<Music> 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, also a political scientist here at the University of Houston.

Thanks for joining us.

And talking politics and what promises to be a pretty wild year.

I know you've got your resolutions all set to go.

My resolutions were elect a speaker of the U.S. House, select speaker of the Texas House.

Oh, so you're almost halfway there.

I'm ready.

Yeah.

Well, let's talk about that first before we get into the whole discussion about the Texas Legislature, which is set to begin very soon.

There's a lot going on there.

We're going to get into every detail the personnel, the policies.

But let's talk about what's happening at the federal level, because the I think against all odds, the the party was able to unify.

The Republicans chose a speaker of the House on the first ballot, Jeronimo.

So tell me about that.

I mean, is it really unification like brotherly, uniting?

I don't think.

There's a lot of like, let's go grab some Chipotle for lunch together, but at least enough that we can vote together to find a common goal and have the speaker which did work, although it took a little bit of a delay.

Right.

So they had to have a little bit of a pause.

They were able to unify after that.

And I think to some degree, people are saying that President Trump gets some of the credit for this.

Do you think that's true?

Absolutely.

I mean, if it wasn't for President Trump.

We would still be voting on, who's going to be the speaker of the House.

Allegedly.

I mean, based on our news media reports, President Trump talked to, two representatives that were holding out.

Out of the three, two were more easily persuaded to support Johnson.

And after the call that got, a little bit, lively discussion, as Representative Self called it, they changed their vote.

But if it wasn't for Trump intervention, we would be still voting for a new speaker of the House.

And the question that I have for you is, is the leadership in the House going to be able to rein in, especially the members of the Freedom Caucus when we're talking about budgets, etc., etc.?

Or if on any single vote, yeah, President Trump is going to have to pick up the phone and start calling those that are not going to vote.

And how long that can go.

Yeah.

I mean, I think that that's a function of the presidency that they need to execute well.

To be honest, this is what all presidents do.

You work the phones, you've got to make sure you've got your party unified.

That's about the best you can ask for in this kind of very partizan world.

But you make a really good point.

You had almost more than 30 people.

Freedom caucus members vote against the budget bill that Trump had.

Made a case for.

And it wasn't exactly like do it or I'm going to primary you.

But he did make those overtures.

And some of the Republicans especially from Texas like you said, Self and Roy were definitely a little bit nervous about that.

But they held to the line on that at least.

But it's different when it comes to your priorities and your principles.

And so that's where it's going to be hard for Trump to be able to give them something.

But also, you know, give everybody else something to.

So that's the real question.

I think we're seeing the kind of preview to some degree of what Donald Trump's presidency is going to be like.

The press conference he gave this week was a bit scattered.

Yeah, he made all kinds of odd promises about potentially invading Greenland or didn't rule out the invasion of Greenland or Panama, like the Panama Canal.

You know, there's a lot of pieces to this that are going to be able to be unpacked.

But I think that what Republicans need from him is to maintain that degree of unity.

There's going to be a lot of big questions.

Trump wants one big bill, one big beautiful bill, right.

Which has a reconciliation package including budget, including immigration changes, including tariffs.

That's a big pill to swallow.

So he needs to be in that role.

I'm not sure that they're there yet, but I think they can get there.

What do you think?

I don't know.

I mean the the big question is how unified the Republican Party in Congress is going to be, and especially in the House, the Senate is a completely different story, right?

Because the Senate elected, senator, Thom Tillis, a little bit more moderate.

And of where.

He's a dealmaker.

Yes.

And can work with the other side.

Easily.

So the big question is at the house, because when you're thinking about, these, big beautiful bill some of these members of the Freedom Caucus are going to sell.

Hell, no.

Yeah.

And then you enter into a very complicated policy dynamic.

So, for example, it's a very simple premise.

The Freedom Caucus wants, to rein in spending.

Yeah.

Fair enough.

Right.

How do you do that?

Yeah.

Well, you have to cut some pieces of the budget.

Yeah, you have to cut, for example, Medicare, snap, etc., etc.. Yeah, that's some members of your own party are saying, no, you cannot touch these things.

So you start that.

Yeah.

And then Democrats are just going to sit back, relax and enjoy this show.

Right.

So you need to have 100% unity in order to pass a bill.

Yeah.

And yeah I'm not very sure how you can do that, especially when, for example, expanding or keeping the 2017 tax cuts has a price tag of $4 trillion.

It's a lot.

It's a lot of money.

I think that's a great point.

And that means that they've got to find a way to kind of package the good with the bad.

And that's what these reconciliation packages are.

So they've got to have to do that effectively.

But I think you're exactly right about this division.

