This is just dandy.
A right-wing former one-term Florida congressman is now seeking to become Texas's next governor by suggesting that the current right-wing governor isn't right-wing enough.
Spare me the alt-right demagoguery.
Allen West, the former head of the Texas Republican Party, has declared his intention to challenge Gov. Greg Abbott in the GOP primary next spring. What has Abbott done to incur West's political challenge? I guess he hasn't yet rounded up and thrown illegal immigrants into jail and tossed the keys into the Gulf of Mexico.
The former president of the U.S.A. has endorsed Abbott already, so West isn't likely to curry much favor with the bloc of fanatics who hang on POTUS 45's every idiotic pronouncement.
Allen West announces he's running against Texas Gov. Greg Abbott in primary | The Texas Tribune
Abbott wants to build a wall along our southern border. He has stuck his thumb in President Biden's eye practically every chance he gets. Abbott has anticipated this challenge from West, so he's moving his re-election rhetoric farther to the right-wing fringe all the time. It's not as if he isn't adhering to the conservative mantra preached by the likes of Allen West and so many other Texas Republicans.
Allen West is a far-right ideologue. Indeed, the entire Texas GOP playing field is cluttered with others just like him.
West now wants to take his game to the next level. He wants that governor's office. Ugh!
Don't get me wrong. I am no fan of Abbott. I am even less of a fan of Allen West, the guy who got drummed out of the Army because he mistreated prisoners of war in Iraq ... allegedly.
West is now a Texas GOP fire-breather. This upcoming campaign season will be fun to watch, if I have the stomach for it.
John Kanelis, former editorial page editor for the Amarillo Globe-News and the Beaumont Enterprise, also is a former blogger for Panhandle PBS in Amarillo. He is retired but is still writing. Kanelis can be contacted via Twitter @jkanelis, on Facebook or his blog, www.highplainsblogger.com. Kanelis’s blog for KETR, “Piece of Mind,” presents his views and does not necessarily reflect the opinion of KETR, its staff or its members.
Kanelis lives in Princeton with his wife, Kathy.
