Fire Hydrant of Freedom
Politics, Religion, Science, Culture and Humanities => Politics & Religion => Topic started by: Crafty_Dog on April 21, 2013, 05:39:45 AM
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from Wikipedia:
Rafael Edward "Ted" Cruz (born December 22, 1970) is an American politician and the junior United States Senator for the state of Texas, in office since 2013. He is a member of the Republican Party.
Cruz was Solicitor General of Texas from 2003 to May 2008, appointed by Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott. He was the first Hispanic Solicitor General in Texas,[2] the youngest Solicitor General in the United States, and had the longest tenure in Texas history. He was formerly a partner at the law firm Morgan, Lewis & Bockius, where he led the firm’s U.S. Supreme Court and national appellate litigation practice.[3]
He previously served as the director of the Office of Policy Planning at the Federal Trade Commission, an Associate Deputy Attorney General at the United States Department of Justice, and as Domestic Policy Advisor to U.S. President George W. Bush on the 2000 Bush-Cheney campaign. In addition, Cruz was an Adjunct Professor of Law at the University of Texas School of Law in Austin, where he taught U.S. Supreme Court litigation, from 2004 to 2009.
Cruz was the Republican nominee for the Senate seat which was vacated by fellow Republican Kay Bailey Hutchison.[4] On July 31, 2012, he defeated Lieutenant Governor David Dewhurst in the Republican primary runoff, 57%–to-43%.[5] Cruz defeated the Democrat, former state Representative Paul Sadler, in the general election held on November 6, 2012; he prevailed with 56%-to–41% over Sadler.[5] Cruz is endorsed by the Tea Party Movement and the Republican Liberty Caucus.[6]
On November 14, 2012, Cruz was appointed vice-chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee.[7]
Contents [hide]
1 Early life and education
2 Legal career
3 U.S. Senate
3.1 2012 election
3.2 Committee assignments
4 Personal life
5 Electoral history
5.1 2012 Republican primary
5.2 2012 Republican primary runoff
5.3 2012 General Election
6 See also
7 References
8 External links
[edit] Early life and educationCruz was born in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, where his parents, Eleanor Darragh and Rafael Cruz, were working in the oil business.[8][9] His father was a Cuban immigrant to the United States during the Cuban Revolution.[10] His mother was born and reared in Delaware, in a family of Irish and Italian descent.[9][11] Cruz's family returned to the U.S. when he was four years old.[10]
Cruz attended high school at Faith West Academy in Katy, Texas,[12] and then graduated from Second Baptist High School in Houston.
Cruz graduated cum laude from Princeton University in 1992.[13] While at Princeton, he competed for the American Whig-Cliosophic Society's Debate Panel and won the top speaker award at both the 1992 U.S. National Debating Championship and the 1992 North American Debating Championship.[14] In 1992, he was named U.S. National Speaker of the Year and Team of the Year (with his debate partner, David Panton).[15] Cruz was also a semi-finalist at the 1995 World Universities Debating Championship.[16]
Cruz's senior thesis on the separation of powers, titled "Clipping the Wings of Angels," draws its inspiration from a passage attributed to James Madison: "If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary." Cruz argued that the drafters of the Constitution intended to protect the rights of their constituents, and the last two items in the Bill of Rights offered an explicit stop against an all-powerful state. Cruz wrote: "They simply do so from different directions. The Tenth stops new powers, and the Ninth fortifies all other rights, or non-powers." [17][18]
Cruz then attended the Harvard Law School, graduating magna cum laude in 1995.[19][20] While at Harvard Law, Cruz was a primary editor of the Harvard Law Review, and executive editor of the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy, and a founding editor of the Harvard Latino Law Review.[13] As a student at Harvard Law, Professor Alan Dershowitz said, “Cruz was off-the-charts brilliant.”[21]
[edit] Legal careerCruz served as a law clerk to William Rehnquist, Chief Justice of the United States, and J. Michael Luttig of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit.[22][2] Cruz was the first Hispanic ever to clerk for a Chief Justice of the United States.[23]
Cruz served as an associate deputy attorney general in the U.S. Justice Department and as the director of policy planning at the U.S. Federal Trade Commission under President George W. Bush.[21]
In 2003, Cruz was appointed Solicitor General of Texas by Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott.[2]
Cruz has authored more than 80 United States Supreme Court briefs and presented 43 oral arguments, including nine before the United States Supreme Court.[2][21][24] In the landmark case of District of Columbia v. Heller, Cruz drafted the amicus brief signed by attorneys general of 31 states, which said that the D.C. handgun ban should be struck down as infringing upon the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms.[24][25] Cruz also presented oral argument for the amici states in the companion case to Heller before the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.[24][26] Cruz did legal work during the Florida recount during the Presidential campaign of Bush/Cheney 2000.[27]
In addition to his victory in Heller, Cruz has successfully defended the Ten Commandments monument on the Texas State Capitol grounds,[21][24] the recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance in public schools[21] and the majority of the 2003 Texas redistricting plan.[28]
Cruz also successfully defended, in Medellin v. Texas, the State of Texas against an attempt by the International Court of Justice to re-open the criminal convictions of 51 murderers on death row throughout the United States.[2][21][24]
Cruz has been named by American Lawyer magazine as one of the 50 Best Litigators under 45 in America,[29][30] by The National Law Journal as one of the 50 Most Influential Minority Lawyers in America,[31][32] and by Texas Lawyer as one of the 25 Greatest Texas Lawyers of the Past Quarter Century.[33][34]
[edit] U.S. Senate[edit] 2012 electionMain article: United States Senate election in Texas, 2012
Cruz speaking to the Values Voters Summit in October 2011.Cruz's election has been described by the Washington Post as “the biggest upset of 2012 . . . a true grassroots victory against very long odds.”[35] On January 19, 2011, following an announcement that U.S. Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison would not seek reelection, Cruz announced via blogger conference call his candidacy for the position.[4] Cruz faced opposition from sitting Lieutenant Governor David Dewhurst in the Republican senatorial primary. Cruz was endorsed by the Club for Growth, a fiscally conservative political action committee;[36] Erick Erickson, editor of prominent conservative blog RedState;[37] the FreedomWorks for America super PAC;[38] nationally syndicated radio host Mark Levin;[39] former Attorney General Edwin Meese;[40] Tea Party Express;[41] Young Conservatives of Texas;[42] and U.S. Senators Tom Coburn,[43] Jim DeMint,[44] Mike Lee,[45] Rand Paul,[46] and Pat Toomey.[47] He was also endorsed by former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin and former Texas Congressman Ron Paul,[48] George P. Bush[27] and former U.S. Senator from Pennsylvania Rick Santorum.[49]
Cruz won the runoff for the Republican nomination with a 14-point margin over Dewhurst.[50] In the November 6 general election, Cruz faced the Democratic nominee Paul Sadler, an attorney and a former state representative from Henderson in east Texas. In the general election, Cruz prevailed with 4,469,843 ballots (56.4%) to Sadler's 3,194,927 (40.6%). Two minor candidates held the remaining 3% of the ballots cast.[5] Cruz won 35% of the Hispanic vote in the general election.[51]
[edit] Committee assignmentsCommittee on Armed Services
Subcommittee on Emerging Threats and Capabilities
Subcommittee on Readiness and Management Support
Subcommittee on Seapower
Committee on the Judiciary
Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Human Rights (Ranking Member)
Subcommittee on Crime and Terrorism
Subcommittee on Immigration, Refugees and Border Security
Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation
Subcommittee on Aviation Operations, Safety, and Security
Subcommittee on Science and Space (Ranking Member)
Committee on Rules and Administration
Special Committee on Aging
[edit] Personal lifeCruz was born and spent the first four years of his life in Calgary before his parents returned to Houston. His father was jailed and tortured by the Fulgencio Batista regime and fought for Fidel Castro in the Cuban Revolution[52] but "didn't know Castro was a Communist" and later became a staunch critic of Castro when "the rebel leader took control and began seizing private property and suppressing dissent."[53] Rafael Cruz moved to Austin in 1957 to study at the University of Texas. He spoke no English and had $100 sewn into his underwear.[24][54] The elder Cruz worked his way through school as a dishwasher making 50 cents an hour.[21] Cruz's father today is a pastor in North Dallas and became a U.S. citizen in 2005.[17] Cruz’s mother, who was from Delaware, was the first person in her family to attend college. She earned a degree in mathematics from Rice University in Houston in the 1950s, working summers at Foley’s and Shell.[17] Cruz has said, "I'm Cuban, Irish, and Italian, and yet somehow I ended up Southern Baptist."[55]
Cruz and his wife, Heidi Cruz, have two daughters, Caroline Camille and Catherine Christiane. Cruz met his wife while working on the George W. Bush presidential campaign of 2000. Cruz's wife is currently head of the Southwest Region in the Investment Management Division of Goldman, Sachs & Co. and previously worked in the White House for Condoleezza Rice and in New York as an investment banker.[56]
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Responding to the charge that he is ignoring the Heller decision:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UNUhWoIdFb4
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Well, that's rather decisive retort :lol:
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Responding to the charge that he is ignoring the Heller decision:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UNUhWoIdFb4
I think I am beginning to like Cruz. I made the same argument he did in this video in a gun rights debate about 2 months ago. I would say that "great minds think alike" but I think he is smarter than I am, so I might offend him by bringing him down to my level. Suffice it to say I'll be watching his senatorial career (and beyond?) with great interest.
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One of the articles suggested that Cruz ran for Senate to raise his visibility to then run for the position he really wanted, [Texas] Attorney General. The thinking then was that he had no chance running in the primary against the sitting Lt. Governor. In a very short time he has earned that level of visibility at the national level.
I am glad to hear of BD arriving at the same logic on Heller and the gun debate.
It looks to me like Cruz' clear and concise logic prevailed in Bush v. Gore, 2000:
In his brief, Cruz wrote:
"The Constitution grants state legislatures, not state courts, the power to pick presidential electors." http://writ.news.findlaw.com/commentary/20001201_cruz.html
After the noise settled, that was the argument the Chief Justice used in the decision.
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http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/may/3/president-cruz-poses-constitutional-conundrum/
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Freshman Senator Ted Cruz wants to shake up Washington, which is certainly needed. But if we can offer the Texan one piece of friendly advice: Try to avoid getting a reputation for rewriting history, especially recent history that everyone remembers.
That thought comes to mind after we heard about Mr. Cruz's speech last weekend to FreedomWorks, the tea party-affiliated activist group. While making the case for his filibuster strategy on the Senate gun-control bill, Mr. Cruz suddenly took our name in vain.
"All of the reporters said, 'Okay, you guys have lost, and that shows what imbeciles you are.' In fact the WSJ wrote two op-eds bashing Rand [Paul] and Mike [Lee] and me for being imbeciles for fighting on this. Didn't we understand?" Mr. Cruz told the crowd.
Related Video
Potomac Watch columnist Kim Strassel on the split in the Republican party over strategy. Photo: Getty Images
"And yet you go forward to a week ago when the votes came on the floor of the Senate. Every single proposal in President Obama's gun-control agenda that would have undermined the Second Amendment, every single one was voted down on the floor of the Senate. I got to tell you—the look of shock from the senior Democrats. They were convinced they had won."
This account is wrong about his strategy, our commentary, and what happened. We also didn't call him an "imbecile," or any other name. The strategy of Mr. Cruz and his comrades was to use the filibuster to block any gun control measure from even getting votes on the floor. We criticized that as misguided, since it would let Senate Democrats avoid difficult votes and open Republicans to Mr. Obama's criticism that they were obstructionists for blocking a Senate debate and votes.
In the event, Mr. Cruz's GOP colleagues agreed with us. They helped to override his filibuster attempt and let the bill proceed to the floor. Whereupon a bipartisan coalition emerged that defeated the gun-control amendments, as each one failed to get 60 votes or in some cases (the assault-weapons ban) even 50.
Mr. Cruz now wants to take credit for that victory when he opposed the strategy that led to it. Had he and Mr. Paul had their way, no such bipartisan coalition would have emerged. Mr. Obama and Majority Leader Harry Reid would be blaming the GOP for their defeat, and moderate Republicans in the Northeast would be under more political pressure. Now gun-rights Democrats are feeling the political heat from the White House and the gun-control PACs.
Normally we'd ignore this insider politics, but Senators Cruz and Paul have been declaring for all to hear that they and a few others are the only conservatives of principle in politics. That's not the way it turned out on gun control because the dispute wasn't about principle. The debate was about how to fight for principle in an intelligent way that had the best chance of winning.
Mr. Cruz will have more success in the Senate, and in his mooted Presidential candidacy, if he stops pretending that he's Nathan Hale and everyone else is Benedict Arnold.
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fS0BM6TKgZA&feature=player_embedded
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http://www.tpnn.com/ted-cruzs-blasts-obama-compares-to-fidel-castro/
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In 2012, Ted Cruz was elected as the 34th U.S. Senator from Texas. Prior to that, he served for five years as Solicitor General of Texas and was for five years a partner at one of the nation’s largest law firms. He has authored more than 80 U.S. Supreme Court briefs and argued 43 oral arguments, including nine before the U.S. Supreme Court. He has also served as Director of the Office of Policy Planning at the Federal Trade Commission and as Associate Deputy Attorney General at the U.S. Department of Justice. Senator Cruz graduated with honors from Princeton University and with high honors from Harvard Law School, and served as a law clerk to Chief Justice of the Supreme Court William Rehnquist.
The following is adapted from a speech delivered at Hillsdale College’s 161st Commencement, held in the College’s Biermann Athletic Center on May 11, 2013.
Today is a day of celebration. For you graduates, it’s a day to celebrate your hard work, your commitment, time, energy, passion, and prayers that you have put in to graduate from Hillsdale College. It’s also a day to celebrate the sacrifice and dedication your family has put in to get you here. I am honored to join you today—but let me say I fully recognize that the most forgettable part of this important day is going to be the politician delivering your commencement speech.
This morning I had the opportunity to tour your wonderful campus, and one of the highlights for me was the statue of Margaret Thatcher. I understand that when the statue was unveiled, she sent a letter of praise that read: “Hillsdale College symbolizes everything that is good and true in America. You uphold the principles and cherish the values which have made your country a beacon of hope.” I couldn’t agree more.
There are commencements being held on campuses all over the country this spring, but this one is different. Hillsdale, it is known across the country, is in a class by itself. Those graduating from other colleges are being told to go out and make something of themselves. But for the men and women receiving their degrees here today, expectations are higher. Because of the education you received here, you are uniquely prepared to provide desperately needed, principled leadership to your families, your churches, your communities, your country, and your fellow man. While other graduates have been exposed to college courses such as “Lady Gaga and the Sociology of Fame,” you have been grounded in an understanding of our Constitution and of the freedom it was designed to preserve.
* * *
Last month the world lost Baroness Thatcher, and in her honor I’d like to spend a few minutes discussing with you the miracle of freedom.
In the history of mankind, freedom has been the exception. Governed by kings and queens, human beings were told that power starts at the top and flows down; that their rights emanate from a monarch and may be taken away at the monarch’s whim. The British began a revolution against this way of thinking in a meadow called Runnymede in 1215. It was embodied in the Magna Carta, which read: “To all free men of our kingdom we have also granted, for us and our heirs for ever, all the liberties written out below, to have and to keep for them and their heirs . . . .” That revolution reached full flower in Philadelphia in 1787, in a Constitution that began from two radical premises.
The first is that our rights come not from kings or queens—or even from presidents—but from God. As the Declaration of Independence put it, “We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, and that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”
Second, in the Constitution, America’s Founders inverted the understanding of sovereignty. Power comes not from the top down, but up, from “We the People,” and governing authority for those in political office is limited to set periods subject to elections. As James Madison explained in Federalist 51: “If men were angels, no government would be necessary . . . . In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.”
Even from my short time in elected office, I can assure you there are no angels in Washington, D.C. And that is why Thomas Jefferson said the “chains of the Constitution” should bind the mischief of government. Only when government is limited are rights protected, the rule of law honored, and freedom allowed to flourish.
You who are graduating from Hillsdale are familiar with these ideas. As the late conservative writer and educator Russell Kirk observed, “Hillsdale does not subscribe to the notion that all books published before 1900 are obsolete. Against all odds, the College speaks up—as it did during the nineteenth century—for ‘permanent things.’ ” And with those as our foundation, what has freedom wrought?
* * *
Simply put, the American free market system is the greatest engine for prosperity and opportunity that the world has ever seen. Freedom works. No other nation on Earth has allowed so many millions to come with nothing and achieve so much. In the centuries before the American Revolution, the average human lived on between one and three dollars a day, no matter whether one lived in Europe, Asia, Africa, or North or South America. But from that point on—from the beginning of the American experiment—for the first time in human history, per capita income in a few countries began to grow rapidly, and nowhere more so than in the United States.
Over the last two centuries, U.S. growth rates have far outpaced growth rates throughout the world, producing per capita incomes about six times greater than the world average and 50 percent higher than those in Europe. Put another way, the United States holds 4.5 percent of the world’s population, and produces a staggering 22 percent of the world’s output—a fraction that has remained stable for two decades, despite growing competition from around the world.
This predominance isn’t new. The late British economist Angus Maddison observed that American per capita income was already the highest in the world in the 1830s. This is a result of America’s economic freedom, which enables entrepreneurs and small businesses to flourish.
Today the U.S. dollar is the international reserve currency. English is the world’s standard language for commerce. The strength of our economy allows us to maintain the mightiest military in the world. And U.S. culture—film, TV, the Internet—is preeminent in the world (although for many of our TV shows and movies, perhaps we owe the world an apology). A disproportionate number of the world’s great inventions in medicine, pharmaceuticals, electronics, the Internet, and other technology come from America, improving, expanding, and saving lives. America was where the telephone, the automobile, the airplane, and the iPhone were invented. Americans were the first to walk on the moon.
But most importantly, freedom produces opportunity. And I would encourage each of you to embrace what I call opportunity conservatism, which means that we should look at and judge every proposed domestic policy with a laser focus on how it impacts the least among us—how it helps the most vulnerable Americans climb the economic ladder.
The political left in our country seeks to reach down the hand of government and move people up the economic ladder. This attempt is almost always driven by noble intentions. And yet it never, ever works. Conservatives, in contrast, understand from experience that the only way to help people climb the economic ladder is to provide them the opportunity to pull themselves up one rung at a time.
As President Reagan said, “How can we love our country and not love our countrymen, and loving them, reach out a hand when they fall, heal them when they’re sick, and provide opportunity to make them self-sufficient so they will be equal in fact and not just in theory?”
Historically, our nation has enjoyed remarkable economic mobility. About 60 percent of the households that were in the lowest income quintile in 1999 were in a higher quintile ten years later. During the same decade, almost 40 percent of the richest households fell to a lower quintile. This is a nation where you can rise or fall. It is a nation where you can climb the economic ladder based not on who you are born to, or what class you are born into, but based on your talents, your passion, your perseverance, and the content of your character.
Economic freedom and the prosperity it generates reduce poverty like nothing else. Studies consistently confirm that countries with higher levels of economic freedom have poverty levels as much as 75 percent lower than countries that are less free.
Thanks to America’s free market system, the average poor American has more living space than the typical non‑poor person in Sweden, France, or the United Kingdom. In 1970, the year I was born, only 36 percent of the U.S. population enjoyed air conditioning. Today, 80 percent of poor households in America have air conditioning; and 96 percent of poor parents say that their children were never hungry at any time in the preceding year because they could not afford food.
Now, of course, there is still need in America and throughout the world, and all of us should act to help our fellow man. But more and more government is not the way to do this. To insist otherwise is to ignore the fact that all major European nations have higher levels of public spending than the United States, and that all of them are poorer.
Nor are human beings happiest when they’re taken care of by the state. Indeed, areas under the yoke of dependency on government are among the least joyous parts of our society. The story of Julia that we saw depicted in last year’s election—the story of cradle-to-grave dependency on government—is not an attractive utopia. Men and women flourish, instead, when afforded the equal opportunity to work and create and accomplish.
I remember some time ago when former Texas Senator Phil Gramm was participating in a Senate hearing on socialized medicine, and the witness there explained that government would best take care of people. Senator Gramm gently demurred and said, “I care more about my family than anyone else does.” And this wide-eyed witness said, “Oh no, Senator. I care as much about your children.” Senator Gramm smiled and said, “Really? What are their names?”
* * *
It is precisely because economic freedom and opportunity outperform centralized planning and regulation that so many millions have risked everything for a chance at the American dream.
Fifty-five years ago, my father fled Cuba, where he had been imprisoned and tortured—including having his teeth kicked out—as a teenager. Today my father is a pastor in Dallas. When he landed in Austin, Texas, in 1957, he was 18. He couldn’t speak a word of English. He had $100 sewn into his underwear. He went and got a job washing dishes and made 50 cents an hour. He worked seven days a week and paid his way through the University of Texas, and then he got a job, and then he went on to start a small business.
Now imagine if, at that time, the minimum wage had been two dollars an hour. He might never have had the opportunity to get that dishwashing job and work his way through school and work his way up from there. I cannot tell you how many times I’ve thanked God that some well-meaning liberal didn’t greet him when he landed in Austin and put his arm around him and say: “Let me take care of you. Let me make you dependent on government. Let me sap your self-respect—and by the way, don’t bother learning English.”
When I was a kid, my father used to say to me: “When we faced oppression in Cuba, I had a place to flee to. If we lose our freedom here, where do we go?” For my entire life, my dad has been my hero. But what I find most incredible about his story is how commonplace it is. Every one of us here today has a story like that. We could line up at this podium and each of us tell the story of our parents or grandparents or our great, great, great grandparents. We are all children of those who risked everything for liberty. That’s the DNA of what it means to be an American—to value freedom and opportunity above all.
In 1976, Margaret Thatcher delivered her “Britain Awake” speech. In it, she said: “There are moments in our history when we have to make a fundamental choice. This is one such moment, a moment when our choice will determine the life or death of our kind of society and the future of our children. Let’s ensure that our children will have cause to rejoice that we did not forsake their freedom.”
If we don’t fight to preserve our liberty, we will lose it. The men and women graduating here today, blessed with a world-class liberal arts education and a Hillsdale love of learning, are perfectly situated to lead the fight, to tell and retell the story of the miracle of freedom to so many Americans—so many young Americans in particular—who’ve never heard that story from the media, or in their schools, and certainly not from Hollywood.
Mrs. Thatcher continued: “Of course, this places a burden on us, but it is one that we must be willing to bear if we want our freedom to survive.”
Throughout history, we have carried the torch for freedom. At Hillsdale, you have been prepared to continue to do so, that together we may ensure that America remains a shining city on a hill, a beacon to the world of hope and freedom and opportunity.
Thank you and God bless you.
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Wow! to both of those posts! There are amazingly few people who can articulate the value of freedom.
Video of the speech: http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2013/05/26/sen_ted_cruz_delivers_the_commencement_address_at_hillsdale_college.html
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Houston Chronicle reports he will headline a fundraiser for the New Hampshire GOP.
(This is not how one hides Presidential ambitions!)
http://www.chron.com/news/article/Sen-Ted-Cruz-of-Texas-heading-to-New-Hampshire-4664315.php?cmpid=hpts
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http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/jul/28/sen-ted-cruz-triumphs-in-2016-presidential-straw-p/
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http://www.tpnn.com/video-ted-cruz-crushes-obamacare-in-two-sentences-flat/
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http://www.dallasnews.com/news/politics/headlines/20130818-born-in-canada-ted-cruz-became-a-citizen-of-that-country-as-well-as-u.s..ece
Egads! Born in Calgary 1970. How can we argue this is ok after just arguing that Obama birthplace was an issue? Both have (had) mother's who were American citizens.
At least he shows us his birth certificate unlike his highness.
I guess this means he is running in 2016. It remains to be seen if he can win over enough voters to his strict conservative views. Lets hope so.
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"How can we argue this is ok after just arguing that Obama birthplace was an issue? Both have (had) mother's who were American citizens."
Yes, hypocrisy again rears its ugly head. Maybe a court needs to rule, but natural born citizen in my view would include both people for the reasons you state. You don't lose citizenship for you or your offspring by traveling while pregnant.
'Natural born' is a term in contrast with legalized immigrant. Ted Cruz never had to apply for citizenship - he was born with it. Same goes for Barack Obama; he was just confusing his detractors by presenting phony documents, applying for multiple social security numbers etc.
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The issue in citizenship is the opposite. A tourist's or trespasser's baby does not gain citizenship by birth location alone, IMO. The baby is a member of the family first. If the family is Mexican or Japanese, Canadian, or from anywhere else, so is the baby. If that is not clear enough in the constitution, then an amendment is needed.
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9r-cRiyEoKI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XDbE8m6vbgs vs. Fleabagger Sen. Schumer: Rather longwinded, but it gives a sense of his composure when dealing with scum like Schumer.
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http://www.glennbeck.com/2013/09/03/senator-ted-cruz-weighs-in-on-u-s-military-action-in-syria/?utm_source=Daily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=2013-09-03_253565&utm_content=5054942&utm_term=_253565_253574
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http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2013/09/27/Poll-Cruz-2016-Frontrunner-New-GOP-Leader
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http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2013/09/27/Poll-Cruz-2016-Frontrunner-New-GOP-Leader
Yes. It is early and 20% support of Republicans is nothing to celebrate, but we did try spineless the last two times and it failed. Cruz is now the lightning rod for both establishment Republican and firebrand liberal attacks. He seems to be handling it well, just going about his job of opposing everyday with all his might the liberal train wreck.
The question for 2016 will be, who rallies the base AND draws new people in. Cruz for sure is a top contender.
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It sure beats the "managing decline" as put by Hannity that we have seen with Bush and company and others like Christie.
My description of it is an army that is in retreat having their rear guard fight a timid defensive action while running backwards.
Rep. King from NY is off my list.
Christie never was on it. The vast majority of the people who I speak to would leave NJ in seconds if they were able to.
He has done nothing to turn it around. Yes he stood up to teachers unions. That was helpful and a start. So he used his big yap to bully Congress into handing over 50 plus billion to NJ NY to divvy up. Does anyone know where the money is going?
Now they want more money for a fire is Seaside? The "official" explanation for the fire is some wiring between or under a building was damaged by the hurricane. Maybe. But I don't take this official finding at face value.
There is a lot of money at stake. Why should I believe officials in NJ? I suppose if was arson there would be no money.
But I digress. No question. Cruz is a hero to me.
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If cans can get their message straight I believe Cruz could be our ONE. Are you listening and taking notes Rove?
http://www.anncoulter.com/columns/2013-09-25.html#read_more
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He is certainly someone upon whom I have my eye too!
