Welcome to 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 a little politics.

The holiday season is here.

That means holiday parties back to back to back.

And that means talking about politics.

It was such a busy week, it was hard to figure out like how to pare it down so we could get to all of these things.

We have a mayor's race, obviously, that's going to be massive.

The deep for us this week is going to be, though, talking about the election, but talking about the legislative session happening in Texas, which didn't produce a lot of actual outcome.

So the governor's not that happy.

He's probably got a big old piece of coal in his stocking, making his naughty list.

Oh, yeah.

For these lawmakers who crossed him.

So we'll get into that because this has major implications for primaries to come.

But first, let's talk about some big national news, and that's that the House GOP is moving ahead with their impeachment inquiries of Joe Biden and and Myorkas, who's the head of the who's the head of Homeland security.

The House is expected to vote basically this week to formalize the impeachment inquiry.

They seem to have the votes.

They'd like to get this done before the holiday season.

There are some interesting things that happened this week that, you know, revealed some of the details that they're pursuing and maybe give us a flavor for what they're going to talk about in terms of justification.

So they've issued a subpoena for James Biden, the president's brother.

They're trying to get Hunter Biden to come testify behind closed doors.

They've released reports that fundamentally have details about the kind of relationship between Joe Biden and Hunter Biden.

Their argument is that this is untoward, this is some legal concept.

There's no real smoking gun in these things.

But they did uncover this transfer payment between Hunter Biden and Joe Biden.

But that apparently was for a truck that Joe Biden helped to finance, which is a good thing for a dad to do.

Yeah, so lots of details here and our kind of responsibilities to kind of cut through a lot of this noise.

So tell me kind of what this means in the big picture of the sort of power struggle in DC.

Well, I guess behind the whole political drama, you would need a very strong shears to cut through all the.

Politics here to say like a really tall eggnog, because yeah, I'm in favor of that as well.

Yeah.

So I think, you know, Mike Johnson, speaker of the House, tried to navigate these, I think in a very astute way by saying, okay, this is not a very big this is not anything like that.

This is just a vote to move forward with the investigation and find out, you know, if there was anything illegal.

Yeah, if we take his words, you know, face value or anything like that.

Everything's fine in politics.

That's what we should be.

Yeah, of course not.

Right.

But at least it's an indication that let's move forward and let's see where we get some other Republicans pressure.

The more moderate Republicans are saying, you know, if there's something we want to find out, yeah, I need is it the constitutional duty of Congress?

It is indeed right.

But obviously, these investigations should have never started because, as you say, there's no smoking gun pointing at the president.

Hunter Biden.

That's a different you know, So yes.

And if he violate the law, then they should proceed and end of story.

Right.

But that's, you know, the OJ investigation.

Yes.

So we'll see what happens in terms of how this investigation is going to move forward.

And apparently, because the House has been arguing that there has been a lot of problems moving and finding evidence, so on and so forth.

Yeah, the White House has said otherwise.

They have had access to more than 35,000 pages.

Right.

Right.

And many hours of depositions, so on and so.

So politics.

Yes, constitutional duty of Congress as well.

Yeah.

How they balance.

Yeah.

On the eyes of the beholder.

Wow.

I didn't know about that.

Yeah.

And we're going to see this play out in all kinds of ways in 2024.

And we've mentioned this before, but there is a kind of equivalency that the Republicans would like to have assuming Donald Trump's the nominee.

Right.

Let's just sort of put this on the table.

Then he's going to have serious legal problems, which lead to political problems.

So obviously, there's going to be a lot of that in the mix.

But the Republicans would like to have Joe Biden on a similar plane.

Right.

To say like, well, everyone here is a little bit dirty.

And so as a result, this impeachment inquiry can kind of provide them that.

Okay, So that equivalency is troublesome because it's not so much the case that they are equivalent, it seems.

But obviously that's the politics of it.

Like you say, people have to decide for themselves sort of what they think of this.

But actually, I wanted to ask you a different question, a related question.

And that's the nature of impeachment as a kind of weapon.

And we've seen this more in the last couple of years.

Republicans are just raging mad that Donald Trump got impeached twice.

And for their opinion, it wasn't for anything that was justified.

Democrats, on the other hand, are saying, you know, the fate of the republic is in the balance.

He had to be impeached.

She was impeached.

This is a problem politically, and we can't have that repeated.

