Episode Summary:
In this week's installment of the "Seeing Red" podcast, hosts Andi Turner and Garrett Fulce discuss various topics ranging from local political conventions to pivotal roles in state party leadership. This episode promises to enlighten listeners on the intricacies of political maneuvering and the everyday realities of governance in the Lone Star State.
Andi Turner begins with an update on her social plans and the upcoming lunar eclipse, emphasizing the significance of proper eclipse glasses. Garrett Fulce shares insights into his family life, setting a friendly and personal tone for the podcast. The conversation shifts towards the upcoming county and senate conventions, offering a detailed explanation of the delegate process and its implications for Texas politics. The discussion on the Republican Party of Texas (RPT) Chairmanship is especially pertinent, as they analyze the sudden departure of Matt Rinaldi and potential successors, emphasizing the role's impact on party unity and success. The hosts round off with heartfelt thoughts on the devastating wildfires in Texas's panhandle, showing their concern for affected communities.
Key Takeaways:
Notable Quotes:
Resources:
Follow us on all socials at @theseeingredpod and online at our website Seeing Red Podcast
Episode Summary:
In this week's installment of the "Seeing Red" podcast, hosts Andi Turner and Garrett Fulce discuss various topics ranging from local political conventions to pivotal roles in state party leadership. This episode promises to enlighten listeners on the intricacies of political maneuvering and the everyday realities of governance in the Lone Star State.
Andi Turner begins with an update on her social plans and the upcoming lunar eclipse, emphasizing the significance of proper eclipse glasses. Garrett Fulce shares insights into his family life, setting a friendly and personal tone for the podcast. The conversation shifts towards the upcoming county and senate conventions, offering a detailed explanation of the delegate process and its implications for Texas politics. The discussion on the Republican Party of Texas (RPT) Chairmanship is especially pertinent, as they analyze the sudden departure of Matt Rinaldi and potential successors, emphasizing the role's impact on party unity and success. The hosts round off with heartfelt thoughts on the devastating wildfires in Texas's panhandle, showing their concern for affected communities.
Key Takeaways:
Notable Quotes:
Resources:
Follow us on all socials at @theseeingredpod and online at our website Seeing Red Podcast
Welcome to the Seein' Red podcast with Andy Turner and Garrett Fools. Check it out on Texas Policies and Politics, with some federal issues thrown in like the assault weapons ban, interest rate hikes. You get it, but it's mostly Texas, since we can't ignore the big stuff either. And now here are your hosts, andy Turner and Garrett Fools.
Speaker 2:Hey everybody, welcome back to this week's edition of Seein' Red. We're really glad to have you. Thank you so much for tuning in on YouTube or if you're getting us on your favorite podcast provider, whether that's Spotify or Google or Apple or whatever. Still happy to have you and welcome back. Don't forget you guys have an opinion about something. Please email us at hostshosts, at seeingredpodcastcom, at seeingredpodcastcom and on all the social media you can find us at, like facebookcom, slash, theseeingredpod, twitter at TheSeeingRedPod and we you know. If you guys have ideas for things you want us to talk about, we want to know that. If you have opinions on things we have talked about, we want to know that. Please, please, please, weigh in so we know. You know what you think. You know you don't tell us we don't do better. Garrett, happy Wednesday.
Speaker 3:Happy Wednesday to you as well. I just wanted to add to our folks if we say something that you disagree with or you agree with and you're watching us on YouTube make sure to go down to the comments section and leave a comment. That helps our algorithm, so we want to spread this around. You want to say something? Either shoot us an email, leave us a comment, you know, like and subscribe all that fun stuff. We really appreciate it. But you know, andy, my week's going great so far so far this week Awesome. Had a great weekend. Got to see all the grandparents with the kiddo Not my grandparents, well, all my kiddo's grandparents, right, and you know, got to do a little bit of that this week, which is great. You know it's always fun to let him see and meet and play with all of his grandparents. This is, you know, not all of close by, so you know he doesn't get to see them as often as we'd like. So that was great. It was a fun time. How about you? Did you have a good week?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's been pretty quiet. So my one of my girlfriends, one of my oldest girlfriends and the world's best special ed teacher and yes, I'm biased, but that woman has done amazing things is actually coming Easter Sunday because she's on Easter break and I haven't seen her in, like we keep in touch but like I haven't actually physically had her in the same room with me in like I don't know 10, 12 years. Wow, I'm super excited. Well, she lives in San Diego and you know so, and then she teaches, obviously, and then over the summer she's busy with her son, and so over spring break I think her son is going to visit some relatives and so she's got time, so she's going to boogie here and she, she says to me so I need to know what's the pack, what do I need to bring? And I'm like sweetie it's Texas, it's Texas.
