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

I'm Jeronimo Cortina, political science professor at the University of Houston.

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

Thanks for hanging out with us and talking politics.

Obviously, big news this week is that we have an ongoing escalating conflict in the Middle East.

This is a fast moving situation.

So we don't have every detail, but we certainly can give us a big perspective in terms of how politically this plays out domestically as well as internationally.

So we'll get to that as the kind of deep in just a minute.

But first, I want to talk about money.

I want to talk about big money.

Donald Trump reports raising $45 million in one quarter, 2023.

Obviously, he surpassed his rivals by a significant number.

So this is a huge bump.

And keep in mind this Dr. Cortina, he is doing this amidst being indicted on several matters, not the least of which is a civil fraud trial that's going on.

If you've seen pictures of him in court, you can see that he's not super happy to be there.

But I suppose nobody would be.

But he's got to be happy about this.

Also, what does this mean?

Well, it means that he's on top of polls like night and day.

The difference and he outraise, you know, the second contest and you know, Ron DeSantis by 30 something million and Nikki Haley also a bunch of, you know, several millions in between.

So that means that, you know, he has been up and, you.

Know, still the front runner, right.

No matter the front runner.

And these has to raise the alarms on the other side.

Yeah.

A.K.A.. On the Democratic side.

Yeah.

And that is going to have implications in terms of how close, you know, especially the Biden campaign is doing these fundraising.

Yeah, that's a great point.

Actually, Republicans are still running scared, but that's something they're used to.

But the Democrats have got to be definitely kind of peeking at this with open eyes like this is a lot of money, I guess is not too surprising in the sense that he raises a lot of money and he gets a lot of eyeballs.

And so they've been able to ramp that up when they need to.

So it's definitely, though, worrisome for Democrats who are going to have to figure out a way around this amidst, of course, this sort of crisis developing in the Middle East.

But that's not the only presidential political news this week.

Will Hurd, the only member of the delegation from Texas in the race, has decided to call it quits.

So we're both breaking two pieces of news that he's running for president and that he's not running for president.

I just but the fact is that his candidacy never took off.

And I guess I want to know from you why why did it never take off?

Well, I think, you know, it's a candidacy in a very polarized Republican Party.

Yeah.

His campaign was basically cemented on going against Trump.

Yeah.

So it was an anti-Trump campaign, and, you know, Trump is very popular.

If you come at the king, you better come to kill.

And he didn't.

I mean, he had very little to say about the kind of sharp politics of the day.

And what he did say was motivated by a kind of.

Yeah.

Moderate approach, which is not the selling point in a primary like this, not early like this, when you're trying to distinguish yourself.

So yeah, yeah.

He didn't get very far.

Does this mean to you that there's no room for moderates in the Republican Party?

Like where do moderates go when they're worried about, you know, who they're going to vote for in the primary, but also in the general?

I don't know.

You know what we need?

We need a third party.

I think we do.

Oh, it's.

Trying to lead you into it right?

I mean, I think there is room.

I think that, you know, the Republican Party's a big tent.

And right now, you know, one side within the Republican Party is making significant noise and attracting a very particular set of voters, I mean, in terms of the demographic composition.

But, you know, demographic change is going to happen.

And therefore, the Republican Party has, you know, eventually to make that change.

If they want to be competitive, because among younger voters, the Republican Party or this brand of the Republican Party is not very popular.

Yeah.

So they will have to readjust that branding process.

But so far, you know, moderates will have to go with someone else, someone else.

Could it be RFK Jr. Perhaps would be RFK Jr.

So this week he made news as well because he came out and said that instead of running against Joe Biden for the Democratic nomination, he's going to run as an independent.

Now, it's a pretty formidable combination.

He's got high name ID, he's got an issue that people care about.

He also can take advantage of kind of voter dissatisfaction out there, like both major parties, likely nominees, assuming it's Trump, like we just mentioned, and Joe Biden and the Democratic side are really not well-liked among their party.

Right.

Or they're only liked by a very kind of small segment of their party.

And we know from decades of political science literature that typically partisans come home.

Right.

And elections are about basically reminding people that this is happening partisans see this, they're activated and they go back to their normal partisan home.

But we're in a very different world in 2024 than we have been in decades past.

So I guess then it's a long lead up question to ask you what you think RFK is kind of chances are I mean, is this just a kind of a like he's constantly downshifting because there's no support or is this the case that he's looking for a way to be able to capitalize on kind of his support?

