How about Greg Abbott?

I can’t be the only American to feel embarrassed by the Clinton Three, with their determined and manufactured smiles on the stage they built for themselves at the Clinton Global Initiative; the organization declaring in ham-fisted symbolism and Soviet-style blunt epithets that former President Bill Clinton, like Elvis Presley, like Bono, like Lady Gaga and Mick Jagger, is a world god king. Then comes former Gov. Jeb Bush (R-Fla.), whom one commentator called “Jeb W. Bush” after hearing his talk on foreign policy this week, so easy to like but so like Perry Como after the Beatles had landed. So much cash, so little time, pushing Bush effortlessly to the stage. Like William Faulkner’s young Confederate for whom it was still not yet two o’clock on that fateful afternoon at Cemetery Ridge in 1863 even 100 years later. Likewise, for conservatism’s establishment heart today, it is still 1957 underneath and it always will be. Bush is their man.

This is not so much a presidential race as a reenactment. Two reenactments. But a storm is coming. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) rises and in presidential debates against her, Clinton world will crumble. Debate is what Warren does; it brought her through college, then to Harvard and the Senate and it could well bring her to the Oval Office. To challenge Warren to a debate is to challenge mixed martial artist Jeff “The Snowman” Monson to a cage fight.

{mosads}And although Bush channels the New England patrician’s wealth and status, it isn’t much help in Iowa, where, The Hill reports, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) has a double-digit lead over the rest of the GOP presidential field. And in New Hampshire, where Walker draws a big lead over the others.

But what happens in Washington today may be only sidebar to the action and passion ahead for America. Trouble started six years ago this month, when New Hampshire state Reps. Dan Itse (R) and Paul Ingbretson (R), citing Thomas Jefferson and the Kentucky Resolutions, declared that New Hampshire need not comply with the federally mandated ObamaCare initiatives, claiming that the federal government had overstepped its bounds. Within weeks, at least 19 other states had joined this unique challenge to Washington.

This action brought a fundamental historical and philosophical change to America; a change specifically from Alexander Hamilton’s vision of a centralized economy and centralized world government to Jefferson’s view of the free state on a continent of free and equal republics; self-governing, self-sustaining, self-reliant.

It might be said that that which starts as an idea in New Hampshire advances to policy and status in Texas. Last December, then-Gov.-elect Greg Abbott (R) of Texas accused the president of “eroding the very foundation of our nation’s Constitution and bestowing a legacy of lawlessness” and led 25 other states against the Obama administration over the president’s executive actions on immigration. Last Monday, a U.S. district court in Texas blocked the president’s order.

As of Monday, the challenge to the Eastern conservative establishment comes from Texas Abbott. He is now the leader and key agent in new conservative thinking. He understands that the Tea Party promise awakened in New Hampshire by Itse and Ingbretson comes down to six words: states’ rights, sound money, constitutional government. And it requires a big state like Texas and a bold, creative, agreeable leader like Abbott to advance in organization and policy.

Abbott has been governor of Texas since Jan. 20. Is it too early to propose he begin to think of the Oval Office? How long had President Obama sat in the Senate before such talk began?

Quigley is a prize-winning writer who has worked more than 35 years as a book and magazine editor, political commentator and reviewer. For 20 years he has been an amateur farmer, raising Tunis sheep and organic vegetables. He lives in New Hampshire with his wife and four children. Contact him at quigley1985@gmail.com.