That said, here are some questions I have:
a) an extremely scholarly life in the law-- what life experiences inform him when the going gets tough? How much has he mixed with the plethora of sub-cultures that make up America?
b) no executive experience whatsoever, indeed no private sector experience of which I am aware. Nor is there military experience.
c) Getting elected Senator from Texas is no small thing, especially an upset such as he engineered, but I worry about his communication modality skills. Per Jung and his offshoot of Briggs Meyers, there are four: thinking, feeling, sensation, and intuition and for each person one of these is dominant. Cruz is definitely a thinker. Unfortunately, thinking is the dominant modality for only about 10% of the population. IIRC feeling is the dominant modality of about 50% of the population. Does he have the ability to communicate effectively with women enthused over the idea of Hillary breaking the glass ceiling? Not that I can see , , , yet. OTOH maybe his superior reasoning skills are EXACTLY what we need to pop the bubbles of nonsequitors (sp?) that litter our political landscape. Connected with this, my impression is that temperamentally he seems to have excellent ability to stay centered in the presence of infuriating idiots (e.g. as I saw him do in a joint appearance with Chuck Schumer) This is very important too!
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Excellent and all very valid and to the point questions Crafty.
I really do think Hillary's appeal to women must be dealt with. We don't have any Republican women on the national level other than Sarah Palin.
One question,
What is " IIRC ".
I liked the post that quotes Alan Dershowitz (clearly a genius even if a liberal) as Cruz being "off the charts".
But your right. Just being smart does not mean he can win. But it certainly makes him a new and inspiring leader greatly needed in the Republican party.
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IIRC=If I Remember Correctly :-)
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TYVM (thank you very much) :-D
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Yes, all true. We need leaders like Ted Cruz whether he rises to the level of nominee for President and President or not. It is on the thinking/feeling side that I saw Marco Rubio's early ability to connect with voters. On the weaknesses side, Rubio has all the same as Cruz and more. When 2015-2016 rolls around, there isn't going to be a perfect choice. I prefer a two term Governor, but not over getting other things right.
In the case of Cruz (and others), he has all the executive experience for the Presidency that Obama had, none. In Obama's case, I don't think it was his lack of executive experience that sunk him. It was his failed ideology. If his foreign policy vision of appeasing enemies and apologizing for American overbearance was the right prescription for peace, he executed it just fine. But he was wrong. If his economic vision was right, America would be prospering and his approvals soaring. But he was wrong.
Cruz holds up to debates, questioning, and even the Palin-like ridicule and attacks coming at him because he is Reagan-like in his comfort with his own principles and his ability to articulate them. He is very, very good but not necessarily Reagan-like in his presence on a camera or a podium.
To me, this is about getting the policies right. But you have to connect with people and win elections to have a say in governing. As frontrunner for the moment, he will be seen and have his opportunity. We will see.
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Cruz needs a non shyster Clinton team to enhance his appeal. An army of believers. But honest brokers. Not shysters.
Hillary is a complete manufactured entity. No inherent substance. All canned. All scripted. All MSM image making. She is a media celebrity. She doesn't write the play. She just memorizes her lines and spits them out.
Just liberal dogma which is today's version of fascism.
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http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/10/01/chris-matthews-says-obama-has-finally-met-his-match-and-you-wont-believe-who-he-cited/
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http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/10/09/glenn-beck-reveals-a-story-he-hasnt-been-able-to-share-for-over-a-year/
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http://www.glennbeck.com/2013/10/11/watch-ted-cruz-battles-van-jones-on-cnn/?utm_source=Daily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=2013-10-11_265754&utm_content=5054942&utm_term=_265754_265761
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http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/oct/12/cruz-crushes-field-presidential-straw-poll-values-/
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http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/oct/12/cruz-crushes-field-presidential-straw-poll-values-/
It turns out that having both a brain and a backbone is a pretty rare combination in politics.
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http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/oct/12/cruz-crushes-field-presidential-straw-poll-values-/
It turns out that having both a brain and a backbone is a pretty rare combination in politics.
Leadership is the rarest commodity these days...
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Cruz: RINOS in Senate deserve the blame:
80 seconds
http://therightscoop.com/ted-cruz-when-half-of-senate-republicans-are-firing-canons-at-house-republicans-it-sabotages-the-house-effort/
18 minutes
http://therightscoop.com/ted-cruz-when-half-of-senate-republicans-are-firing-canons-at-house-republicans-it-sabotages-the-house-effort/
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http://blogs.rollcall.com/wgdb/after-cruz-strategy-failed-will-his-clout-fade/
From the article:
Cruz is the Senate heir apparent to former senator and current Heritage Foundation President Jim DeMint, a man who once famously said of a moderate colleague who later was forced out of the party: “I’d rather have 40 Marco Rubios than 60 Arlen Specters, and the reason for that is if you want 60 Republicans, you’ve got to have at least 40 to start with who stand on principle.”
Cruz has starred in ads for DeMint’s former PAC, the Senate Conservatives Fund, which is actively campaigning against incumbent Republicans, and so these past two weeks have only expedited the process of his falling out of favor with many colleagues.
The question is whether the Republicans who pushed this deal to reopen a government shuttered for more than two weeks have the strength to resist Cruz if he pushes a similar strategy again
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To take on the powerful forces that Cruz has, a man must have mind, heart, and balls to an unusual degree. I caught a bit of his speech on the Senate floor yesterday. I admit that internally I have vacillated over the wisdom of his strategy, but the man remains unbowed and on the attack. This moment is a helluva a gut check for him and as best as I can tell, so far he is passing with flying colors.
I was watching Crossfire last night (with Newt and Van Jones, this promises to become regular viewing for me btw) and Newt weighed in very articulately with how this deal is not a Dem victory but a failure-- a failure to address that which must be addressed. The political dynamics where we will be when get to the can in the road once again are unknown for now, but it may be that Cruz will be in a much more powerful position than most can imagine in this moment.
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second post:
Does Ted Cruz support ObamaCare? You might laugh at that question, but on Wednesday the freshman Texas Republican refused to delay the Senate deal to reopen the government and raise the debt limit even though it contained barely a token concession on the Affordable Care Act.
"Delaying this vote would not accomplish anything," Mr. Cruz explained. "The focus is and should be on the substance of providing real relief for the American people. This deal doesn't do that and that's why I intend to vote no, but there is nothing to be benefited by delaying this vote a couple of days, versus having it today."
That's true, but wait. For weeks Mr. Cruz scolded his fellow Republicans as the "surrender caucus" and closet supporters of ObamaCare because they wouldn't support his strategy to tie a vote to fund the government to defunding ObamaCare. His GOP colleagues thought the Cruz strategy was futile, and politically dumb, as it proved to be. Yet now even Mr. Cruz is admitting that there are limits to what Republicans can achieve when they control only one house of Congress. Maybe he's learning, or maybe his earlier accusations were, well, less than sincere.
Speaking of admissions, one of the ringleaders of the shutdown caucus conceded Wednesday that he always knew ObamaCare couldn't be defunded this year. "Well, everybody understands that we're not going to be able to repeal this law until 2017 and that we have to win the Senate and win the White House," Michael Needham of the Heritage Action political operation told Fox News.
That's also true, but wait. If the defund cause was always futile as some of us argued, why spend weeks pursuing a strategy he knew would fail? And why run ads declaring the opposite, as Heritage Action did, in Congressional districts held by Republicans who actually oppose ObamaCare? Mr. Needham and his allies claim to be tribunes of the people, but they're the ones who treated the public like rubes by misleading it about what was politically possible.
Messrs. Cruz and Needham are fortunate after all of their false advertising that the deal Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell negotiated with his back to the wall wasn't worse. Mr. McConnell managed to save the budget caps on discretionary spending, which the defund caucus dismissed as inconsequential. This gives Republicans at least some leverage in the budget negotiations before the next spending and debt-limit deadlines.
Meanwhile, the most damage to ObamaCare this month has been inflicted by the law's supporters, with their rollout of the law's insurance exchanges. (See editorial above.) If not for the shutdown diversion, more of the American people might even have noticed the debacle.
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"Meanwhile, the most damage to ObamaCare this month has been inflicted by the law's supporters, with their rollout of the law's insurance exchanges. (See editorial above.) If not for the shutdown diversion, more of the American people might even have noticed the debacle."
The roll out failures mean nothing. Temporary. It will be fixed. The problem is half the country will be forced to pay more to cover the other half. That won't go away.
The big corporations are expanding and increasing their market power because they are the ones who have the financial and consulting recourses to figure out how to navigate the gigantic maze of regulations.
That's it.
It is all driven by data and assembly line tinkering from birth to grave. No stopping it. Whether it is better for us I am not sure. But many of us will suffer with higher rates, less options, more regulation, and more being dictated to. Managed care of the 80's and 90's was a small taste of what we will see.
This could be on the Health care politics thread I guess.
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"...now even Mr. Cruz is admitting that there are limits to what Republicans can achieve when they control only one house of Congress. Maybe he's learning, or maybe his earlier accusations were, well, less than sincere.
It failed not because Ted Cruz did not lead but because Dems knew that Republicans would not follow. Among so many others, the WSJ did not back him up or call out his opponents on their falsehoods.
"...we're not going to be able to repeal this law until 2017 and that we have to win the Senate and win the White House"
How does Obamacare repeal in 2017 without 60 votes in the Senate. Republicans will not have a trunk full of uncounted conservative ballots to bring in without scrutiny to duplicate the way Democrats won their 60th vote.
The this-will-be-easier-to stop-later argument fails every time it is tried. How about an Article One argument - government funding begins in the House. Last November, Obamacare lost in the House. But send those elected officials to Washington and big government is on again.
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http://www.glennbeck.com/2013/10/18/ted-cruz-stands-up-to-detractors-i-didn%E2%80%99t-come-to-d-c-to-make-friends/
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Defund now!
http://www.senateconservatives.com/site/post/2352/video-ted-cruz-on-the-kelly-file?c=747585b24fc8b6d3edc2d876bb2dcad3
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http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/nov/15/ted-cruz-targeted-politifact-over-gun-crime-facts-/
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http://www.conservativeactionalerts.com/2013/11/cruz-demands-benghazi-investigation/
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Iran deal "historic mistake"
http://www.cruz.senate.gov/record.cfm?id=348123
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http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/12/11/its-clear-to-me-hes-running-for-president-conservatives-will-be-elated-to-hear-who-this-is-about/#
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" I think it was absolutely a mistake for President Obama and Harry Reid to force a government shutdown."
Ted Cruz was profiled this week on ABC's 'This Week' for 2nd place man of the Year...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y1lGaTgTk94
JON KARL: But the year also ended with Ted Cruz as the most high- profile Tea Party consecutive in congress. Again at Tortilla Coast, Cruz reflected on all of that.
When you think about the tradition of first-year senators, they tend to be seen but not heard, you have had, you said, a whirlwind for a first year as a U.S. senator, does that surprise you? I mean, you're on TIME magazine's list as the runner-up to the pope for person of the year.
SEN. TED CRUZ: That was a very strange thing.
This is a city where it's all politics all the time. And I'm trying to do my best not to pay attention to the politics, to focus on fixing the problems.
KARL: Really?
CRUZ: I know that's hard to believe, but because no one in this town does that. This is a time for people to step up and do the right thing and that's what I'm trying to do.
KARL: You have had a couple of months to think about this whole government shutdown strategy. Now that it's over in hindsight, are you prepared to say that it was a mistake, it wasn't the right tactic?
CRUZ: I think it was absolutely a mistake for President Obama and Harry Reid to force a government shutdown.
KARL: Now you know even John Boehner has said this was a Republican shutdown.
CRUZ: Look, I can't help what other people say.
And Jon, I understand that in the media, every day the media reported the Republicans shut the government down...
KARL: No, I mean, but come on. I mean we're a couple months away from this, the only reason why this happened is because you insisted, Republicans insisted that Obamacare be defunded as a condition of funding the government. If you didn't -- if you took away that insistence, there would be no shutdown. I mean, really.
CRUZ: You've got conservatives who stood strong and said let's stop the train wreck that is Obamacare, and you've got Democrats in the middle of the shutdown, President Obama called every Senate Republican to the White House, sat us in a room and said I called you to tell you, we're not going to negotiate, we're not going to compromise on anything.
Repeatedly Republicans were compromising, trying to find a middle ground. And repeatedly Democrats said, no compromise, shut it down.
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Logically, he is right.
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Logically, he is right.
Right on so many levels, not just that it was Dems that shut down the government.
This legislation is bad for the country. He said so. People now know he was right.
Congress is a co-equal branch with so-called power of the purse. There should be nothing wrong with exercising that responsibility.
The effort to stop Obamacare clarified that this is 100% a Democrat program, right before the trainwreck. All Democratic Senators, including those facing reelection challenges across the heartland, were forced to double down on the program and put it ahead of every other government priority.
The size, scope and cost of government is the lower of what the House, Senate and President believe it should be - unless the smaller government body succumbs to bullying by the others.
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Right now, "everyone knows" that Cruz's play was a "big error", but down the road it is not impossible that things will turn around to "He was right all along and was willing to stand alone saying so. This is presidential level character."
I'm not predicting this, just saying that this is possible to imagine.
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http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/01/10/senator-ted-cruz-attacks-obama-for-not-locking-up-marijuana-users-in-colorado/
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http://www.harvardlawreview.org/issues/127/january14/forum_1023.php
From the article:
With treaties potentially supplanting federal and state governmental authority, the President and Senate should carefully scrutinize all treaties, as a policy matter. We must jealously guard the separation of powers and state sovereignty if we are to preserve the constitutional structure our Framers gave us.
At the same time, our courts must scrutinize the federal government's powers to make and implement treaties. Our federal government is one of enumerated, limited powers, and the courts should not let the treaty power become a loophole that jettisons the very real limits on the federal government's authority.
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http://therightscoop.com/ted-cruz-obamas-consistent-pattern-of-lawlessness-is-the-most-dangerous-of-all-his-actions/
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http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/369222/cruz-holder-appoint-independent-prosecutor-irs-scandal-andrew-c-mccarthy
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WSJ:
The Minority Maker
Ted Cruz hurts his party by forcing a meaningless debt-ceiling vote.
Feb. 12, 2014 7:10 p.m. ET
The Senate passed the House debt-limit increase on Wednesday, but not before some needless drama that helps to explain why Republicans remain a minority.
Democrats had enough votes to pass the increase with a simple majority, which means they would have owned the debt increase. But then Senator Ted Cruz —the same fellow who planned the GOP's shutdown fiasco in October—objected on the floor and insisted on a 60-vote majority. This is exactly what Democratic leader Harry Reid wanted because if the bill failed he would have sent the Senate home on recess and returned later this month to join President Obama in flogging the GOP as the debt-ceiling deadline neared.
The 60-vote threshold was reached only after GOP leaders Mitch McConnell, John Cornyn and 10 others voted to let the final debt-ceiling vote proceed. All 12 then opposed the increase on final passage, but thanks to Mr. Cruz they had to walk the plank with Democrats on a procedural vote.
Not coincidentally, activist groups allied with Mr. Cruz announced they will use those votes in GOP primaries this year against Messrs. McConnell and Cornyn. Mr. Cruz claims to be neutral in Senate primaries, but he knew exactly what he was doing.
We're all for holding politicians accountable with votes on substantive issues, but Mr. Cruz knew he couldn't stop a debt increase the House had already passed. He also had no alternative strategy if the bill had failed, other than to shut down the government again, take public attention away from ObamaCare, and make Republicans even more unpopular.
Democrats beat the odds and retained their Senate majority in 2010 and 2012 in part because they stuck together. If Republicans fail again this November, a big reason will be their rump kamikaze caucus.
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"Ted Cruz hurts his party by forcing a meaningless debt-ceiling vote."
The WSJ Editorialists rely on their own view that the debt ceiling is meaningless. They advocate no debt ceiling. That is far more controversial!
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304104504579377303355489512?mg=reno64-wsj&url=http%3A%2F%2Fonline.wsj.com%2Farticle%2FSB10001424052702304104504579377303355489512.html&fpid=2,7,121,122,201,401,641,1009
"Repeal the Debt Ceiling"
I disagree. Raising the debt ceiling is one of the occasions where negotiations can and should take place to control the rate of increases in spending. That isn't happening, but it should be.
Cruz was holding Republicans to a standard we should hold all politicians; make them cast difficult votes and make them explain their vote. If they aren't going to control spending now, they can tell us when they will.
Shouldn't there have been a promise made between the politicians and the electorate last time they upped the debt limit to come up with a plan to reform entitlements and unfunded liabilities? Shouldn't we require that promise now? Did we? No.
Congress has a 12.1% approval rate: http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/other/congressional_job_approval-903.html Ted Cruz is wrong to upset this apple cart? Maybe not.
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I get all that, but , , , reality check please. "Intelligence is the amount of time it takes to forget a lesson." What happened a few months ago? We shouldn't have lost that, but we did, and did so quite badly.
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I saw a snippet on FOX yesterday wherein Cruz was asked about the US accepting refugees from Syria. He was in favor. I readily grant that the humanitarian crisis there is huge (millions of refugees if I am not mistaken) but our taken people in seems a poor idea to me. His expressed thought was that the refugees in question would be properly vetted. This I seriously doubt.
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I get all that, but , , , reality check please. "Intelligence is the amount of time it takes to forget a lesson." What happened a few months ago? We shouldn't have lost that, but we did, and did so quite badly.
I am not in full agreement as to what happened, didn't happen or should have happened a few months ago.
Republicans held the power of the purse, but failed to come together and exercise that responsibility. Instead they funded and implemented Obamacare while knowing they were elected to stop it, knowing it would do irreparable harm to our country and knowing it will be nearly impossible to fully repeal once implemented.
We had a 16 day, 17% federal government employee paid vacation shutdown, that polled badly, where we clarified to the nation that Democrats would do anything to get this terrible program implemented, we clarified that Obama and the Democrats would not negotiate - for things they now have already conceded, and we clarified that Republicans all oppose it - just as the nation learned of its catastrophic, systemic defects and failure. Now, a few months later, Republicans are poised to gain in the House and compete for about 9 additional Senate seats while Democrats are running scared, distancing, delaying and hiding from the President and his signature program. The lesson from this is what?
Cruz has merely caused Republicans to put votes down to authorize the status quo - more government borrowing as we end the 'sequester' and enter our multi-trillion-dollar health insurance company bailout future. Let Representatives and Senators on both sides cast votes and explain them to their constituents. What's wrong about that?
We have seen the other side of the coin. The sane, reasonable, sensible Republicans (who call Cruz a looney bird) say lay low, win the next election, and then one more two years later, all three chambers, let this massive dependency program get fully entrenched - and repeal it later. Much later. Really? In 11 months it will still be vetoed. In three years, then we really mean it?
Look back to the last time go-along, get-along Republicans controlled all chambers, 2003-2006. We had a surge of economic growth based on tax rate cuts. We had federal tax revenues and employment surging making it possible to get more and more people off of the dependency of government. Did we? No. Why not? Because no one like Ted Cruz stepped forward to hold his own party accountable.
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Understood, but did we win or lose last time? I submit that even though we were right, we lost. Why repeat the experiment? There is some riff about "Insanity is doing the same thing and expecting different results , , ,"
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That was not much of a political loss if Republicans are now contending or leading in most key races. It was far less of a loss than not taking a stand, in my view. And this* is different. He didn't try to shut down the government; he called for a vote that exposed which Republicans will cave first when Democrats play tough. Some voters want to know that. 'Worst' case, which wasn't going to happen, was that if congress failed have to raise the debt ceiling we would have a balanced budget. We would have to live within our means, with our tax rates all freshly raised and 5 years of wesbury-style, galloping growth behind us out of a recession. Shouldn't we have a balanced budget by now? And then the Democrats could run on Obamacare, new deficit spending, and the great economy.
We can move this to 'the way forward', but once in a while we should ask ourselves, what are we for, and when are we for it. We are for greater liberties, which means smaller government and more spending restraint - everyday of the year, not just in ads and campaigns. The ongoing debt ceiling problem is a reminder of the larger problems, runaway spending and unfunded liabilities. You raise the debt ceiling in exchange for spending concessions such as entitlement reform. Or you dissent. Maybe somebody finds out we are serious. Instead we funded the largest entitlement ever, they said no concessions whatsoever and we said okay. It is that strategy that divides the party and the movement, not one Senator calling for the Senate to use Senate rules on a multi-trillion dollar, multi-generational question.
"Treasury secretary: Debt limit rise will promote economic growth" [And 67 Senators agree?] Lew said the administration is "eager to continue to partner with Congress on these efforts on behalf of the American people." [Did George Orwell write this?]
* http://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2014/02/12/Cruz-vows-to-force-60-votes-on-debt-ceiling/UPI-72011392183960/
"In threatening a filibuster, Cruz had argued Republicans should extract spending cuts from Democrats and the White House" - 'Wacko bird' outrageous!
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What has Cruz said about the Russian invasion of Ukraine?
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What has Cruz said about the Russian invasion of Ukraine?
Looks like he has speaking out on the crisis since at least last December as co-sponsor of Senate Resolution 319:
https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/113/sres319/text
January 23, 2014:
http://www.cruz.senate.gov/?p=press_release&id=824
The President and Congress should unite in a coherent and sustained program to support the opposition and encourage Yanukovych to both rescind his restrictions on the rights of the Ukrainian people and renounce violence against those engaged in protest... The Department of State should be commended for implementing visa bans against Ukrainian officials this week. We should follow-up swiftly with targeted economic sanctions as well, including freezing the assets of those responsible for the violence.
January 28, 2014, 12:39 pm
Cruz: Putin plays chess, Obama plays checkers on foreign policy
http://thehill.com/blogs/global-affairs/europe/196646-cruz-putin-plays-chess-obama-plays-checkers-on-foreign-policy
He also called on Obama to take a more active role in helping pro-democracy protesters in Ukraine who are trying to break the grip of Russian influence.
The Obama administration should consider short-term and long-term steps such as setting up a free-trade zone to help bolster the Ukrainian economy and protect it from Russian economic coercion, he said.
Cruz said the United States should share the expertise of American companies to assist in the development of Ukraine’s domestic shale gas reserves and assist with the construction of liquid natural gas import infrastructure so that the former satellite state does not have to depend on Russia as a source.
February 19, 2014
Ted Cruz: The World Cannot Afford to Be Distracted as Ukrainians Are Brutalized by Their Own Government
http://blog.heritage.org/2014/02/19/ted-cruz-ukraine-free-world-stands/
Feb 28, 2014
Ted Cruz: "Stand Up To Putin's Power Grab... Stand With Ukraine"
http://townhall.com/tipsheet/kevinglass/2014/02/28/ted-cruz-stand-up-to-putins-power-grab-stand-with-ukraine-n1802493
"look into suspending Russia from the World Trade Organization and the United Nations Security Council"
the U.S. needs to suspend "Russian membership in the Group of Eight (G8)," and we need to do so "immediately."
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Peace/2014/03/01/Senator-Cruz-Words-Are-Not-Enough-Suspend-Russian-G8-Membership-Immediately
3/4/14
Cruz argued for immediately passing a new free trade treaty with Ukraine and “looking at existing treaties between the United States and Russia, and considering abrogating those treaties.” He said Russia should be kicked out of the G-8.
http://www.politico.com/story/2014/03/ted-cruz-ukraine-crimea-russia-104247.html
http://www.examiner.com/article/ted-cruz-suggests-free-trade-agreement-with-the-ukraine-to-deal-with-crisis
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Politico: Ted Cruz 'Crushed' Gridiron Speech, Even Impressed Democrats
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Journalism/2014/03/09/Beltway-Media-Anti-Crist-Ted-Cruz-Crushed-Gridiron-Speech-Even-Impressed-Democrats
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) wowed the beltway elite and even Democrats during Saturday's annual Gridiron event, showing why the Ivy Leaguer has confounded and been vilified by many with whom he shares the same intellectual pedigree.
The annual D.C. roast is hosted by the exclusive Gridiron Club, which is composed of D.C.'s mainstream and "elite" journalists.
Cruz has degrees from Princeton and Harvard, which those in the permanent political class covet, and he can do their social rituals better than they can. Yet Cruz refuses to be co-opted by them politically, instead choosing to be a staunch conservative who represents the grassroots that sent him to Washington to fight against both political and media establishments.
Politico's Mike Allen said that Cruz, "crushed his speech – even Dems said he knocked it out of the park." In an appearance with Secretary of State John Kerry and Republican-turned-independent-turned-Democrat Charlie Crist, the Florida gubernatorial candidate who wants to be loved by the permanent political class, Cruz called himself the "anti-Crist" in what could be the perfect description of Cruz's brand of politics.
He also made fun of his filibuster and tense relationship with the GOP leadership:
And when Leader McConnell wants something, who am I to say no?… Twenty-one hours and 19 minutes [in the filibuster] – hearing nothing but my favorite sound. We’re talking Biden territory. And so typical of how this town works, they cut me off just as I was coming to my point.
By the way, does anyone know the record for the longest speech ever at this dinner? I looked it up, and in the late 1800s, New York Senator Chauncey DePew enthralled his audience until well past midnight. So LOOSEN UP THOSE WHITE TIES, settle back, and what do you say we make Gridiron history? [Applause]
...n front of conservative and tea-party audiences, I am hailed as the anti-Obama. But tonight, I’m the anti-Crist.
He also said his relations with McCain have greatly improved because "This week… he’s only once demanded a public apology from me. As wackobirds go, that’s pretty good." He also poked fun at his having been born in Canada, mocked Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), and compared his Cuban dad to Sen. Marco Rubio's (R-FL), who was also from Cuba:
Canadians are so polite, mild-mannered, modest, unassuming, open-minded. Thank God my family fled that oppressive influence before it could change me.
I might add that Canadians are also extremely efficient. No red tape at all in handling my application to renounce citizenship. They had that thing approved before I even sent it in. The simple truth is that for a very brief time my family lived on the plains of Calgary. That does not make me a Canadian. Although Elizabeth Warren says that it does make me an Algonquin Indian. Of course, my family is Cuban… At first, when he got here, my dad washed dishes for 50 cents an hour. He was so low on the totem pole where he worked that even Marco Rubio's father bossed him around.
Cruz also blasted Obama's executive orders and his disregard for the law: "We are still a nation of laws. You just have to check with Barack Obama every day to see what they are."