I think he has some support.

He has some money.

He has been raising, you know, some good millions of dollars out there.

Not not a lot.

Trump Right.

Sorry.

But, you know, competitive one way or the other.

He would need to raise a lot, a lot, a lot more, right.

But I think he presents himself as, you know, it's a weird candidate in the sense that you cannot pinpoint him in one side or the other.

Yeah, he has made significant inroads with very conservative bloc of voters.

But then on the other hand, he's also a staunch environmentalist.

Right.

So he's working the fringes of you know, voters in terms of providing an alternative for some voters.

Right.

They or he might represent the right combination of features.

And that's what's interesting is that, yeah, he has some traction and there's not a lot of polling on this.

And of course, polling this early is always suspect.

So anytime you're seeing polling now, it's always dangerous to apply this to what's going to happen a year from now.

But the polling suggests that he is getting about 14% of the national popular vote.

That's almost as much as Ross Perot was.

Yeah, at the height of when third parties were a thing.

So that's certainly potent.

But obviously, doing this, as you say, is going to take a lot of money, right?

Yes.

A state by state challenge here is really a problem, because logistically getting on the ballot is really hard.

You have to have people organized on the ground.

I'm not sure that exists.

Right.

So it's really just a kind of ideas looking for a movement.

And in that sense, it's not necessarily going to have to move that far.

But I do think that the Democrats should be a little bit worried because that certainly RFK can take some votes from Biden, who has seeing the Democrats not as loyal to him as he would like.

Now, of course, that can change.

But the funny thing is, I think the reason he actually dropped out of the Democratic primary was that Kennedy is shown to be more popular among Republicans, independents than he is among Democrats.

And so there is no real probably chance he was going to beat Joe Biden in any capacity.

But this could actually hurt really both Trump and Biden in the general.

So that's potentially.

Interesting.

We shall see.

Yeah.

We're going to see a lot more political news.

But obviously another big piece that follows up from last week's discussion about the chaos in Washington, D.C., is who's going to be the speaker of the House just a little matter about like logistics, like logistically, who's going to be in charge of things over there?

This, as we reported last week, there are two candidates.

Basically, we don't know what's going to happen because we're taping this before the, you know, the vote.

But we have majority Leader Steve Scalise, who has been trying to get that nod, as well as Judiciary Committee head Jim Jordan, both of which are polarizing figures generally, but also within their own caucus.

What does this mean, big picture wise?

I mean, the Republicans are struggling to find a leader.

Somebody who can kind of bring the caucus together is even finding a speaker going to be enough to pull the caucus together?

Well, no, I don't think so.

I mean, I think that finding whether it's it's going to be a representative Scalise or Jordan, are is going to be a very complicated task to reign the Republican Party.

And why?

Because you have factions within the conference.

And what happens is that you have to be very, you know, careful in terms of promising and in terms of balancing.

Yeah.

Because, you know, if Matt Gaetz was able to get rid of former Speaker McCarthy, yeah, he can do the same.

Right again.

Right.

If that agreement is still on the table.

Yeah.

But also for Steve Scalise, that is, let's say, less conservative.

I mean, and I say this with air quotes because he's also very conservative, right.

You split the quotes around less and less.

Exactly.

You know, he also has the support of more moderate Republicans, but it's just the balancing act that we'll see.

And that has implications for what legislation can and cannot pass.

But that's a good point.

Democrats.

Yeah.

They can just sit back, relax.

Yeah, just get some.

Popcorn and like that kind of let the party self-destruct.

And they sort of are.

But, you know, they're trying to find a way forward.

And that's been the real challenge.

But you mentioned former speaker Kevin McCarthy.

We could also see future speaker Kevin McCarthy.

Does he still have not ruled out running again?

He said that, you know, he'd consider it obviously under very specific circumstances.

And those circumstances, what really matters and you said really it's the rules here that are a big part of it.

And so you've got some of the members who are trying to facilitate some rules changes.

So, for instance, they want to have a rule set in the place that they won't bring something to the floor unless it's got 217 people who support it.

So that means effectively hardening what they already do.

But, you know, some hard line conservatives like Chip Roy from Texas here want to put that in as part of the package.

So this is not just a fight about the speaker, it's also a fight about the committee and how the conference the Republicans are really operating.

And so at its core, it's really about that.

So it's going to tell us a lot this week.

But the other thing it told us is that Donald Trump still has some juice in this.