So to me, the fight over whether impeachment is something that should be used in these conditions is really important because if it becomes used all the time as just a political weapon, then it no longer has the functional role of creating the accountability that the framers wanted.

And that's really the core.

Oh yeah, it's supposed to be for.

So is this going to create this just constant tit for tat where you're impeaching everybody and everything for all kinds of different reasons?

I mean, you can justify it in any kinds of ways that you even have to justify it in a way like it's like the broad enough language, right, that you could do it in any case you wanted.

Is it going to create a problem for accountability in this country if everybody's impeached, Everyone has one impeachment on their record, right?

Like a little punch card, you get like a subway.

I mean.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

Like, I mean, there's no escape, right?

And, you know, unless, you know, polarization suddenly ends.

Right?

But no, I mean, this is going to be used like if you were driving through Harris toll Wednesday that go through.

Its racks it up.

Racks it up and they send you a bill later.

Right.

I need, you know, one way from nine to whatever 1130 or whatever it is, and then it's the other way.

So it's going to be a two way street and they're going to use it like that, you know, left to right.

And then they're going to it's like, oh, he look at me in, you know, with evil eyes.

Oh, yeah.

You have to be impeached.

We're impeaching you.

So that is a significant risk, right?

It's a significant reason that deters and diminishes the purpose of impeachment.

So, you know, I guess, you know, everyone has some fault in terms of creating these situations.

You know, you know, 2.1% or not.

So, yeah, you know.

Well, speaking of creating the situation, a lot of Republicans point to Liz Cheney as part of the reason that Donald Trump.

Got his agent.

And so she was very vocal this week because of a new book that she has out that she might run for president.

That's been in her mind the way that they solved the Donald Trump problem.

Basically, she makes him lose.

And if she ran for president as an independent, she would get probably enough Republican votes that it would probably cripple his chances in some key states and therefore really hurt his potential to be president.

So what do you think of this as a strategy?

I mean, I don't think there's any case, any scenario, any kind of strategy where she could really win.

But the fact that she's a kind of Republican on the outs is going to attract a lot of support.

The fact that she's a female candidate is going to get her like a lot of support, especially if we see this gender gap rise.

Now, we don't know everything about sort of her positions on a bunch of national issues that drive the discussion these days.

But for sure, it's the case that she has a built in constituency that could really hurt Donald Trump.

So how do you see this playing out in the long run?

Yeah.

Well, I mean, initially we haven't had any indication that, you know, she's moving to register in in the ballot in in some states.

These registration starters early as March next year.

And we're like months away from Iowa.

So it's complicated to get that registration That's one to any fundraising.

We have no idea.

We have no idea if there is, you know, a political strategy is if she has a ground game operation or not.

So there's a lot of questions, right?

The question is, if the right could have significant movement implications, especially within the GOP primary candidate.

Right.

A.K.A Governor Christie.

Right.

That some voices these weeks I probably you should move aside.

Let Nikki Haley take it from here.

Maybe ravish one of these like like.

Let's run together.

I just I want to be part of the team.

Right?

So, you know, it's just a lot of questions.

Indeed, it could have a lot of potential implications for Trump, but also for Biden.

Right.

She could also siphon some votes away from President Biden.

You know, those Republicans, moderate Republicans.

I would never vote for Trump.

Good point.

Yeah.

Now they have an option to vote for and that could cripple so actually could help Donald Trump if he gets nominated to win the presidential election.

Interesting.

That's a good point.

Yeah.

So we'll see this play out.

She said she's going to make a decision in a few months.

And obviously time is of the essence here because, yeah, politics waits for nobody.

But actually in between the time where we started the show and now I figured out what I'm going to get you for Christmas and that's going to be a cameo from one representative, former Representative George Santos, for 350 bucks.

You two and 50.

Now it's up to 350.

It started at like 250.

It went up preceding the couple of days he was on because it's been such a popular thing.

Really.

It's amazing.

And actually the funny thing about this is that John Fetterman, Senator Fetterman from Pennsylvania, sent who he call ethically challenged to Bob Menendez, a cameo from George Santos.

So saying that, yeah, here's how you exit Congress gracefully, I'm not sure he knows that well, but for 350 bucks, you can get him to provide a message.

So I'm actually strongly considering getting a message from him to you what he'll say.

Yeah, I don't know.

I need to think or not, but I read something along the lines of Merry Christmas.

I suppose we shall see.

But let me ask you this.

What do you think about this?

