{"id":3261,"date":"2013-08-15T19:26:59","date_gmt":"2013-08-15T19:26:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.wordpress.com\/?p=3261"},"modified":"2013-08-15T19:26:59","modified_gmt":"2013-08-15T19:26:59","slug":"talk-to-all-texans-sen-cruz","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=3261","title":{"rendered":"Talk to all Texans, Sen. Cruz"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Something struck me as I looked at U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz\u2019s planned series of town hall meetings across Texas.<\/p>\n

He\u2019s going to be speaking to groups friendly to his point of view.<\/p>\n

http:\/\/www.texastribune.org\/2013\/08\/15\/ted-cruz-staging-events-across-texas\/<\/a><\/p>\n

Local Republican women\u2019s groups are hosting him; same for local tea party organizations; an event in Dallas will be put on by the Heritage Foundation; he\u2019ll be talking to a chamber of commerce audience too.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s all fine and good. I\u2019m curious, though, as to whether the Republican junior senator from Texas is going to engage individuals in actual debate and discussion over differences they might have in public policy.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m going on out a limb here, but I\u2019m quite sure liberal Democratic senators in, say, California or New York don\u2019t spend much time talking to conservative audiences. So the query is posed to them as well.<\/p>\n

Cruz was elected by a majority of Texans in 2012 to represent the entire state<\/em>. I get that Texas leans hard right in its political view. All its statewide elected officials are Republicans; there\u2019s not a Democrat to be found \u2026 or none on the horizon with a prayer of winning a statewide election. But not every Texan adheres to that world view. A few of us out here lean the other way and do not like the notion, for example, of shutting down the government in order to defund the Affordable Care Act \u2013 which Cruz is pushing.<\/p>\n

Sen. Cruz also is thought to be considering a run for the presidency in 2016, a notion that was noticed by Tanene Allison, spokeswoman for the Texas Democratic Party. \u201cHe\u2019s not talking about the issues that matter most to Texans,\u201d Allison told the Texas Tribune. \u201cA movement to try to shut down the government is not on the top of the list of what most Texans want at the moment.\u201d<\/p>\n

A more productive town hall series would be to include constituents who aren\u2019t particularly friendly to the fiery conservative. Maybe someone with a different point of view will sneak into one or more of these meetings and actually challenge him. Let\u2019s hope so.<\/p>\n\n

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Something struck me as I looked at U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz\u2019s planned series of town hall meetings across Texas. He\u2019s going to be speaking to groups friendly to his point of view. http:\/\/www.texastribune.org\/2013\/08\/15\/ted-cruz-staging-events-across-texas\/ Local Republican women\u2019s groups are hosting him; same for local tea party organizations; an event in Dallas will be put on by … Continue reading Talk to all Texans, Sen. Cruz<\/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":[1],"tags":[913,2108,2776,4531,4537,4602,4691],"class_list":["post-3261","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-chamber-of-commerce","tag-heritage-foundation","tag-liberal-democrats","tag-tea-party","tag-ted-cruz","tag-texas-democratic-party","tag-texas-republican-party"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3261","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=3261"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3261\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3261"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3261"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3261"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}