{"id":29075,"date":"2018-04-08T14:01:33","date_gmt":"2018-04-08T14:01:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=29075"},"modified":"2018-04-08T14:02:47","modified_gmt":"2018-04-08T14:02:47","slug":"cruz-vs-orourke-a-fight-to-watch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=29075","title":{"rendered":"Cruz vs. O’Rourke: a fight to watch"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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I’ll lay this out there right away: You know where I stand regarding U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, whom I have dubbed “The Cruz Missile.”<\/p>\n

For those of you who don’t know, I’ll just say this: I do not support him. <\/em>There. That’s out of the way.<\/p>\n

I’m going to watch his fight for re-election with intense interest. He has a Democratic challenger who hails from way out yonder, El Paso. Beto O’Rourke is a member of the U.S. House. He wants a promotion to the other end of the U.S. Capitol Building.<\/p>\n

I am not going to predict<\/em> how this year’s election will turn out. I’m not smart enough to make such a prediction. Yes, I consider The Cruz Missile to be the favorite. Texas is seriously Republican. Our voters are more conservative than liberal. Cruz is banking on the voters’ party loyalty.<\/p>\n

But wait! O’Rourke is raising lots of money. He has raked in more campaign cash than Cruz. It’s coming from somewhere. He is tapping the state’s pockets of progressive voters.<\/p>\n

Political observers do suggest that O’Rourke needs to build his brand. He needs to establish a political identity. Many of us know how to ID Cruz. I consider Cruz to be a front-running media hog. He loves the spotlight. He’s good at basking in it. He ran for president in 2016 after serving just partly into his first term as a senator; that’s not a strike by itself against him, as Barack Obama did the same thing in 2008.<\/p>\n

If there is a “blue wave” set to sweep across the land in the 2018 midterms, I suspect that the Cruz-O’Rourke contest will determine just how angry voters are at the manner in which Republicans have governed the nation. We’ll know whether that wave is for real or whether it’s a mirage created by wishful thinkers.<\/p>\n

My heart<\/em> hopes that Cruz gets the boot. My head<\/em> prevents me from suggesting it will happen.<\/p>\n

It will be among the critical U.S. Senate races to watch.<\/p>\n\n

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I’ll lay this out there right away: You know where I stand regarding U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, whom I have dubbed “The Cruz Missile.” For those of you who don’t know, I’ll just say this: I do not support him. There. That’s out of the way. I’m going to watch his fight for re-election with … Continue reading Cruz vs. O’Rourke: a fight to watch<\/span> →<\/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":[14,18],"tags":[7490,7043,849,4537,6262,5051],"class_list":["post-29075","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-political-news","category-state-news","tag-2018-election","tag-beto-orourke","tag-capitol-hill","tag-ted-cruz","tag-us-house-of-representatives","tag-us-senate"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29075","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=29075"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29075\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29078,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29075\/revisions\/29078"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=29075"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=29075"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=29075"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}