I mean, George said we talked about this last week, George Santos expunged from Congress.

Obviously, the politics around this are interesting and bizarre because there's so many laws that he's potentially broken.

He's under indictment for these things.

What does it say about the political system where, like you exit Congress and immediately you're on cameo doing these like, you know, 32nd ads for?

Yeah, well, first of all, I think Kafka would die if we you know, or it's a Republican or we've all been in his grave just to see like, what the hell is going on.

Like, no sign fiction, no could predict this thing.

That's one thing.

But the other one is, you know, and you are an expert in scandals, Right?

And it's like, remember those times that you did something like that, Then you dig a hole in the ground and just crawl.

Over is disappear.

Hide completely.

Great point.

Yeah, but apparently now it's like, whatever.

That's actually a brilliant point.

Like, they embrace it, Right?

And honestly, being that celebrity, even after a scandal, provides you with a base, it provides you with attention.

So and I think, honestly, to me, so much of politics now is just a show and it's about the celebrity part of it.

And so, not surprisingly, you're seeing very little get done in Congress, very little gets done in Texas, in the House and Senate.

So obviously, I think this is symptomatic of a bunch of this.

But it is hilarious.

And so be on the lookout for in your email box or message.

All right.

Fair enough, Representative Santos.

But let's talk more about what's going on in DC.

Obviously, you know that our junior senator from the state of Texas is Ted Cruz, but his legal name is Senator Rafael Eduard Cruz, Correct?

He's actually introduced a bill, though, that some people say is in sort of the wrong spirit, where he is essentially requiring federal law to prohibit the use of preferred names and pronouns on on official documents.

This is called the Safeguarding Honest Speech Act and prohibits the use of federal funds in any policy or guidance requiring an employee or contractor of a federal agency or department to use on the person's preferred pronouns.

If it's incompatible with a person's sex.

So obviously this is not going to really go anywhere.

But people have pointed out that, you know, you go by Ted, right, in a kind of colloquial way.

Right.

Is it misleading?

Is it like ironic?

What would you say about how this plays out?

So Senator Cruz said that is not that you would have to call him X, Y or Z.

It's just the federal government making you ride referred to a person according to what that person wants.

Yes, them.

They're preferred call.

Them or something like it's complicated.

Complicated.

So what he said is like you know the federal government and he made he tweeted or X or whatever X that, you know, the federal government would prohibit, you know, a person calling him Ted or calling him, you know, he's other examples or something like that.

Yeah.

So that means that from now we can call Rafa.

Okay, good.

Rafa.

Rafa.

Hi.

And he would be fine with Senator Rafa.

Yeah, his name is Rafael.

There you go.

I mean a rip off of Rafael is Rafa.

I think it's perfect because.

Then the other way he's like, Edward, it's Ted, but that's a middle name.

So it's, you know, okay, graphite.

It's fine.

I gotcha.

Rafa It gets complicated.

Yeah, it gets complicated.

Yeah.

Obviously, that's not going to go anywhere in a Democratic Senate.

And the fact that they're not really doing much at all in terms of legislation certainly suggests this to go anywhere.

But the kind of grievance politics of this continues.

And I think it's just a signal that this is not going to go away.

This is going to be the kind of thing that is going to be used as a wedge issue going into 2024.

But it's very dangerous to use it as a wedge issue because, you know, for the older folk, right, some of them may agree, some of them, you know, may completely disagree.

Some of them think is ridiculous.

Some of them don't simply care.

Some of them embrace it.

Right.

So over there, I think it's clear.

But for, you know, younger millennials for Gen Z what or that kind of stuff.

Yeah.

They see it as a kind of disrespectful act.

If you don't refer to a person.

Yes.

To their preferred pronoun.

Yeah, good point.

So that could create a which we've a big, big chunk of the electorate.

Yeah.

And that big, big chunk of the electorate may be motivated for something that they see, as you say, a grievance against them.

Right.

If we're talking about, you know, foreign policy in Azerbaijan.

Younger folk may be low, whatever, right?

Yeah.

Eyes glaze over.

I'm sure you're copying right.

Or something like that.

But you know, something that is within their very own identity.

Yeah.

That could be something very.

So it's playing with matches.

Yeah.

With an open kind of gas to you.

And I would say like, okay, let's see if we can throw a match inside the cabin.

No, you're right.

And it's worth reminding Senator Rafa Cruz that he's up for reelection and Texas is a state in transition.