Speaker 2:Even if we go to like Capitol Grill in in in Austin like a nice pair of jeans and a pretty blouse will be fine, like I, I fully go to Capitol Grill jeans, my fancy cowboy boots and whatever you know shirt. That isn't a t-shirt type thing, you know, and like it's Texas. So I had to. I had to sort of, because she lived in Maryland for a long time so I had to explain to her think you know Eastern Shore, not DC, right?
Speaker 2:So, yeah, yeah, so that this is the Texas. Texas, even in its urban areas, is still country, and so, anyway, she was like oh, so cool, so I'm really hoping for some decent weather, but I'm so excited to see Holly and so, so there's that, and then my brother-in-law is coming just in time for the Eclipse.
Speaker 3:Okay, which is which is April 8. Make sure you know where you're going for it.
Speaker 2:I'm going to be in my backyard.
Speaker 3:Well, I'm talking to our viewers. Yes, our audience.
Speaker 2:Yep, and so I did a little research yesterday online. Not all Eclipse classes are created equal, by the way, so actually Amazon had to pull, temporarily pull some off their stock because they were just tinted plastic and not what NASA and this other council recommends. So I did some research and then I went to Amazon. I found a list that was approved by the people who approve such things, and so I ordered five sets, because you can't just order two. So if my brother-in-law and sister-in-law need glasses were set and yeah. So, yeah, pretty excited, and we were looking at the map of the Eclipse and we can't. We can't see the one I found on on on. It just came across on my Facebook feed. It doesn't detail where my little town is, my little town being 10 minutes from the Travis County line. I can't. Peter and I were both looking at it, going I can't tell where, like, but I figure it'll be close enough.
Speaker 3:Well, I don't know, because everything I've heard is if you don't get total totality, then you don't really get the real full eclipse, because once it goes fully behind the moon it's when all the weird stuff happens with the animals and the bugs and stuff. So all the weird, all the weirdest effects that happen is like when you get, when you get to 100%, even if you get to 99.6, like it's not enough.
Speaker 2:When, when we had that other eclipse A few months ago, but like the cricket started, you know, and it was like it was a dusk when the cricket started and the locust started. And so yeah all that, that, all that did happen here.
Speaker 3:We were doing our baby shower. I don't remember what day it was, but I remember we were at our baby shower.
Speaker 2:It was a Saturday. I remember that because did Peter was off and we were at that point like so Peter is not like Like by trade, like an astronomy guy, he's an engineer and he deals with microchips, right so but he's fascinated with this stuff. So he actually made like a pinhole thing for me to see the eclipse on a white piece of paper and it was really interesting. So I'm like we're getting glasses this time, no question.
Speaker 3:You get the glasses, the ball, the shadows are eclipse shaped, so if you look like through shadows, through a tree, all the shadows, my little crescent. So that was the weird. And then we had this weird like tinted a window at my in-laws house where we were doing our shower, where if you took a photo through the tinted window you could actually take a photo of the eclipse. Not that they were worth anything, but you could still see it through that too. So that was all fun, because it's really hard to do eclipse photography.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and that's what I was just going to say For anybody that's listening that has any interest in this please, please, please. I have read many articles. Do not use your camera and basically just take a picture, because it will harm your camera in your phone and then you're out a lot of money, depending on how much you paid for your phone. So, please, please, please, do go find out how to take pictures. If that's what you want to do, I choose not to.
Speaker 3:Just live in the moment. Just live in the moment.
Speaker 2:And makes a good memory.
