Welcome to Party Politics, where we prepare you for your next political conversation.

I'm Jeronimo Cortina Political scientist at the University of Houston.

And I'm Brandon Rottinghaus a political scientist, also here at the University of Houston.

Obviously, it's a big week as a lot of weeks are.

And we want to get you ready for your next dinner party, your next gathering cocktail hour.

It's all something you going to be talking about politics.

And so this is going to give you some insight.

The big news of the week is that Ken Paxton is still on trial.

By the time this airs, it may be done.

So we'll see how that proceeds.

We don't have any crystal ball predictions on this and we don't and shouldn't because every time we do it.

Yes, that's.

Right.

I'm not in the business of, you know, any more prognostications of stuff.

So it's risky, right.

Even riskier than like, you know, doing an NFL pick or something.

You.

But we are going to give you some context for how to understand it and what it means in the big picture of Texas politics.

But that's going to be later.

First up, we're going to talk a little bit about what's happening in Washington, D.C. Ken Paxton is not the only person in America with his hands full politically.

Speaker Kevin McCarthy also has got some dissent on his hand, really in the form of Matt Gaetz, who is a member of Congress from Florida and has been a kind of antagonist on the right.

So two things are going to happen this week.

One is are things happened this week?

One is that Matt Gaetz is going to give basically a speech where he outlines his grievances with the speaker, which is a kind of fancy way of saying that they're unhappy with the way the speaker's gone.

Now, remember, it only takes one vote.

To.

Issue a motion to vacate the chair, which is to say one vote to trigger an election of the speaker.

And so that's something that definitely is worrisome.

And McCarthy wants to head that off.

How is it going to head it off if you ask?

Well, what he's going to do is to offer up the idea that they impeach Joe Biden.

So a lot going on in what I just said.

How is this going to shake out for the Republicans?

How does it affect the thing we talked about last week where we know that the debt ceiling discussions upcoming and this sort of they've got to be able to fund the government.

It's going to turn out bad .

I mean, there's no positive spin on this.

And the problem with that is that we're very close to the election.

A lot of people are going to fight to be reelected and, you know, impeachment on not very clear grounds because, you know, a lot of Republicans are saying, sure, we'll impeach Joe Biden any time, any day, but I will be happy to answer.

His dog bit.

People like.

Oh, let's do it.

Right.

Crimes and.

Misdemeanors.

We need to have some sort of evidence, right.

A little bit of something.

And so far it is not clear because they want to do, you know, via Hunter Biden, you know, I guess legal calamities.

Right.

But there is no clear indication of how does that translate into President Biden.

Right.

So it's going to be complicated.

And it's also going to be complicated because Congress is going to be in mayhem, is going to be in complete disarray.

And then who is going to be blame?

Well, of course, Speaker McCarthy, but also members of the GOP in a primary election.

But also in a very, very complicated presidential election of next year.

I totally agree, although I'm not so sure that McCarthy is going to get the blame or Republicans look at the blame.

That's about the politics of it, right?

How they fight that out and who gets blamed.

Republicans want to blame, you know, Schumer and say that, you know, you're the reason that this isn't going because you're not accommodating us and they may blame Mitch McConnell, who also is not that happy about the impeachment prospects.

Also not that happy about impeachment prospects are some of the people in battleground states.

So polling I found suggest that in eight Republican held districts that were won by Biden in 2020, they're skeptical of this.

56% of people in these district said that impeachment inquiry would be a partizan stunt and compared to 41% who said this was a serious effort to investigate.

56 also percent also said that they were thought this was basically just a damaged Joe Biden.

I think that's not a great look.

And so in terms of blame, yeah, I think you're probably right that more likely that there is going to be a problem for the Republicans in McCarthy's, got to get his house in order and get resolved because if he doesn't, then it's going to be.

Yeah.

Even more chaotic, right?

Yes.

Obviously, that's an interesting piece of news.

But another big piece of news this week was that Austin Congressman Michael McCaul has basically called out U.S.

Senator Tommy Tuberville for delaying about 300 military promotions.

This has been going on for a couple of months, but is coming to a head because it's at the point now where it could be that there are no Senate confirmed individuals who are in the military in in the military, which is problematic because you expect to have some civilian oversight of the military.

So the four year term of General Mark Milley, who is the current chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, expires on October 1st.

And that would mean that there would be no individual who's Senate confirmed as a top military adviser.