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http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Peace/2014/03/09/Ted-Cruz-I-Don-t-Agree-with-Rand-on-Foreign-Policy?utm_source=e_breitbart_com&utm_medium=email&utm_content=Breitbart+News+Roundup%2C+March+9%2C+2014&utm_campaign=20140310_m119502188_Breitbart+News+Roundup%2C+March+9%2C+2014&utm_term=More
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http://www.theblaze.com/blog/2014/03/29/ready-this-ted-cruz-ad-is-so-epic-it-almost-looks-like-hes-announcing-hes-running-for-president/
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Speech highlights http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303873604579494001552603692?mod=WSJ_hp_RightTopStories&mg=reno64-wsj
WASHINGTON—Rushing to an afternoon vote last month, Sen. Ted Cruz hopped the underground tram to the U.S. Capitol from his office across the street.
The Texan planted his black ostrich cowboy boots in the middle of the small subway car without getting so much as a nod from the other senators—Republican or Democrat—amiably chatting or huddled in their seats.
Mr. Cruz finds himself standing alone a lot these days. His response to the cold shoulders: "The establishment despised Ronald Reagan " before he became president, "but the people loved him."
For the 43-year-old Republican, the Reagan name illuminates his political life's fundamental dichotomy: Many senators from his own party mistrust and dislike him, but many conservatives elsewhere worship him.
How Ted Cruz Followed His Boyhood Idol to Washington
Acquiring his Cuban-immigrant father's love of Ronald Reagan, the Texan geared his life toward emulating the president.
He lives that contrast daily. Moving into the vast congressional hallway that afternoon, he attracted a burst of adulation from tourists. "Ted Cruz, I love you!" shouted a Massachusetts father, William Harvey, there with his young daughter. "President Cruz in 2016!"
Mr. Cruz's quest to position himself as a latter-day Reagan has led him to defy his party's elders on handling issues such as debt and health care, and to become the national face of last fall's government shutdown. His methods have led political rivals to brand him as an extremist and made him the target of talk-show lampoonings.
His quest also has put him in the center of national political debate, a status validated when Vice President Joe Biden singled him out as a threat in a recent fundraising appeal.
"No one has vaulted onto the national political stage faster and caused more of a sensation than Ted Cruz," says Vin Weber, a former congressional leader with strong ties to today's GOP heads. "But his style and tactics in accomplishing that create questions about his ability to broaden his appeal."
Despite Mr. Cruz's high profile, even many Republican colleagues don't know much about the man, what drives him or where he's headed. Mr. Cruz, in a series of interviews over several weeks in the Capitol, in his Washington home and during trips to public and private meetings in Texas and Iowa, spoke of how his childhood devotion to Mr. Reagan drove his education and informs his politics.
In a nutshell, he positions himself as one who can lead the GOP back to majority status by sticking with conservative positions rather than by moderating them, as he says losing Republican presidential candidates Mitt Romney, John McCain and Bob Dole did.
That is a position designed to contrast him with party-establishment favorites such as former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who are less wedded to conservative social positions, and with Sen. Rand Paul, a fellow tea-party favorite whose reticence about foreign commitments contrasts with the more muscular global role—including in the Ukraine crisis—that Mr. Cruz and other Reagan disciples advocate.
He deflects questions about the 2016 race but shows signs of toying with presidential plans: His itinerary this month included trips to early presidential-primary states New Hampshire and South Carolina.
"The best thing I can do is to stand up and lead now" rather than get involved in 2016 speculation, Mr. Cruz says.
In his Senate office, Mr. Cruz sits under a giant oil painting of Mr. Reagan at Berlin's Brandenburg Gate, where the president declared: "Tear down this wall." Mr. Cruz commissioned the painting after his surprise 2012 Senate victory.
To understand him, Mr. Cruz says, look back to the 9-year-old Rafael "Rafelito" Edward Cruz alongside his father, cheering Mr. Reagan during televised presidential debates. His Princeton University roommate, David Panton, recalls Mr. Cruz saying his life's goal was to "become like Ronald Reagan—a principled conservative and great communicator."
Some in the GOP take exception to his claim to the Reagan mantle. Mr. Paul appeared to be doing exactly that when he said on a news show recently: "Sometimes people want to stand up and say, 'Hey, look at me, I'm the next Ronald Reagan.' Well, almost all of us in the party are big fans of Ronald Reagan." Sen. Paul's office didn't respond to inquiries.
Texas Sen. Ted Cruz poses in his office before the oil painting he commissioned of Mr. Reagan giving the Brandenburg Gate speech in which the president declared: "Tear down this wall." Melissa Golden for The Wall Street Journal
Critics say Mr. Cruz's rapid rise has shown a drive to propel himself to stardom rather than to solve his party's or country's problems. Until he teamed up with a Democrat this month to pass a resolution opposing a visa for an Iranian ambassador, he hadn't logged a significant legislative win. "I try to stop bad things from happening," he says.
Some Republicans worry that Mr. Cruz might prove too conservative for a general-election audience, much as some other tea-party favorites have proven incapable of winning Senate elections in the last two election cycles.
And Mr. Cruz needs to demonstrate more of Mr. Reagan's ability to "find common ground," says Roger Porter, a Harvard government professor who served in the Reagan White House. Republicans will be "looking for a standard-bearer who can win and work with others to govern effectively."
Polls this early in a presidential cycle are notoriously unreliable, but the data so far suggest Mr. Cruz would start a quest for the Republican nomination in the middle of the pack. A McClatchy-Marist poll this week showed him sixth among 10 potential Republican candidates tested.
Mr. Cruz's rabble-rousing style has paid off with a $1.5 million book deal and $4 million in political donations last year.
That style clearly resonates in some voter blocs. "I just came from Washington, D.C., and it's great to be back in America," he said to cheering crowds at an Iowa convention of home-schoolers in March, where his attendance fueled speculation about his presidential ambitions. An audience member yelled that the Washington establishment doesn't listen to "the people." Mr. Cruz shot back: "They're not listening to me, either."
Yet despite cultivating an outsider image, Mr. Cruz carries impeccable establishment credentials: degrees from Princeton and Harvard Law School and a Supreme Court clerkship. His wife, Heidi, whom he met when both worked on the 2000 Bush campaign, is a vegetarian with a Harvard M.B.A. and is a Goldman Sachs managing director. The couple lives in a Houston high-rise with a live-in nanny for their daughters, 3 and 6.
Mr. Cruz's admiration for Mr. Reagan began with his father, Rafael Cruz, who often told his story of fleeing Cuba with $100 sewn into his underwear. The elder Mr. Cruz started a Houston seismic-data company, briefly moving with his wife, Eleanor, to Canada, where Mr. Cruz was born in 1970 before the family returned to Houston.
When Sen. Cruz's Canadian birthplace came up last year as a presidential-bid issue, he said his American-born mother—she is of Irish-Italian descent—made him a "natural-born citizen," as the Constitution requires.
"Before Ted was 10," his father says, "he was jumping into our dinner-table conversation about replacing the leftist government of Jimmy Carter with a constitutional conservative like Ronald Reagan."
The father sent his son to a Baptist school with strict standards and conservative values. In home and school, Sen. Cruz says, he learned the socially conservative values he pushes today: opposition to most forms of abortion and to gay marriage, for example.
To improve himself in the style and substance he idolized in Mr. Reagan, Sen. Cruz says, in high school he joined the Constitutional Corroborators, a traveling troupe on the Texas Rotary Club circuit, where he recited by memory the Constitution and words of the Founding Fathers.
At Princeton, he showed up as "much the same person he is today," says Mr. Panton, his former roommate, now an Atlanta investor. "Surrounded by liberals, Ted was resolute with his conservative principles," he says. "Even in the dorm room, he talked about Ronald Reagan all the time."
Mr. Cruz admits to some youthful indiscretions. At Princeton, he built up a $2,000 debt playing poker and had to borrow from his aunt to pay it off. At Harvard, he acted in "The Crucible" but was once so hung over he had to leave the stage.
His Reagan obsession permeated his personal life. Before his marriage ceremony, he took the wedding party for a picnic at the Reagan ranch.
"I grew up in a nonpolitical, Patagonia-wearing, mountain-climbing, vegetarian family in California," Mrs. Cruz says of her courtship. "And then I fall in love with a Hispanic man from Texas who loves the game of politics, is a policy wonk, and…lives and breathes the values of Ronald Reagan."
In 2003, he returned to Texas to become solicitor general responsible for the state's appellate cases, winning cases such as one that allowed a Ten Commandments monument to stand on the state Capitol grounds.
While working in private practice, he visited Washington in 2010 and hit it off with newly elected Sen. Mike Lee (R., Utah), who encouraged him to run for Senate.
The day Mr. Cruz launched his Senate bid, he polled 2%. Challenging an establishment candidate, he modeled his campaign after Barack Obama's 2008 grass-roots push for the presidency, garnered strong tea-party enthusiasm—and won.
When Mr. Cruz arrived at the U.S. Capitol, Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell sought to bring him in the fold by taking him on new-senator trips to Afghanistan and Israel and as his guest to a glitzy Washington gala.
But Mr. Cruz says that warmth dissipated when he quickly dispensed with the unwritten rules of Senate etiquette, particularly the one that said a new senator should be seen but not heard, because "I didn't think representing my constituents was optional."
After he opposed the nomination of Senate Republican alumnus Chuck Hagel as defense secretary—grilling Mr. Hagel sharply in hearings about positions he worried were anti-Israel and weak on Iran—Mr. Cruz says some GOP senators told him that he crossed the line in his strident challenge of the nomination.
He enhanced his notoriety as a rhetorical bully in a Senate Judiciary hearing on gun control after the Sandy Hook school shootings. His questioning of veteran Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D., Calif.), who was pushing to reinstate the assault-weapons ban, came across as a lecture, prompting her to lash out, "Senator, I'm not a sixth-grader."
The measure failed. Soon after, Sen. Feinstein, when encountering him in the Senate elevator, would greet him: "Hello, tough guy."
When a bipartisan group unveiled a comprehensive immigration plan, Mr. Cruz criticized its border-security provisions and path to citizenship for illegal immigrants. Later, he infuriated House Republican leaders by denouncing their immigration plan as "amnesty" for illegal immigrants.
His next gambit: an all-out effort to defund Obamacare. Despite resistance from Senate Republicans and Democrats, he stood up before an empty Senate on Sept. 24 to argue Congress shouldn't renew government funding while the health law remained on the books. "I rise today in opposition to Obamacare," he said, launching a 21-hour monologue that included a reading of "Green Eggs and Ham."
Mr. Cruz was roundly pilloried. "Technically, this was just a tantrum," said Jimmy Kimmel on his talk show. "And while the speech was not a record for the longest ever given on the Senate floor, it did tie the record for the dumbest."
While he lost his defunding attempt, he says he finds victory in the low approval ratings of Mr. Obama and his health-care law.
Relations with GOP colleagues chilled noticeably, he says. At weekly Senate GOP lunches, some colleagues went out of their way to avoid sitting beside him, several attendees say. "Some aspects of the Senate are like the junior-high lunchroom or 'Mean Girls' cliques," Mr. Cruz says.
He doubled down on his approach this year, angering Republicans by insisting on a procedural vote on raising the federal debt ceiling rather than letting it slide through the Senate—thus forcing the GOP leader and 11 other Republicans to vote with Democrats. "Why are you throwing Republicans under the bus?" he recalls a colleague asking at a lunch. "I'm not," he responded. "I'm urging us to quit bankrupting the country."
Faced with Mr. Cruz's defiance, the Republican Senate leadership has frequently acted as if he were invisible, he says. Mr. McConnell maintains severely limited contact with Mr. Cruz, occasionally refusing to even say hello when they pass. Mr. McConnell has disagreed strongly with Mr. Cruz's tactics, a McConnell spokesman says.
Mr. Cruz says he won't temper his approach. Despite being named vice chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee last year, he says he now refuses to raise money for the group because it has chosen to back incumbents in GOP primaries, sometimes against tea-party candidates.
In a meeting in his office last month, he reviewed the draft speech for the following day's appearance at Conservative Political Action Conference, a gathering where most GOP presidential hopefuls would appear. "I want to tell them they don't need to be scared," he told his staff, "that we can win again by following Reagan's example of standing on principle and campaigning against Washington."
At the CPAC conference, he took that point further by criticizing by name Messrs. Romney, McCain and Dole for losing by moderating their positions. He promptly earned a rebuke from Mr. McCain, who demanded an apology for the ailing Mr. Dole. Mr. Cruz later praised Mr. Dole as a war hero, but never apologized.
Some CPAC attendees didn't seem to mind. "Sometimes having the right enemies is as important as having the right friends," says one, Sarasota, Fla., investor George Templeton.
Mr. Cruz vaulted to second place in the CPAC straw poll after Sen. Paul, from seventh a year earlier.
Later that day, at a conference hosted by the Center for Security Policy, Mr. Cruz said his foreign policy is between Mr. Paul's nonintervention leanings and Mr. McCain's more activist world approach. "My views are very much the views of Ronald Reagan," he said, "which I would suggest is a third point on the triangle."
Mr. Cruz's positions endear him to the grass-roots conservative movement. Back in Texas, he is casting a bigger shadow now that Gov. Rick Perry isn't seeking re-election. In last month's Texas primaries, Mr. Cruz endorsed five candidates, four of whom won. Some office seekers now identify themselves as "Cruz Republicans."
A poll this week by Public Policy Polling showed 47% of Texas voters surveyed approved of Mr. Cruz, more than approved of Gov. Perry or Texas' other GOP Senator, John Cornyn.
Washington has begun to acknowledge he has arrived. He returned from Texas to speak at the Gridiron Dinner, an exclusive political-journalistic annual event. He got a $15 haircut from the Capitol barber and reviewed his remarks, prepared with the help of professional joke writers.
Before the dinner, he played George Strait's country music in his apartment above a museum overlooking the Capitol. He disappeared into the bedroom in bluejeans, emerging in a white tie and coattails. Mrs. Cruz, 41, had arrived in town and unhappily spied his favorite bachelor meal, cans of Campbell's Chunky soup; she is trying to get him to eat less processed food.
At the dinner, he played off his reputation as an egotist disliked by Democrats and Republicans alike, and he got a big laugh by saying his 21-hour speech included "nothing but my favorite sound"—his own voice.
The next day, Mr. Cruz was back on the road to slam the establishment.
All signs point to a presidential bid. Mr. Cruz says he's traveling to "fire up the grass roots." Yet a new video on his website filled with fiery stump lines is more of a presidential commercial than a voter update. A new super PAC, Draft Ted Cruz for President, launched last month. On his fourth Iowa swing in just a few months, he visited the crop-and-cattle farm of Bruce Rastetter, an influential Republican whose support is sought by GOP presidential hopefuls. Mr. Rastetter was noncommittal.
At a Cerro Gordo County GOP dinner, local Republican activist Paul Pate described Mr. Cruz's venture into Iowa, home of the first presidential caucuses: "This is the senator's off-Broadway performance to give him a chance to work on his message."
Mr. Cruz is also making some progress working across the aisle. He joined Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D., N.Y.) as a co-sponsor on her military-sexual-assault bill that narrowly failed last month. His bill demanding the Obama administration bar a visa for Iran's new United Nations ambassador—because of his affiliation with the 1979 American embassy seizure—passed unanimously because of an unlikely partnership with Sen. Charles Schumer (D., N.Y.) and was signed by Mr. Obama Friday.
"I'll work with Democrats, Republicans, independents, libertarians," Mr. Cruz says. "Heck I'll even work with Martians to get this country back on track."
Some fellow Senators still apparently aren't ready. After a recent floor vote, Mr. Cruz entered an elevator occupied by three lawmakers; none greeted him. After a silent ride to the basement for the subway, Mr. Cruz said: "Have a great day."
The others rushed out, saying nothing.
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http://www.tpnn.com/2014/05/24/sen-ted-cruz-41-democrat-senators-want-to-repeal-the-first-amendment/
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http://www.tpnn.com/2014/05/24/sen-ted-cruz-41-democrat-senators-want-to-repeal-the-first-amendment/
The true totalitarian face of the dems is shown.
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http://www.daybydaycartoon.com/2014/06/08/
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http://www.daybydaycartoon.com/2014/06/08/
I really like Cruz.
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Me too, but I fear
a) he tends to be tone deaf on certain issues; STRONGLY intellectual he tends to be weak on communicating with those who use emotion as their dominant modality.
b) complete lack of executive experience
c) apparently not much time or thought over time to international issues.
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Me too, but I fear
a) he tends to be tone deaf on certain issues; STRONGLY intellectual he tends to be weak on communicating with those who use emotion as their dominant modality.
b) complete lack of executive experience
c) apparently not much time or thought over time to international issues.
Agree on all three. He will connect emotionally just fine with people that start on his side. The biggest question I have for all of them is who will rise up with the charisma (and emotion) to lead with our principles and connect with people who used to vote differently, moderate or liberal. We need to change millions of hearts and minds, not just eek out one win while the opponent is down. You have to bring the people with you to pass )or repeal) legislation even if you win the Presidency, House and Senate.
Ted Cruz is an extremely valuable asset even if he never rises above Senator - and his influence goes up every time we send him another like-minded Senator - or President.
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After many, many months of promising to renounce his Canadian citizenship, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) has finally achieved that goal.
Cruz's Canadian citizenship was officially terminated in May, according to the Dallas Morning News. The senator was notified by mail of the renunciation a few days ago.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/06/10/ted-cruz-citizenship_n_5482163.html
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http://www.tpnn.com/2014/07/23/ted-cruz-just-turned-the-tables-on-true-blood-and-its-awesome/
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http://www.tpnn.com/2014/07/23/ted-cruz-just-turned-the-tables-on-true-blood-and-its-awesome/
Sucking the blood of the living like any parasite and being dead make vampires a perfect dem voting bloc. Dems have always dominated among dead voters.
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/wp/2014/08/05/the-insiders-ted-cruz-is-burning-bridges-in-washington-does-it-matter/
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Not sure what to make of this article about Cruz. Especially from the Post. The "established" insider right is clearly going after Cruz. I don't get the impression anyone one of them is necessarily trying to form any alliance with him.
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I still like Cruz A LOT, but there are already substantial gaps in his resume when it comes to being considered for the presidency and this does not bode well in that direction.
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Not sure what to make of this article about Cruz. Especially from the Post. The "established" insider right is clearly going after Cruz. I don't get the impression anyone one of them is necessarily trying to form any alliance with him.
It looked to me like a sweeping hit piece that landed no punch. Cruz, they say. is burning bridges and has no loyalty - right while he is making the biggest splash since entering the Senate of any new Senator since Obama, and he has done it with substance, not sizzle. His loyalties are to principles and his following is with the people not the Bob Doles, Trent Lotts of the Senate cloak room.
They were just accusing him of being Speaker Cruz when he called House Republicans together and stopped Boehner and a bad immigration bill. That is a lot of national clout for a freshman, junior Senator from a party out of power, on a very big issue.
But he is going about it all wrong, lol.
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Those are fair points Doug.
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@ Marc, I'd be curious to know where you think Cruz is vulnerable... My take is he is the 'best man standing' for a lot of the reasons Doug mentioned, but I am somewhat afraid that he is simply TOO conservative to be electable. But partly, I acknowledge that that is because at least part of me is subconsciously buying into the MSM argument that such a thing as 'too conservative' actually exists so therefore we should 'run a Chris Christie'-- to which a much larger part of me says flatly: 'No'.
I DO believe people can be convinced of the value and benefit of Reaganesque conservatism and I believe Cruz could sell it competently-- provided he gets the pulpit-opportunity. And I recognize what an uphill battle it will be as the attacks are already starting. Also, one only needs to look at the government shutdown to see that Cruz took as many bullets in the back from his own party as he ever did from Democrats, which concerns me A LOT. And then you have the 'WaWa' phenomena, where MSNBC (for example) recut Romney's speech simply to make him look like an idiot. That is what I mean by getting the 'pulpit opportunity'-- I am not sure how conservatives overcome the current media bias AGAINST conservatism except via social media and I believe even that is only partially effective as most people tend to tune out. This is what attracts me to Paul, is that he could potentailly reach across the aisle to attract other voters, certainly independents that I belive Cruz might lose. But, we have not been doing very well playing the safe bets.
Regarding managing the party, personally, I am waiting on a (hopeful) Republican reversal of the Congress in November, at which time I plan to become *a lot* more vocal with members of Congress 'in general' about demanding action from the RNC , as at that point there will be no excuses remaining about why they 'tried but can't'. My Rep is Amash, who tends conservative, and my Senators are Stabenow and that gas bag Levin, who is retiring. Meaning: I already know how Amash is likely to vote, which is favorable to Constitutional issues, and I already know how Levin will vote which is almost always straight DNC on primary issues. Stabenow also usually tends to vote left, but I believe she is at least 'somewhat responsive' (unlike Levin) which makes her worth contacting occassionally. But, point: calling my own reps is unlikely to produce results that aren't *already* happening. If we reach such point where conservatives control both houses, I think it will be beholden on people to reach BEYOND there own reps to demand action from the RNC in general. The Boehner 'we tried our best' excuse-making days have gotta go.
Back to Cruz, I'd just be curious what your concerns may be. I am not trying to make a refutational case for Cruz, per se, just attempting to share my thoughts.
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I LIKE Cruz. A LOT.
BUT , , ,
In my sense of things culturally he has a tin ear, and will do quite poorly in carrying our message to those who are not already believers.
I doubt his political judgment. Yes he was right on the "government shutdown" but our side got set back badly.
He utterly lacks executive experience and his legislative experience is , , , thin. What legislation has he sponsored? What has he done that shows he can work well with others to get things done?
Foreign affairs?
Humans have four basic modalities: thinking, feeling, sensation, and intuition. Cruz is OVERWHELMINGLY a thinker-- who for all his considerable IQ has little idea how to communicate effectively with other modalities.
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Valid points, all, thanks.... I think part of the reason he resonates with me is that I also tend toward the 'cerbrally tone deaf'. 8-) Although I didn't miss the fact that you said you like him in the first post. :wink:
As to the lack of specific legislation, that is what I meant about the Congress and why I brought it up... what have ANY of them done in the face of outright Constitutional tramplingthat we could point to in the last six years? That is why I say that I'm waiting on Nov. If the R's win and STILL don't have the guts/ capacity/ get-it-togetherness to act, I will not be voting R any longer.
Personally, I like Cruz precisely BECAUSE he attempted to lead people up and over the wall during the shutdown. I realize it hurt the party in the media, but my take is that that was mostly because people ON OUR SIDE didn't follow him, supposedly because the 'timing was off' or whatever. So, we need to take that for what it says. But personally, I like Cruz *because* he's evidently not afraid of a fight and not afraid to show leadership in the face of opposition. Like I said, playing the 'soft bets' hasn't exactly worked out.
I admit to regulalry going back and forth on the idea of whether I believe a 'real' conservative candidate would be a Godlwater, or a Reagan so I may be talking out of both sides of my mouth a little. Of the entire pack of 'potentials', Cruz is my personal favorite for 2016, so that's why I wanted to hear your crticisms of him. I tend to think sometimes I have already made up my mind, which is kinda dumb since he hasn't even declared. :-)
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The political result of the "shutdown" is not exactly what the media-based conventional wisdom tells us. It was a 17% "shutdown" for 16 days. Republicans only delayed the rollout of one failed new program, Democrats shut down the government. Republicans clarified their opposition to Obamacare just before America found out it was a disaster. The poll that matters is Nov 2014, not Oct 2013. Polls today say Democrats now have no chance of taking the House and every chance of losing the Senate. But Cruz and Mike Lee et al were wrong to rock the boat?! Our Mike has this right (IMHO), rock the boat.
Ted Cruz has no executive experience. Marco Rubio, Rand Paul, Paul Ryan, all have that same missing piece, and Abraham Lincoln too! While the governors with executive experience mostly lack foreign policy and national policy experience, as Reagan did. But we will have to choose on of them anyway.
Crafty wrote: "Humans have four basic modalities: thinking, feeling, sensation, and intuition. Cruz is OVERWHELMINGLY a thinker-- who for all his considerable IQ has little idea how to communicate effectively with other modalities."
Very well put. More simply I would ask whether or not Cruz has the charisma and ability to connect with people who are not already conservative, and draw tens of millions to the cause if placed at the top of the ticket. I don't know the answer to that. I will be supporting the one who I think can do that.
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Also, well put, and echoing what Marc said: I have wondered about Cruz's sex appeal to non-conservatives myself. He is ceratinly articulatem, but he comes across as a little 'stiff'; and perhaps 'so smart as to be intimidating' for some people. As we saw, that was fatal for Romney. People appear to want a 'sax playing president' these days. But maybe that is how it has always been, I think Regan's greatest strength was his cross party personability.
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I was going to put this in the 'rants' section but it seemed related to what we are discussing as far as 'selling' conservatism. feel free to move if it's innappropriate.
I don't know where this was in 2008 or '12 but personally, I am happy to see it. How do you guys think it will play?
Via Allen West:
http://allenbwest.com/2014/08/share-video/
Direct url:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OX6VCjpI0S0&feature=player_embedded
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I've not heard anything from Cruz about what to do, if anything, about ISIL.
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but he is sure "rough around the edges":
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2014/09/10/Ted-Cruz--Opposition-to-Israel-Led-to-Me-Leaving-Event
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Good for him!
BTW I see that he has proposed legislation for taking away the passports (and citizenship?) of those who go to fight for ISIL.
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I think he could have been a tad more tactful though.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NXAYFzhNhQg
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http://www.addictinginfo.org/2014/12/14/ted-cruzs-superhuman-stupidity-backfires-accidentally-helps-democrats-confirm-obama-nominees/
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http://www.addictinginfo.org/2014/12/14/ted-cruzs-superhuman-stupidity-backfires-accidentally-helps-democrats-confirm-obama-nominees/
I have heard this story too, but the bias throughout this report is a bit hard to swallow.
"Cruz, who almost single-handedly caused the last government shutdown"
- Who caused the 16 day, 17% shutdown?? The people who funded the government or the people who wouldn't?
- Whose fault is it that the vote to defund the executive action over existing law failed?
Why are R's voting to fund a Democrat budget for one year after the Republicans take the Senate?
Why does it have to be a CRomnibus no one has read instead of funding the government, department by department, line by line, through to the start of the next congress?
Why is it Republicans fault if Democrats shut the government down, again? Because Obama and MSNBC said so? Who cares if Obama gets a radical Surgeon General at this point? Will they order more new laws for Republicans to fund? 3 quotes are from Lindsey Graham who favors unilaterally surrendering the filibuster back to the Democrats, immediately, anyway.
When the leaders make a deal, should everyone fall in line, no matter your view or your conscience?
Maybe the vote he forced WILL matter in 2016. Maybe he was right about that last time. The midterms went pretty well.