Speaker 3:Let the professionals do it and you can see it on the Internet later. It will be way better than what you come up with yourself. So that's kind of what's going on. That's the fun stuff to look ahead to. Next weekend it's going to be the 23rd. The Saturday is going to be the county and senate conventions we touched on last week. But if you're interested in seeing the county and the Republican, the convention process, the delegate process, work for all the conventions and being taking part of it yourself in some situations, then now this is the time to go out and do it. It's going to be this Saturday. Look up your county websites, your county parties website, for information, because if you're in a district that has a county that has more than one senate district in it, then you'll have to figure out where you're going, because it's not going to necessarily be the same place.
Speaker 2:Is that for every single county?
Speaker 3:Yeah. All the senate districts meet on the same day. All those districts have on the same day In some situations. So the very, very first step in the process is the precinct level convention and those can happen any time before that convention. So in some cases they happen on election night so they can have any time between the election and the senate convention or county convention. The county had something a couple weeks ago, though they may have had a training, or they may have had the precinct convention a couple weeks ago.
Speaker 2:Well, they have had, and I'm sorry I've done this once, but I showed up and it was like representative of the whole county, so I'm not sure which one that was, but this was county wide. So they had just said okay, we're going to put all the precincts into this building.
Speaker 3:Saturday so that's how a lot of times they'll do it. The morning will be the precinct and the afternoon will be the county convention. So when you're at certain counties, I think the minimum is four precincts per county. By law, I think, you can have to have at least four for various reasons. The maximum I think is endless, because there's certain qualifications where you can't have more than like 5,000 households or whatever. So the precincts end up being fairly uniform size in big cities, but when you get to smaller areas it can be all size whatever. But that's the precinct level convention. And then the precinct convention. You elect your delegates from your area, from your local neighborhood, to go to your next level convention, which you're in. Bastrop County, if I remember correctly, only has one senate district that covers it. I think it's senate district 10.
Speaker 2:Oh, wait, wait, no, no, I'm sorry, senate district, state, senate one.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so you only have one senate district. That covers it, which means you all just have a county convention. I'm in Fort Bend County. We have three senate districts. We have 13, 17, and 18. So, depending on which precincts you live in 13, 17, or 18, depends on which senate district convention you'll be a part of. Now all three of ours are at the same location and on the same day as when our precinct convention is me. So that's just kind of how that process is going to work out. You go, you pass resolutions, you don't pass resolutions, you go on to the next level. It's a good way to meet people who are active in the party, to hear from your elected officials and your candidates for the next year and to kind of get a feel for what it is to be a member of an actual member of the party infrastructure itself. So it's a good time. And then they also elect people who will go represent the county or the district at the state convention.
Speaker 2:Right, and that's the one I was at, because somebody who was running for an office in the RPT had asked me to go be a delegate so that I would be able, I would be helpful to them. And so that was interesting because nobody knew who I was except one person. And I said, well, what if I bring my resume to the committee? And so I did. And I walked into the room and the head of the committee really a nice man, the head of the committee was going through all the applications and I'd filled out the application and attached my resume and he said, hey, how you doing Nice to meet you? And I said, hey, I'm me.
Speaker 2:And so only one other person like the committee filed in and one other person sat in the back to watch, but he wasn't interested in being a delegate. And so they were like well, come sit at the table with us and be part of the committee. And I was like you can do that here. And he was like, yeah, so I got involved and it was fun and so it was a good time. And then we went digital for the convention. But I've been to many state conventions and they are a good time, whether you go to the Fun Stuff or you go to the. You know whether you're just watching the floor action. You're there to vote, whatever.
Speaker 3:Well, there's going to be a lot of floor action in this one, when we get to the state convention because Republican Party of Texas chairman Matt Rinaldi has announced that he will not seek reelection and will finish out his term. We have seen red podcasts applaud him for finally taking our advice for once and getting out of the way. I mean, it's good news in that he won't be there, but it's going to be an open contest for the seat, so there's going to be a lot of people throwing the hats in the ring. The person that Matt Rinaldi and, you know, all of the FinTechs' Liberty crowd immediately backed within minutes of Rinaldi announcing that he wasn't running, is Abraham George, who I've met on a number of occasions and who I've never had a. Yeah, I mean, he was the county chair for Collin County, which is just north of Dallas. It's where Ken Paxton's from, it's Plano, McKinney, et cetera, and so I've met him a number of times. He was on the SRAC. I liked him as a person back then. He was, you know, nice enough guy. He decided to go full Paxton and was one of the people who would decide to run against the Collin County delegation.
