick to him. If hes right, its in part because of the extraordinarily low standards to which we hold Republicans who express the slightest bit of discontent with the administration. If we want to see more political courage from our elected officials, maybe we should stop so casually rewarding the hint of it.

See more here:
Will Hurd's Guide to Running as a Republican in 2018 - The Texas Observer