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I'm still hearing he got played by Dingy Harry and now a bunch of nominations have gone through thanks to his (Cruz's) move.
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I'm still hearing he got played by Dingy Harry and now a bunch of nominations have gone through thanks to his (Cruz's) move.
And now 88 judges will get lifetime appointments. http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2014/12/16/senate_may_confirm_up_to_88_federal_judges_124979.html
I'm having a hard time believing that wasn't going to happen anyway. That was the entire point of Harry Reid changing the Senate rules and this is their last shot.
Here is Ted Cruz on Mark Levin:
http://therightscoop.com/boom-ted-cruz-they-want-to-come-after-me-knock-yourself-out-my-concern-is-honoring-oath-of-office/
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Well, I'm thinking having 9 more Rep senators would have made for different results overall.
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Well, I'm thinking having 9 more Rep senators would have made for different results overall.
They're coming in 3 weeks, but we're funding amnesty (and Obamacare) as permanent programs that can't be removed by the new majority. Someone stood up and called for a vote on that. Only in Washington does that cause 88 liberal judges to get lifetime appointments. Rules are set or changed on the whim of the majority. Then blame for the result goes to anyone who disagrees.
Don't use logic, common sense or passed laws to try to understand this.
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At least Cruz fights, unlike the rinos that just pissed away their mandate.
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At least Cruz fights, unlike the rinos that just pissed away their mandate.
Byron York doesn't buy the storyline that all these confirmations are Ted Cruz' fault:
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/did-ted-cruz-really-bungle-the-lame-duck-session-for-republicans/article/2557498
The whole point of the nuclear Senate was to do this.
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Ted Cruz was on Bret Baier's Special Report, Tuesday I think it was, and I must say I was quite impressed, perhaps the best I have ever seen Cruz. Perhaps someone can find a clip?
With regard to the question we are discussing at the moment, Cruz said the assertion that he was responsible for scores of nominations going through was false, Reid et al would simply have done it anyway a day or two later. Thus, it would appear my criticism above may have been misplaced.
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What Really Happened This Weekend
Why I tried to block Obama’s amnesty.
By SEN. TED CRUZ
December 16, 2014
For the past week, Sen. Harry Reid has worked hard to prevent a vote on President Obama’s illegal executive amnesty. Finally, after considerable turmoil this weekend, we were able to force a vote.
Only one month ago President Obama announced amnesty for roughly five million people here illegally. He did so in defiance of the manifest will of the voters; as he rightly noted, his “policies were on the ballot all across the country.” And the people voted overwhelmingly against amnesty.
Amnesty is wrong, and it is unfair. It’s unfair to millions of legal immigrants, to the 92 million Americans who are currently not in the labor force, and to minority communities across the nation struggling with record unemployment.
Even more troubling was how the amnesty was decreed: by executive fiat, directly contrary to federal immigration law and to the Constitution. The former prohibits issuing work authorizations to those here illegally, and the latter prohibits the president from ignoring federal laws passed by Congress.
If a president can defy federal law, it renders useless the checks and balances in our Constitution. And it sets the stage for presidents to ignore any other laws (tax, labor, environmental) with which they might disagree.
If Congress does nothing in response, we acquiesce to this constitutional crisis.
Late Thursday night, the House passed the so-called “CRomnibus,” funding the federal government to the tune of $1.1 trillion.
That’s what’s publicly known. Now let me tell you some of what happened behind closed doors.
Within hours, I joined a handful of other senators in going to leadership and affirmatively offering to cooperate to facilitate a quick vote on the CRomnibus—that very evening, we suggested—in exchange for a simple up or down vote on defunding executive amnesty.
Republican leadership told us we would likely get our vote. All day Friday, they told us the same thing. Then, late Friday night, Harry Reid apparently changed his mind, and we were told there would be no vote on amnesty.
At that point, I supported an objection to delaying the CRomnibus vote any further. We used the leverage we have under the rules to try to force our vote.
Harry Reid responded in anger. He forced the Senate to come back Saturday and spend the entire day casting procedural votes to move forward a series of Obama nominations.
Some critics have disingenuously suggested that, by fighting on amnesty, we somehow facilitated these Obama nominations. That’s nonsense; Harry Reid had announced a week earlier he was going to force through every one of these bad nominations—from an unqualified and extreme surgeon general to the new head of immigration enforcement who has pledged to uphold Obama’s amnesty—and there is no doubt he would have done the exact same thing on Monday and Tuesday, with the very same result.
An hour into our Saturday session, I offered to Reid yet again to take up the CRomnibus immediately, vote on amnesty, and then finish it. He accepted my offer, but then the other Senate Democrats vetoed his agreement.
Finally, late Saturday night, the Democrats relented, and we forced a vote on the constitutionality of executive amnesty. Had we acquiesced, had we waited until Monday, Reid could have held the floor and blocked the vote.
So what was accomplished? First, every single Senate Democrat is now on the record in support of President Obama’s illegal amnesty. No fewer than a dozen Democrats had previously criticized that amnesty; now their positions are unambiguous for the voters.
That matters, as we discovered this past November.
Second, 22 Republicans voted in support of my constitutional point of order. This comprised a majority of the Republicans voting, and (not coincidentally) most of the Republicans up for reelection in 2016.
This puts a stake in the ground: That we will defend the Constitution.
Some have attacked the vote because not every Republican stood together. That’s true, because leadership did not want to fight this fight right now and urged Members to oppose.
But the substantive disagreement is overstated. A number of Republicans had a good-faith disagreement with the procedural vehicle we used to force the vote. They argued that Obama’s amnesty is unconstitutional, but the bill funding it is not.
It would have been much better if all 45 Republicans had stood together. For that reason, we had preferred another procedural vehicle—a straight up or down vote on defunding amnesty—but Reid had blocked that. So this was the only tool remaining. This was the only way to get a vote.
And the procedural disagreement on the vehicle masks the breadth of the substantive opposition of Republican Members to executive amnesty.
Republican leaders have promised that the CRomnibus was part of a broader plan to force a fight to stop executive amnesty in January or February. I very much hope we come through on that promise.
And if we do indeed stand united against amnesty sixty days from now—if we follow through on our commitments—none will celebrate, and praise leadership, more than I will.
But we need action, not just words. We need resolve.
And one of the most significant benefits of the fight this weekend was that almost every Republican—those who voted with us and those who voted against us—has once again gone to the press expressly agreeing that Obama’s amnesty is unconstitutional.
We should build on that, stand together in the new Republican Senate, and honor those commitments. If we are going to defend the Constitution, we must respond decisively to this constitutional crisis.
Ted Cruz is a U.S. senator from Texas.
Read more: http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/12/amnesty-what-really-happened-113605.html#ixzz3ML1Y1bor
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http://www.dickmorris.com/can-ted-cruz-win-dick-morris-tv-lunch-alert/?utm_source=dmreports&utm_medium=dmreports&utm_campaign=dmreports
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http://www.dickmorris.com/can-ted-cruz-win-dick-morris-tv-lunch-alert/?utm_source=dmreports&utm_medium=dmreports&utm_campaign=dmreports
Morris is correct.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ou25iiRxWCQ
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http://www.glennbeck.com/2015/03/10/heres-how-ted-cruz-could-win-the-gop-nomination-for-president/
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http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2015/03/23/a-time-to-reclaim-the-constitution-of-the-united-states-ted-cruz-enters-the-race/
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I'm glad he is in and think he is probably the best of those trying to win the right side of the spectrum. He is a far better candidate than Huckabee, Santorum or Rick Perry, among others. I trust his agenda better than I trust Jeb and others. Pundits are over-using the word "purity". He is emphasizing something like that, but also points out he will compromise, as Reagan did, if that will gets parts of his agenda started.
Cruz is not my first choice right now because I am not convinced he is the best candidate to unite our side and bring more people over to our side. (I have written elsewhere who is doing that better.) The challenge is on Cruz (and all of them) to demonstrate they are up to this challenge.
That said, I like him a lot and will enthusiastically support him if he is the nominee, or the last conservative standing. He seems to have it right on all the key issues, and is very willing to fight for what is most important. He is very sharp and could do very well in one on one debates against the big government liberal, if he gets that far.
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Well said.
In addition to our shared doubts about his electability, I would add that apparently his father is a pretty extreme character-- a lot of shiny objects there with which to disrupt Ted's campaign.
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http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2015/03/24/watch-how-ted-cruz-responds-when-hes-asked-on-cbs-if-he-would-take-away-health-care-from-16-million-people-as-president/?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_term=Firewire_Morning_Test&utm_campaign=FireWire%20WYWS%203-25-with%20ad%20returned
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In addition to our shared doubts about his electability, I would add that apparently his father is a pretty extreme character-- a lot of shiny objects there with which to disrupt Ted's campaign.
True. Rafael (Sr.) has said things that will distract.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/11/07/the-six-craziest-quotes-from-ted-cruz-s-father-rafael-cruz.html
The Six Craziest Quotes From Ted Cruz’s Father, Rafael Cruz (Mostly from 2012)
1) No one is going to send Obama "back to" Kenya or Indonesia. That type of hyperbole is a distraction that no one needs. Those of us on the right wouldn't even like his governing ideas to continue in third world countries.
2) Murder? Reasonable people actually do believe the intentional act of killing a baby who made it out of the mother alive is... well... murder. http://www.lifenews.com/2012/08/23/new-audio-surfaces-of-obama-defending-infanticide-in-illinois/ President Barack Obama was the only member of the Illinois legislature to not support a bill to provide medical care for newborns who survived failed late-term abortions.
3) Just like Fidel Castro? Governing by decree, by executive order? - Check the record!
4)' Gay marriage is a government plot to destroy the family...Socialism requires that government becomes your god. They have to destroy all loyalties except loyalty to the government'?? - It is not politically helpful to comment on your opponents bad motives. But yes, breakdown of family was the result of liberal social policies, as warned by extremists on the right. Dependence on the government is politically helpful to left; belief in God is not. You don't need to impugn motives when the facts (prior to gay marriage) already make the case. That said, it is hard to look at the amazing breakdown of marriage and family in response to liberal policies especially since the 1960s and left's ambivalence to all that and not at least ponder the idea that it is intentional.
5) Media: The U.S. has its very own “ministry of misinformation” that governments in communist countries like Cuba employ to spread their messages. That propaganda machine, he said, is the liberal media. “They just tell us what they want us to hear. They are rewriting history…because they have an agenda. And unfortunately the agenda is an evil agenda. It’s an agenda for destroying what this country is all about”. - This is only slightly over the top. Don't we have a thread here with 1520 posts and 256015 reads documenting something pretty close to that? In some ways, the apparent conspiracy of our mainstream media through so many channels is worse than their ministry with one.
6) 'Our enemies control our energy. Because of Obama’s excessive regulation, the oil industry is stifled...We are buying 40 percent of our oil from our enemies (pre-fracking)…Our enemies control the energy that we use or do not use. And they have the power to shut down the valves and bring us to our knees.' - Liberals have continuously fought our efforts to produce our own energy. Enemies don't control all our foreign supplies, but there is a significant element of truth in that concern. For example, we can't seem to solve the crisis in Ukraine now or the Baltics next because of Russia's willingness to supply them with gas versus our inability or unwillingness based on restraints put on our energy industries by leftist policies here. Russia, Iran and Venezuela could easily be considered enemies. Saudi, Libya, etc. arguably so. http://www.cnn.com/2015/02/03/politics/9-11-attacks-saudi-arabia-involvement/ Saudi is somewhat of an ally at the moment only because of worse threats in the region. It only takes a partial shutdown of sources to create havoc in supplies and prices. We are less vulnerable now despite, not because of, their policies.
[Rand Paul also has a father problem; he has written as recently as this week on the Iraq situation.]
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One feather of many in Cruz' cap is the DC v. Heller case, a great decision for individual liberty that was based on the merits of the arguments made by Ted Cruz, who as Solicitor General of Texas wrote the Amicus brief signed by 31 states and was Counsel of Record for the winning side, the US constitution. http://www.scotusblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/02/07-290_amicus_texas.pdf In the Elk Grove case, he wrote the U.S. Supreme Court brief on behalf of all 50 states that was successful. Cruz authored 70 United States Supreme Court briefs and presented 43 oral arguments, including nine before the United States Supreme Court.
The next President of the United States should appoint Ted Cruz to the US Supreme Court.
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http://thefederalist.com/2015/03/25/9-reasons-ted-cruz-is-exactly-like-barack-obama/
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http://thefederalist.com/2015/03/25/9-reasons-ted-cruz-is-exactly-like-barack-obama/
(Respectfuilly) I strongly, vehemently, take issue with this. The first 8 of these are either bogus or are not negatives, they served in state government, taught constitutional law, are populists, have eligibility issues(?!), etc.
Read our thread, Cognitive Dissonance of His Glibness. Of all the things wrong with Barack Obama as President, virtually none of it comes from his lack of executive experience or any of these so-called commonalities. He would be an even worse President if he had more experience prior to taking office, unless he changed his viewpoint.
He is arrogant, snubs his nose at constitutional issues. He thinks government has all the answers and individuals with their liberties have none of them. Barack Obama was a pretend constitutional lecturer. So am I. :wink: Ted Cruz won BIG cases at the US Supreme Court. Barack Obama wants to transform America away from what made it great. Ted Cruz wants to focus precisely on what made America great. That's hardly the same.
Obama's lack of experience didn't stop him from getting things done. It was the least of his problems. He got PLENTY of things done. Just all the wrong things!
On point 9, "both are divisive and intensely disliked by an opposing faction." That happened to work for Obama. He IS President. And so it is no reason to discount Ted Cruz' chances.
Finding similarities like that they both have dark hair and birthdays in December misses the whole point of both these men, IMHO.
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https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=468415179991106
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http://bearingarms.com/ted-cruz-laughs-blasting-away-m249-machine-gun/
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/cruz-is-aiming-at-the-wrong-republicans/2015/04/01/87899c0a-d893-11e4-b3f2-607bd612aeac_story.html
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-EsDxRDEwhw
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http://www.nationalreview.com/article/416074/ted-cruz-bush-years-jim-geraghty
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Ted Cruz was right on target when asked about his views on the Second Amendment: "When it comes to constitutional rights, what matters is what the Bill of Rights says. It doesn't matter what might be popular at the moment. We've seen regimes across the face of the earth come and take away people's guns, strip away their rights to defend themselves, and sometimes it's been very popular. And yet it is an inevitable prelude to tyranny. Our country was founded on a radical proposition, which is that our rights don't come from government; they come from God. ... The entire reason for the Second Amendment is not for hunting; it's not for target shooting. ... The Second Amendment is there so that you and I can protect our homes and our families and our children and our lives. And it's also there as a fundamental check on government tyranny. And that, ultimately, is not subject to public opinion polls, it's subject to the express protections of the Bill of Rights of the Constitution." Cruz really nailed it.
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Cruz!
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oUrkucrcCTI
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My other first choice. Good interview. 20 minutes, no commercials.
http://www.hughhewitt.com/wp-content/uploads/06-11hhs-cruz.mp3
Senator Ted Cruz on 2016, TPA, TPP And The Islamic State
Thursday, June 11, 2015 | posted by Hugh Hewitt
Fund raising going well.
Ted Cruz got 40% of the Hispanic vote in Texas, 2012. That threatens the Obama model Hillary is following.
CinC should have a strategy, defeat radical Islamic terrorists, destroy Islamic State.
Arm the Kurds. Kurds are boots on the ground for us.
Would not end the filibuster.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DNBfuz3iNrk
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http://www.salon.com/2015/07/30/way_over_the_line_mitt_romney_slams_ted_cruzs_for_unhinged_terrorism_charge_against_obama/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=socialflow
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http://www.salon.com/2015/07/30/way_over_the_line_mitt_romney_slams_ted_cruzs_for_unhinged_terrorism_charge_against_obama/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=socialflow
Hey Mittens, go find something else to do.
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http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2015/08/04/rachel-maddow-schools-ted-cruz-on-guns-and-shes-right/?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_term=Firewire&utm_campaign=Firewire%20-%20HORIZON%208-4-15%20Build-TUES-GlennAd
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http://www.nationalreview.com/article/422395/carly-fiorina-climate-change-left?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_term=NR5PM&utm_campaign=Wednesday%20Email%208%2F12
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dKxXtOyMmYc
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Time for something about Ted Cruz.
There has been talk about Cruz and his motivations for staying silent about Trump. The motivations have been thought to be:
- Cruz as VP under Trump
- Cruz for SCOTUS under Trump
- Cruz picks up Trump supporters if Trump drops out
All of these speculations have seemed reasonable. But then things like this come out.
A Cruz Super-Pact donates $500,000 to Carly Fiorina's campaign. (I posted about this before.) Why did this occur before the 2nd Debate? Who does it benefit and harm? Now we see. Both Cruz and Fiorina benefit. The money keeps Carly running so she can bleed off Trump votes. Cruz benefits because Trump is weakened and could leave Cruz as the Trump alternative. Bush benefits from the Splitter Strategy. Who is hurt? Trump.
Now this:
http://www.dallasnews.com/news/politics/headlines/20150422-donations-to-ted-cruz-come-in-chunks-big-and-small-but-much-is-murky.ece (http://www.dallasnews.com/news/politics/headlines/20150422-donations-to-ted-cruz-come-in-chunks-big-and-small-but-much-is-murky.ece)
His biggest benefactor is Robert Mercer, a reclusive New York hedge fund billionaire who reportedly provided nearly all of the $31 million collected last week by four related super PACs created to help Cruz.
Mercer, one of the GOP’s top money men, pumped $15 million in the last five years into GOP causes. That included $2 million to the Karl Rove-founded American Crossroads and $1 million to a super PAC that helped 2012 nominee Mitt Romney.
Cruz and his benefactor share a disdain for the IRS. Cruz wants to abolish the tax agency, which has been investigating Mercer’s hedge fund, Renaissance Technologies, over complex transactions that shaved more than $6 billion from its tax bill.
“He can win,” said Mica Mosbacher, whose late husband, Houston oilman Robert Mosbacher, was secretary of commerce under President George H.W. Bush and a key Bush money man. “He had the courage to not play the game in Washington and become co-opted. He is more interested in being effective than being liked.”
She was one of Sen. John McCain’s top 10 bundlers in 2008. Four years later, she co-chaired Rick Perry’s campaign, and later she hosted Romney for a fundraiser at her home. She co-hosted a Houston event March 31 that gave Cruz a $1 million boost.
More on Mercer. He donates heavily to Club for Growth and also to Mrs Lindsay Graham. He has been before the Senate Investigations Committee about his Tax Deduction procedures. He is one of the Hedge Fund managers who would be hurt by Trump. He has ties to Glenn Beck. He is GOPe all the way.
Now the FEC is investigating how the Cruz Pac came to donate to Fiorina.
http://www.dailynewsbin.com/news/fec-begins-inquiry-into-carly-fiorina-campaign-financing-irregularities/22576/ (http://www.dailynewsbin.com/news/fec-begins-inquiry-into-carly-fiorina-campaign-financing-irregularities/22576/)
This begins to really change my thinking on Cruz. I have to wonder how much he knows about the donation to Fiorina. (It has been published over a month ago. Why would he not condemn it when he found out.) Also, with Mercer and his tax motivations, how can Cruz not be bought?
Very disturbing for me....
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Very interesting and I await further developments.
I would say though that Cruz's hostility to the IRS and the tax code long predates any donations here.
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http://www.politico.com/story/2015/09/ted-cruz-senate-rebuke-planned-parenthood-214183
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https://www.facebook.com/AskDrBrown/videos/1254084237950509/
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http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2015/10/01/what_ted_cruz_really_stands_for_128264.html
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Ted Cruz receives very favorable coverage today from my new favorite political reporter Eliana Johnson.
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/425183/ted-cruz-iowa
The Texas senator may look like an also-ran, but he’s a legit contender. Where’s Ted Cruz? The outspoken Texas senator has been unusually quiet in recent weeks. But in GOP circles, there’s soft but growing chatter that he is likely to be one of the last men standing in one of the most chaotic and unpredictable presidential races in recent memory. You wouldn’t know it from his poll numbers. Cruz is running at about 6 percent nationally and in key states such as Iowa and New Hampshire. That’s well behind outsiders Donald Trump, Carly Fiorina, and Ben Carson, and those numbers accord with the attitude that many influential Republicans have taken toward him since his arrival in Washington three years ago: There’s no way he can win the nomination. He’s too conservative and doctrinaire, and his abrasiveness doesn’t help the cause. Given his poll numbers and his
s is the man, after all, who, according to one of his allies, began meeting with Iowa activists to plot his path to victory in the state in August of 2013, just nine months after he was elected to the Senate. Is it possible that he’ll sneak up on the Republican establishment again, just as he did in his 2012 Senate race? Within Republican circles, attitudes about his viability have begun to change. Even strategists associated with some of Cruz’s rivals acknowledge that, in a historically crowded field, he may be one of the last men standing. “He’s got a long way to go, but unlike some of these guys, he has a coherent strategy, he has a lot of money, he has a pretty consistent message, and he’s not making mistakes,” says a top Republican strategist allied with Florida senator Marco Rubio. “He’s running a good campaign.” RELATED: The Paradox of Ted Cruz With strong support in Iowa and South Carolina, Cruz has a path through the early states; both his campaign and his super PAC are flush with cash; and he’s a skilled politician who doesn’t slip up much on the campaign trail or in debates. But unlike Cruz himself, his strategy is not head-turning but simple, steady, even creeping. “He’s not readily considered a first-tier candidate, but if you look at the critical ways to evaluate whether a candidate is strong or not, he should be a first-tier candidate,” says GOP strategist Matt Mackowiak. By all accounts, Cruz is positioned to succeed in Iowa, which has been friendly to conservative candidates in years past. The Real Clear Politics polling average has him tied for third place with Carly Fiorina, and he has a solid ground game in place. “Our trajectory has been slow and steady upward,” says Bryan English, Cruz’s political director in the state. “I’ve just been kind of curious, okay, when are people going to start paying attention to what we’re doing and that we’re positioned to do very well in Iowa.” RELATED: How Ted Cruz Has Wooed Some of the GOP’s Top Donors The campaign has been getting in position for a long time. Steve Deace, an Iowa-based talk-radio host who has endorsed Cruz, says that as far back as August of 2013, Cruz was asking him to set up meetings with top Iowa activists. Now, Deace says, the Texas senator has “the best [Iowa] organization I’ve ever seen,” composed of the sort of dedicated activists who put Rick Santorum over the finish line four years ago. Cruz also has a plan beyond Iowa. He has referred to the March 1 “SEC primary,” in which eight Southern states go to the polls, as his “firewall”: that is, a backstop against whatever losses he might sustain beforehand. This year, these Southern states will go to the polls before Florida and before the traditional Super Tuesday, a change in the primary calendar instituted by RNC chairman Reince Priebus. Most of those contests, unlike the ones that precede them, are not winner-take-all, and Cruz’s goal is to win the most delegates rather than to take entire states.
Throughout the primary season, Cruz has crisscrossed the South, sweet-talking voters unaccustomed to playing an outsized role in presidential contests. “He has made the largest investment in those Southern states of any candidate,” Mackowiak says. “Most of those political leaders in those states have never been asked to participate in the process.” Texas is one of the “SEC primary” states, and it alone will award 155 of the 1,144 delegates needed to win the nomination. Cruz, of course, holds a natural advantage. His team spent over a year developing detailed knowledge of the state’s political contours just three years ago. Mackowiak says there’s a “very real possibility” that Cruz will be the overall delegate leader on March 2. Mackowiak says there’s a ‘very real possibility’ that Cruz will be the overall delegate leader on March 2. It’s not uncommon for “insurgent” candidates to take a number of early states, but they then typically have to rapidly raise the cash and build the big infrastructure needed to turn out voters across the country. Rick Santorum’s campaign was starved for money until he won the Iowa caucuses in 2012, after which it had trouble turning a sudden influx of cash into a viable campaign organization overnight. In 2008, in the months before the Iowa caucuses, Mike Huckabee had no national finance chairman or speechwriters, and he didn’t have enough money to commission any internal polls. Cruz is a different sort of insurgent, who has from the first days of the 2016 primary made it clear that he won’t be outpaced financially. Small-dollar donors from an enormous e-mail list culled during the fight over the 2013 government shutdown have made him the leader in hard-dollar donations, and a cadre of eccentric billionaires looking to shake up Republican presidential politics have put over $37 million into his super PACs. He has used that money to build a national organization: As he told a gathering of donors in August assembled at the behest of Charles and David Koch, “If you are going to run a national campaign, you’ve got to be able to compete nationally.”
A year ago, most political onlookers assumed that Cruz and his tea-party colleague Rand Paul would vie for the insurgent crown. A top Republican who’s not aligned with either campaign told me at the time that Cruz and Paul would battle to the death. They were, he said, like “like Harry Potter and Lord Voldemort: One cannot exist while the other lives.” As it turns out, it hasn’t been much of a contest. Cruz has proved to be an ambitious and serious campaigner, devoted to doing the hard and unglamorous work required of presidential candidates, while Paul has not, and other candidates have risen to compete with Cruz in the anti-establishment bracket. Cruz has proved to be an ambitious and serious campaigner, devoted to doing the hard and unglamorous work required of presidential candidates. The natural question is why a candidate with strong fundamentals is mired between 5 and 8 percent in the polls. There is, of course, the unexpected candidacy of Donald Trump, who has eclipsed Cruz not only in the polls but also in the national spotlight. Cruz has chosen uncharacteristically to lie low, and flying under the radar has meant that he hasn’t sustained many attacks from his rivals. Meanwhile, though many of his challengers rolled their eyes when he went out of his way to shower praise on Donald Trump, whose withering insults have done damage to stronger candidates, Cruz has managed to stay out of his path of destruction as well. Four months from the Iowa caucuses, he remains virtually untouched by his rivals. And, though he hasn’t had a real breakout moment, his supporters say the polls, particularly in Iowa, simply don’t predict what’s going to happen when caucusgoers and voters start getting more serious. Jeff King, the son of Iowa congressman Steve King, who’s working for one of Cruz’s cluster of four super PACs, says that national polls rarely reflect the reality on the ground in Iowa. “You can almost throw ’em out,” he says.