Speaker 3:Well, because, remember, if you recall, all the Collin County state reps voted for impeaching Ken Paxton. None of them have lost yet. I think three of them won outright and Candy Noble, who would be Abraham George, was one of those. You won by a significant margin. They, but he's, you know, former county chair, former candidate. So I mean the last Can I share? Before, Renaldi was a one-term congressman who got beat by a Democrat. The next person, Renaldi, was a two-term state rep who got beat by a Democrat and lost his seat. And now we have Abraham George, who was a one-time candidate who lost in a primary. So it seems like we're getting worse and worse resumes as we as we get from this group and it's just. Can we get somebody who's one, who's beat Democrats, who's even beat Republicans? That'd be great.
Speaker 2:Well, and my issue is you know, in my viewpoint on things, matt Renaldi has not been good for the party. He might be. I've never met him. He might be the nicest human on the planet. I had no idea.
Speaker 2:This is not a comment about him Personally. This is a comment on his job performance and you know you don't get involved as the RPT chair under that title. I am the RPT chair and I endorse no. You don't do that because you're there to support all Republicans, all of them. Now, as a private individual, you don't lose your First Amendment rights. So Matt Renaldi wants to go work on somebody's campaign or give them advice without his title. You know he's free to do that, but he cannot go to the press or issue. No chairman should do this. The primaries are the primaries and they are for the people, for Republican people, to figure out who they want to advance to the general. That's what they're there for. And because you are chairman of the state party and there are many shades of red, you need to represent all of them instead of making them feel, you know, like, oh well, if you don't support my guy, then you know, go away that first of all. First of all, that's bad for fundraising.
Speaker 1:Well, yeah, of course.
Speaker 2:I ain't never gonna give anybody like that money, but I mean full stop. But when?
Speaker 3:you only represent one faction of the party, you're only gonna get money and support from one faction of the party and the party, the strength of the party, comes from the fact that there are multiple factions that can get along on certain issues and push those through. Right, that's where the strength comes. So, like if you have somebody who's a big, who's like a solo voter, what's it called A single issue voter for pro-life issues Right, well, they only care about pro-life issues. So, like your party if you're, but they'll need to support candidates. That might be, you know, pro business on some issues or, you know, whatever the case may be, right, but they know that when it comes to a pro-life issue, you push that one forward, or however that case works. That's how the party works. It's how you build a coalition. Is you find where you can agree on things on a certain issue and you push in that direction?
Speaker 3:Yeah, right now, what we have is that we have the people who have taken over the infrastructure of the party, have been the most have come from one particular faction within the voting coalition of people who go out and vote for candidates at the end, you know, in the general election, and we're getting further and further away from working as a group to only working for one faction's benefit.
Speaker 3:And what happens when that happens is you have a party break where you just lose voters and you start losing general elections. That you, if you're only representing 70% of the party or 60% of the party, whatever the case may be, even if it's a big number when you lose that 30% and they either don't vote for you or candidate or they vote for the other candidate, those are massively bad things for the health of a longevity of a party and we're seeing that right now in the fact that we have lowest convention turnout numbers in a long time. We have terrible fundraising. I'm not entirely sure how they've paid for the convention thus far. They had to cut the election integrity unit. I don't think there's nearly as much staff. We almost have. We've had almost no infrastructure from the Republican Party of Texas itself over the past two election cycles and I don't see it coming in again in this next election cycle. There's just not money for it because no one's donating.
Speaker 2:Matt Rinaldi did not do the fundraising that I would expect and most people would expect an RPT chair to do, or any state chair. I can count on one hand the number of communications in the last year, year and a half, that I've had asking for money for the RPT, whether that's hard mail or email or text or whatever he depended on, depend Texas, liberty, payloads, strategies, all these people that have now been forced to rebrand because of dubious activities which we've talked to you guys about forever. I won't go through that again. Also, your job is to get more Republicans in seats, whether that's more Republicans voting, showing up, registering to vote, showing up on election day, raising money and filling state and federal seats with Republicans. That's your job. Your job is not to take sides. So anybody that Rinaldi, matt Rinaldi, either Matt Rinaldi or anybody that he endorses and I am not a delegate to the RPT this year, but if I were, there is no way I would be voting for them, because I don't care for the way that Matt Rinaldi has run the party these factions you're talking about, garrett. You're leaving people out and so they're forced to go over here and do their thing.