And part of that complication is that there's a lot of things that President Trump wants to do.

That might not be something that the Freedom Caucus members are concerned about, that is including things like expanding the U.S. territory to Greenland or taking over Canada or the Panama Canal.

This kind of, I don't know, manifest Destiny story that President Trump obsessed with.

Yeah.

Like that really, I think does run against what a lot of the kind of MAGA folks want, which is to sort of say, let's keep budgets tight, let's kind of focus on the stuff we can control.

So I think that he I'm kind of going off on the range could be a problem, but I don't know how much of that is real.

Right.

It's really hard to know until there's actual kind of tangible evidence of it.

It's a lot of just bluster.

And that's also the way President Trump kind of governs.

Right?

He's using this as a way to kind of prime people to say like, well, here's what I might do, right?

Just to kind of.

Mess with them.

Right?

Yeah, it's a joke or a laugh, but it does undercut and sort of undergirding a lot of that is a real policy change.

Right?

Tariffs are very real.

The promise of increasing NATO spending and requiring other nations to increase NATO's spending is another.

Those are ways that they can kind of artificially reduce what the U.S. might spend.

So there's a lot of truth here, but you kind of have to dig through a lot of the variety to get there.

Like the "Gulf of America".

$4 trillion, right?

Yeah.

So so that gets extremely complicated in that sense.

And then you have the other real issues, right?

And those real issues are going to be, are is inflation and grocery prices are going to go down on day first of, President Trump's presidency.

Yeah.

And the answer to that is not very likely.

So people are expecting an answer.

And the Republican campaign in in November they were very clear.

Yeah.

I mean they run a very smart campaign and open the flags.

Yeah.

And open the flags.

He's full transparency.

Yeah.

No more high prices.

No more of these, no more of that, no more immigration.

And people are it's it's it's very clear what people can see and.

Yeah to see if they deliver or not.

Yeah.

I think if I were to kind of A.I.

summarize what Twitter saying about like what the president's press conference was, it was like, how does this help reduce the cost of eggs?

Right, exactly.

But I don't think that's the full point.

Right.

Because part of the point is that they're using this as a way to kind of generate enthusiasm and pull people into this sort of outrageousness of it, and then use that to prime the base.

There's a method to the madness here, but I.

Know I understand, the.

Democrats do have to kind of see through some of this to get to what really is going on, because they have a tough task in 2026 too, right?

They've got to be able to convince people that the Trump administration hasn't done what they promised.

So there's a chance that could happen.

But they can't take their eye off the ball.

So everyone's got a kind of tough challenge here.

And we'll see how the lay of the land is.

You know, once the inauguration comes, which we'll talk about in a few weeks.

But let's shift focus and talk about what is to be a very exciting legislative session here in Texas.

Now we only get to have one of these usually once every two years.

But it's odd to me that we're really changing the character of the way the legislature operates.

We've been watching legislature for a long, long time, and to me, they've been fighting against being like Washington DC for so long.

But they are now officially Washington, DC.

Let me just give you the kind of rundown on the tape, right, that you've got internal fighting in the majority party.

You've got a lot of sort of challenges at the very top.

The elites aren't sure exactly what to do, even though some of them have specific objectives.

You've got the minority party that's a bit in disarray because they're not sure what the majority party is going to do, and you've got everybody fighting, everybody that looks a lot like DC, right?

It does no coalition government.

It's really kind of majority party rules.

Those kind of characters aren't exactly the way that the Texas legislature has gone.

But that's really the way things are.

And this is against the backdrop of a pretty healthy economic bottom line.

The state's got about $20 billion in surplus funds.

There's a lot of new people that's done their dynamic, too.

You're going to have a more than 30 new House and Senate members.

That's going to change the dynamics of the way that things operate.

We don't know who's speaker is going to be yet.

That's another kind of dynamic.

So give me your kind of top takeaways from what we expect in this session.

Well it depends.

Once again, it depends on unity of the Republican Party, which.

Is pretty short supply these days.

Right.

It is in very short supply.

They have the numbers they increased by a couple in these sessions.

So now they're going to have 88 out of 150.

Yeah.

They have more than a majority.

You need 76 votes to have a majority in the, in the in the House Democrats have 62 seats.

They can play a role.

They may play a role.

We don't know yet, but it depends on that particular number.

Yes, yes.

You can lose, but you cannot lose a lot of people on that side.

Yeah.

So the big question is, yes.

For example, if you're thinking about policy, outcomes, are we going to have, school choice vouchers?

The answer to that is yet.

But the question is we don't know how the Frankenstein is going to look like.

We don't know how is going to look like in terms of that.