Polls in Iowa may not be that much better. Of the six polls taken closest to the 2012 caucuses, none showed Rick Santorum running ahead of Mitt Romney; one showed Ron Paul winning. In 2008, Mitt Romney led Mike Huckabee until about a month before the caucuses. “I would caution everybody to be very, very, very leery of drawing any conclusions from Iowa polling,” says Deace. Some are starting to take note of his strength. In a blog post titled “Ted Cruz vs. Marco Rubio: This Is Where We Are Headed,” the right-wing commentator Erick Erickson, the soon-to-be-former proprietor of the RedState blog, wrote last month that if Republican primary voters were to cast their ballots now, “We’d find the last men standing would be Sen. Ted Cruz and Sen. Marco Rubio,” and that Cruz would have the advantage. “He’s in an incredibly strong position,” says David Bossie, the president of the conservative activist group Citizens United. “If Ted Cruz does not win the nomination, he is gonna come back to the United States Senate as the most powerful senator, even without the title of majority leader.”
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http://www.examiner.com/article/ted-cruz-must-show-naturalization-papers-to-keep-his-us-senate-seat
http://www.cnn.com/2014/06/11/politics/ted-cruz-canada-citizenship/index.html
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On the Cruz citizenship issue, the "documented timeline" is from an unidentified person, and is not even in a formal type of presentation. Nor are sources cited. This is problematic at the very least.
Also, Cruz's mother was born in the US so she is a US citizen by birth. Unless she renounced citizenship to become a Canadian citizen before the birth of Cruz, Cruz would be a US citizen and therefore eligible for the Presidency.
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Thank you for pinning that down Pat.
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Ted Cruz Raised $12.2 Million in Quarter, Eclipsing GOP Rival Marco Rubio
Republican presidential candidate Marco Rubio, who stands higher in the polls, raised $6 million in the quarter
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This is where candidates stood financially at end of 2nd qtr.
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/us/elections/election-2016-campaign-money-race.html (http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/us/elections/election-2016-campaign-money-race.html)
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A very useful chart. I like the way it separates Super PAC money and candidate raised money and the amount each category has spent and how much cash is left.
Interesting that Carson has virtually no SuperPAC money at all.
Would love to see this chart for the third quarter!
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https://www.facebook.com/OCEANSIDEGANGBUSTER/videos/770212219755702/
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https://www.facebook.com/chuck.a.ness/videos/10206571214651950/
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Ted Cruz has been winning some of the fundraising contests and is in close to last place of the people who actually could win the nomination. His strengths are his purity on the issues. His weaknesses include the perception he won't be able to win and govern and that he has made enemies on bth sides of the aisle.
But he has money. So what should he do with that? Here's a bold idea, break the primary tradition and run his ads against the Democrats, the Obama administration and Hillary Clinton's positions and issues.
What would that do? Raise up his own image, improve the chances of any Republican nominee of winning, improve the chances of holding the Senate, improve the chances of saving the country, raise himself above the fray since everyone is ignoring him anyway, and show himself capable of being a team leader.
Isn't the person who can make the strongest case against continued liberal governance the person best suited to be President?
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I would add that it is my understanding that he is the ONLY candidate with organization in all counties of the first four primary states. Good ground game is a good thing.
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I wrote previously about the VAT tax plans on the Presidential thread. Posting more info on the Cruz plan here. His strategy with it puzzles me.
Ted Cruz’s “Business Flat Tax” is what most tax policy experts would call a “tax-inclusive subtraction-method value-added tax” (VAT)
http://taxfoundation.org/blog/ted-cruz-s-business-flat-tax-primer
Senator Cruz’s (R-TX) tax plan would enact a 10 percent flat tax on individual income and replace the corporate income tax and all payroll taxes with a 16 percent “Business Transfer Tax,” or subtraction method value-added tax. In addition, his plan would repeal a number of complex features of the current tax code.
http://taxfoundation.org/article/details-and-analysis-senator-ted-cruz-s-tax-plan
The tab for taxes collected from businesses is ultimately passed through to individuals in the form of lower wages, reduced dividends, or higher prices. So for transparency, the best thing would be to scrap business taxes altogether, and collect the full tax load from individuals at a flat rate. That way, people could accurately perceive the full cost of government.
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/426469/ted-cruz-rand-paul-vat
(famous people caught reading the forum?)
So what happens 10 years from now or 25 years from now if statists control both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue and they decide to reinstate the bad features of the income tax while retaining the VAT? They now have a relatively simple way of getting more revenue to finance European-style big government.
And also don’t forget that it would be relatively simple to reinstate the bad features of the corporate income tax by tweaking Cruz’s business flat tax/VAT.
- Dan Mitchell, Senior Fellow, Cato Institute
http://www.forbes.com/sites/danielmitchell/2015/10/29/ted-cruzs-tax-plan-is-pro-growth-and-reins-in-the-irs-but-there-is-one-worrisome-feature/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/right-turn/wp/2015/10/30/the-pluses-and-minuses-in-ted-cruzs-tax-plan/
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More quality contributions Doug!
Would you please post these on the Tax Policy thread as well?
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If we can ever figure out what was in TPP, this article proves that Cruz supported it.
http://paulryan.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=398270 (http://paulryan.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=398270)
Cruz co-authored the article.
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If we can ever figure out what was in TPP, this article proves that Cruz supported it.
http://paulryan.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=398270 (http://paulryan.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=398270)
Cruz co-authored the article.
If he co-authored it in April, it doesn't mean he supported the bad parts put in it during the May-October time frame, when it was written.
Sovereignty is the issue and trying to pin lack of concern for American sovereignty on Ted Cruz is not likely to go far.
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The Cruz tax plan came up in the debate. He passes it off as a 10% flat tax where a family of 4 pay nothing on the first $36k (the average family size is no where near 4!) and abolishes the IRS. He glosses over the business tax but brags that in total it takes in more money than most of the other proposals. In other words, he raises most of the revenues with a hidden tax.
He eliminates the payroll tax, estate tax and others and he replaces the corporate tax with this, but does not fully explain that this applies to every economic act and dollar, not just applied to profits after all expenses are deducted. Therefore your tax is 26%, not 10%. Your tax below 36k family of 4 is 16%, not zero. Your new house has a 16% tax on it, your car, 16% tax, your kids' expenses, 16% tax, and everything else.
This is a fine tax plan, very efficient if it was created in a vacuum but it wasn't. This is a regressive tax in that the sales tax part of it hits the lowest income hardest. Does anyone think that we are politically ready as a nation to go to zero progressivity in the income tax code?
If Ted Cruz has polling on this, I guarantee you that it only tells him how to rise above single digits with Republicans, not how to win a general election.
The worst part, already mentioned, is that after starting such a nice, big, new tax that liberals will love and eave in place forever, there is no guarantee they will not still raise the income tax back up to at least where it was before, or higher. To the contrary, I think we can guarantee that they will.
Like Huckabee and the Fair tax, it tells me Cruz isn't serious.
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Hmmm , , , interesting comments Doug.
Please flesh this out "but does not fully explain that this applies to every economic act and dollar, not just applied to profits after all expenses are deducted."
"This is a regressive tax in that the sales tax part of it hits the lowest income hardest." There is a sales tax in the mix?
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Doug,
On TPP, the vote was for TPA, which both Ryan and Cruz voted for. It removed 66% votes for passage and changed it to 50% plus 1. This legislation provided for Fast Track Authority where by Congress will not have future inputs into regulation changes. The WH wants it, and it is implemented.
So Cruz gave away the farm by changing the number of votes for passage. Now he wants to go another way with it to appeal to conservatives.
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"On TPP, the vote was for TPA, which both Ryan and Cruz voted for. It removed 66% votes for passage and changed it to 50% plus 1. This legislation provided for Fast Track Authority where by Congress will not have future inputs into regulation changes. The WH wants it, and it is implemented."
Please flesh this out on the TPP thread. Thank you.
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Please flesh this out "but does not fully explain that this applies to every economic act and dollar, not just applied to profits after all expenses are deducted."
"This is a regressive tax in that the sales tax part of it hits the lowest income hardest." There is a sales tax in the mix?
A state sales tax applies normally just to consumer purchases and makes exceptions for essentials like food and clothing.
The Cruz 'business transfer tax' of 16% applies to every dollar of our $17 trillion GDP including employment, raw materials, food, clothing, housing, utilities, tuition, child care, health care, etc. The 'subtraction' method business transfer tax means subtract only what has already been taxed the 16% and would cause it to be double taxed. Every dollar of every economic transaction gets the 16% hidden tax. It is applied behind the scenes, hidden, not visible at the point of sale like a sales tax.
As John McEnroe used to say, you can't be serious! He doesn't get down to a 10% flat tax with a 36k exclusion for free.
See the links in this post and please correct me if I am wrong. http://dogbrothers.com/phpBB2/index.php?topic=2408.msg91069#msg91069
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https://www.facebook.com/tedcruzpage/videos/10153708307112464/
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Also give Trump and his poll numbers credit for Cruz evolving on immigration. One point here is that Cruz shouldn't be pointing accusingly to Rubio's past views if his own have changed so dramatically in the last few months. In both cases it looks like political expedience, but to learn and change based on facts and reality might be better than the alternative.
How Ted Cruz Became a Jeff Sessions Republican
by ELIANA JOHNSON , National Rreview
November 18, 2015
When Ted Cruz argued in the most recent Republican debate that the ongoing flow of immigrants into the country will “drive down the wages” of millions of Americans, it was a departure for him. Cruz has long supported higher levels of legal immigration. When he cited concerns over wages and subsequently backtracked on increasing the levels of guest workers and legal immigrants, many saw a new policy intended to appeal to Republican grass roots, but also the influence of the Senate’s foremost immigration hawk. The controversial argument that immigrants, both legal and illegal, are depressing the wages of the lower and middle class has become something of a calling card for Alabama senator Jeff Sessions. Over the past decade, his office has essentially served as ground zero for the war against comprehensive immigration reform and as a clearinghouse for the intellectual and political arguments against it.
It’s not the first time the soft-spoken Southerner has managed to inject his arguments into the presidential primary. Cruz is but the latest in a series of Republican contenders to consult with the senator on immigration and to come away from the conversation singing Sessions’s tune. Sessions’s influence on the party is more often felt than seen, but as the Iowa caucuses approach and Republicans look to rally the grass roots, it is becoming increasingly visible. Cruz’s immigration plan, unveiled Friday in a speech in Orlando, Fla., calls for halting increases in legal immigration “so long as American unemployment remains unacceptably high” and for limiting the H-1B visa program to those with advanced degrees. It is a dramatic departure for a candidate who just six months ago was criticizing former Wisconsin governor Scott Walker’s rightward shift on immigration and asserting, “There is no stronger advocate of legal immigration in the U.S. Senate than I am.” Cruz had already had a change of heart, but his public pronouncements followed a two-hour meeting with Sessions and his top staffers. The subject of the discussion was an H-1B reform bill — Cruz had proposed that he and Sessions team up to push the bill.
According to Mark Krikorian, the executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies and a leading immigration hawk, Sessions’s ten years of work on the immigration issue have given him “credibility with the base, and that is something that is in very short supply among politicians.” That credibility is also something Cruz needs to preserve if he is to win the Republican nomination. “The presidential candidates seeking the Republican nomination should listen to Jeff Sessions,” says Rick Tyler, Cruz’s national spokesman. Sessions has “been focused and consistent on solving the problem of illegal immigration,” Tyler says. “Senator Cruz has worked with him on a number of immigration-reform bills and will continue to consult with him.” Sessions has been unrelenting in advancing a populist argument against comprehensive immigration reform. Sessions’s credibility derives from his monomaniacal focus on immigration and the role he has played in rallying his colleagues in the Senate and the House against the comprehensive reform bills in 2007 and again in 2013. Armed with reams of data and numerous academic studies, most notably from Harvard economist George Borjas, Sessions has been unrelenting in advancing a populist argument against comprehensive immigration reform. It is the rich, he says, who benefit from low-skilled labor, which keeps wages down and profits up, while the poor have seen their salaries drop or their jobs replaced entirely by foreign workers. “The principal economic dilemma of our time is the very large number of people who either are not working at all, or not earning a wage great enough to be financially independent,” reads a passage in the senator’s 23-page guide to the issue for newly elected lawmakers. “What sense does it make to continue legally importing millions of low-wage workers to fill jobs while sustaining millions of current residents on welfare?”
It's an argument not often heard in the immigration debate. On the left, union leaders who might naturally make the argument have dropped their opposition to amnesty (the New York Times chastised them for it in 2000, noting that it would “depress the wages” of native-born workers), and Republicans have focused largely on legality, ensuring that immigrants are entering the country legally. “I think Sessions fills a needed gap in that sense,” says Yuval Levin, the editor of National Affairs and a contributing editor of National Review. “It makes sense to think about wages when you think about immigration.”
For Republicans, it also seems to make sense politically to argue that increased immigration levels depress wages on the low end of the scale – it undermines the perception of the GOP as the party of the rich. By pressing the case within the Republican conference on Capitol Hill, Sessions has made the Republican side of the immigration debate something that “really does resonate with a number of people, especially since the market crash, the economic slowdown, which really hasn’t ended for most people,” Krikorian says. The first mention of Sessions’s name on the campaign trail came not from Ted Cruz but from Scott Walker. “Our sense was that Walker was new to the federal scene and therefore would benefit from our thoughts,” says a Sessions aide, who sent the Walker campaign the primer the senator distributed to freshmen lawmakers in January. Sessions followed up in a series of phone calls with the governor.
Walker turned heads when he told radio talk-show host Glenn Beck that the next president should champion a legal immigration policy that focuses “first and foremost on protecting American workers and American wages.” Then he dropped Sessions’s name, in a nod to the Republican base that on this issue, he understood their concerns.
“I’ve talked to Senator Sessions and others out there,” Walker said, “but it is a fundamentally lost issue by many in elected positions today . . . and we need to have that be at the forefront of our discussion going forward.” It was one of the high points of Walker’s short-lived campaign, but he never explained what an emphasis on wages would mean as a matter of immigration policy. Walker was thrown in part by the tumult Donald Trump introduced into the presidential primary with the announcement of his campaign in June. In Trump, who began to use his enormous platform largely to stoke populist resentment about the type and amount of immigration into the U.S., Sessions and his team saw an opportunity to amplify their message. The Trump immigration plan has Sessions’s fingerprints all over it. In a series of phone calls, they provided policy advice that culminated in their collaboration with the Trump campaign on Trump’s immigration proposal. The Trump plan has Sessions’s fingerprints all over it: It argues that “the influx of foreign workers holds down salaries, keeps unemployment high, and makes it difficult for poor and working-class Americans — including immigrants themselves and their children — to earn a middle-class wage.” The policy proposal: Decrease the number of low-skilled immigrants who enter the country legally, and require companies to favor American workers over foreign-born visa holders. Trump himself seemed to acknowledge Sessions’s political value and the credibility he has with grassroots conservatives. When Sessions joined him on stage at a campaign rally in Mobile, Ala., in late August, Trump was full of praise. “He’s been so spot-on, he’s so highly respected,” Trump said of Sessions, who responded slyly: “I’m really impressed with your [immigration] plan. I know it will make a difference.”
Had Trump familiarized himself with it, it might have. Instead, during the Republican debate hosted by CNBC last month, he contradicted key aspects of his Sessions-inspired immigration plan. The plan had called for lowering the rates of legal immigration. In the debate, however, he said: I’m in favor of people coming into this country legally. And you know what? They can have it any way you want. You can call it visas. You can call it work permits. You can call it anything you want. Nobody ever called Trump a disciplined messenger. But the label has often been applied to Ted Cruz, and if Cruz continues to carry the Sessions mantle in the Republican primary, the Alabama senator’s views will get a wider hearing than ever before.
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/427240/ted-cruz-jeff-sessions-republican-on-immigration
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http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news-campaigns-presidential-campaigns/260579-cruz-to-obama-insult-me-to-my
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Alan Dershowitz said Cruz was "off the charts" on intelligence. I don't remember what he said of Brock in chief.
Both at Harvard law.
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http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news-campaigns-presidential-campaigns/260579-cruz-to-obama-insult-me-to-my
Good response.
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Ted Cruz Battling Ben Carson for Evangelical GOP Voters
Texas senators aims to reverse lead among this key voting bloc now held by the retired neurosurgeon
Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz speaks Monday at the Bully Pulpit forum at the College of Charleston in South Carolina. Cruz defended his call for accepting Christian refugees fleeing Syria, but not Muslim refugees. Photo: Richard Ellis/Zuma Press
By Janet Hook
Nov. 19, 2015 6:33 p.m. ET
29 COMMENTS
GREENVILLE, S. C.—Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas is moving steadily to consolidate support for his presidential bid on the Republican Party’s right flank, but he is facing stiff competition for evangelical voters, who are turning in large numbers to retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson.
Mr. Cruz’s efforts have been broad and deep, including a recent rally here in support of religious liberty where he called for a 10-million-person increase in evangelicals voting in 2016.
“When we stand together, the truth is mightier than lies; the light is stronger than the darkness,” Mr. Cruz told a crowd of about 2,500 at Bob Jones University, a Christian college. “There are more of us than there are of them.”
Evangelicals are one of the largest voting blocs in the GOP primary electorate in key early voting states. Cultivating them is especially important in Iowa, where such voters made up about 57% of GOP caucusgoers in 2012. Mr. Cruz’s father, Rafael, a celebrity in his own right on the evangelical ministry circuit, has campaigned heavily for his son in Iowa. His state director, Bryan English, is a minister.
A Nov. 4 national poll by Quinnipiac University found that among Republicans, Mr. Carson is the first choice of 32% of evangelicals, compared with 16% for Mr. Cruz. In Iowa, Mr. Carson also has an advantage among likely caucus goers, with the support of 23.5% while Mr. Cruz draws 12.3%, according to the Real Clear Politics poll average.
Messrs. Cruz and Carson will be among seven GOP presidential candidates speaking Friday night to a meeting of 1,500 social conservatives sponsored by the Family Leader in Des Moines.
Mr. Cruz’s supporters are banking on the Carson candidacy fading as voters come closer to actually picking a presidential nominee. Meanwhile, Mr. Cruz is quietly building a far-reaching political organization in early voting states and beyond. And while he hasn’t criticized Mr. Carson, Mr. Cruz draws an implicit contrast by arguing that he doesn’t just hold Christian values—he has fought for them in Washington.
“Some candidates will talk about religious freedom, but only one has fought for it and won,” a supporter says in a radio ad aired this fall by a pro-Cruz super PAC, Keep the Promise.
That argument has made an impression on voters like Susan Swanson, who finds both Messrs. Carson and Cruz appealing. “Both have good values, but I see Ted as a fighter,” said Ms. Swanson, who works for a Christian nonprofit center advising pregnant women in Augusta, Ga. “He’s had to fight his own party.”
Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson speaks this week at the International Church of Las Vegas. ENLARGE
Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson speaks this week at the International Church of Las Vegas. Photo: John Locher/Associated Press
Some voters prefer Mr. Carson because he is more removed from Washington. “He is a good Christian man. I do believe that’s what this country needs now more than anything,’’ said William Tucker, a machinist in Mississippi. “I don’t get the same vibe from Ted Cruz as I do from Ben Carson. He comes off as a politician first and foremost.”
Cruz supporters say he is better equipped than Mr. Carson to manage foreign policy, especially in the wake of terrorist attacks in Paris. “When I look at national security and the geopolitical chess game that’s going on…I don’t have any doubt—it’s Ted Cruz who’s going to play it better,” said Rep. Steve King, a leading Iowa conservative who endorsed Mr. Cruz Monday.
Cruz supporters say Mr. King and other key supporters give the campaign an organizational edge more valuable than raw numbers in early polls. “They have relationships with the people who drive voters to the caucuses,” said Cruz campaign spokesman Rick Tyler.
Mr. Carson’s spokeswoman Deana Bass said that Mr. Carson’s evangelical support runs deep because “people are familiar with his faith, having read his life story.” He began amassing supporters before he declared his run for president, as he wrote books and spoke to audiences about his life’s journey from troubled youth to renowned neurosurgeon that is seen as a classic tale of Christian redemption. A well-known evangelical activist, David Barton, is heading one of the super PACs supporting Mr. Cruz.
When Mr. Cruz started his campaign in late March, he was a blip on the public opinion radar, a star among tea-party activists but little known nationally. But he has turned out to be a formidable fundraiser, through a combination of small donors and large contributors, and his efforts are being supplemented by a flush family of super PACs. His campaign ended the third quarter of 2013 with more cash on hand than any other GOP candidate.
It was clear from the outset of his campaign that Mr. Cruz would make a play for the evangelical vote. He announced his candidacy at Liberty University, a Christian college founded by the late Jerry Falwell. He has made religious-liberty protection a central campaign issue, especially after the Supreme Court decision legalizing gay marriage left many traditionalists feeling under siege.
While some candidates are staking their hopes on getting momentum from victory in one early state, Mr. Cruz is extending his reach into the swath of southern states that hold their primaries on March 1.
The Cruz playbook calls for drawing support in three of the four voter blocs within the GOP. Writing off the party’s establishment wing, he is playing to win the GOP’s tea-party activists, who are his natural constituency; libertarians, a smaller group that he has been trying to peel off from rival Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky; and evangelicals.
His biggest challenge, supporters say, is introducing himself to evangelical voters who know little about him. The campaign and one of the super PACs supporting him have been trying to spotlight his work defending religious liberty before he was elected to the Senate. A flier distributed at the Bob Jones University rally detailed court cases he argued before the Supreme Court, including a case involving the display of the Ten Commandments at the Texas capital. Some of the super PAC ads took the same tack.
His campaign is counting on the idea that the more evangelicals know about him—and about Mr. Carson—the more likely they are to back Mr. Cruz. People at Bob Jones University, where the two candidates appeared a day apart, were able to compare their night-and-day styles, with Mr. Cruz offering as fiery a presentation as Mr. Carson’s was low key.
The comparison worked to Mr. Cruz’s advantage in the case of Dee Dee Groves, who attended both events undecided between the two and came out a Cruz supporter. “I really appreciate his strong Christian stand,” said Ms. Groves, who is home schooling her children in Greenville. “I still like Carson, (but) I feel like he’s not dynamic enough.’’
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By Kimberley A. Strassel
Nov. 19, 2015 7:15 p.m. ET
44 COMMENTS
The Paris attacks have put a lot of things into focus. Including a new focus on a particular trait of a particular up-and-coming presidential candidate: Ted Cruz.
The Texas senator has been the stealth contender. He has quietly built his donor base and erected an early-state infrastructure. He has identified his main opponents and deployed strategies to poach voters from each. He flatters Donald Trump and Ben Carson, waiting to scoop up support if they fade. He lambastes Marco Rubio, presenting himself as a purer pick for the conservative base.
But more notable at the moment is Mr. Cruz’s calculated effort to peel off Rand Paul voters by pitching himself as Paul-lite on foreign policy. The strategy isn’t surprising to anyone who has watched Mr. Cruz’s career. A dictionary definition of “opportunistic” is to “exploit chances offered by immediate circumstances without reference to a general plan or moral principle.” And that helps explain why Mr. Cruz is both so loved and so disliked.
Opinion Journal Video
Wonder Land Columnist Dan Henninger on the President’s reaction to the French terrorist massacre. Photo credit: Getty Images.
The senator’s supporters adore him because they see him in those moments when he has positioned himself as the hero. To them he is the stalwart forcing a government shutdown over ObamaCare. He’s the brave soul calling to filibuster in defense of gun rights. He’s the one keeping the Senate in lame-duck session to protest Mr. Obama’s unlawful immigration orders.
Mr. Cruz’s detractors see a man who engineers moments to aggrandize himself at the expensive of fellow conservatives. And they see the consequences. They wonder what, exactly, Mr. Cruz has accomplished.
ObamaCare is still on the books. It took the GOP a year to recover its approval ratings after the shutdown, which helped deny Senate seats to Ed Gillespie in Virginia and Scott Brown in New Hampshire. Mr. Obama’s immigration orders are still on the books. The courts gained a dozen liberal judges, all with lifetime tenure, because the lame-duck maneuver gave Democrats time to cram confirmation votes through. Mr. Cruz’s opportunism tends to benefit one cause: Mr. Cruz.
Yet getting away with this kind of thing is harder in foreign policy, and the Paris massacre is illustrating that difficulty. For months now, Mr. Cruz has been presenting himself in debates and national forums as hawkish, even as he panders to Mr. Paul’s voters at smaller events. Last month he attended the Republican Liberty Caucus in New Hampshire, where he boasted that the “liberty movement has been integral to our campaign since Day 1,” and touted the endorsement he received from (the isolationist) Ron Paul during his run for the Senate. He enjoyed a standing ovation.
Mr. Cruz regaled the crowd about how he had opposed a proposal to intervene in Syria and how he doesn’t support “nation building.” To this he could add a few others: He has consistently voted against defense reauthorization bills that enable troop funding. And this spring he ginned up support to pass a law that undercuts the National Security Agency’s ability to use metadata to root out terror plots. Mr. Cruz, citing “privacy rights,” co-sponsored the bill, along with Chuck Schumer, Dick Durbin, Al Franken and Barbara Boxer.
Among the vocal critics, by contrast, were the freshman Republican senators elected on their foreign-policy chops: Arkansas’s Tom Cotton and Iowa’s Joni Ernst.
It may have seemed like a good idea to Mr. Cruz at the time. But after Paris, he finds himself with a national security agenda that is increasingly at odds with the public will. Florida’s Marco Rubio (who opposed the NSA bill) had fun this week reminding Americans of the stark foreign-policy differences between himself and the Texan, noting that Mr. Cruz has supported laws that “weaken U.S. intelligence.” Mr. Rubio, who has delivered at least 10 major foreign-policy addresses in the past few years, is running as the unabashed hawk, calling for robust new U.S. world leadership. Mr. Cruz may have walked himself into playing the counterpoint—a Rand Paul stand-in.
Mr. Cruz will certainly argue that he’s more hawkish than Mr. Paul. He has consistently criticized Mr. Obama for failing to demonstrate international leadership. Many of his votes are accompanied by disclaimers. He says, for instance, that he opposed the defense reauthorization bills because they didn’t contain language prohibiting the indefinite detention of citizens.
Yet after Paris, this approach risks looking feckless. Foreign policy requires guiding moral principles and consistency. If national security continues as a pressing theme, will voters put their faith in a candidate who is on record (whatever the nuance) against military spending, against intelligence capabilities, against a proactive stance in Syria? A candidate who even refuses to condemn secrets-leaker Edward Snowden?
That’s a record closer to Bernie Sanders than to the GOP. And that will be a tough sell, even for Mr. Cruz.