He was going to announce that he was going to support Jim Jordan.

And it turns out that Roy Nehls, who is from Texas here from Sugarland, kind of jumped the gun and announced it.

And then Trump was really mad at him.

He says that he totally f'd up on social media saying basically that he sold his thunder and that was a problem because they wanted that momentum to carry Jim Jordan forward.

So it's interesting to see that like Trump is still a big player and even in the congressional politics.

Well, this is party politics.

I'm Brandon and this is Geronimo.

The big news for the week.

Obviously, Jeronimo is the tragedy unfolding in the Middle East.

Sudden attacks by Hamas in Israel have left thousands of people dead, 900 Israeli, 700 people in Gaza, 100 hostages have been taken.

11 Americans were killed.

This was a stunning attack and something that was not expected, at least according to the intelligence services from both the Israeli military and U.S. military.

The fighting has been escalating.

Obviously, it's fast moving.

We don't know every detail about what's happening on the ground.

But let's talk about the big picture and I want to get your take on this with respect to how it's going to affect domestic politics for Joe Biden and how it's connected to questions and concerns about the production of oil, which is always the biggest question when there is this sort of a crisis in the Middle East.

Well, first of all, this is you know, this was a terrorist attack.

I mean, there's no question about that.

And the politics are very interesting, not only within, you know, domestic politics, but more importantly, what's going to happen in the region and how the United States is going to respond.

So it's very interesting to see that this is, you know, a war of Israel against Hamas.

Right.

And that's, you know, the first thing there.

Hamas is a terrorist organization.

That was found in the late 1980s.

And, you know, their only mission is to eradicate the state of mind.

So it's just, you know, insane.

This is to say the least.

But the interesting thing is that when you go to the region, you know, Hamas does not necessarily has, you know, support of all Gazans, citizens residents of Gaza.

Right?

Yeah.

Some polls that were conducted last year said that between 53 to 71% of Gazan residents do not support Hamas.

So the first thing is that we have the question is, what is the goal of Hamas of inflicting these terrorist attacks?

It is not clear at all.

And then what's going to be the role of the other countries in the region, namely, you know, especially Egypt that shares a border with Gaza and then Saudi Arabia.

Right.

Lebanon.

Lebanon.

Right.

Very important because Hezbollah is there and it's, you know, kind of, you know, brothers allied allied with Hamas.

So it's a complete utter mess.

Yes.

I mean, is there any choice here for Joe Biden and the Biden administration except to just have a full throated support of Israel and Netanyahu on this?

Netanyahu effectively said, like, we can't negotiate like this is too brazen of an attack.

And I think the people generally are with him on that.

But he's been pushing a very hard line stance and the president's been trying to kind of get them to come off of that and to gender some kind of peace.

But that seems off the table now.

Oh, yeah.

Is there any other choice that Joe Biden has or acceptance to kind of really go all in on this and follow Netanyahu's lead?

Or is he going to try to sort of push pause on things, at least try to cool things down before it gets worse?

I don't think that things are going to cool down.

Yeah.

At all.

Yeah.

And I don't think that, you know, the Biden administration has any leeway to a potential ally in this situation.

Might be Egypt.

Yeah.

That sometimes or in the past has played, you know, a role of back channeling some of the information between Israel and Hamas.

But I don't see it.

I mean, as you said, he was too brazen of an attack too bloody too barbarian and to inflict that attack that, you know, Netanyahu, especially given the political climate before these terrorist attacks, you know, was very tense.

Right.

And what they tried to do with the Supreme Court, etc., etc..

So the political climate was not, you know, ideal.

It's a great point.

Let's say let's take pause.

Yes.

And Netanyahu has no choice.

Yeah, no choice to retaliate.

Yeah, that's a good point.

So it's going to be very difficult to see what's going to happen.

Yeah, because the problem here is that you're putting civilians right on both sides in the middle of the conflict.

Yeah.

And simply that is not okay.

Yeah, it's a good point.

No.

And I think that, you know, for Joe Biden, there are some risks here.

But there are also potential rewards for the Democrats in the Senate so that they have been complaining that Republicans have been holding up their nominees from the State Department and other ambassadors like the counterterrorism coordinator.

And so they would like to see that move.

And so this might be the kind of thing that spurs that.

The other is that now there's this big discussion about how much money or if to give the funds to Ukraine.

Well, there's been discussions on the Hill about basically partnering together support for Israel financially with the support for the Ukraine.