Speaker 2:You've got Republicans here. You've got Republicans there, you've got a group of Republicans here and no, we're supposed to be working together. I've said it before on the show and I know you're saying you're in it from me. But Reagan said if we agree on seven of our 10 issues, then we are friends and we can work together. So those three other context issues we work together, we find some compromise and we go forward. That's not happening. That's not happening. And it's not just Texas, by the way, that that's not happening in. That's happening in a lot of states. But I have no theories as to why that is. I won't go down the road.
Speaker 3:So it's gonna be a big fight for chair. A big fight for vice chair, because the vice chair has already announced that she's running for chair. She was running. She announced she'd be running against Rinaldi. I imagine she's still running for chair. Yeah, so you have Dr Dan Amire and you have Abraham George who are running. You have at least one person announced for vice chair. Oh, we also have Weston Martinez announced for chair. He's run for a lot of offices and never met him, but he's a known quantity. I don't know how much support he's gonna garner, but these are. It's going to be an open seat.
Speaker 3:What's interesting, so what we have to keep in mind, is, when it comes to chair and vice chair elections, the way the process works is you vote for it first in your Senate District Convention, at the state convention, so your Senate District will meet together and vote on a number of things, primarily who wants to say for vice chair, chair and for SRAC. From there it goes to the nominations committee, who. You also vote for somebody to go to the nominations committee. The nominations committee takes who your Senate district voted for in the first ballot, so that's who they have to vote for, and then, if there's not a, you know, 50 plus percent. It goes on to the next ballot.
Speaker 3:What's interesting is if you want to have a floor fight, then your candidate has to win at least three different Senate districts. There's 31 Senate districts, so the most interesting scenario is if more than two candidates secure winning outright in the individual, three individuals in the districts, because then it goes to a floor fight with multiple candidates and then it can get really, really interesting. But it just comes to the political science. In political science terms very interesting.
Speaker 2:And floor fights, I would imagine, are really. It all comes down to the bylaws, right, Because a lot of times you get these floor fights and somebody would be like point of order, this is not like kosher, according to the state bylaws. And then you know if you're not paying attention and you don't know those bylaws. These things can drag out forever.
Speaker 3:So you have that it's also a presidential year, so you have two extra like statewide, state convention, wide elections for RNC committee man and committee woman. Our committee man, robin Armstrong, is running for reelection, I believe, and then, but our committee woman, tonya Ndashil, has decided not to run for reelection. She announced that a couple of months ago. So and then the people who initially run for it they backed out.
Speaker 3:So there's been enough. So there's been some. I don't actually know who the candidates are for committee woman, for the RNC committee woman position. So those are going to heat up too, because those are positions that people want but they're expensive because you have to fly to DC a lot or fly to wherever they're having the quarterly meetings and all that and you don't get paid for that job I think the only job that has a salary is chair, and that's pretty recent.
Speaker 3:So, yeah, no, it's. You don't get paid for those jobs. These are all volunteers. I already see all that. So you don't get paid for them. So it's a lot is going to be happening, kind of with a reshuffling of the party. Is that happens every two years? They have some rules in place to kind of prevent it from getting too crazy, but when it's this wide open, the craziness can happen regardless of the rules, the bylaws that are put in place. So just stay on your toes, yeah, Just keep yourself informed. So that's the stuff going on with the party. We haven't really touched on it because neither Andy or myself are particularly well versed in why it happened or what could prevent it. But there was a terrible wildfire up in the panhandle. That looks like it's finally been contained and they're working to put out million acres, lots of heads of cattle. Some folks have passed. I think you know there's a terrible emergency up in the far north of Texas.
Speaker 2:So, so it is the worst, worst wildfire in Texas's history, and the only thing we do know at this point is that Texas A&M went out to figure out what was the cause of the fire, and it was due to power lines. The company that owns the power lines is saying no, no, we weren't negligent. Of course I mean, I would too, but we don't know. We don't know what we don't know yet. But you know, hundreds of homes were lost and like my heart is just breaking for these folks.