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Very interesting. Perhaps the first time I've seen someone land a punch on him from the right. Glenn Beck had him on radio and asked about Rubio's charge about him voting to weaken intelligence capabilities. First he laughed - not a very convincing laugh because it's not funny. Then he went on about that is Marco trying to change the subject away from immigration, as he changed the subject away from the intelligence vote. Beck let him go on until he finally stopped and then asked him again even more specifically. His avoidance was quite telling especially since Beck is most likely a Cruz supporter.
These are tough votes but he never just came out and explained it was a tough tradeoff between privacy and intelligence gathering.
Good luck picking up both the Trump, bomb the sh*t out of them, vote and the Rand Paul isolationism-lite vote.
Strategically, note that Cruz struck first making a point of weakness about Rubio that conservatives already know and Rubio struck back with a weakness.on Cruz ttat people didn't really know.
I favor Rubio over Cruz not because he's more conservative like me but because I think he can bring more people over to our side and win.
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I confess that this piece has resonance with me:
https://theintercept.com/2015/11/15/exploiting-emotions-about-paris-to-blame-snowden-distract-from-actual-culprits-who-empowered-isis/
Exactly what is the point of giving the State ever more Orwellian powers and conversely shrinking our American freedom if, as this piece asserts, the Jihadis were already doing trade craft that makes irrelevant the Orwellian surveillance? Aren't we regularly reading that the jihadis simply take someone dark?
If we are talking political opportunism here, can't the same be said of Rubio's position and attack in this moment? Can't we say that Cruz is actually showing some backbone in this moment by not sacrificing our privacy to the convenience of the political winds of the moment? Yes, I agree that if this is the case that he should have "come out and explained it"-- this is a fair point-- though all of these candidates are putting in real long days at a relentless pace and I am willing to give them (in this case Cruz) a chance to clean up missed opportunities.
As for Strassel's other attack points (from a frame of reference of the GOPe btw, I thought they were out of favor around here , , , :roll: ) is the blame for the political consequences of the shutdown on Cruz or the GOPe Reps in Congress who failed to back his stand in favor of Congress actually exercising the power of the purse.
I caught Cruz last night on Hannity (for the record I use the DVR to get only to segments that I like, in this case Cruz, and blow off anything having to do with Hannity bloviating) and, as usual, he displayed an ability far superior to any of the other candidates to keep track of Hillary's nefariousness webs of lies, evasions, criminality, and utter incompetence and wrong-headedness.
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I confess that this piece has resonance with me:
https://theintercept.com/2015/11/15/exploiting-emotions-about-paris-to-blame-snowden-distract-from-actual-culprits-who-empowered-isis/
Exactly what is the point of giving the State ever more Orwellian powers and conversely shrinking our American freedom if, as this piece asserts, the Jihadis were already doing trade craft that makes irrelevant the Orwellian surveillance? Aren't we regularly reading that the jihadis simply take someone dark?
If we are talking political opportunism here, can't the same be said of Rubio's position and attack in this moment? Can't we say that Cruz is actually showing some backbone in this moment by not sacrificing our privacy to the convenience of the political winds of the moment? Yes, I agree that if this is the case that he should have "come out and explained it"-- this is a fair point-- though all of these candidates are putting in real long days at a relentless pace and I am willing to give them (in this case Cruz) a chance to clean up missed opportunities.
As for Strassel's other attack points (from a frame of reference of the GOPe btw, I thought they were out of favor around here , , , :roll: ) is the blame for the political consequences of the shutdown on Cruz or the GOPe Reps in Congress who failed to back his stand in favor of Congress actually exercising the power of the purse.
I caught Cruz last night on Hannity (for the record I use the DVR to get only to segments that I like, in this case Cruz, and blow off anything having to do with Hannity bloviating) and, as usual, he displayed an ability far superior to any of the other candidates to keep track of Hillary's nefariousness webs of lies, evasions, criminality, and utter incompetence and wrong-headedness.
- The going dark argument is valid, but so is the point that these terror organizations are openly recruiting on social media. We need tools and resources to fight them on the information front of this war. At the monment of that vote, that was the tool the experts were saying they needed.
I'm scoring this Cruz-Rubio fight as a tie - in a situation where Cruz was winning it before he picked the fight.
"Can't we say that Cruz is actually showing some backbone in this moment by not sacrificing our privacy to the convenience of the political winds of the moment?"
- I don't buy the argument that capturing and studying 'metadata' is a sacrifice of my privacy, unless they release it or use it for nefarious purposes. They are not coming into our home, they are not listening in without a warrant, etc. By having access to metadata, when they find a terror point, we want them to tie it in with every possible connection without delay. As I have posted, if I have dialed a wrong number to a known terror cell by accident, that call deserves scrutiny and in a post-9/11 world I may be called on to explain my innocence or connection to that person. Even in my innocence I may be able to give them helpful information. (We have rental property within a mile of where 911 hijackers lived and could have had contact.) Regrettably, fighting suicide bombings and terror does not fit neatly into a pre-911 law enforcement and civil liberties world. Yes I believe in a right to be left alone, but this fight is also real and there is no liberty left if we lose the terror and security fight.
Both sides of that argument have validity. Rubio's attack point is true though. That legislation hampered intelligence gathering. Cruz was leaning toward the Rand Paul liberty-privacy side at that moment and Rubio was consistently siding with the fight against terror. Events have turned against the purer civil libertarian view.
"Yes, I agree that if this is the case that he should have "come out and explained it"-- this is a fair point-- though all of these candidates are putting in real long days at a relentless pace and I am willing to give them (in this case Cruz) a chance to clean up missed opportunities."
- True that the debate is still on, but this was a great opportunity in a friendly setting with no particular limit on time to show off his award winning debate skills and he shrunk from it. Cruz is a smart guy. He knows he has a vulnerability here and is choosing to not double down on the Rand Paul side of this debate at a time where they are all trying to show they would lead the toughest fight against terror.
"As for Strassel's other attack points (from a frame of reference of the GOPe btw, I thought they were out of favor around here , , , rolleyes ) is the blame for the political consequences of the shutdown on Cruz or the GOPe Reps in Congress who failed to back his stand in favor of Congress actually exercising the power of the purse."
- Again, two valid sides to this. Yes, we failed to use the power of the purse effectively (although as you have pointed out we shrank the deficit and curtailed other new spending). Yes, Cruz led the fight. But are you a leader if you have no followers? Conservatives like me have argued the so-called 'shutdown' did no damage because we won the elections a year later. We've also argued that the shutdown is Obama's fault. But Strassel is also right that we lost the public relations fight over it at the time and it took a year to recover that. Since we were losing the PR fight, had the Cruz strategy prevailed much further beyond a 17% 'shutdown' for 16 days into a very long showdown with a very stubborn President who was fully supported by the press, are we sure we would still have all won those electoral gains?
To me, what is needed is to change minds in the masses, not just for a few of us to take stronger stands. While Ted Cruz was proving himself one of the top 2 or 3 stalwarts of the conservative right of which I am a proud member, he also perhaps pidgeonholed himself out of being someone who can be perceived by the persuadable in the middle as someone they can relate to or vote for.
So far, approval spreads and general election polling bear that out.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2016/president/us/general_election_cruz_vs_clinton-4034.html
I also don't think Cruz' tax plan looks like the work of someone who intends to be running past the primaries. It gives way too much ammunition to the Hillary side, and it leaves us in a very bad position for when we eventually lose power, if we were to win and enact this.
If these two (Cruz and Rubio) get any better at fighting this out, they will both lose and so will we, IMHO.
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- I don't buy the argument that capturing and studying 'metadata' is a sacrifice of my privacy, unless they release it or use it for nefarious purposes. They are not coming into our home, they are not listening in without a warrant, etc. By having access to metadata, when they find a terror point, we want them to tie it in with every possible connection without delay.
I am glad that you trust the government to do what is right. But try and sell that to the Tea Party groups that were singled out by the IRS.
Government is all about expansion of control over the citizens. Give them an ability to gather information on the populace, and at some point, they will use it against the people.
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PP, No I don't trust government and I don't like being in the situation we are now in.
And I'm guessing that you don't think we will prevent suicide attacks by using the traditional method of investigating the 'crime' after it happens and prosecuting the (already blown up) perpetrators.
There are a lot of lost liberties I would like back ahead of metadata.
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No, investigating after the fact will not stop it.
Absolutely we have lost many freedoms that I would like back, but getting them back is not likely. This is especially so since we are ruled by a bureaucratic state that imposes its own laws without regard for what is truly statutory or not.
The problem is that with any program that is initiated, the goal is to expand and build upon the power and the governmental benefits received with that program. For metadata gathering, it appears to be "okay" at this point, but that is only what we see on the surface and are allowed to know. What is being done with the data behind the scenes is what bothers me.
We have let the camel's nose in the tent............and it will eventually push all the way into the tent.
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This is exactly what I mean and expect to happen with any program.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/20/us/politics/records-show-email-analysis-continued-after-nsa-program-ended.html (http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/20/us/politics/records-show-email-analysis-continued-after-nsa-program-ended.html)
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"The problem is that with any program that is initiated, the goal is to expand and build upon the power and the governmental benefits received with that program. For metadata gathering, it appears to be "okay" at this point, but that is only what we see on the surface and are allowed to know. What is being done with the data behind the scenes is what bothers me."
- I agree although between IRS, FAFSA and an invasive census, there isn't much about me that they don't already know.
For another thread but Google with Android, GPS, Gmail, searches, contacts and history (and Apple for the rest of you) has all the rest.
The fight of the moment though is security and terrorism.
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So, clarify for me exactly what is it that the State needs but does not now have?
And what is/was Cruz's role in that?
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The Senate let the existing program lapse. Cruz sided with Rand Paul on that. I am not an expert on the details but I did notice at the time that Rand Paul's arguments were loaded with exaggeration and grandstanding.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/06/01/us-usa-security-surveillance-idUSKBN0OG0RF20150601#sYZUD0D53vDwIK0x.97
Senate lets NSA spy program lapse, at least for now
... Security officials counter that it provides important data they can combine with other intelligence to help stop attacks.
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Wasn't this temporary?
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With the government, when is any temporary program ever temporary?
Only with Tax Cuts or Budget Cuts. If there are Temporary Tax Hikes or Budget increases, temporary becomes permanent.
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Actually I mean in this case the interruption.
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Yes, the lapse was temporary. They worked out a compromise that put new limits/restrictions on the program, left the record keeping at the phone companies instead of with the NSA as I understand it.
The brief lapse was a big deal while it was happening.
Either they succeeding in significantly limiting the intelligence capabilities or it was another case of Cruz fighting for something and losing.
The allegation is that Cruz (and Paul) voted to weaken intelligence programs. Is the allegation true or false?
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NOVEMBER 19, 2014, Powerlineblog.com
TED CRUZ VOTES TO HAMPER U.S. ANTI-TERRORISM INTELLIGENCE GATHERING
The Senate has failed to pass the “USA Freedom Act,” which would have hobbled our government’s efforts to conduct electronic surveillance of terrorists. Good. As Mitch McConnell argued, with ISIS and other blood thirsty terrorist groups on the rise, this is “the worst possible time to be tying our hands behind our back.”
Former Attorney General Michael Mukasey and former NSA and CIA director Michael Hayden have described the “USA Freedom Act” as “reform only ISIS could love.” But they are wrong. Ted Cruz loves it too, or at least liked it enough to vote against the filibuster that blocked it. In effect, Cruz voted for the legislation.
Mukasey and Hayden explain why a vote for the “USA Freedom Act” is a vote to hamstring our intelligence services in their efforts to keep America secure:
For starters, the bill ends the National Security Agency’s bulk collection of what is called telephone metadata. This includes the date, time, duration and telephone numbers for all calls, but not their content or the identity of the caller or called, and is information already held by telephone companies.
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2014/11/ted-cruz-votes-to-hamper-u-s-intelligence-gathering.php
Ted Cruz has also been a critic of NSA spying. He was one of four Republican senators who crossed party lines to vote to move the USA Freedom Act forward in November. At a recent campaign event in Iowa, he called the compromise bill the "single best chance to end the bulk collection of meta data," according to CNN -- and knocked Paul for his vote against it.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2015/04/23/heres-where-the-presidential-candidates-stand-on-the-nsa-scooping-up-americans-phone-records/
Cruz was for NSA spying befoe he was against it, before he was for it. (?)
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I remember now and have a different take on it.
When the phone companies have the records there will tend to be a paper trail when the Feds want something. When the Feds have the records we are leading them into temptation.
Cruz was right.
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Cruz was right ... unless the need for the information is urgent, like in a terror attack situation.
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Look, the Russians GAVE us the brothers in Boston and still we couldn't put it to use-- and all of us can think of plenty more examples.
Besides I'm thinking a phone company would cough up the info with more efficiency, ESPECIALLY in an emergency than DHS.
Balance that against Hillary having access to everyone's phone calls and emails.
If this weren't political already, we would have her 30,000 deleted emails.
And, isn't your concern a matter of closing the barn door after the horses have escaped? http://www.christiantoday.com/article/terrorists.may.be.using.sonys.playstation.4.to.communicate.and.plan.their.attacks/70960.htm
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We could actually secure our border rather than let anyone in and spy on everybody equally. Nah, that's crazy talk.
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Crafty
My grandson uses the Play Station 4 all the time. He is playing games online with his friends. Each has their own PS4 and are doing it in their homes.
Jayden has a headset own with microphone, and he is talking back and forth with his friends while they are playing. I can easily see terrorists using this method to communicate and who would know what was going on, especially if talking in code while playing a violent type of game.
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Exactly! So what is the point in giving the State the right to our email, phone calls, etc.?
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http://www.wired.com/2015/11/isis-opsec-encryption-manuals-reveal-terrorist-group-security-protocols/
http://www.jihadwatch.org/2007/08/world-of-jihadcraft
Nothing new.
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The question relevant to this thread is whether have the data held by the phone companies instead of the State is a problem for our security. I'm not getting that a ticking time bomb question applies to this aspect of things and as such I therefore approve of Cruz's position in the regard-- indeed I regard it as a positive that he refuses to be stampeded even while he is one of us in the war with Islamic Fascism.
As for the tradecraft, those are some really interesting URLs from GM (How do you do it GM?) so let's take this over to Intel Matters, or Homeland Security.
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The question relevant to this thread is whether have the data held by the phone companies instead of the State is a problem for our security. I'm not getting that a ticking time bomb question applies to this aspect of things and as such I therefore approve of Cruz's position in the regard-- indeed I regard it as a positive that he refuses to be stampeded even while he is one of us in the war with Islamic Fascism.
As for the tradecraft, those are some really interesting URLs from GM (How do you do it GM?) so let's take this over to Intel Matters, or Homeland Security.
I will take the rest of this over to the other thread, but from my point of view (and in spite of being out-numbered), the charge is valid that intelligence resources were at least distanced from those behind the curtain that we pay to try to connect the dots before evidence of an impending attack can fully materialize. That there are other ways to communicate and other things like securing borders we should be doing or that some of us for good reasons don't want them to have unfettered access to this information doesn't change the validity of that charge made by Rubio on Cruz' vote, from my point of view. )
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WHAT NO ONE SEEMS TO KNOW about Ted Cruz’s past.
At the FTC, Cruz’s agenda could have been written by Milton Friedman.
Cruz promoted economic liberty and fought government efforts to rig the marketplace in favor of special interests. Most notably, Cruz launched an initiative to study the government’s role in conspiring with established businesses to suppress e-commerce. This initiative ultimately led the U.S. Supreme Court to open up an entire industry to small e-tailers. Based on his early support of disruptive online companies, Cruz has some grounds to call himself the “Uber of American politics.”
Moreover, and perhaps surprising to some, Cruz sought and secured a broad, bipartisan consensus for his agenda. Almost all of Cruz’s initiatives received unanimous support among both Republicans and Democrats.
Ted Cruz a consensus-builder? He was, at the FTC.
http://pjmedia.com/instapundit/219606/
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Good point to make-- hope we see more of it!
And here's Ted's most recent promo clip: https://www.facebook.com/tedcruzpage/videos/10153714235167464/
Tangential observation: Amazing how much of the candidates campaigns are requiring little to no money , , ,
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D. Goldman makes his case in favor of Ted Cruz.
A.
Dave's Top 10 Reasons to Vote for Ted Cruz
A month ago I predicted a Cruz-Rubio ticket. Now that Cruz has overtaken Carson to run neck-and-neck with Trump in the Iowa Quinnipiac University poll, Cruz is looking a lot like a winner. Here are my top 10 reasons to back him.
10. He really knows economics--not the ideologically-driven pablum dished out at universities, but the real battlefield of entrenched monopolies against entrepreneurial upstarts. As Aweesh Agarwal and John Delacourt reported in this space, he did a brilliant job at the Federal Trade Commission: "Cruz promoted economic liberty and fought government efforts to rig the marketplace in favor of special interests. Most notably, Cruz launched an initiative to study the government’s role in conspiring with established businesses to suppress e-commerce. This initiative ultimately led the U.S. Supreme Court to open up an entire industry to small e-tailers." Anyone can propose tax cuts. It takes real know-how to cut through the regulatory kudzu that is strangling America enterprise.
9. He really knows foreign policy. He is a hardline defender of American interests, but wants to keep American politics out of the export business. That's why neo-conservatives like Jennifer Rubin at the Washington Post and Kimberly Strassel at the Wall Street Journal keep sliming him. The Bushies started attacking Cruz a year ago, when he stated the obvious about the Bush administration's great adventure in "democratic globalism": "I think we stayed too long, and we got far too involved in nation-building…. We should not be trying to turn Iraq into Switzerland." He's not beholden to the bunglers of the Bush administration, unlike the hapless Marco Rubio.
8. He really knows the political system. As Texas Solicitor General he argued nine cases before the US Supreme Court and won five of them. How many other lawyers in the United States have gone to the Supreme Court nine times on points of Constitutional law? The best write-up I've seen on brilliance as a Constitutional lawyer came from the liberal New Yorker--grudging praise, but praise nevertheless. Some of his legal work was brilliant, displaying a refined understanding of separation of powers and federalism. If you want a president who knows the mechanism of American governance from the inside, there's no-one else who comes close to Cruz.
7. He's an outsider, and America needs an outsider. The public thinks that Washington is corrupt, and it IS corrupt. The banks are corrupt, the defense industries (with their $1.5 trillion budget for a new fighter plane that won't fly) is corrupt, the tech companies (run by patent trolls rather than engineers) are corrupt, the public utilities are corrupt. The American people want a new broom. But it helps to put it in the hands of someone who knows his way around the broom closet.
6. Trump and Carson aren't serious candidates. Carson is an endearing fellow who has no business running for president: apart from his medical specialty, his knowledge of the world is an audodidact's jumble of fact and fantasy. Donald Trump inherited money and ran a family business: never in his life did he have to persuade shareholders, investors, directors, or anyone else to work with him. At best, he knew how to cajole and threaten. It's been his way or the highway since he was a kid, and that's the worst possible training for a US president.
5. Cruz is in but not of the system. The distinguished conservative scholar Robert P. George mentored him at Princeton and the flamboyant (but effective) liberal Alan Dershowitz taught him at Harvard Law School. Both agree he was the smartest student they ever had. An Ivy League education isn't important unless, of course, you don't have one: to run the United States, it helps to have dwelt in the belly of the beast. Cruz came through the elite university mill with his principles intact, and a keen understanding of the liberal mentality.
4. He's got real grit--call it fire in the belly, but Cruz wants to be president and wants us to want him to be president. Determination is a lot more important than charm, where Cruz won't win first prize. When it comes down to it, Americans don't want a charming president, but a smart, tough and decent one. Marco Rubio, the Establishment's last hope after Jeb Bush's belly-flop, is instantly recognizeable as the tough-guy hero's cute younger brother. Either Cruz or Fiorina would fill out the ticket.
3. He knows how to run a real campaign as opposed to a flash-in-the-pan media event. Cruz has boots on the ground, an organization of people who believe in him and raise money at twice the rate of Rubio--with an averge $66 donation.
2. He's a true believer in the United States of America. His love for his country and belief in its prospects are impassioned and unfeigned. He's ambitious, but his ambition stems from a desire to serve, where he believes that he is uniquely qualified to serve.
And the top reason to vote for Ted Cruz is:
He can beat Hillary Clinton. Not just beat her, but beat her by a landslide. Mrs. Clinton isn't that smart. She looks sort of smart smart when the media toss her softballs, but in a series of one-to-one, nowhere-to-hide Presidential debates, Cruz would shred her. Cruz was the top college debater in the country. He knows how to assemble facts, stay on message, anticipate his opponent's moves and neutralize them. He's a quarter-century younger than Mrs. Clinton, smarter, sharper, and better prepared. He's also clean as a whistle in personal life and finances, while the Clintons could reasonably be understood to constitute a criminal enterprise.
https://pjmedia.com/spengler/2015/11/24/daves-top-10-reasons-to-vote-for-ted-cruz
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Previously on these pages:
"When the phone companies have the records there will tend to be a paper trail when the Feds want something. When the Feds have the records we are leading them into temptation.
Cruz was right."
Chair of the Senate Inteeligence Committee, Sen Richard Burr, R-NC, was on Fox News Sunday and Chris Wallace with his rebuttal this morning:
(excerpt from transcript) http://www.foxnews.com/transcript/2015/11/29/safe-at-home-sen-richard-burr-talks-terror-threat-carly-fiorina-reacts-to/
WALLACE: ...Today at midnight, the NSA's bulk data collection of America's phone records, that program expired as of last night, and now the NSA is going to need a court order from a judge to collect records on any American. And again, we're not talking about the content of the phone call, simply my phone number called your phone number, and we spoke, or people on those two lines spoke for X number of minutes.
What impact do you think that’s going to have on your counter-terrorism effort?
BURR: ... I think what's troubling is that you'll have to go to multiple telecom companies, and at their pace search their records, which means it could take weeks. What we saw in Paris once we got a cell phone was that we used that cell phone number to look at cell phones it had talked to -- and not only Paris investigators but Belgian investigators were able to expand the search net in a way that stopped a massive terrorist attack, an additional one in Paris, potentially has led to the apprehension of at least a dozen, if not more, ISIS operatives throughout Belgium, Germany, and parts of Europe.
I’m not sure that we know the full extent of what we’ve learned to this point, but any time you can take electronics and use those selectors, it's beneficial to the world's intelligence community. And the United States made a real mistake when they eliminated this program where we could search foreign known terrorist' cell phones.
But Congress took that away from the NSA, and, unfortunately, it's not going to be a timely tool to use in the future.
WALLACE: Well, let me pick up on that. You have signed on to legislation that’s now in the Senate that would revive the program, which is I say ran out as of midnight, but the Senate just voted to end the program in June. So, what are the chances that they're going to reverse that just a few months later?
BURR: Well, Chris, it's amazing what happens when people are reminded what terrorists can do. It hadn’t happened here at home, but I think the American response to the Paris attack was as significant outside of New York and New Jersey as 9/11 was. The American people recognize that the indiscriminate, brutal acts that ISIS carried out could happen in any community across this country and throughout the world.
And I think as Americans, we believe we should do everything we can to eliminate that. Knowing who the terrorists are and where operatives may be in the United States or something, Americans expect us to know, they expect us to investigate.
I want to make sure that the tools that law enforcement have are as robust as they possibly can be, and metadata is a big contributor to that.
How much privacy did you gain when this terror tracking program expired? I didn't get any of my privacy back.
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Excellent discussion on the merits; I may have to reevaluate my position. Please post this on Intel Matters and/or Privacy/4th Amendment.
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From what I understand, the NSA is using new methods of collecting the data so they no longer needed the old program.
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If I have this right, Cruz was against Hillary's Libya policy and Rubio a gung ho supporter. Is this correct?
I saw it asserted that Cruz tends towards "Let them kill each other and leave it to God to sort it out" in Iraq-Syria. Is this correct?
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https://www.commentarymagazine.com/foreign-policy/ted-cruz-wrong-lesson-libya/
... Even on policy, the distinctions between these two candidates [Rubio and Cruz] are relatively trivial. That has led to some rather tortured efforts by both campaigns to either blur or highlight those dissimilarities. While Rubio has attempted to suggest that he and Cruz agree on more than they disagree, Cruz has taken the opposite approach and is elevating their minor disagreements into irreconcilable divisions. For the Texas senator, that has meant sacrificing coherence in the effort to strike a pose. In that process, Cruz seems to be drawing some rather incomprehensible lessons from the failed NATO intervention in Libya. More bizarrely, he has laid that failure at the feet of his fellow Republicans.
“Senator Rubio emphatically supported Hillary Clinton in toppling [Muammar] Gaddafi in Libya,” Cruz recently said. Calling the deceased dictator directly responsible for the deaths of 270 people in the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 a “significant ally in fighting radical Islamic terrorism,” Cruz added that Marco Rubio shared as much blame for the 2012 terrorist attack in Benghazi that claimed four American lives as did former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
“If you look at President Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton and for that matter some of the more aggressive Washington neo-cons, they have consistently misperceived the threat of radical Islamic terrorism and have advocated military adventurism that has had the effect of benefiting radical Islamic terrorists,” Cruz added. He went on to say that the proposed intervention in Syria is identical to that which led to a disaster in Libya. Just two weeks after an ISIS terrorist cell with a command structure in Syria slaughtered 132 people in Paris, Cruz insisted that the United States “has no dog in the fight of the Syrian civil war.”
Cruz hadn’t gone as far as Senator Rand Paul, who has in the past said it was a mistake for the United States to overthrow Saddam Hussein despite that regime’s abuses and a virtually constant state of war between Hussein’s Iraq and the West from 1990 to 2003. Cruz did, however, offer an alternative to Rubio’s approach to geopolitics. “Ultimately I believe we should always be on the side of a transition to democracy,” Rubio said in 2011 in support of regime change in places where “those in charge of a government are friendly to our interests.” Cruz apparently disagrees.
The Texas senator is, however, misrepresenting history insofar as the Obama administration’s mission while “leading from behind” over the skies of Libya was never regime change. “Of course, there is no question that Libya – and the world – would be better off with Qaddafi out of power,” Obama said in an address to the nation. “But broadening our military mission to include regime change would be a mistake.” In that address, the president noted that regime change in Iraq was not worth the cost in lives or dollars. That’s perhaps why the administration was ill-prepared for the crumbling of Gaddafi’s regime.
That collapse came suddenly. What had been designed as an air war that would degrade Tripoli’s ability to wage a campaign of terror on civilians in Libya’s rebellious west soon transformed into air support mission for anti-government forces. Six months into the air campaign, and after just 64 NATO-led strikes on Gaddafi’s capital, the dictator was forced to go into hiding. Hillary Clinton immediately expressed qualified support for Libya’s ramshackle interim government, even before Gaddafi was captured and murdered by his countrymen – a fate that stiffened the spines of the Arab leaders facing similar unrest in their countries, and cemented their resolve to resist their outer at all costs.