So it could be that they're able to kind of spin this together as a way to be able to build a kind of bridge and what builds bridges better than money.

Right.

But obviously, it's a complicated scenario because Republicans are worried that like too much money to Ukraine might mean, you know, that it's going to be kind of less money elsewhere.

But partnering these things together is smart.

But I think the risks are still pretty high for Joe Biden.

Right, because he has to deal with potentially an energy crisis on the heels of this.

And that's why they don't want things to get any worse than they are.

They don't want a wider war.

They want a narrow of this conflict as much as they can and have it effectively dealt with soon.

Because if this spurs a kind of, you know, drop in, you know, the volume of oil, then it's going to increase prices.

And that's going to mean domestically a real problem for for Joe Biden.

But we have we have significant reserves here.

That's true.

And they did just tap this, though, and I think that they're worried that they can't continue to do that for too much.

Right.

So after the Ukraine fighting started, they tapped it.

But so far, no one said that's needed.

But we shall see.

Right.

Because the longer this goes, the harder it's.

Going to be and it's everything is going to be rested on, you know, these cartel of all producing countries.

Yeah.

And if they side or not again strategically like you know, if you are, you know, you know from Saudi Arabia.

So it's like what just happened like doesn't make any sense strategically speaking.

Yeah.

Unless Right.

There is involvement as some people have been saying of Iran, you know.

Yes.

Financing these groups.

However, Iran, even though that it produces oil, is not a huge producer.

Right.

I mean, it could be overtaken by Saudi Arabia in just a blink of an eye.

So Saudi Arabia has to consider that and has to consider if they're going to, you know, reduce production of oil.

Right.

That is going to bring prices up and then we're going to be in a bigger mess.

Yes.

Plus the Ukraine.

Okay, now, I'm thoroughly impressed about all of this.

Well, we're still hoping that there's going to be a positive outcome here.

But obviously, the politics of this create all kinds of different problems.

Speaking of problems, let's talk Texas, because Texas is obviously in the middle of its own war, but it's a political war.

Happily, it's really a war by op ed and just kind of name calling, which is unusual.

But just think about where we are, Jeronimo, in terms of this position, right?

You've got lieutenant governor and speaker who are fighting lieutenant governor took money from this organization that met with white supremacist.

That is something the speaker saying that like they should give the money back.

You've got the attorney general who's effectively suing certain members of the legislature saying that they he they were doxxed during the whole impeachment affair.

You know, the GOP chair is calling the speaker a drunk, just the average, you know.

Yep.

Beginning of a special session on a Tuesday in October.

So there's a lot of crazy stuff happening.

And we want to talk all about what that looks like.

But first, there's at least some good news for funding and that's that the comptroller has released an updated revenue estimate and that shows that the state has about an $18 billion surplus.

So that's at least happy news for moving forward in terms of potential funding for the special session, which the governor obviously is is very keen to see get started and get finished.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So I mean, you just, you know, thinking about the policy option here in this special session is, you know, some sort of bill that tackles school vouchers choice, right?

Whatever the name is going to be, whatever it's going to look like.

We don't know the news of the controller.

Very important because Phelan, Speaker Phelan already said, hey, like we are willing to work on this thing if there is more money for public education.

Yeah.

So now the money's there.

Yeah.

Right now we'll see how the governor can control and also Phelan and Patrick can control those, you know, press releases.

Right.

One way or the other, because that does not help at all moving forward.

So I think, you know, the governor has an interest in saying, okay, like, cool it down, let's get this thing done.

Let's keep it.

Yeah, shake hands, right, and then we'll figure that out.

But yeah, he's going to be yeah.

Very complicated.

There's a baseball expression, it's take it to the tunnel, keep it in the tunnel.

Right.

Like if you're going to fight with your teammates, don't fight in the dugout.

Go in the tunnel and fight because you don't want everyone to see that there is sort of internally chaos.

That's all we see.

Right.

And so the governor needs to step in.

And that's a problem because he's been MIA so far and despite the fact that this was his idea, like, he hasn't been very vocal.

And so maybe behind the scenes, things are a little different.

But people are reporting out of Austin that he simply isn't there and so that's one big question, because this is going to be a tough vote for a lot of these members.

School choice is going to be something they're going to have to swallow hard.

But like we do have a preview of what this is going to look like.

Right.

Because we do have Senate Bill one from Brennan Brighton here from the Houston area.

