{"id":9737,"date":"2015-06-13T17:16:58","date_gmt":"2015-06-13T17:16:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=9737"},"modified":"2015-06-13T17:16:58","modified_gmt":"2015-06-13T17:16:58","slug":"castros-vp-stakes-on-the-rise","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=9737","title":{"rendered":"Castro&#8217;s VP stakes on the rise"},"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>Julian Castro has the chops to be vice president of the United States.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ll lay that out right now. He&#8217;s as qualified to be VP as, say, Dan Quayle or Spiro Agnew. Heck, even Richard Nixon was considered a young buck when\u00a0Dwight Eisenhower\u00a0selected him to run as vice president in 1952; then again, Ike could have run with a trained chimpanzee and still been elected in a landslide that year.<\/p>\n<p>Castro&#8217;s stock as a potential running mate on a Democratic ticket led by Hillary Rodham Clinton appears to be rising.<\/p>\n<p>The Big Question: Does Castro&#8217;s presence on a Democratic presidential ticket deliver Texas to the Democrats? It&#8217;s not going to happen.<\/p>\n<p>However, it could make Texas more competitive than it otherwise would be.<\/p>\n<p>http:\/\/www.texastribune.org\/2015\/06\/12\/houston-castro-avoids-veep-chatter\/<\/p>\n<p>Castro is the highly charismatic former mayor of San Antonio who now serves as housing secretary. He&#8217;s had his federal job for less than a year and wasn&#8217;t mayor of Texas&#8217;s second-largest city all that long before moving to Washington.<\/p>\n<p>He did light up the Democratic National Convention in 2012 with a stirring keynote speech.<\/p>\n<p>Castro&#8217;s ties to the Hispanic community are quite obvious, given his name. What&#8217;s more, the name &#8220;Castro&#8221; doesn&#8217;t carry quite the negative political baggage it once did in this country, given that <em>Fidel<\/em> Castro is now out of power in Cuba and the United States is on the verge of establishing normal diplomatic relations with its former enemy. Sure, it&#8217;s still a commie state, but it poses no threat to the United States of America.<\/p>\n<p>These things occasionally have a way of reversing themselves. Someone else could emerge from nowhere to become the next favorite to join Hillary Clinton. Heck, someone else also could emerge &#8212; from the <em>same<\/em> nowhere &#8212; to bump Clinton out of her shoo-in status to become the Democrats&#8217; next presidential nominee. Do I think either event will occur? Umm, no &#8212; definitely not the latter.<\/p>\n<p>For now, it&#8217;s fun to watch Julian Castro navigate his way through the treacherous world of political punditry and speculation.<\/p>\n<p>The young man already is adept at dodging the obvious questions that keep coming at him.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/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>Julian Castro has the chops to be vice president of the United States. I&#8217;ll lay that out right now. He&#8217;s as qualified to be VP as, say, Dan Quayle or Spiro Agnew. Heck, even Richard Nixon was considered a young buck when\u00a0Dwight Eisenhower\u00a0selected him to run as vice president in 1952; then again, Ike could &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=9737\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Castro&#8217;s VP stakes on the rise<\/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":[18],"tags":[1256,1335,1487,1723,2139,2606,3940,4093,4365,4966,5105],"class_list":["post-9737","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-state-news","tag-dan-quayle","tag-democratic-national-convention","tag-dwight-eisenhower","tag-fidel-castro","tag-hillary-clinton","tag-julian-castro","tag-richard-nixon","tag-san-antonio","tag-spiro-agnew","tag-u-s-housing-secretary","tag-vice-president-of-the-united-states"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9737","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=9737"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9737\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9737"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9737"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9737"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}