You're seeing a lot of young people politically very active.

So this is the kind of thing that might ignite that tinderbox.

So we'll track this as it goes on.

But we should talk about Texas.

This is Party Politics.

This is Jeronimo Cortina, I'm Brandon Rott The big news of the week is that the fourth special session ended in kind of a clutter like unhappy very unfriendly very on kind of holiday spirit way they had adjourned Signy Di for the end of this session.

The speaker and the lieutenant governor are fighting about the who's to blame for the fact that things didn't go the governor's way.

The governor is not pleased.

As I said, he's probably making his naughty list many issues, including the school choice issue that he wanted to have on the agenda did not get to his desk.

Neither did teacher pay or increasing the public school student allotment two border security bills did.

But obviously the governor didn't get all of what he wanted.

So either he kind of made Santa Claus mad or he simply can't get his party together.

Which do you think it is?

I think it's a little bit of both, right?

I mean, the Republican Party in Texas is clearly divided.

Yeah.

I mean, and it's I think that we're moving a little bit faster than the national GOP, but the real issues are happening here, first in Texas.

And that division is very clear.

And it's a division that is, you know, people with power within the GOP are openly fighting about issues and how to conduct government and how to govern.

Yeah.

On some stuff, they're unified, right?

Immigration issues, border security issues.

They tend to be pretty unified.

But school choice has divided them.

And I think the governor recognized like there's no reason to do this again, especially given the timing and he's content to kind of fight this out in the election space.

Right.

Like that's coming up.

Primaries are on their way.

Organize, spend some time next week talking more about the primary process and about sort of the governor's role in it.

But it's just a kind of preview here to say that he's going to back people who supported him on school choice.

Do you think it's going to work?

I mean, I don't know.

But given what we have seen before, where and the governor has backed up primary challenges right.

He has a mixed record.

Yeah.

In some cases he has not won, you know, especially in those very open confrontations.

Right.

And then the other question is a substantial question.

Right.

What is the role of the legislative branch?

And the role of the legislative branch is to be a balance, right, with the executive branch.

Yeah.

And obviously the judicial branch.

I see.

So you have don't forget about the people in the robes.

I like that.

But I don't think that's what the governor sees.

The governor things are doing the way that you should do what I want you to write like.

But then then is okay, what are we playing?

Yeah, right.

So either we ascribe by the rules of democracy, right?

And where each representative know has their own right to represent their constituents the way that he said.

That's why we have a representative democracy, right?

Because that represented interprets what their constituents want and then enacts them.

So to me is working perfectly.

Yeah, right.

It seems like it's going well.

It's it's good in terms of that.

Right.

But if the government wants to impose his views or anything like that, it's it's that's not how it works.

You have to give them something and what they're giving is, okay, we can do this thing but we need X, Y, and Z, and especially, you know, Republicans from religious and is so bitter.

We have said it so many times.

They do not want it.

Yeah.

And I think the governor kind of misread this.

I mean, he's definitely one of the more powerful governors we've seen in the state.

He's got tremendous fundraising capacity.

Oh, yeah.

He's got at least some leverage with voters.

But I don't think that people are going to go to the mat for him on this.

And those are two things.

Right.

School choice may not pop as an issue and he may not have the kind of juice to be able to pull it.

Right.

I maybe Dan Patrick does.

Dan Patrick, though, said he wouldn't run against people who were supportive of the speaker did Fallon So that was interesting to note after this kind of session crashed and burned, you had the lieutenant governor saying that, you know, he doesn't like David Fallon.

I think that's unclear, although he said it wasn't personal, but he used the words like stupid, which is not a good sign.

And I think, you know, Dan Patrick is a worry about the kind of, you know, the fact that Santa Claus is always watching.

Right.

Yeah.

He says on the question about calling him California date, he brings us up.

Yeah.

Which is sort of insulting.

But he says this is a good natured sparring maybe.

I don't think that they see it that way, though.

I think that they see this is a real existential battle for the heart of the Republicans.

And so a lot of bills got killed in the Senate.

The Dan Patrick wanted a teacher bill of rights bill removing judges who refuse to follow Texas law, banning CRT in universities.

So there's a lot of bills that Patrick wanted that didn't come about and he feels like he can't work with the speaker on this.

And so I think that's a just no signal that like no reason to call in the special if it's the case that you can't get the speaker right.

Well, I mean, it's not working with.

Right?

