Let’s go just a bit out on a limb and presume that Republicans Greg Abbott and Dan Patrick will be elected Texas governor and lieutenant governor, respectively, on Tuesday.

This sets up an interesting and provocative relationship for the next four years.

Abbott has campaigned to the far right in his bid to succeed Rick Perry as governor. He’s out there on the fringe with Patrick, who’s made no effort to disguise his brand of “conservatism.”

As some Austin commentators have noted, Abbott has raised a mountain of money and has a lot of it left over from the campaign that’s about to conclude. The theory is that Abbott is preparing for a possible challenge from within his party in 2018 — from none other than Dan Patrick.

Here’s where it get provocative.

Abbott has a chance to govern more from the center-right than from the far right. Will he do so? Or will he be concerned about that potential challenge from Patrick that he’ll govern from the far right, which likely is how Patrick likely will do his own job as presiding officer of the Texas Senate?

I’ll be brutally candid. I don’t want either man to win the office they are seeking. I support strongly Democrats Wendy Davis for governor and Leticia Van de Putte for lieutenant governor. But this is Texas, one of the most Republican Red states in the U.S. of A.

Abbott has done nothing to defeat himself. Patrick’s shrill rhetoric endears him to the GOP majority that runs everything in Texas.

My hope is that for Texas’s sake that Abbott veers more toward the center and works constructively with the relatively few Democrats who remain in the Legislature. If he does that, then he’s likely to anger the lieutenant governor enough to challenge him in four years.

So we’ll find out just how much of his own man a Gov. Abbott turns out to be.