{"id":6725,"date":"2014-10-09T02:47:48","date_gmt":"2014-10-09T02:47:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=6725"},"modified":"2014-10-09T02:47:48","modified_gmt":"2014-10-09T02:47:48","slug":"abbott-is-swimming-in-campaign-cash","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=6725","title":{"rendered":"Abbott is swimming in campaign cash"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Greg Abbott has become a fundraising dynamo in his campaign for governor, which a lot of observers think he’s going to win next month.<\/p>\n

He’s got an estimated $30 million in the bank. He won’t spend it all, according to the Texas Tribune.<\/p>\n

What’s the deal?<\/p>\n

http:\/\/www.texastribune.org\/2014\/10\/08\/brief\/<\/p>\n

It appears he’s saving it up for the next campaign in 2018, which could get serious if another Republican — state Sen. Dan Patrick — is elected lieutenant governor.<\/p>\n

Patrick might be so darn full of himself that he’ll want to challenge Abbott for governor in four years. I’m worried far less about Patrick’s challenge of Abbott than I worry about what kind of governor Abbott would become.<\/p>\n

Here’s the deal.<\/p>\n

If Abbott wants to fend off a challenge from the right wing of his party, he’ll have to govern<\/em> from the far right. That means he’ll let loose with fiery rhetoric about border security, working with Texas congressional Republicans to repeal the Affordable Care Act, appointing right-wing ideologues to all those boards and commissions and perhaps even raising the specter of secession when the moment presents itself.<\/p>\n

There might be a formidable Democrat out there who’ll challenge a Gov. Abbott in 2018. Let’s not kid ourselves, though, about where the stiffest challenge might present itself.<\/p>\n

It’ll come from within the Republican Party.<\/p>\n

As the Tribune reports: “The target of this cash juggernaut, of course, may not be a Democrat at all, but rather GOP lieutenant governor candidate Dan Patrick, who as (Austin American-Statesman reporter Jonathan) Tilove writes, ‘would like to be governor someday.'”<\/p>\n

Therein lies the concern of where an Abbott governorship will take the state in the meantime.<\/p>\n\n

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Greg Abbott has become a fundraising dynamo in his campaign for governor, which a lot of observers think he’s going to win next month. He’s got an estimated $30 million in the bank. He won’t spend it all, according to the Texas Tribune. What’s the deal? http:\/\/www.texastribune.org\/2014\/10\/08\/brief\/ It appears he’s saving it up for the … Continue reading Abbott is swimming in campaign cash<\/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":[78,131,709,816,1255,2006,3376,4622],"class_list":["post-6725","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-political-news","category-state-news","tag-2018-campaign","tag-aca","tag-border-security","tag-campaign-cash","tag-dan-patrick","tag-greg-abbott","tag-obamacare","tag-texas-gop"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6725","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=6725"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6725\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6725"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6725"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6725"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}