Once again, it's that Bill that the House has to do whatever the Senate and that that gets things complicated.

And again, from a substantial and substandard point of view like academics, this is how you have a bicameral legislature.

This is exactly what should because we and the founders and the Texas fathers and mothers, whatever.

Right.

Saw these as a balance of power.

It's a great way to put it.

Like the plural executive encourages those individuals to like, think that they're more powerful than the system.

But the system sometimes says not so fast.

And that's why we elect alternate governors separately from the governor.

And once we elect the controller and the commissioner of of the trains and oil, etc., etc., railroad.

Yeah, yeah.

Land Commissioner.

The line Commission.

Yes, of course.

That was just it was a joke, of course.

So that's why we have because it's the lexicon.

But you just said it.

That's in your book completely.

All, all the way through.

Yes, indeed.

Well, this is Party Politics.

I'm Brandon.

This is Jeronimo.

Let's talk about the mayor's race.

Let me ask you a question.

What have we had a mayors election and nobody showed up That looks like kind of what we're having here.

Turnout for early voting is flat.

Now, this may air after the time where we have the final results, but early voting at this point looks really flat, considering that the population in the city has grown.

You don't see those people coming to vote.

There hasn't been a groundswell of activity, but some interesting things happened this week.

The mayor and John Whitmire have sparred over diversity.

The John Whitmire accused the mayor simply of not allowing for there to be enough diversity in the cabinet officials right inside the city.

Turner responded by saying that, you know, he's highlighted people who he has appointed.

He says that this is a misrepresentation and the John Whitmire owes him an apology.

Then he turns around, it hits Whitmire with the conflict of interest issues, which the Houston Chronicle reported this week.

To my person here is that the mayor is running a better campaign against Sheila Jackson, against John Whitmire than Sheila Jackson Lee is.

What do you think?

Well, I mean, I think that it's just a campaign that hasn't gotten fired in any shape or form.

And we saw that since the general election.

There is a lot of appetite from candidates to run, as we saw in the general election.

A lot of people running.

But in this one is, you know, it's kind of something that we hope it is.

But to be fair is within the primaries that we have seen in in in other runoffs.

Right.

Is nothing, you know, right out of the norm.

Good point.

Yeah.

Like it's not that different, but it's also not better.

And you'd expect it to be a little bit greater.

Part of the reason is that John Whitmire has had a significant lead since the start, and he's also spent something like $12 million to make this happen.

And no one has really come to Sheila Jackson Lee's aide.

So that's been a real, I think, interesting dynamic here.

And I when this is all said and done, we'll wrap this up and talk more about how this shapes up and the way that it's going to affect Houston.

But this has been an election that simply hasn't really, as you say, kind of caught the voters attention.

The last thing to talk about, though, is something that has caught at least the GOP's attention, and that's the fact that the Texas GOP executive Committee rejected a proposed ban on associating with Nazi sympathizers and Holocaust deniers by a very close vote.

I guess, happily, 32 to 29.

The committee said that such a ban proposed after conservative activists was caught meeting with a famous white supremacist is a slippery slope or too vague.

What do you make of where the GOP is and the leadership of the party and in Texas politics?

I mean, this is very conservative, right?

Whatever party organization, anything like that, an organization that does not condemn.

Yeah, this seems like an easy yes.

Yes.

Let's all this associate.

Why are you making these these problems?

It's bad, bad, bad, bad.

Anyone that you know does not condemn association with white supremacists is.

Like, right.

What should be the logic?

I guess the good news is that with the vote was sort of close, but the fact that there have been these allegations and this is obviously an ongoing political problem means that the GOP still hasn't sorted out where it is.

And that's going to play out in primaries because this is going to be, I think, the most upfront kind of story where you've got the traditional moderate kind of, I don't know, mainstream Republicans who are saying this is too far.

We have to stem this tide.

And at this point, they're really not.

So the wound is still pretty open and very fresh.

Oh, yeah, This is going to be something that we're going to see play out in ugly ways in primaries.

Well, absolutely.

And we're going to continue with that next week because we're going to talk about the primaries.

So this is going to be a very good point.

But the other issue here is that, you know, you have to condemn these things.

Yes.

I mean, there is no justification and there is no way to basically focus on questioning if it's too big or not.

Yeah, but that's going to be a question that we're going to address next week.

I'm Jeronimo Cortina.

And I'm Brandon Rottinghause The conversation keeps up next week.