Were the, you know, so what 14 Republicans were so that were, primary out, they're going to behave differently.

What about the relationship with their constituents, especially those Republicans in rural areas where, public school is a vital part of their community?

We don't know.

Yeah.

And even suburban districts are struggling.

And even, you know, when Republicans are sort of worried about what the form of the budget will look like, what the form of the voucher process will look like.

So, yeah, lots to get into.

I think two dynamics are especially important.

One is that we're going to see a lot of red meat, right?

That is, if we were to take our boys to the Texas de Brazil and like get your endless, like, meat, kind of flow, it would not be enough, to try.

But we're going to see.

So no matter who's speaker, no matter what the tone of the session is, we're going to be a lot of conservative policies.

The other is that we're still seeing the same House versus Senate dynamic.

Now, that could change depending on who gets to be speaker.

So it could be like, you know, Tom Holland and Zendaya kind of like relationship.

Or it could be like, Ben and J.Lo situation.

Right?

Depending on how fracture is, it ends up being that's going to have to be, I think, a major step to where the kind of legislature goes.

But there's a lot of pent up demand.

It's going to be, I think, all gas and no breaks for Republicans.

There's almost double the number of pre file bills.

A lot of these are messaging bills that are never kind of passed.

But ultimately though this is the case that they see an opportunity to be able to move the needle.

And so I think they're going to do exactly that.

But that polarization comes with the costs.

And that's the cost is basically not getting enough done.

Right.

The more, polarized things are in the legislature, the harder it is to get things passed.

Oh, yeah.

Most of the things that the ledger does isn't, isn't political.

It's not controversial.

But there's a small segment that is and that's the segment that is going to take up a lot of that time.

So let's talk about the Republicans.

We've tried that.

They're not really on the same page.

They spent basically all summer fighting with each other, insulting each other on social media, you know, sanctioning each other, censoring each other.

Just one example of that Jacey Jetton of Richmond here who lost in a primary, fired at Tony Tinderholt, who's a member from North Texas, saying that he's a broken dipstick, which was not the nicest thing that night.

You know, one faction said that the other, but motivated by past fights about how to do property tax reform, how to do or if to do vouchers.

The PACs and impeachment, they're still fighting over all these things.

Do you see any way that even if they can find a consensus in terms of speaker, you know, unity, that they can pull together?

No.

Yeah.

Good.

Next question.

Yeah.

No, I mean, you can see it.

I mean, now the Texas GOP, has a new rule that would censure any Republican lawmaker, for example.

That doesn't vote for representative caucus speaker.

Yeah.

And that would, bar those lawmakers from appearing in a GOP primary, the sort of damage.

for two years, Right, right.

It's not.

Wait, what?

Like how will you can build unity if you're fighting against your own, causing your own?

So I just don't understand it.

The Republicans are want to say that iron sharpens iron, right?

We have like a hard position here, a hard position here.

It'll sharpen both.

But it looks a lot more like Gladiator than it does.

Some like metal works.

So let me ask you this.

I mean, you make a really good point about the party trying to assert itself.

In their party.

They really haven't.

Yeah.

And so the question is, do we see parties in Texas stronger than in the past?

Because typically we teach that Texas parties are kind of squishy, like they don't really do much.

Right.

But now the apparatus of the Republican Party especially, is going to hold the feet of these sort of members who aren't going to vote for the caucus nominated, you know, in with an asterisk, nominee.

What do you think's going to happen there?

Do you think we'll see stronger parties?

And will the Republican Party's kind of platform then have a bigger stance in terms of what the members do or don't do?

I mean, it's a different route.

The the Texas GOP's taking, the Texas, Democrat Party.

I don't know what they're doing.

About that in a second.

Yes.

I, I don't know, first they need to pick someone.

But the the way that they are operating, I think that it's also creating tension with their own supporters.

Right.

You have, for example, some, represented matching and so that, told on social media I'm going to vote for Representative Cook all the way, he's going to win, yada yada yada.

But the party must stop.

Consider tag to on Republicans.

So I think that's what they tell me.

Just like attack every other person who's not doing it.

Right?

Right.

Yeah.

I mean, that's funny because like, every member has got this sort of lengthy explanation if you're on Twitter, like, well, like you are, you're sort of constantly tracking the stuff, but like, almost every member has got like a 4 to 5 page, like dissertation about why they're supporting the candidate they are, and they all make good points.

But the bottom line is that there's not much unity.

But I would actually pivot for a second talking about the, Republicans talk about the Democrats.

I'm not sure they're much better off right now.

He's got a real transition moment here for Democrats.