Speaker 3:Yeah, just it's just a wreck, um the, but I don't believe that area is covered by ERCOT. I think that's areas covered by one of the national grids and so I don't know, and that's why it's one of these things where I don't really know what the rules are in place for it or what or, at this point, what laws the legislature could change or not change to prevent it in the future. But when you have dry plant matter, high winds and a spark, this can happen. In Texas it has wildfires fairly often. I think you live in an area that was devastated by wildfires about 12 years ago. I'm not even sure you might be in an area that was burnt itself.
Speaker 3:I'm not entirely sure where these fires were, but regardless, the bastard fires were awful and they got a lot more attention because they were in Austin and the smoke kept blowing into the city. So legislators were aware of it happening. It's harder for there's not as many people up in the paint handle and there are not as many people in power who are impacted by it, but the ones who are trying to raise the alarm and let people know we got to do something. So we wanted to help echo that and say I don't have a solution. Emergency management is not something that I have much experience in at all, and I don't really have any experience in or much knowledge about I should say so I do just want to say that this is yeah.
Speaker 2:nobody can say, oh, this is what we should do until we know exactly what happened with those parallel lines. If there was some negligence and I'm not saying that there was, please God don't anybody say, and Andy said on air, but we need to know what happened with those parallel lines and until that is established you can't figure out how to prevent this problem in the future. So when we know, we'll bring it back up. But keep your thoughts and prayers, send good karma and whatever it is you have. Good send to the folks who lived on the little over a million acres in North Texas who were affected by the wildfires, because I imagine a great many of them were farmers and that has wiped out everything for them for the year.
Speaker 3:Oh, for sure. Like livestock, produce their homes, their equipment like wildfire comes through it just leaves destruction behind.
Speaker 3:So those are the two main things we want to talk about this week. There are a couple more major news stories that popped up that we want to get your input the viewer and the listener to see kind of which one we should get a little bit more feedback about, so that we can kind of research a little bit more and come, come back and, with you, come back to you next week. So make sure you get into the comment section, comment about it or send us, send us an email. We'll mark it all up. The first one is Governor Abbott has come out to as in support of looking at solutions to the home affordability crisis, which is millennials and Gen Z feels if they have a harder time gaining a foothold in the housing market, and one of the biggest issues that's driving this cost are large scale investments, companies buying up housing and then renting it out and just kind of screwing with the market. So the governor's come out to look at legislative solutions.
Speaker 3:Some people on kind of more of the libertarian right I'm saying libertarians are always going to have their own thing. It's kind of more the liberty leaning right are against any involvement in the housing market. On the other hand, there's some arguments that the way that these investment companies are looking at this issue or have are involved in this market is more of like a trust. It's more of a monopoly and how they operate in certain things. Let us know if you want to hear about issue. That's issue number one. Issue number two.
Speaker 2:Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Also a little piece of that. That. I don't know if you saw that, because I have a lot of friends who are realtors. Yeah, I think it was. The National Association of Realtors just lost a lawsuit over the commission.
Speaker 3:They settled the lawsuit and then admit false.
Speaker 2:Okay, my fault. Yes, so they have to redo so that the commissions that realtors charge is going to become much more competitive, so that may actually have an effect on the home buying. Don't know, let you know as it goes on, but I just wanted to add that into the first topic.
Speaker 3:Sure. And then the second topic has to do with sexually explicit materials and adults accessing those materials online. There's a notable websites of purveyors of obscene sexual material have withdrawn access to residents of Texas or people located in the state of Texas to their websites because of a law passed recently that's being appealed currently.
Speaker 3:And basically it has to do with an age verification and their argument had. Basically the porn sites argument boils down to the impetus for age or identification should not be on the website. It should be on the user or on the ISP or someone else. It should basically that the age verification should happen at the device and not at the website. Among other first amendment, complaints and queries, neither of these topics are ones that Annie and I know Well. On these issues we know a little bit more of some of them, more constitutional and more kind of national implications, but both of them we're gonna take a little bit of time to dig into. We want to hear from you which you're more interested in hearing about. So that's topic number two, and if you have a third topic that you really want us to look at that we just haven't highlighted yet, throw it in the comment section. Shoot us an email.
