{"id":29131,"date":"2018-04-13T02:26:59","date_gmt":"2018-04-13T02:26:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=29131"},"modified":"2018-04-13T02:29:53","modified_gmt":"2018-04-13T02:29:53","slug":"id-rather-be-a-vegetarian","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=29131","title":{"rendered":"&#8216;I&#8217;d rather be a vegetarian&#8217;"},"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\/04\/Mac_Thornberry-CSIS-879x485.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-29132\" src=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/Mac_Thornberry-CSIS-879x485-300x166.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"166\" srcset=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/Mac_Thornberry-CSIS-879x485-300x166.jpg 300w, https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/Mac_Thornberry-CSIS-879x485-768x424.jpg 768w, https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/Mac_Thornberry-CSIS-879x485-672x372.jpg 672w, https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/Mac_Thornberry-CSIS-879x485.jpg 879w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Paul Ryan is giving up one of the most powerful political offices on Earth.<\/p>\n<p>Who is going to succeed him as speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives? It won&#8217;t be U.S. Rep. Mac Thornberry, the Clarendon (Texas) Republican who came to the House in 1995 after winning the 13th Congressional District office the previous year.<\/p>\n<p>Thornberry was part of the Contract With America team led by insurgent firebrand Newt Gingrich, who went on to become speaker for a couple of congressional sessions.<\/p>\n<p>A quote is attributed to Thornberry, who came from a Texas Panhandle ranching family, that sums up his interest in the speakership. &#8220;I&#8217;d rather be a vegetarian,&#8221; he reportedly said after John Boehner quit the speakership some years ago.<\/p>\n<p>To be honest, Thornberry strikes me as more of a follower than a leader. Yes, he chairs the House Armed Services Committee <em>(for now)<\/em>. I&#8217;m beginning to think there&#8217;s an increasing chance someone else will chair that panel when the next Congress convenes in January 2019; that &#8220;someone else&#8221; well could be a Democrat.<\/p>\n<p>Thornberry has served in the House for 23 years. He is not prone to making himself available to the media for constant Q&amp;A, which is what he would face as speaker of the House. He has been for much of his time on Capitol Hill a classic back bencher.<\/p>\n<p>Would he like to be speaker? This isn&#8217;t even a serious question.<\/p>\n<p>But &#8230; they&#8217;re asking it of the Texas Panhandle Republican anyhow.<\/p>\n<p>https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/2015\/10\/how-does-speaker-thornberry-sound\/<\/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>Paul Ryan is giving up one of the most powerful political offices on Earth. Who is going to succeed him as speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives? It won&#8217;t be U.S. Rep. Mac Thornberry, the Clarendon (Texas) Republican who came to the House in 1995 after winning the 13th Congressional District office the previous &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=29131\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">&#8216;I&#8217;d rather be a vegetarian&#8217;<\/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":[13],"tags":[849,1941,2179,2849,3524],"class_list":["post-29131","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-national-news","tag-capitol-hill","tag-gop","tag-house-gop","tag-mac-thornberry","tag-paul-ryan"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29131","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=29131"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29131\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29134,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29131\/revisions\/29134"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=29131"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=29131"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=29131"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}