And that's you've got, you know, Gilberto Hinojosa has resigned as the leader of the party.

You've got a swap in caucus chair.

Trey Martinez Fischer for Gene Wu.

We've talked about that a few weeks ago.

They've lost a high profile Texas Senate race.

Right.

So they're down to, you know, they're down one in in the Texas Senate, they lost some winnable seats in the Valley in South Texas.

They've had modest input on the speaker's race there, kind of adrift in a way.

And so, you know, they have potential here to be able to swing this vote.

If they were unified, they could do that today if they wanted, but they haven't done that.

And so that's a kind of curious feature.

Trey Martinez Fischer.

Like I said, he's no longer caucus chair, came out last week and said we should unify and this would be the smartest play for us.

They haven't done it.

Maybe they will.

But the Republicans are in disarray.

But the Democrats are really no better off.

So what does that mean for the kind of flow of policy in In the Ledge?

Well, even if Democrats want to have anything.

Yeah.

I mean, if Cook gets re elected speaker of the House it's very clear.

Yeah.

They're Democrats are not going to share any committee whatsoever.

Yeah.

And they're going to be relegated to, you know, I don't know where.

Yeah.

Yeah.

To the side.

They're going to be at the cloakroom like just drinking their days away.

Exactly.

So it's not it's not a bad strategy.

Actually.

This is no practice before.

Right.

The dirty 30 did this back in the 70s.

Right.

So there's a possibility the Democrats could just say, you know what?

Good luck.

You guys fight it out.

You know we're going to be over at Schultz Beer garden.

Right.

But just let us know if you know we have vote comes.

Right.

Yeah.

We're going to be here, when you call us, but, I think that if they have a strategy, they can have a saying on who's going to be the next speaker of the House.

Yeah.

Very clear.

It's clear that, Cook and Burrows have support one way or the other.

And Democrats can be that tipping point.

Yeah, if they're united.

So two, two, a couple of things.

One is perhaps they're fine tuning their strategy with the, with the change of Representative Wood taking control of the caucus, and try to come up with something and probably they already know.

Yeah.

And this strategy to distract is like, oh, we don't know what we're going to do.

There's infighting here, etc., etc.. Yeah.

But stealthy, you know, I like this like having the.

Rope a dope strategy.

Exactly.

Points themselves out and exactly.

They come in and.

Exactly and then boom, be the saviors.

So that might be another strategy that they already know what they're going to do, but they're not opening their cards or anything like that.

Yeah.

Why?

Interesting.

Just wait for, the opening, day in.

Yeah, yeah.

I'm sorry.

It's like.

Yeah, here it is.

It's Rocky III against Drago or whatever last round is.

Oh, I forgot something.

Oh.

Well, okay, but Rocky III was against, Clubber Lang, so.

Oh, sorry.

That was a much harder.

Oh, it was Rocky II.

Rocky II was against Apollo.

The second Apollo.

Yeah.

And was Drago.

Drago's four.

Oh, Drago's four.

Yeah.

So I had a little.

Bit of a digression, but yes, we can we can cut that.

Okay.

Actually, no, I like that part.

Okay, let's keep it.

But, yeah, I think you're right.

But I actually want to ask you about the big three, right?

We talk about the speaker's race.

We don't know who's going to be speaker.

Although my guess is honestly, like a third person will probably emerge.

But I won't talk about Patrick and Abbott because they both have a lot of say in this.

What's odd about Texas is that, you know, the plural executives are supposed to kind of balance power.

Yeah.

Giving them each a, you know, kind of authority in different ways.

And they actually have that.

Right.

I mean, I think that they're both at the head of apex of their power.

I mean, you know, you certainly see Patrick, who's in an under a decade in public life reform the role of the lieutenant governor politically and in the chamber.

He's been essentially the one who said, I can protect you members.

Right.

And Phelan can't, you know, Burrows can't.

I'm the one that can protect you politically.

So I think that the fact that he's that politically strong is meaningful, is definitely going to have a significant say in terms of what the House does, in addition to the fact that he controls what's happening in the Senate.

And in terms of Abbott, it's also an interesting position.

I think, that Abbott has kept a very tight rein on the party, and the fact that he was out campaigning for members and spending a lot of money trying to get the legislature that he wants is pretty telling.

So, you know, you break it, you buy it.

Now he owns this and he has to succeed in it.

He needs a legacy defining outcome here.

And that's probably school vouchers.

Yeah, that's going to be the hardest lift of any outcome of a governor in a decade or more.

So this is really an important moment for him.

So he's got to choose his kind of approach carefully.

Legislatively.

He's been pretty successful.

Like he's been getting 80% plus of his initiatives passed.

