{"id":28450,"date":"2018-03-04T19:57:27","date_gmt":"2018-03-04T19:57:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=28450"},"modified":"2018-03-04T19:57:27","modified_gmt":"2018-03-04T19:57:27","slug":"price-vs-brassfield-test-gop-sanity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=28450","title":{"rendered":"Price vs. Brassfield: test of GOP sanity"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/four-price-300x202.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-28452\" src=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/four-price-300x202-300x202.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"202\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>I have drawn a conclusion about the state of the Texas Republican Party, which is that if state Rep. Four Price of Amarillo is taken to anything approaching a close finish in his primary contest against a challenger from Fritch, then I believe the Texas GOP has gone around the bend.<\/p>\n<p>What does the rising Republican legislative star need to do to vanquish Drew Brassfield? I&#8217;m thinking he needs to win the GOP primary by something like 25 to 30 percentage points.<\/p>\n<p>Brassfield, the Fritch city manager, is challenging Price for reasons I don&#8217;t quite grasp. He is campaigning as some sort of &#8220;conservative option&#8221; to the lawmaker who has represented House District 87 since 2011.<\/p>\n<p>As if Price isn&#8217;t a conservative. Is that what Brassfield &#8212; and his Empower Texans benefactors &#8212; are suggesting? I guess they believe he isn&#8217;t conservative <em>enough.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Actually, the Amarillo lawyer who&#8217;s done a bang-up job representing his legislative district, is tailor-made for this political post. He has been re-elected every two years with token opposition since he first won election to the seat held by David Swinford of Dumas from 1991 until 2010.<\/p>\n<p>The Texas Republican Party&#8217;s internal strife mirrors much of what is going on around the country, with mainstream GOP officeholders being &#8220;primaried&#8221; by challengers from the far-right fringe of the party. So it is with Price, who under normal circumstances would breeze to re-election.<\/p>\n<p>My hope is that he does so again this year, even with a well-funded challenge from a young man who is getting a lot of campaign money from political activists based way downstate.<\/p>\n<p>If Price is forced to sweat his re-election out a couple of days from now, if Brassfield makes this a contest, then I fear the Texas GOP has flipped its wig.<\/p>\n\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I have drawn a conclusion about the state of the Texas Republican Party, which is that if state Rep. Four Price of Amarillo is taken to anything approaching a close finish in his primary contest against a challenger from Fritch, then I believe the Texas GOP has gone around the bend. What does the rising &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=28450\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Price vs. Brassfield: test of GOP sanity<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,18],"tags":[1783,7628,4622,4653],"class_list":["post-28450","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","category-state-news","tag-four-price","tag-house-district-87","tag-texas-gop","tag-texas-legislature"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28450","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=28450"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28450\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28453,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28450\/revisions\/28453"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=28450"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=28450"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=28450"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}