{"id":36047,"date":"2019-03-17T01:11:56","date_gmt":"2019-03-17T01:11:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=36047"},"modified":"2019-03-17T01:11:56","modified_gmt":"2019-03-17T01:11:56","slug":"beto-gets-em-fired-up-early","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=36047","title":{"rendered":"Beto gets &#8217;em fired up early"},"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\/2019\/03\/beto-2.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-35966\" src=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/beto-2-300x201.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"201\" srcset=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/beto-2-300x201.jpg 300w, https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/beto-2-768x515.jpg 768w, https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/beto-2.jpg 850w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>The media and political fascination with Beto O&#8217;Rourke has commenced. It&#8217;s at full throttle already.<\/p>\n<p>The former West Texas congressman announced his presidential candidacy this week, jetted off to Iowa and had the political media following his every move.<\/p>\n<p>I heard one commentator gushing over how physically attractive he is and how O&#8217;Rourke already has ignited the national flame much as he did in Texas when in 2018 he came within a whoop and a holler of defeating U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz.<\/p>\n<p>None of this early excitement is surprising. O&#8217;Rourke presents a different type of presidential challenger. He nearly defeated Cruz in a heavily Republican state. He ran close and hard with nary a political adviser to be found; he had no pollsters; he toured every one of Texas&#8217;s 254 counties.<\/p>\n<p>He is pledging to do something similar as he runs for president. Good luck with that, young man.<\/p>\n<p>I remain fervently on the fence regarding Beto O&#8217;Rourke. I am inclined to want to support him. I am just not there. I don&#8217;t know if I&#8217;ll get there. I&#8217;m thinking hard about it, along with the rest of the already-gigantic field of Democrats lining up for the chance run next year against Donald Trump.<\/p>\n<p>The media fascination in a strange way seems to mirror the fascination they showed toward Trump as he announced his candidacy in 2015.<\/p>\n<p>I don&#8217;t expect O&#8217;Rourke, though, to inflame animosity the way Trump did, even though the president likely owes the media debt of gratitude for elevating him from carnival barker to serious presidential candidate.<\/p>\n<p>Welcome to the big time, Beto O&#8217;Rourke. This will be wild ride.<\/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>The media and political fascination with Beto O&#8217;Rourke has commenced. It&#8217;s at full throttle already. The former West Texas congressman announced his presidential candidacy this week, jetted off to Iowa and had the political media following his every move. I heard one commentator gushing over how physically attractive he is and how O&#8217;Rourke already has &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=36047\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Beto gets &#8217;em fired up early<\/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":[13,14],"tags":[7490,7225,7043,1424,1941,4537,5051],"class_list":["post-36047","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-national-news","category-political-news","tag-2018-election","tag-2020-election","tag-beto-orourke","tag-donald-trump","tag-gop","tag-ted-cruz","tag-us-senate"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36047","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=36047"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36047\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36048,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36047\/revisions\/36048"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=36047"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=36047"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=36047"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}