In the intervening months, Libya became a haven for al-Qaeda affiliated terrorists. As conservatives are well aware, the American diplomatic and CIA outposts in Benghazi had been the target of Islamist attacks on more than one occasion before the coordinated strike on September 11, 2012, that killed three American servicemen and a U.S. ambassador. Any of those attacks should have been a wake-up call for the administration. Libya had become a vacuum where terrorism could be planned and executed with impunity. Those warnings went ignored. Today, Libya is a North African haven for radical Islamist groups including ISIS, which occupies the Libyan port city of Sirte.
It’s easy for some to suggest that Western interventionism is the problem here, and the world would be better off if the cries of the civilians Gaddafi slaughtered went ignored. That’s only an argument that can be made from outside the Oval Office, but it is one that has a broad political constituency. To claim that Libya is a “neo-con” failure, however, is a willful misrepresentation of neo-conservatism. Libya is a disaster today as a result not of Western engagement but withdrawal. Cruz has drawn the worst lesson from the Libyan debacle: half-measures will almost always produce suboptimal results.
The West has a bad taste in its mouth from its experience in Iraq, but to suggest that nation-building is a wholly reckless enterprise is wrong. As our Max Boot observed, to make his case, Cruz is selectively ignoring success stories like Colombia’s. “Colombia has been able to beat back the Marxist guerrilla group known as FARC, which little more than a decade ago controlled an area the size of Switzerland,” he noted. This was only possible with the help of U.S. military advisors and aid investment. Boot also noted that the United Arab Emirates is exporting civil society as well as troops to Yemen as part of its effort to oust an Iranian-backed militia from power. “Paradoxically, the more nation-building we do, the less likely it is that we will be forced to send large numbers of our own troops into harm’s way,” Boot noted. If Ted Cruz is suggesting that interventionism produces terrorist safe havens, he will have to account for his steadfast opposition to intervention in Syria where American detachment allowed for the rise of ISIS.
Cruz has determined that his electoral prospects are advanced by his embrace of a slightly more disengaged approach to foreign affairs than even Barack Obama. His tormented effort to link Marco Rubio’s support for interventionism to Hillary Clinton only highlights that it is, in fact, Cruz who shares the administration’s thinking regarding foreign crises. When it comes to addressing looming disasters abroad before they become disasters at home, only one of these candidates represents a change from the approach preferred by Barack Obama.
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Very helpful Doug. It would appear Sen. Cruz was playing a tad fast and loose , , ,
What about what his strategy for the ISIS, Syria, et al in the Middle East?
Cruz blaming Rubio for the assassination of the American Ambassador in Benghazi was out of line and out of touch with the facts.
It would appear to me that Cruz doesn't have a strategy, saying that Syria is not our fight and positioning himself somewhere between the hawks and the doves. He may be right but I think there is a greater urgency than that for many reasons to topple ISIS in every area they control. Sunni Arab fighters, gulf states involved, NATO etc. but with American leadership. There is something horribly wrong with letting them rape girls and force them to raise another generation of terrorists who are coming to get us. This doesn't get better taking a wait and see approach.
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Unless/until we are ready to fight the war the way it needs to be fought, there is no point in doing anything.
Very helpful Doug. It would appear Sen. Cruz was playing a tad fast and loose , , ,
What about what his strategy for the ISIS, Syria, et al in the Middle East?
Cruz blaming Rubio for the assassination of the American Ambassador in Benghazi was out of line and out of touch with the facts.
It would appear to me that Cruz doesn't have a strategy, saying that Syria is not our fight and positioning himself somewhere between the hawks and the doves. He may be right but I think there is a greater urgency than that for many reasons to topple ISIS in every area they control. Sunni Arab fighters, gulf states involved, NATO etc. but with American leadership. There is something horribly wrong with letting them rape girls and force them to raise another generation of terrorists who are coming to get us. This doesn't get better taking a wait and see approach.
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Unless/until we are ready to fight the war the way it needs to be fought, there is no point in doing anything.
Don't make me laugh. That will be never.
One thing I have learned here, as much as people like to think that I'm crazy, is that you have to be willing to play by the same rules you need to inflict.
Americans can't do that. They have too much to lose.
I'm not being snide. It's the truth. When was the last time you went, knowing your wife could seriously be targeted?
I remember the last time it happened to us. Do you? Has it ever happened?
That's what you need to be able to endure in order to fight the war that needs to be fought.
Period.
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http://www.breitbart.com/2016-presidential-race/2015/12/03/exclusive-ted-cruz-reacts-san-bernardino-now-ever-americans-must-armed/
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DDF,
Must agree entirely with your war fighting sentiments. Fight to win or don't fight at all.
Since WW2, we have not fought to win. Use of overwhelming force to win, fighting with no restrictions, has become for lack of a better word, evil. So we play PC games that end up costing us lives and treasure.
Kill people, break things, and show the enemy what happens when you mess with us............and show the rest of the enemy supporters what can be coming their way.
Among the current candidates, I don't see the willingness to fight to win, except perhaps with Trump. The others will fight like we have in the last few decades.
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DDF,
Must agree entirely with your war fighting sentiments. Fight to win or don't fight at all.
Since WW2, we have not fought to win. Use of overwhelming force to win, fighting with no restrictions, has become for lack of a better word, evil. So we play PC games that end up costing us lives and treasure.
Kill people, break things, and show the enemy what happens when you mess with us............and show the rest of the enemy supporters what can be coming their way.
Among the current candidates, I don't see the willingness to fight to win, except perhaps with Trump. The others will fight like we have in the last few decades.
Two cents here, I agree. Rules limited our engagement are killing us, literally, but it is more complicated than that. We still have troops in Germany, Japan and South Korea. We fought well in Gulf war I, then quit, taking Saddam's word for a surrender agreement (of which I have been trying to obtain the text). Saddam broke the agreement. (Who could see that coming?) We fought well in the second war with Iraq, phase I, shock and awe, deposed the tyrant quickly, found him eventually, then stayed which is when the strategy failed, then succeeded, then we left and failed again.
Cruz says stay out of Syria, but Syria is the breeding ground for things like THIS:
http://breaking911.com/graphic-isis-child-soldiers-search-ruins-for-prisoners-then-shoot-them/
8 year olds being trained to play hide and seek with prisoners, find them, execute them, then hand the gun to the next kid.
These aren't isolated incidents of atrocity. It is what they do and it doesn't stop without US leadership. That we know!
This is NOT a wait and see, let them sort it out situation, IMHO. They are already global.
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From Pres. thread:
CCP: "Cruz gets better and better on the podium."
That to me is a sign of a real genius. We still haven't seen his peak.
- Agree. But his strategy seems aimed at the primaries only, proving he is the most conservative running in a 4-way or 16-way race.. Is there any evidence he draws more people to the conservative side?
Crafty: "I like his [Cruz] tax proposal best."
- If we were starting a country today from scratch, I think I would agree with you. But I don't think it's politically realistic, I don't think anyone has thought through the economic transition of a change like this, and I think if it did happen, rates would soon go back up and we would be stuck with one more MAJOR layer of federal taxation.
Polls vary widely, but large majorities have consistently favored higher rates on higher incomes. (That's how we got into this mess.)
http://www.nationalmemo.com/big-majorities-favor-progressive-tax-and-spend-policies-polls-show/
I don't see how this gets enacted if Cruz did win. Democrats in the Senate would suddenly say, hey, you're right, let's give it a try! Remember Dems had 60 seats in the Senate at the moment O'care was deemed passed.
If Cruz did win and this got enacted, I don't see how the transition works. Certain industries housing, autos for example) will tank immediately. We don't have the stomach to sit still while that happens. We would see programs to prop up those hurt in the transition and so on. I don't see how you phase in radical change. What happens to the politics when the short term effect is turmoil? Approval ratings tank, other initiatives collapse, etc.
I don't see how both taxes don't end up being raised to the hilt later. Look at every other tax that started small. I can't stand the idea of giving them one more big tax source to work with, introducing a MAJOR new tax without repealing the old one. If we had a 15% VAT tax and a 10% flat income tax when President Cruz leaves office, what happens next? They wouldn't go up just a couple of points. Tax rates on the rich would go right back up to where they were at least and the VAT would be permanent, way above 15%. Do you not see that happening? Bernie Sanders is doing just as well as Cruz and others in general election matchups. That is the state of our politics.
I don't think Cruz fully believes in his plan either or he would be touting it at the beginning, middle and end of his speeches. Why isn't this tax plan front and center in his campaign? No one has taken it seriously IMHO. The best coverage of it anywhere on the internet is here.
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Intelligent discussion on the merits Doug.
As far as not discussing it much, I think he does believe in it-- at least that was the impression I got when he and an article by its intellectual author Art Laffer persuaded me of its merits-- but in this moment it would be too wonkish for making it a central theme. My impression was that he can speak quite persuasively about it. Contrasting it to Hillary's approach will be time enough for it.
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Intelligent discussion on the merits Doug.
As far as not discussing it much, I think he does believe in it-- at least that was the impression I got when he and an article by its intellectual author Art Laffer persuaded me of its merits-- but in this moment it would be too wonkish for making it a central theme. My impression was that he can speak quite persuasively about it. Contrasting it to Hillary's approach will be time enough for it.
The tax "discussion" with Hillary will be in the face of hurricane-sized, mainstream media-led blitz supported by another $2 billion from the campaign and her PACs. They will promote the fact-based claim that this is a massive tax cut ("giveaway") for the rich at a time when we are already in deficit, owe 19 trillion, have aging bridges, inner city schools are failing, and while Republicans are cutting off healthcare subsidies to working families, etc. As he tries to explain, they will go off call him out as an extremist on everything else too. I don't agree there will be more time later for a serious discussion needed that isn't happening now.
He is serious about this? I take you to friendly task on that. How many co-sponsors in the House? How many in the Senate? (If those are the RINOs, then how many sponsors in the challengers for those incumbents' seats?) Tax cuts go through the Congress and Cruz is a member (since 2013)... This came out of the blue. And it is wonkish. It is a great way to set up a tax system from scratch; then we would point to all the taxes that anyone making a high income will pay instead of hearing ad nauseam hw the big this tax cut will be for the rich We aren't one election away from dropping the top federal rate from about 40% to 10%, IMHO. I wish we were!
You and I like Professor Laffer, but that article does not say a word about getting elected on this, getting it sold, getting it passed, managing the transition, and preventing it's mis-use after he leaves office, five of my concerns.
At least in the Fair Tax they give lip service to repealing the income tax amendment first - which will never happen in our lifetime (even less likely after that).
The greater the dynamic claim that this tax rate cut will stimulate the economy, the greater the dollar amount in trillions that will be shouted and 'fact-checked' as a "giveaway" to the "wealthiest among us".
As G M said on another matter, they will say that anyway. Yes, but don't feed the sharks unnecessarily. A whole new system of taxation is worth fighting for only if and when that war is winnable. Given that the lowered rates can always be raised, the repealed taxes can always be restored, but the new tax will never be ended, I can't see a scenario with this that is a long term win for conservatives.
My prediction (sorry, not much of a track record) is that: 1) Cruz can't win the general election anyway and this won't help. 2) The top marginal rate will never drop below let's say 25% federal, the best of the other proposals. 3) We will be sold a VAT tax anyway and Democrats will say Ted Cruz supported it.
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They had a side by side comparison of the Reps tonight on Bret Baier with regard to the Middle East. I confess to being surprised that apparently he only actions Cruz supports are bombing and arming the Kurds and that he opposes US boots leading an alliance.
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They had a side by side comparison of the Reps tonight on Bret Baier with regard to the Middle East. I confess to being surprised that apparently he only actions Cruz supports are bombing and arming the Kurds and that he opposes US boots leading an alliance.
Ted Cruz foreign policy = 'Rand Paul-lite' is meant as a description, not a pejorative.
Ted Cruz foreign policy also gets compared to Pres. Obama's foreign policy based on Cruz's intent to make no significant changes.
One notable exception, Obama was to the hawk side of Cruz on metadata, for better or worse.
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Hmmm , , , I had heard some more definitive statements from him on defeating instead of containing ISIS, but this , , , gives me cognitive dissonance. Will have to consider this.
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https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2015/12/09/fact-ted-cruz-is-in-the-catbirds-seat-to-win-the-republican-nomination/
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Love the WAPO showing the money donations. JEB has spent $50 million plus in the last couple of months on ads, etc. And look at how much that money got him.
4% or less support in many polls. Keep spending Jeb. Maybe you can match Mrs. Lindsay Graham's support.............0%
Cruz is the Iowa frontrunner? Uhh, that was only one poll, and since then another poll came out with Trump as the front runner.
Why is WAPO pushing Cruz now? His Tea Party connections will be easy for the Dems to demagogue. Add in his conservative positions, and he can be easily beat.
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" JEB has spent $50 million plus in the last couple of months on ads, etc. And look at how much that money got him."
It is relishing to think these guys spent a huge fortune for nothing. We shoved it right down their throats. The darn media loves it though and I am no fan of those phonies.
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Designate them as 3/5ths of a person? Round'em up?
Cruz locks in on being the most conservative running with no chance of being President.
No legal status - for anyone. Great. Tough talk, but you have to win the Presidency and hold congress to implement any of it. Also a flip flop on legal immigration, trying to keep up with his competitor. His greatest strength was his consistency.
He was asked specifically what he would do with people already established here for 10-12 years of more. Guess what, they met a couple of voters while they were here, neighbors, family, friends, coworkers.
If he causes Hillary to win, she is committed to going further in the other direction than Obama did. How does that help illegal immigration - or the Supreme Court?
But let's race to the right as if we live in our own conservative cocoon...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2015/12/16/ted-cruz-opposes-legal-status-for-undocumented-immigrants/?ref=yfp
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Mentioned in a previous post:
http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/263443-burr-investigating-if-cruz-discussed-classified-information-during-debate
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DMG,
You and I agree on this about Cruz and the Right. He can't win the election as it stands. His conservatism will be endlessly attacked and the Tea Party support will be a part of it.
Purity candidates will not win. The electorate has changed significantly and conservative purity is left behind. Today, people are willing to accept past divisive issues like gays and abortion. Just take me:
Don't care either way about abortion.
Gays - I don't care. Just don't shove it in my face any longer.
Balanced Budget - The government will never change. Just try and reduce the amount of growth.
Close Department like the EPA - Not going to happen. Just try to restrict the ability to make administrative law.
For me, Immigration, Terrorism, and a couple of other items are critical. The rest, you can't change everything at once. Just try stopping drinking, smoking, drugs and overeating all at once. Ain't gonna happen.
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Does Ted Cruz’s Slipperiness Matter?
There is an easy way to conclude Ted Cruz didn’t lie on the debate stage Tuesday night; conclude that he lied throughout the spring of 2013. The problem with posing as a bill supporter in an effort to insert a poison bill -- and performing the role with great passion, at great length, in front of many audiences -- is that afterwards, people may not be so convinced that it was all an act.
Professor Robert George: The disagreement is about whether they should be granted citizenship, through some mechanism, through some process, not whether they should be moved from illegal status to legal status?
Cruz: The amendment I introduced affected only citizenship; it did not affect the underlying legalization in the Gang of Eight bill.
George: Would your bill pass the House, or would it be killed because it was proposing ‘amnesty’?
Cruz: I believe that if my amendments were adopted, the bill would pass. My effort in introducing them was to find solution that reflected common ground and fixed the problem.”
Now, both then and now, Cruz is one notch to the restrictionist side of Marco Rubio. Rubio supported a Gang of Eight bill that included a path to citizenship; Cruz wanted a path to legalization. Now Rubio wants an eventual path to legalization; Cruz opposes it.
(One of the arguments against a path to legalization is that once it’s enacted, the goalposts will move; the Left will claim that the 11 million new legal permanent residents are second-class citizens and denied the rights of their “fellow Americans.” Legal status is just a technicality in their minds; Obama declared the DREAMers “are American by any other name except for their legal papers.” Cruz proved his point about the Democrats’ real priorities with his amendment. They see immigration reform as a way to find a big box of 11 million new voters under the Winter Solstice tree.)
But Rubio can fairly point out that Cruz ripping him over a path to legalization is like Obama ripping gay-marriage critics. You’re denouncing people for holding the same opinion you held just a few years ago.
Here’s Cruz, explaining himself to Fox News Channel’s Bret Baier last night:
BAIER: One of the big back-and-forth moments between you and Senator Marco Rubio was on immigration. Many people said you scored some points against Marco Rubio there. You also said though, and it has been checked today, at the debate, that you denied that you’ve ever supported legal status for undocumented immigrants. You said quote, I’ve never supported illegal immigration. But back in 2013 you did support an amendment and back when you were making the case, this is what you said.
(video)
CRUZ: I don’t want immigration reform to fail. I want immigration reform to pass. And so I would urge people of good faith on both sides of the aisle, if the objective is, to pass common-sense immigration reform, that secures the borders, that improves legal immigration and that allows those illegally to come in out of the shadows, then we should look for areas of bipartisan agreement and compromise to come together.
BAIER: Now that amendment would have allowed undocumented immigrants to remain in the U.S. permanently and obtain legal status. So how do you square that circle?
CRUZ: Actually, Brett, it wouldn’t have. What was happening there is that was the battle over the Gang of Eight, the Rubio/Schumer amnesty bill, which was a massive amnesty bill proposed by Senator Rubio, by Chuck Schumer and Barack Obama and I was leading the fight against amnesty. I was standing shoulder-to-shoulder with Jeff Sessions, I was standing shoulder-to-shoulder with Steve King. Leading the fight to secure the borders and what I did in that amendment was an amendment I introduced to remove citizenship to say those who are here illegally shall be permanently ineligible for citizenship. Now the fact that I introduced an amendment to remove part of the Gang of Eight bill doesn’t mean I support the rest of the Gang of Eight bills. The Gang of Eight bills was a mess. It was a terrible bill --
BAIER: That’s not what you said --
CRUZ: The Rubio campaign is trying to claim, ‘gosh --
BAIER: That’s not what you said at the time. Yahoo dug up these quotes, saying ‘if this amendment were to pass, the chance of this bill passing into law would increase dramatically.’ A few weeks later during a debate on the Senate floor Cruz repeated his belief that ‘this amendment is the compromise that can pass.’ And you repeated later in Princeton that ‘if my amendment were adopted, this bill would pass.’ It sounds like you wanted the bill to pass.
CRUZ: Of course, I wanted the bill to pass, my amendment to pass. What my amendment did-
BAIER: You said the bill.
CRUZ: What my amendment did is take citizenship off the table. What it doesn’t mean, what it doesn’t mean is that that I supported the other aspects of the bill, which was a terrible bill and Brett, you’ve been around Washington long enough, you know how to defeat bad legislation, which is what that amendment did, is it revealed the hypocrisy of Chuck Schumer and the Senate Democrats and the establishment Republicans who were supporting it because they all voted against it. And listen I’ll give you the simplest proof why this notion that my fighting amnesty, somehow made me a supporter of amnesty -- Jeff Sessions voted with me on my amendment to eliminate citizenship. Now is anyone remotely suggesting that Jeff Sessions support amnesty?
BAIER: Of course not. The problem, though, Senator--
CRUZ: We were fighting side by side to defeat Marco Rubio’s amnesty and we succeeded, we defeated it.
BAIER: The problem is at the time you were telling people like Byron York with the Washington Examiner that this was not a poison pill. You said ‘my objective is not to kill immigration reform.’ You said you wanted it to pass at the time. So my question to you is, looking back at what you said then and what oar saying now, which one should people believe?
CRUZ: What the amendments I introduced, I introduced five amendments, a whole series of amendments, what they did is they illustrated the hypocrisy of the Democrats. They showed it was a partisan effort and they succeeded in defeating the Rubio/Schumer amnesty bill.
Some are asking why make a big deal about Cruz’s slipperiness here; surely no one thinks he’s a closet amnesty supporter. Surely, Rubio offered a bigger and more consequential lie while defending the Gang of Eight bill in April 2013: “What I said throughout my campaign was that I was against a blanket amnesty. And I was, and this is not blanket amnesty,” (No, he didn’t add the ‘blanket’ qualifier at any point in his 2010 Senate campaign.)
It’s like “I didn’t have an involvement with Mannatech . . . It is absolutely absurd to say that I had any kind of a relationship with them,” or “I watched in Jersey City, New Jersey, where thousands and thousands of people were cheering as that building was coming down . . . It was on television. I saw it,” or touting “the power and value of the Constitution” while giving a “Liberty medal” to Hillary Clinton.
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Worth remembering is the Cruz is the only candidate other than Trump that opposes TPP.
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And worth remembering that Cruz wife is:
1. Works for Goldman Sachs in real life.
2. Previously, she was an investment banker at JP Morgan Chase.
3. Work on the Dubya campaign in 2000.
4. Served in the Dubya Admin as Economic Director for the Western Hemisphere on the National Security Council.
5. Director at Treasury.
6. Special Policy Assistant to Robert Zoellick, Chief US International Trade Negotiator. javascript:void(0)
7. Term member on Council for Foreign Relations.
8. Co-author of Building a North American Community, a paper for the CFR.
http://www.cfr.org/canada/building-north-american-community/p8102 (http://www.cfr.org/canada/building-north-american-community/p8102) Can be downloaded here....
From the paper:
Our economic focus should be on the creation of a common economic space that expands economic opportunities for all people in
the region, a space in which trade, capital, and people flow freely.
The strategy needs to be integrated in its approach, recognizing the extent to which progress on each individual component enhances
achievement of the others. Progress on security, for example, will allow a more open border for the movement of goods and people;
progress on regulatory matters will reduce the need for active customs administrations and release resources to boost security. North
American solutions could ultimately serve as the basis for initiatives involving other like-minded countries, either in our hemisphere or more
broadly.
Read the above, and isn't that what is happening now? This is the EEU.
Do ya think that Cruz is against wifey on this?
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Very interesting. Yes, politicians are affected by the views of their spouses.
Most of that is fluff and idealistic. The EEC was supported by a lot of good people. Robert Mundell, who designed the path out of stagflation here set up the original framework for the euro and a lot of good came out of it. Also the EEC was set up with the idea of copying the success of the free flow we have here with the 50 states. Of course now we have Chicago murders in Minneapolis and Mexico City in LA. Then there are these things that went wrong in Europe. Is it racist or bigoted to notice that Muslim immigration and the failure of the new people to assimilate was a big part of their downfall. Also the race to the bottom in work rules, welfare etc. Those two phenomena are not unrelated, immigration and free cash and services just for existing. People come for the goodies instead of coming to contribute.
A number of years back our 'thread manager' here gave me a hard time for putting a video of an Islamic riot in Sweden in the health care thread as we were considering national healthcare. The connection that this is what happens when you do that was clear to me.
Trump and Rubio have wives who are mostly not in politics. I don't know if Heidi Cruz is good or bad for his positions, candidacy or chances of winning. I'm sure you see the CFR connection and others will obsess on the Goldman connection. Hillary has a spouse problem too...
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I don't like the Goldman relationship in the least, not to say the CFR relationship. But if you look at the actual working paper, it spends excessive effort talking about free flow of labor across borders, lessened controls and other things.
Hell no to that.
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By Bret Stephens
Dec. 14, 2015 7:09 p.m. ET
734 COMMENTS
Not everything in Ted Cruz’s foreign policy speech on Thursday at the Heritage Foundation was awful. There was enough intellectual heft in there to suggest that the senator from Texas is too smart to believe the ideological contrivances and strategic impostures by which he seeks to gain the GOP nomination.
The central foreign-policy challenge facing the next president is how to re-establish American credibility with friends who no longer trust us and enemies who no longer fear us. Mr. Cruz gets this, just as he gets that the purpose of U.S. foreign policy cannot be to redeem the world’s crippled societies through democracy-building exercises. Foreign policy is not in the business of making dreams come true—Arab-Israeli peace, Islamic liberalism, climate nirvana, a Russian reset, et cetera. It’s about keeping our nightmares at bay.
Today those nightmares are Russian revanchism, Iranian nuclearization, the rise and reach of Islamic State and China’s quest to muscle the U.S. out of East Asia. How to deal with them? Mr. Cruz has thoughts on these and other important matters, but first he wants you to know that he intends to finish the wall along the border with Mexico. And triple the border patrol. And quadruple the number of aircraft patrolling the border.
Why? Because “when terrorists can simply swim across the Rio Grande, we are daring them to make the journey.”
By now, illegal immigration is to the GOP what global warming is to the Democrats: the all-purpose bugaboo that is supposed to explain nearly every problem and whose redress must be part of every solution. But immigration policy is not foreign policy, much less a counterterrorism strategy. And there are probably larger pools of would-be jihadists in Montreal and Vancouver than in Monterrey or Veracruz. Shouldn’t Mr. Cruz call for a wall from Quebec to British Columbia?
Similarly depressing—because he surely knows better—are Mr. Cruz’s efforts to paint himself as a champion of civil liberties when it comes to his recent success in gutting the National Security Agency’s bulk telephony metadata collection program.
Mr. Cruz must feel politically vulnerable on this score, especially after the San Bernardino massacre and the sense that the pool of libertarian-leaning GOP voters is fast drying up. But he’s decided to double down on his objections to the (now lapsed) NSA program. “Hoarding tens of billion of records of ordinary citizens,” he said last week, “didn’t stop Fort Hood, it didn’t stop Boston, it didn’t stop Garland, and it failed to detect the San Bernardino plot.”
All true—nobody ever said intelligence is foolproof. But here’s another plot the NSA program failed to stop. “Telephony metadata,” wrote Judge William H. Pauley III of New York’s Southern District in a 2013 ruling affirming the constitutionality of the program, “would have furnished the missing information and might have permitted the NSA to notify the Federal Bureau of Investigation of the fact that [9/11 hijacker Khalid] al-Mihdhar was calling the Yemeni safe house from inside the United States.”
At this point, readers may sense that Mr. Cruz is closer to President Obama when it comes to fighting terrorism than he lets on. His views on metadata collection are identical to those of James Clapper, the incompetent and dishonest Director of National Intelligence whom Mr. Cruz cites approvingly in his speech. He excoriates the Obama administration for hollowing out the military but fails to note that he was one of just two Republican votes (the other was Rand Paul) against the latest National Defense Authorization Act, opposition he justifies on obscure civil-liberty grounds. He cites Libya as a case study in why not to intervene in a Middle Eastern civil war. But he may also have noted that his anti-interventionist instincts precisely track those of Mr. Obama, who was reluctantly dragged into a war he led from behind.