Speaker 3:Hosts at the seeing red, at seeing red podcastcom at seeing red podcast at seeing red podcastcom and you know we'll we'll tackle one of those in the next week or two.
Speaker 2:Yeah so and I think this is the last thing I was reading recently that there are a couple people who write for a living and they think, in my opinion erroneously that the date feeling race is is a? A. What's the word I'm looking for? It's a mandate, a a there's a better word but a mandate on his role as referendum. Well, thank you, it just went right out of my head.
Speaker 2:So they think it's a referendum like the runoff is a referendum on his role as speaker and I now there's always gonna be some people living in his district who will judge whether to vote for him based on that. But I promise you, the people in his district are more concerned about the policies you know access to his office, his willingness to help people, this that the other thing. I do not think that just because he's in a runoff, this is some sort of referendum on his and they're like hill. It's clear from these election results he's never going to be elected speaker of the house again and it's like that's wish casting on their part One more.
Speaker 3:Speaker Bonin was on a news show a local news show recently that I think Scott Bradock highlighted it where he basically came down completely on the other side of speaker feeling wins his reelection he thinks will definitely be reelected the speaker. I am of the opinion that if the speaker is reelected, he'll likely be. He'll likely be speaker again for the next term. This, the math doesn't math. Well, for the other side. That said, who knows? But no one wants a speaker fight. Everyone gets burned in the speaker fight, so it's, it's just it'll damage everybody.
Speaker 2:So no one really wants to have to deal with it, unless they have to well, I think, given that we as Republicans in the state house kind of own the state house, right, we have a majority and if the Republicans are with you on a bill, the bill is going right, the Republicans are with you, you get the bill. If the Democrats want a bill and the Republicans don't want it, it goes nowhere. And it doesn't matter that, like on some committees, there are Democrat chairs. That has nothing to do with it. Nothing to do with it, okay. So you know, these people can complain about Democrat chairs, all they want. Bottom line is, if the Republicans want the bill, the bill is coming out and it will go, and if the Republicans don't, no matter who the chair is, the bill is going to die and that's what's happened.
Speaker 2:I've watched it and, and so I think it is. I think there's a certain amount of diplomacy that goes on, especially in the house, because there's so many more members than in the Senate and there is a level of diplomacy involved there, and I think that Dave Fielin has done a lovely job of being diplomatic, not sewing discord, you know, in the house so people can work together and to say, well, he's got that. He passed, like hugely conservative bills, things that we never thought we would see in our lifetime. And you know it's all happened under Dave Fielin. So either you like the policies or you don't, and that's where that vote to me should come down to. It's not about like, well, if you know, you know he's got Democrat chairs and tell me what. What liberal bill, what Democrat liberal ban for the economy? Or you know, smaller, more efficient government, less taxes bill got through under Dave Fielin.
Speaker 3:Because I can't yeah, they can't so, but it's one of these things where we'll we'll know more in like 10 weeks. We just don't know until we know who's won the runoffs and it's a lifetime.
Speaker 2:Until then it is a lifetime, 10 weeks a lifetime.
Speaker 3:So there's a lot of other stuff we'll be covering between now and then, but as things heat up in that race again, we'll let you know about it. So thank you so much for joining us this week. We hope to get some guests back on the show here soon. If you're interested in being asked, you know, if you're an elected official, or if you have something really interesting to say about politics, or even the something mildly interesting to say about politics.
Speaker 3:She doesn't email and yeah and if we have a topic coming up that we think would you'd be soon, soon be suited well for we'd love to have you on. So email us hosts at seeing red podcast calm, that's host with HOSTS or just once again like comment, subscribe, follow us. We appreciate you joining us today, dear listeners and viewers, and we hope to see you again next week, but until then, bye guys you've been listening to the seeing red podcast.
Speaker 1:It's always Texas politics and beyond. We present the facts and opinions the seeing red podcast with your host, andy Turner, and Garrett Fools. Thank you and tune in next week and please do us a favor, hit the subscribe button so you don't miss a single episode.