And that's sort of one of those things that you expect to have happen in a functioning government.

Why is this happening, you ask?

Well, Senator Tuberville, who was a member of the Armed Services Committee, has blocked these promotions over an objection he has that the Department of Defense allows for paid time off and reimburses travel costs for service members and their dependents seeking abortions.

So it's about abortion again, not about military readiness?

No, about abortion.

McCaul says this is paralyzing the Department of Defense, and he's not alone.

The secretaries of Navy, Air Force and the Army all wrote an op ed in The Washington Post saying We ought to put national security first.

You've got Elizabeth Warren, who's basically calling him out on the Senate floor, saying we've got to get these things done.

What do you think is the end game here for Tuberville and do you think it's going to work?

I have no idea.

I mean, I simply do not understand.

I mean, mixing two completely unrelated issues.

Right.

One is, you know, the state of readiness.

One is has to do with national security.

And as everybody knows, the military operates on a very clear chain of command.

So if one of those links is broken, right, the very top, you know, it can have very important implications because, you know, we don't have that chain of command that is going to tell.

We have to do X, Y or Z.

And therefore, you know, it can have very important allegations.

And the other one is not only these issues, but it's also about promotions.

Right.

And, you know, I don't think it's fair to those that disagree over a promotion to be hauled up because Senator Tuberville thinks that these is illegal and therefore they should get rid of that policy.

Yeah, and I don't think, on the other hand, that, you know, Defense Department, Department of Defense or anything like that is just going to, you know, say, yes, senator will do that right away.

So it's also balancing a division of powers, so on and so forth.

And that creates a lot of problems.

So I don't understand it.

And I think that now he's going to start getting more and more and more pressure.

And obviously, you know, no one, especially in an election year, no one wants to mess with the military.

So if you take that issue right, that has been usually stronghold for Republicans.

Right.

How is that going to fare eventually in, you know, the overall narrative of 2024?

Yeah, it's a good question.

And I think two things are apparent.

I mean, I think, number one, we're certainly seeing Republicans kind of slip away from this hard line defense stance.

Right.

And so there are people who agree with Tuberville on this.

And although it's not included in among that list, Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader, or any other Democratic senators.

It's certainly the case, though, that there is a sort of dissent about the sort of foreign policy and the sort of military issues as they connect to these other kinds of concerns.

And so funding for Ukraine is a good example, right?

We're seeing a real shift in terms of that.

The debate, actually, a Republican debate that we saw a couple of weeks ago, kind of brought that out.

Right.

It was not a uniform support for kind of, you know, military aggressiveness.

That's something that we're seeing change.

The other is that we're seeing a lot of these issues take priority, like abortion over all other things.

Right.

So that's interesting to see that hard line stance come about.

And Republicans are wanting to fight like that hard line that right wing is willing to fight, just like Matt Gaetz.

But for for Senator Tuberville, who is, you know, people thought was kind of like a lightweight, he said before he was elected that there were three branches of government, the House, the Senate and the executive.

That's not right.

And I'll say, despite the fact that he was obviously wrong and we flunk our students for writing, that he figured out how to work a filibuster pretty well.

And like I said, it's been going on for a few months.

So he has a base friends, though, in the Senate right now, as he had when he left Texas Tech as a football coach.

So that's a little throwback there, but we'll see how that plays out.

But speaking of the debates, we're going to have another Republican primary debate in a couple of weeks.

We're going to talk about that when we get there.

But at this point, we have several of the candidates who are just fighting for a spot.

So among them is Will Hurd, who is a former congressman from Texas, famously did this kind of buddy road trip with Beto O'Rourke.

Well, Will Hurd's trying to park himself in a spot in California for the debate.

He's the only Texan in the race, and it's not going well.

The debate rules require that an individual hit 3% in two national polls after August 1st, or one national poll plus two early voting states.

There's also a financial requirement he's not getting there.

Right.

If you look at his most recent numbers, they're not that good.

He's raised less than half a million dollars, about $270,000 in the first few weeks of the campaign.

And he had about 250 on hand.

So he's less than $1,000,000 running a race for president.

That's not a good spot.

His numbers are moderate.

He's got a 14% fave.

10% on fave.

This is not a sign of a leading contender for the presidency.

And I think part of it is that, honestly, you know, he's the kind of anti-Trump candidate.

Yep.

And that's not something that sells particularly well.