But they haven't always been easy.

And it's sometimes meant he has to make enemies.

He's pursuing policies over people.

And there's a risk in that in the legislature where if you can't maintain that unity, then you're in trouble.

You know, unless a be able to get things done.

So I think he's at that point right now where it's, you know, go time.

He's really got to get wins in this session.

And it will be a governor defining moment for his entire career in office.

What do you take away from the other members of the big three here, the lieutenant governor and governor?

Well, I think the, the lieutenant governor is, politically, as you say, in the apex of his career, very solid.

He doesn't have any problems whatsoever in the Senate.

What he says he has, he's going to go that way.

Yeah.

In the house.

I think what they're trying to do, or what they're expecting, to happen, is to have someone that is going to play ball.

Yeah.

And that that.

Is what Patrick wants.

Exactly.

Yeah.

And what Abbott needs.

Exactly that the legislative priorities are just going to go like pew, pew, pew, pew with no problems whatsoever.

So like Rocky going through all the bums.

Yeah, exactly.

To get to play.

Exactly.

Running.

There's no climbing up the stairs.

That's what I can remember.

That's good.

Okay.

You remember the best part.

Yeah.

So I think that that's extremely important in terms of Texas institutions.

Then it's like, oh, I don't know.

Because as you say, the Texas Constitution has these pluralist executive that it tends to balance each other, by having different elections and electing the lieutenant governor and separately from the governor and so on and so forth.

So that's institutional.

It's important.

What worries me, I guess the most is how we're using budget surplus for stuff that may be necessary or may not be necessary.

That depends.

That's you're the governor's prerogative.

So on and so forth, but not necessarily on the things that I see coming.

And those things come in, have to be with water infrastructure.

Yeah.

Extremely, extremely important issues about our roads.

I mean, I travel a lot internally within the state of Texas and some of the roads are like, oh my God, what's going on?

Yeah.

The roads in and around Midland.

Definitely.

Yeah.

Rough shape.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Terribly so, actually.

Dangerously so.

And that makes a great point and a good transition to talking about the policies that they'll talk about.

Now, the people who are there and they're part of kind of political skills and priorities are going to dictate what policies pass.

Correct.

There's a lot of stuff on the agenda, as there always is for a session.

But like time is short and unity is low.

So it's going to make it really hard for them to get these things passed.

But Greg Abbott did say, as you mentioned, an infrastructure package, especially dealing with water is going to be really important to him.

He may put that as a special item for sure.

He's going to put vouchers as an item.

We're likely to see a bunch of other things too, right?

Dan Patrick said he wants to ban THC the Delta eight and nine.

They've talked about power issues as part of it.

They talked about protecting minors from social media.

They talked about affordable housing.

You talk about insurance issues.

Property taxes.

Stop me when we get to the point where it can't all be done.

It's a priority issue right now.

They've of course, they always save the first sets of bills to be able to push the things that they really care about.

So the question is then what's the number one issue that they all agree on has to be fixed and will be the thing that gets passed.

Who knows, because there's so many and once again, and, and pardon me for returning to the budget is the way that I see budgets.

Obviously budgets reflect in this case the governors or or the state legislature, prerogatives and values.

And that's fine.

That's what budgets are intended.

But the big question is why are we purchasing?

Why are we buying and buying?

For example, school vouchers.

It's not just a one time payment.

Yeah, right.

It's like you're going to go and pay for that thing in perpetuity is never going to stop.

And that's what worries me, that we are and I'm not against or for school vouchers.

That's not my point.

My point is only to point out the policy implications.

The fiscal note on the.

Fiscal note is what really worries me.

We have more people here, more needs, more infrastructure, and we can become a really, really, really well positioned state in comparison to the other state to become a success story on many fronts.

On this, the structural imbalance, potentially with the $18 billion in property tax cuts that happened that people are still say wasn't enough, is also on the table.

Our surplus to actually lower this this.

These year.

Than last.

And so that's another problem in terms of just.

About $10 billion, you're.

Paying for stuff in the future that you may not have money for in the future.

And that's where you get into these complications are states have kind of come against this.

That's where gambling comes in real quick.

Gambling yes or no?

We have this.

I mean, I think it's a it's a good source of revenue.

And if you know.

What's your game, blackjack.

Craps.

I'm very bad at I've never gamble in my life.

That to the state wants.

Yeah.

Oh, I'm sure you have to teach me blackjack.

That's what I think.

Yeah, but, you can teach me, I guess, in the next, couple of programs, because by now we're done.

Jeronimo Cortina, I'm Brandon Rottinghaus.

Party keeps up next week.

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