He's put together this plan that gives $8,000 of taxpayer money to people to use for private schools.

This is going to basically add about $500 million to the kind of general cost of this from the general revenue.

They have an allocation in terms of a lottery about where the money is going to go to.

So it prioritizes people who are receiving, you know, free and reduced lunches or people who have, you know, kind of in that federal poverty hole donut.

Right.

The 185% to 500% poverty people disability.

So like they have a priority system in place, which would be, I think, appealing to some people, but probably not appealing to most Democrats who came out uniformly and said no deal on the table for any of this.

But I want to ask you about this, because obviously the money matters.

So the comptroller says you've got more money, but $500 million every biennium is a lot of money.

We have it right now, happily.

But it's not the case.

You have that.

I mean, that money's not going to last.

Yeah.

Again, here, there is a lot of miscommunication and mis- interpretation of what this thing is going to look like.

Like we don't know how much is going to look like how far he's going to go, how he's going to help.

So let me just give you an example.

Let's say that, you know, I want to send my kids to these private school and these private school is $20,000 a year.

Which is pretty common for a school.

So I have three kids.

Right.

So does that mean that the state is going to give me $60,000?

I like doubt it.

If I get 5000 or 2000, it's perfect.

Yeah.

So what I'm going to do with the, let's say all their $15,000 a year that I have to cover, I don't know.

I still need to pay property taxes.

Right?

Right.

So, like, the math doesn't work for me.

No, that's right.

And I think a lot of people are ambivalent about this.

And so in terms of polling, the governor put out a bunch of polls that said that people generally support vouchers.

That's true.

Certainly conservatives do.

We know this is accurate.

But when you put it in the context of like the total issues people care about, it doesn't tend to be a top issue.

And so I think that they're missing the sort of priority of it right.

And so if you couple that with the funding issue, it's going to be even more hard, I think, for them to get these things done.

So that's going to be tricky.

And our, you know, friends and the Texas Tribune and UT did a very nice, interesting experiment, right, by just changing the wording of the question.

And it was aimed rural respondents.

Yeah.

So when you asked, you know, establishing voucher program, it's yes, 61% say absolutely.

I want it.

But then saying, hey, by the way, we're going to take money from here and give it to them.

And out of here, that number falls to 43%.

Yeah.

So it's going to be an issue of how right and how public opinion is going to be informed because that's going to curtail.

On the one hand, how the governor has significant power or Dan Patrick, or Dade Phelan in addition, right?

If Paxton sues or challenges these other members of the House.

Yeah.

Then it's, you know.

Yeah.

They may choose to die on that here.

Yeah.

Just to say like.

We're going to Yeah.

We're going to stick it.

Gavel out and strike.

And see what happens.

See what happens.

So fight it out.

Yeah.

Okay, just.

A couple of moving pieces.

It's.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah.

Well, happily, we're here to help break it all down.

The last thing we'll talk about for the week is just a crazy bit of news, but it is also affecting a lot of the relationship between the big three.

And that's that far right GOP activist Jonathan Stickland is a former member of the House and the head of this Defend Texas Liberty PAC, which funnels the sort of conservative money to conservative members, hosted a white supremacist, Nick Fuentes, at his office in Fort Worth, not once but twice.

GOP chair Matt Rinaldi was also seen entering the building, although he says he denies beating Fuentes.

Basically, they implied that they were just renting a conference room and it was a coincidence.

But there's a lot of condemnation going on.

Many of the House members, about 70% of come out and said, like, we want you to give those that money back.

Right.

Which is, by the way, a huge chunk of money.

Right.

Including, as I mentioned, the money to Dan Patrick.

So what do you think is going to happen here?

Do you think that the GOP's going to use this?

To me, it seems like because they're fighting about the money now, it's a real fight.

Before it was just the politics of ideology.

But the money fight means this is going to go.

And this is really big.

I mean, first of all, having meetings, whether you're in one party or the other party, whatever white supremacy is.

No, it's a big no.

No, like beard.

No, that's hard.

No.

And yes, once you have the money, I mean that I agree with you, that signals that you know this thing is for real.

Mhmm and Texas for lawsuit reform jumped into saying, you know, now your money is tainted, basically.

So I think that's a smart play actually to hit them where the pocketbook is.

Absolutely.

But we're going to continue with these and many other stories next weeks.

I'm Jeronimo Cortina.

And I'm Brandon Rottinghaus.

The conversation continues next week.