He wants to position himself as a kind of moderate voice and somebody who's going to kind of focus on the things that Republicans care about, not on, as he says, sort of banning books or harassing his friends in the LGBT community.

So I'm not sure that's going to sell that well.

And clearly it's not.

Well, of course.

And absolutely.

And also, he has said many times that he is not going to sign the GOP policy all to support whoever wins, write the nomination.

And he said that he will not sign a blood oath to Donald Trump and that even if he had the numbers right, I don't think that he would be going to any of these debates.

Yeah, I mean, it's a loss because he brings, I think, very interesting perspective here.

And it would be very interesting to see, for example, Nikki Haley and and heard discussing some of these issues, especially since Haley did, according to some polls, very good in the last debate.

I think she's doing well.

Yeah.

And certainly her star is on the rise.

But it's all about Trump and he's not going to be there, right?

I mean, he has a beef with the Reagan Library and with Fox.

And so as a result, he's probably not going to show and write.

So it's really going to be everyone else kind of fighting it out.

But I think it's only so long that Trump can hold out before he really has to get involved in this.

And that's going to be probably sooner than later.

But the spread that he has over the seventies, you know, when you look at the average between late August and early September, it's about 40 points.

So he's not that worried.

Yeah, right now I think he's like, yeah, you can have your show.

I'm not going.

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Yeah.

He's running kind of a basement campaign in much the same way Joe Biden is because we've got the lead as well.

Milk is right.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But you know, L.A. is always nice and seamy.

Valley's got great views.

That's true.

It could be a nice place to be.

There you go.

He's got more important things to do, like, you know, making sure he keeps his lead and not saying something is going to get him further into legal trouble.

So everyone has their objectives on this and he's got his.

Well, this is party politics.

I'm Brandon.

This is Jeronimo.

We're chatting about all things related to the big picture of politics.

Let's talk Texas because there's a lot going on in the Lone Star State.

First up is the ongoing legal controversy over the buoys and the Rio Grande River.

Sorry, I shouldn't say Rio Grande River.

It's redundant, I suppose, but any case, yes, the Rio Grande is the issue.

And the problem is that the state put these giant orange buoys in it and they have violated various treaties.

It's obviously made a lot of people unhappy.

This week, nearly three months after the governor ordered the deployment of these buoys, an Austin judge ordered the state to remove the barriers and stop building further obstructions.

Then one day later, a higher court sided with Texas.

So as it is now, Texas can keep the buoys, but the ongoing legal fight continues.

Operation Lone Star has been an ongoing kind of controversy.

It's been something Greg Abbott has used to be able to kind of, you know, just sort of have a an anchor, no pun intended, in a border politics.

It's been a long time coming in terms of this legal battle.

What do you think is going to transpire on this politically for the governor and legally?

Do you think that this is something that they can continue to do and will win on?

Well, I think they're going to continue doing it right, because the main argument that the U.S. Justice Department is making is that the very violated federal law that prohibits structures in navigable waterways without fail approval.

It doesn't get into the matter.

If states can, you know and do have a say, implement a tentative immigration policy, that is a federal prerogative.

Yes.

So it's not getting into the real question.

The legal matter of this issue.

Texas is arguing that Texas has a clear constitutional authority to defend its territory against an invasion.

Right.

So once again, is this an invasion or not?

You know, that's up for debate.

And it's more political than anything on both sides of the aisle.

Yeah, immigration or illegal crossings or undocumented crossings have been decreasing according to the latest numbers of the Department of Homeland Security.

So you know, there's debate for that.

But obviously, when you have a highly politicized issue, both sides say, well, this is a win.

The other side says like, well, you're just making and cooking up the book these way or the other.

I'm surprised at this.

Yeah, there's no.

It is.

Very close.

And here it's all.

And then you know, the most I guess interesting thing is that the the whole buoy length ride it's around .02 miles on point 20 miles.

That's what I run every day.

Exactly.

Stay fit.

And that represents 0.02% of the whole border that Texas has with Mexico.

So it's feels kind of like a stunt because there are other ways to deter crossing.

This is a obviously kind of a political play from the governor, but it doesn't mean it's not working.

People seem to support this, and I think there's an assumption that this is useful as a deterrent.

It seems like it to some degree is and maybe even if not physically, certainly mentally.

Right.

It's sort of a deterrent.

I mean, if you're crossing within those 995 feet of border.

Yes.

I mean, it could be a deterrent.

And to your point, around 52% of Texans support these measures and around 40% oppose it.

Okay.

So this.

1% of Republicans supported.

That by a majority, right?

92%.

But then.

Yeah, exactly.

And then you see the the opposite for the Democrats.

So this issue works very well for both Republicans and Democrats.

Republicans use it to get that wedge and send, you know, the invasion, they're coming, etc., etc.. And then Democrats use it is like, look at these people, no respect for human rights.

So it helps both sides of the aisle heads Republicans, helps Democrats, and none of them have a real incentive to fix these things.

Yeah, good point.

Because it helps with their constituents.

Because it's a sort of political.

Issue.

Exactly.

Anything.

It works.

It does.

We're going to see a lot of this in the next thing we'll talk about.

And that's the U.S. Senate race that's upcoming in 2020 for Senator Ted Cruz is up for reelection.

And there are several people who would like to see him go back to Houston and not be in the U.S. Senate.

We have two more this week who are joining the cast currently made up of U.S. Representative Colin Allred of Dallas and Senator Roland Gutierrez of San Antonio this week.

Representative Carl Sherman, who's a representative in the Texas House, has become the third prominent Democrat to jump in.

He's elected from Sherman, Texas.

And then we have a fourth, and that's Nueces County prosecutor Mark Gonzales, who's the D.A.

there.

He was famous for kind of pushing back on the legislature, saying that as a day he was going to, you know, not pursue criminal charges against people who were seeking an abortion as the law would dictate.

And that got him into some hot water with local activists.

A couple of strong candidates for Democrats here.

And this is going to be a race we'll talk a lot about.

But off the kind of cusp of this, what do you think is the kind of, you know, sort of style of these candidates?

Like what do you think that the Democrats are recruiting good enough candidates to beat Ted Cruz, I guess?

Well, I think so.

Right.

I think that, you know, the fact that we already have, you know, for, you know, good, solid Democrats saying like, yeah, I'm going to throw my hat into the race.

That suggests that they see something.

That suggests that they see an opportunity in that opportunity.

Given that, you know, Senator Cruz is a very polarizing figure.

Either you like him or you don't like him.

And, you know, in terms of approval, disapproval meets around 42% approve of his job as U.S. senator.

45% disapprove.

So it's right there.

You have to take into account the margin of error.

So it's right split into the middle.

So I think that, you know, there's an opportunity for Democrats if they run a good race, if they get well-funded to have a real fight.

I'm not saying there's lots of ifs in there that are at least two that are right.

I like to caveat things.

I see.

So you're not embracing this.

But no, I agree.

I mean, I think you're right.

Lots of kind of questions are are swirling around here.

But I think there are some certainties, right?

Yeah.

We don't know how good a candidate that each of these will be.

We don't know how much money they'll have.

These are huge gifts.

But we do know that Senator Cruz is not well-liked.

Right.

That's not just true in Texas, though, the numbers suggest are definitely relevant.

But it's also kind of nationally how Ted Cruz is seen, because there's a lot of money to be raised as we saw Beto O'Rourke do in 2018.

Also, it's a presidential year.

Right.

So this is going to spike turnout.

Yeah, in a way that probably is going to benefit the Democrats.

So that's interesting.

We are seeing suburban change in Texas, in DFW.

There's been a massive growth of the support for the Democratic Party.

It went from plus 25 Republicans in the DFW suburbs to plus one for Democrats in 2020.

In Houston, it went from a plus 40 Republican advantage to a much smaller 5% advantage.

So those numbers are really telling because if you have the big cities voting for Democrats and you've got suburban Texas voting for Democrats, that's where a lot of that growth is.

Ted Cruz did not do well in rural America.

Beto O'Rourke did a good job at kind of priming that.

And so ultimately there's an opportunity here, I think, like you say.

But it depends on which one does it, which one, you know, wins and how good a campaign they run.

But number one, interesting, there are no women in this race so far.

That's interesting.

That's an under tapped probably set of demographic characteristics.

And the other is that I think it's important to note that it's worth having.

Right, like they're fighting over this, which is, I think, a pretty good signal that like Democrats are, you know, engaged.

Oh, yeah.

And especially when you're talking about the rural voters.

Right.

I think that these past legislative session showed.

Does that leave rural voters?

Right.

And that constituency is not solid Republican?

100% is, you know, common sense.

There are some there are some some cracks there.

Exactly.

So I think that if Democrats come out and have common sense policies.

Yeah, well, you're going to have broadband, period.

End of story.

Yeah.

Like health.

Care.

Or health care.

You're going to have schools.

We're going to support you in terms of, you know, water, etc., etc., etc.. Land these and that.

They're going to be happy.

Yes.

I mean, they just want common sense.

Yes.

They're not seeking, you know, wishy washy stuff or anything like that.

Mm hmm.

Also, immigration reform, because they also need, you know, workers.

So it's a combination of issues that if they're done correctly, it can help them.

And frankly, in the case of the GOP and in the case of Senator Cruz, he has taken a position that he's going to be very hard to disentangle with without alienating the core constituency that he relies on.

I think that they're worried, and I think you're right.

But I also think abortion, transgender issues, LGBTQ issues, these are things that culturally are hard to overcome.

So, I mean, I think you're right that a case could be made, but Democrats have made that case.

And I guess the your I think sort of analysis is that that that things have changed and that now they've heard it enough and so they can make kind of a different kind of choice.

I am not sure, but I think that that moment is here.

And so, yeah, I think that they can sort of have some success at that and Cruz is not well liked in rural parts of the state, so that'll be interesting to see.

We'll keep track of how 2024 emerges, but in the meantime, we've got a big piece of news and that is that the attorney general of the state who was suspended from office during the impeachment is on trial.

And we talked about this a lot last week.

There's a much debated kind of set of of controversies about what the AG did in office.

So I guess my first question to you is, do you think that the prosecutors have made a case, a successful case against the attorney general, or have the defense been able to kind of bat it down?

It depends on who you're going to say that.

I mean, if you see it, I mean, both the prosecution and the defense have taken very clear pathway to our distinguished people.

You know, from 11,000 miles away for the prosecution is you abuse your office.

You were, you know, doing things that you were not supposed to be doing.

That's it.

That's what the witnesses say.

End of story.

And for the defense, he's like, you know, all of these witnesses are these loyal or these witnesses have personal agendas.

All these witnesses do not have, you know, hard proof evidence.

And the smoking gun that has been the whole situation.

And all the defense has to do is to say that they haven't made their case.

And so that's enough to be able to get him acquitted.

But obviously, that's in the hands of the jury who have to make those choices, all of the kind of machinations that the attorneys are going back and forth on.

I know you've been watching this like I have, and it's just lots of objecting rights, a lot of discussion.

I don't think it's really playing with the jury, but they're the ones who have to make this this bigger case.

And I do think that the shortness of a trial had an effect.

I think that that made them have to really consolidate what they were going to say.

And so as a result, they definitely had to truncate their evidence and be much more punchy in terms of how they presented this.

But let's talk big picture, right?

Because obviously this has implications for the kind of current politics.

But what about the bigger picture?

One of the things that Tony Buzbee, who's the attorney when he attorneys for the attorney general, said, is that this is going to be something we're going to see all the time now.

Right.

Basically, impeachment of public officials is going to be the norm.

I don't mean to say that it's okay that, you know, we should expect to see this check.

That's what it's there for.

And as an institutional question, we ought to see this friction when there's some kind of debate and we'll sort it out.

Right.

We have a trial, which is organized in a much logical manner.

And so we should expect to see this.

And so I don't hope we have this because I'd like to get some sleep, but I don't think it's a bad thing for the system.

What do you think?

Oh, absolutely not.

I think it's good for the system.

Right.

And it's, you know, a system that is healthy is going to take itself.

So these sort of things also help out in terms of, you know, public officials thinking about twice, right, if I should do X, Y or Z, that's the point.

And that's deterrence.

And I think that's good gets good eventually.

I mean, every single elected official is going to get impeached.

No, that's probably too far.

And well, they're going to get impeach do something wrong.

Or if there is enough evidence to suggest that they did something wrong.

I hope so.

Yeah.

So I don't think it's a bad outcome eventually for, you know, the grand scheme of things.

Yeah, it's good.

It's a situational check and obviously the politics of this are going to be something we continue to talk about because they're going to be primaries fought over this.

There's going to be money raised over.

Oh, yes.

Once the gag order is lifted, like, wow.

Right.

It's like going to be like a circus.

But obviously there are implications to this that we'll get to sense over the long term.

So it'll be exciting to watch.

And we're going to continue our conversation next week.

I'm Jeronimo Cortina and.

I'm Brandon Rottinghaus the conversation keeps up next week.