As for Syria, Mr. Cruz insists “we do not have a side in the Syrian civil war” and endorses Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s view that nonintervention allows two evil sides to exhaust themselves in the fighting. But this is indistinguishable from Mr. Obama’s hands-off approach to the conflict, notwithstanding the administration’s flaccid efforts to arm a credible opposition and bomb ISIS.
If your aim is to bomb ISIS until the “sand glows in the dark,” you are taking a side in the conflict. Mr. Cruz knows this. If you want to destroy ISIS without strengthening the Assad regime and its backers in Tehran, you have to target the regime, too. The truth about Syria isn’t that we have no dog in the fight. It’s that we’ve got to fight two dogs. The alternative is the endless chaos in which ISIS incubates and desperate refugees come knocking on our doors.
Again, Mr. Cruz knows this. Again, he’s too smart not to. Intelligence is never in question when it comes to the junior senator from Texas. Character is.
Write bstephens@wsj.com
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e3hB3iOQKjY
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Second post:
One of the notions coming out of the most recent debate is that Cruz was "cornered" by Rubio into doubling down on his commitment to deport over 12 million illegals.
I caught Cruz last night being interviewed by Greta Van Sustern (God! What a moron! Remarkable that Cruz could remain unflappable) and this is is construct.
1) Get a hold of true control of the border (walls, manpower, true intent, monitor visas for overstay, etc)
2) Enforce the Law
The choice of "Enforce the Law" I think to be pretty shrewd. Cruz then cleverly pointed out that Clinton deported 12 million and Bush 10 million (yes, he is conflating actual deportations with turn backs at the border, but then that is what the Manchurian Mole has done for the past seven years) but that with the border a sieve they just came back in. He goes on to discuss how all other countries e.g. Mexico, enforce their laws in this regard, why should not the US?
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"One of the notions coming out of the most recent debate is that Cruz was "cornered" by Rubio into doubling down on his commitment to deport over 12 million illegals."
Yes, he has doubled down with a stronger commitment to this than Trump which I think puts a new ceiling on his general election support. Yes you can talk around it but the question will come up with specificity, what are you going to do with the 1 1 or 12 million, what ever number we are throwing around. Rubio put it even clearer, what are you going to do with people who are productive, otherwise law abiding and have been here 10-12 years or more. If his answer is anything other than round em up and send em back, he has just flipped again, making him at best a typical politician.
Trump has left himself a whole lot more wiggle room by saying all kinds of things he doesn't really mean anyway. His general election stance will be to suddenly sound reasonable and compassionate after winning the nomination by pretending to take the hardest line.
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Cruz had a funny line in the debate. He was asked about Muslims being terrorists and he said his Grandfather told him that all horse thieves are Democrats but not all Democrats are horse thieves.
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The Bret Stephens piece is important; thank you for posting it. He is very critical of Cruz. I find that Rubio has a far better mastery of foreign affairs than Cruz. In principle I am more with the Cruz approach, crush threats and then get out, but in Syria and with ISIS it is more complicated than that. We will need someone who can organize and lead a wide coalition on a complicated mission. Easy answers aren't going to get us there. Leaving our Middle East policy to Putin and Russia (Trump's plan) isn't going to solve it either. So my approach is somewhere between Rubio and Cruiz and Rubio is the best one to do it. Rubio will eat Hilllary's lunch over Libya using his mastery of the facts and details about how it was done wrong. Polenty to work with there even though he favored the mission in concept. Hillary will be caught up in defending both her ideas and Obama's failed policies, always trying to make her split with them delicately without pissing off the Obama administration. She can't win without the full support of the Obama get out the vote machine. This isn't 1996.
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Doug,
"Rubio is the best one to do it. Rubio will eat Hilllary's lunch over Libya using his mastery of the facts and details about how it was done wrong."
Maybe, but most people don't care about Libya. That is not going to win him a general election IMHO.
"She can't win without the full support of the Obama get out the vote machine."
What makes you say that?
"I caught Cruz last night being interviewed by Greta Van Sustern (God! What a moron!"
I couldn't agree more. Greta's shows are totally boring. Who cares about some legal technicality of some unimportant trial etc.
Plus there is no doubt in my mind she is a flaming liberal who just keeps it toned down. She will certainly vote for her fem fatale Hillary.
Additionally I am concluding that Rubio probably is the best all around candidate with his big flaws, particularly on immigration, noted. But I can bear voting for him a GREAT DEAL more than Bush who I would have stayed home. Rubio is establishment friendly which is a big problem but it is better than losing to Hillary.
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"Maybe, but most people don't care about Libya. That is not going to win him a general election IMHO."
- Right. My point is that Cruz and others see that as a Rubio's blunder, but it is not a weakness Hillary can attack. He can point to plenty of differences. SHe went in without congressional authorization and in the end, let it burn.
"She can't win without the full support of the Obama get out the vote machine." What makes you say that?
- Romney won 59% of the white vote in 2012 and whites were 72% of the electorate - and he lost it all in the other 28%. There was something magical about the Obama turnout machine. I have argued it was illegal and corrupt, but extremely effective nonetheless. Suffice it to say, the incumbent administration and thuis the Obama machine knows where the government checks are sent. She has to set up a normal amount of separation from him and he has to accept that. But when she crosses the line about disrespecting his record or policies and pisses them off, they can leave her out to fight it on her own. They also have plenty of dirt on each other. He could have her indicted with the snap of a fingers, plenty of evidence to support it. Obviously they aren't headed that direction now but she knows not to mess with him.
I said don't underestimate her but still she is an old, fat, corrupt, white lady whose husband was a popular (impeached) President back when they were the younger generation and Fleetwood Mac, Don't stop thinkin' about tomorrow, was a hip song.
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https://www.facebook.com/tedcruzpage/videos/10153763139162464/
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https://www.facebook.com/tedcruzpage/videos/10153763139162464/
Good defense of Cruz. The questioner was more aware of the weaknesses than Welsch was. Cruz would be the right person for President if the center of America is to the right of all the other elected politicians. If not, he won't win and couldn't govern effectively if he did win I am afraid. He acted in the Senate as Welsch says, doing what he said he would do, but is running a campaign aimed only at the people already as conservative as he is.
On Rubio, he said, too slick and not deep. I disagree.
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https://www.conservativereview.com/commentary/2015/12/why-the-establishment-fears-cruz-more-than-trump
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Interesting point of trivia that is difficult for his opponents to go after. Ted Cruz has been in the Senate for 3 years and 11 months. He had just completed the first half of his first term when he announced for President.
Yet Trump says Rubio rose too fast and thinks Cruz is a Washington politician.
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Classy, Donald, real classy , , , not.
Trump: Hey, You Know Cruz Is a Canadian Ineligible for the Presidency, Right?
Donald Trump: Warm to Putin, tough on poutine.
Donald Trump said in an interview that rival Ted Cruz’s Canadian birthplace was a “very precarious” issue that could make the senator from Texas vulnerable if he became the Republican presidential nominee.
“Republicans are going to have to ask themselves the question: ‘Do we want a candidate who could be tied up in court for two years?’ That’d be a big problem,” Trump said when asked about the topic. “It’d be a very precarious one for Republicans because he’d be running and the courts may take a long time to make a decision. You don’t want to be running and have that kind of thing over your head.”
Trump added: “I’d hate to see something like that get in his way. But a lot of people are talking about it and I know that even some states are looking at it very strongly, the fact that he was born in Canada and he has had a double passport.”
Sure, Donald, sure. Ted Cruz is the Great Canadian Menace. After all those years of sitting above us, seeming so polite and hockey-obsessed, drinking their Molson’s and eating their Tim Horton’s doughnuts . . . the Canadians have been carrying out their elaborate ruse, lulling us into complacency while their sleeper agent gets into place. We’re on to their tricks! We know their bacon is just ordinary ham! Once President Cruz is in the Oval Office, they’ll take back the Washington Nationals, change Z to “Zed,” ban fourth down, blast Celine Dion from public loudspeakers, give us something to cry aboot! President Cruz will turn us into the “U.S. Eh”!
In case you’re wondering . . .
Most legal experts contend [a “natural born citizen”] means someone is a citizen from birth and doesn’t have to go through a naturalization process to become a citizen.
If that’s the definition, then Cruz is a natural born citizen by being born to an American mother and having her citizenship at birth. The Congressional Research Service, the agency tasked with providing authoritative research to all members of Congress, published a report after the 2008 election supporting the thinking that “natural born” citizenship means citizenship held “at birth.”
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Stupid but not surprising, the birther issue was Trump's main case against Obama. IIRC Obama's mom 'Stanley' (they wanted a boy) was born and raised in Kansas and perhaps never left the country. The lack of records on Barack Obama was weird but the idea he wasn't a natural born citizen was absurd. There were so many other obvious ways to attack him. The election itself served as a referendum on that issue. No judge, jury, or Supreme Court was going to overturn the 2008 election. For Cruz, the key facts are identical. His mother was born in Delaware, a US citizen. Ted Cruz was an American citizen since birth making him a 'natural born citizen' by any accepted definition. After 8 years of Obama, no court is going to rule that the next guy with the same facts is ineligible.
http://www.npr.org/sections/itsallpolitics/2015/03/23/394713013/is-ted-cruz-allowed-to-run-since-he-was-born-in-canada
What this attack says about Trump is troubling.
Real reasons to oppose Cruz: Either he is too conservative for you personally or he is too conservative to get elected nationally. Other potential weaknesses include that he lacks the directly relevant executive experience that they all lack, or that he has only 3 years Washington experience, a case Trump can't and won't make. Trump can't tell the base Cruz is too conservative, adheres too much to core conservative and founding principles. It would only help Cruz and expose his own vulnerability. Cruz has outsmarted Trump by not taking the bait and attacking back.
Cruz is burdened with high expectations in Iowa. Either he wins decisively or he took the wrong strategy. Winning in Iowa makes you as inevitable as Santorum, Bachmann, Huckabee, Pat Robertson and Tom Harkin. The Iowa caucus means having to come out and listen to speeches on behalf of all the other candidates before you vote. A very different experience attracting different people than a primary. Cruz needs to meet expectations in Iowa and exceed his expectations in NH and SC. If so then he comes into his strength in the south. If not, someone else quickly becomes the story.
(http://www.dallasnews.com/incoming/20130818-cruz_0819nat_32638724.jpg.ece/BINARY/w940/CRUZ_0819NAT_32638724.JPG)
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I haven't been commenting on posts because I am tired of going over the same old crap each time. But both of you have taken the Trump comments out of context so I must intervene. Here is what he was pointing out.
1. The Courts have never ruled on the question of what constitutes a natural born citizen and the Constitution is vague about it. In fact, courts have been loath to address this subject.
2. Grayson, the Florida Rep, has already indicated that
Speaking on Alan Colmes’ radio show last week, Democratic Rep. Alan Grayson let us in on his nefarious plan:
I’m waiting for the moment that he gets the nomination, and then I will file that beautiful lawsuit saying that he’s unqualified for the job because he’s …Call me crazy but I think the President of America should be an American,” he added.
3. There are already at least two lawsuits regarding this in the State Courts right now, Florida and either Vermont or New Hampshire. The allegation is that Cruz and Rubio are not natural born, so they cannot be on the state ballots.
4. If you read comments on the different websites, there are huge numbers of people who state that they will not vote for either because they are not eligible to run for president.
Each of you argue that the Dems will use anything possible to attack Trump if he is the nominee. Why do you not think that the Dems would use eligibility to attack either Rubio or Cruz? Of course they will..........as Grayson proves. (Who cares if he is a nutter? Who needs the distraction?)
It is better to get this out in the open and resolved now, instead of waiting for the General Election for it to come up.
BTW, from my own reading, I believe that they are eligible. But I also understand how it could be used against them if not countered now. Look at what was done with Obama.
Also, since I am at it, each of you have also stated that the polls are showing that Rubio can beat Hillary but not Trump. Yet you also challenge those same polls by saying when it comes to Trump beating the other GOP candidates, they mean nothing until the primaries have run their course.
You can't have it both ways! Provide reasons for believing that they are correct in one case, but not the other, especially when Trump is showing such a huge lead in the different states and in the national polls. (At least I do try and postulate why Rubio might be matching up better against Hillary than Trump.)
nuff said...
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No need to be so contentious with us Pat.
"I haven't been commenting on posts because I am tired of going over the same old crap each time."
No, that Trump brings it up is new.
"But both of you have taken the Trump comments out of context so I must intervene."
WE have not taken anything out of context. We have quoted sources that in your opinion do so.
", , , It is better to get this out in the open and resolved now, instead of waiting for the General Election for it to come up."
It was tried with McCain, who was born in Panama, not really a question here as far as I can tell , , ,
"BTW, from my own reading, I believe that they are eligible. But I also understand how it could be used against them if not countered now. Look at what was done with Obama."
Which was Obama's doing because of his extreme secretiveness about his past , , ,
"Also, since I am at it, each of you have also stated that the polls are showing that Rubio can beat Hillary but not Trump. Yet you also challenge those same polls by saying when it comes to Trump beating the other GOP candidates, they mean nothing until the primaries have run their course."
I'm not aware of having said that polls showing Trump in the lead in the primaries mean nothing. The closest I have come to that is when I said that ON LINE polls, which are frequently the result of one candidate's operatives spreading the word to their people to go to the URL in question and vote early and often are not worthy of serious consideration. Please don't , , , ahem , , , take things out of context.
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Isn't this the same policy right now as Rubio? Secure the border first. Address the Visa overstays, that's where 40% of the illegals come from. Implement e-verify, etc. Act first in the areas where we can find common agreement.
Cruz like most could not look straight into the camera and tell the general election public that an otherwise law abiding family with two American citizen children will be sent 'back' to where two of them have never lived before, or be faced with having our federal government break up their family.
If you act first on the other areas, secure the border etc., then these kids will be in high school or adults. Are you going to send them back later if not sooner? No.
My understanding is that since then, in competition with Trump, Cruz now says send them all back. What changed, the immigration issue or his poll standing?
Pretending this issue is simple isn't the answer.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SVCiF10SFdk
(BTW, If I'm elected, I will ask Megyn Kelly to be my press secretary.)
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First, it was odd that Cruz canceled an appearance on the Hugh Hewitt show yesterday without explanation. Rare for a presidential candidate to make that commitment and then break it. The eligibility question has hit him and it shouldn't have. (?)
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Comments from Roger I. Zakheim is a visiting fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. He was deputy staff director and general counsel for the House Armed Services Committee from 2011 to 2013.
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/429430/cruz-rubio-and-national-security
A rejoinder to Ramesh Ponnuru.
Ramesh Ponnuru claims on Bloomberg View that Marco Rubio is trying to “turn Ted Cruz into Rand Paul,” and that attempts to label Cruz as weak on national security won’t work. I disagree. Ponnuru admits that his friendship with Senator Cruz could cloud his judgment, so I’ll state at the outset that I am biased too, inasmuch as I support Senator Rubio’s candidacy. Setting aside for the moment whether this line of argument will resonate politically, there are at least three issues on which Senator Cruz clearly “stands with Rand.” Each of these raises serious questions about Senator Cruz’s true national-security views and his viability as a candidate for Commander-in-Chief.
The first instance was when Senator Cruz entered the Senate chamber to literally “stand with Rand.” Many will recall Senator Paul’s filibuster, in which he stirred up a frenzy over the possible targeting of U.S. citizens in the United States by U.S. military drones. In a bizarre attempt to suggest that a U.S. citizen sitting in a Starbucks café is at risk from the threat of U.S. Hellfire missiles, the senator from Kentucky held up Senate business until the attorney general certified that the president does not have the authority “to use a weaponized drone to kill an American not engaged in combat on American soil.” What a revelation!
Instead of focusing the Senate on the threat posed by radical jihadists, Senator Cruz chose not only to stand with Rand, but to join him in attempting to stir up libertarian passions and create a false choice between liberty and security. This may have been good politics and a great way to increase his Twitter followers (Senator Cruz, in fact, spent part of his time on the Senate floor reading tweets praising Senator Paul), but it certainly wasn’t the conduct of a credible would-be Commander-in-Chief.
A second example where Senator Cruz aligned with Senator Paul is on the defense budget. At a time when sequestration’s $1 trillion of defense cuts hung over the military — a moment when even President Obama was unwilling to impose additional cuts on the military — Senator Cruz supported Senator Paul’s budget proposal intended to “reduce the size and scope of the military complex, including its global footprint.” In its tone and many of its policy components, this certainly appeared to be an isolationist budget.
Moreover, the proposal was anything but mainstream among Republicans. Paul Ryan’s budget, for example, provided $400 billion more for defense than the Paul/Cruz budget. While Senator Cruz earlier in the year supported Senator Rubio’s budget proposal to rebuild the military (at a time when ISIS and national security were top issues in the minds of voters), it’s significant that Cruz failed to stand with the military at a pivotal moment when our leaders were trying to prevent our national security from being put at risk. Again, even if one were to set aside the charge that his record reflects an isolationist philosophy, it’s clear that Senator Cruz was not on the side of policies tailored to rebuild American strength.
The last example is Senator Cruz’s voting record on the defense-policy bill, known as the National Defense Authorization Act. Although this bill has enjoyed bipartisan support in Congress every year for over 50 years, Senator Cruz has opposed its passage each of his three years in the Senate. This is legislation that authorizes pay increases for our troops, invests in their training and equipment, and cares for their families. The Heritage Foundation called last year’s NDAA “one of the biggest defense reform bills in decades.” But Ted Cruz voted no. And he has done so amid drastic defense cuts, when our military needed Congress’s support the most. As John McCain, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, has said of Cruz’s opposition to the NDAA, “I view that as a slap in the face to the men and women who are serving.”
Senator Cruz says he has voted against the NDAA because he sees a legal ambiguity that would allow a president to indefinitely detain American citizens and deprive them of their rights (as alleged in the Rand Paul filibuster). The Wall Street Journal labeled this “paranoia” and “woefully uninformed.” Once again, Senator Cruz’s record places him adrift from the national-security arm of the party. If we are to judge candidates by their actions, it’s fair to question whether Senator Cruz is truly the hawk on national security he claims to be.
So if we are to judge candidates by their actions, it’s fair to question whether Senator Cruz is truly the hawk on national security he claims to be. In fact, neither in the Senate nor on the presidential-campaign trail has Senator Cruz put forward a serious program that would promote American strength and rebuild our military. Ramesh Ponnuru seems to believe that Cruz won’t let any daylight “come between him and conservative Republican primary voters” and that the effort to portray him as weak on national security is doomed to fail. That remains to be seen. But here’s what we do know: At the moment, no issue is more important to Republican primary voters than national security, and Marco Rubio is running his campaign on a national-security message. The latest poll out of New Hampshire suggests his message is resonating with voters.
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Regarding NBC:
http://www.constitution.org/abus/pres_elig.htm
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Regarding polling:
http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/political_commentary/commentary_by_john_stossel/bettors_know_better_than_pundits
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BD:
That looks to be a really excellent article on TC's eligibility AND it's really long :-D Would you be so kind as to give us a summary?
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BD:
That looks to be a really excellent article on TC's eligibility AND it's really long :-D Would you be so kind as to give us a summary?
What I found in a glance: "Sen. Cruz is not eligible to be president" ... but could be made so if province of Alberta were "to secede from Canada and be admitted as a state of the U.S. before the term of presidency would begin [and] for the duration of the term in office."
I am okay with that. We could trade them NY or CA.
This looks like an opinion piece written by someone opposing Pres. Obama's eligibility, although I thought constitution.org is a definitive site. I wonder what BD's personal/professional judgement of the Cruz question is...
The author(s) here make a complete distinction between citizen when born and natural born. I don't believe the constitution does.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XdK7a8EuUPc
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This is to my knowledge the first time anyone except for Trump did not back down to the leftist pulling at the heart strings shame game.
His answer could include also that hundreds of thousands go through a legal process which exists to have people apply and gain citizenship in our country.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XdK7a8EuUPc
Fcuking awesome!
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XdK7a8EuUPc
Fcuking awesome!
1. He did a great job of explaining it, something the big tough bully frontrunner has never done.
2. Is this policy position electable? (How is Pete Wilson's party doing in California?)
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XdK7a8EuUPc
Fcuking awesome!
1. He did a great job of explaining it, something the big tough bully frontrunner has never done.
2. Is this policy position electable? (How is Pete Wilson's party doing in California?)
2. How is California doing these days?
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A no-win situation.
If Cruz is the nominee, I won't have to hold my nose to vote. But I will have to hold my breath for the results.
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Apart from Mark Levin's yelling and hollering this makes sense to me:
http://www.breitbart.com/2016-presidential-race/2016/01/11/2746384/
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But wouldn't the Equal Rights Amendment include Jus Sanguinis in its purview?
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Jus sanguinis
I just looked this up. This is the right to citizenship by since one or both parents are citizens.
But the professor quoted in the article states this was not (at least in his opinion) the 'intent' of the founders.
Except through the father's side (which sort of makes sense in the 18th century when women did not have the right to vote) but not the father's side.
If his interpretation is correct than Cruz would not be a natural born citizen with regard to the original intent of the writers of the Constitution.
I don't know if the amendments specifically address this.
I haven't heard Levin's take on this interpretation. As much as I like him he does sound a bit hypocritical on this. Our side should not be blindly hypocritical.
If valid questions can be brought up about McCains or Obamas or anchor babies citizen status than the same goes for "our" guys.
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Obama is Kenyan and Muslim.
People still don't care. They've come right out and admitted it, "America needed a Black president, and if he isn't American, I don't care."
Who gives a da.m.n at this point? If he wasn't American, congress wouldn't do squat unless it served their wallets, which brings up an interesting point.
American politics are wholly unnaccountable for anything (look at Hilary, Obama, Holder....add another 100 names here), and who gets punished? Not a f ing one of them. Obama smoking weed, Bush jr doing coke.... and they're for sale, and half of the US could care less....because "they need a Black president," and "let's congratulate North Korea on getting hydro-nuclear weapons."
This country is f.ed.....but hey....you can grow your own pot.
That tree needs to be watered, and the more it does, the more I want to see Babylon fall.
No one, of any walk of life, is anything, without principles and values.
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ccp, It seems to me that a natural born citizen is a person who doesn't have to go through some process other than being born to become a citizen.
The idea that both parents need to be American is interesting but not written in the constitution nor did it become the law of the land later that I know of. The constitution is a document written in plain English for all to understand, not just Supreme Court Justices. The idea that a candidate could have an American mother and a foreign father and still be President was 'adjudicated' by the American people in 2008 and 2012. There were plenty of challenges to that and it went nowhere in the courts. The idea that an American mother cannot travel outside the US while pregnant because of risk of losing citizenship for her newborn is not the case anyone is arguing. On the flip side, the idea that these foreign travel babies with no citizenship claim other than being born here is absurd and not what the 14th amendment says or means. Where does it say that birth location divides a family?
OTOH, the master of controlling the news cycle has everyone talking about this instead of everything we should be addressing at this critical juncture. Like playing with a lead in football, sit on the ball and run the clock out.
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The idea that a candidate could have an American mother and a foreign father and still be President was 'adjudicated' by the American people in 2008 and 2012.
No it wasn't.
The last I checked, he barely eeked in and there was plenty of noise about his parents. It might be ok by you, but certainly not to a large portion of the US.
The country needs to be segregated.
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Obama as President was NOT okay by me - for reasons of his ideology.
Proposing to break up the country is another way to keep losing elections, though fun to ponder on a forum.
Our ideas are better. Why don't we try persuading people of that? Their ideas result in failure and that has never been easier to prove.
Who communicates our ideas best, to the widest audience?
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Obama as President was NOT okay by me - for reasons of his ideology.
Proposing to break up the country is another way to keep losing elections, though fun to ponder on a forum.
Our ideas are better. Why don't we try persuading people of that? Their ideas result in failure and that has never been easier to prove.
Who communicates our ideas best, to the widest audience?
I almost agree, with the exception that I'm serious about breaking the country up into zones, because.... other than fear of iminent death, there is no persuading the laziness, sense of entitlement, or hatred out of someone....at least that I've ever seen.
I'm confident that a US, led not so much by states, but by zones, liberal, conservative, and one where anything goes, is by far the best way to go.
I agree with a wide swath of what I see here, other than the fact that some think I shouldn't be armed....which I will never bow to....so....I'm liking the anything goes zone and I'll put out my own fires, and forego the speeding tickets and background checks. Others, may live as they please.
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http://harvardlawreview.org/2015/03/on-the-meaning-of-natural-born-citizen/
Here is the flavor of it-- seems pretty strong to me:
We have both had the privilege of heading the Office of the Solicitor General during different administrations. We may have different ideas about the ideal candidate in the next presidential election, but we agree on one important principle: voters should be able to choose from all constitutionally eligible candidates, free from spurious arguments that a U.S. citizen at birth is somehow not constitutionally eligible to serve as President simply because he was delivered at a hospital abroad.
The Constitution directly addresses the minimum qualifications necessary to serve as President. In addition to requiring thirty-five years of age and fourteen years of residency, the Constitution limits the presidency to “a natural born Citizen.”
1. U.S. Const. art. II, § 1, cl. 5.
All the sources routinely used to interpret the Constitution confirm that the phrase “natural born Citizen” has a specific meaning: namely, someone who was a U.S. citizen at birth with no need to go through a naturalization proceeding at some later time. And Congress has made equally clear from the time of the framing of the Constitution to the current day that, subject to certain residency requirements on the parents, someone born to a U.S. citizen parent generally becomes a U.S. citizen without regard to whether the birth takes place in Canada, the Canal Zone, or the continental United States.
2. See, e.g., 8 U.S.C. § 1401(g) (2012); Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952, Pub. L. No. 82-414, § 303, 66 Stat. 163, 236–37; Act of May 24, 1934, Pub. L. No. 73-250, 48 Stat. 797.
While some constitutional issues are truly difficult, with framing-era sources either nonexistent or contradictory, here, the relevant materials clearly indicate that a “natural born Citizen” means a citizen from birth with no need to go through naturalization proceedings. The Supreme Court has long recognized that two particularly useful sources in understanding constitutional terms are British common law
3. See Smith v. Alabama, 124 U.S. 465, 478 (1888).
and enactments of the First Congress.
4. See Wisconsin v. Pelican Ins. Co., 127 U.S. 265, 297 (1888).
Both confirm that the original meaning of the phrase “natural born Citizen” includes persons born abroad who are citizens from birth based on the citizenship of a parent.
As to the British practice, laws in force in the 1700s recognized that children born outside of the British Empire to subjects of the Crown were subjects themselves and explicitly used “natural born” to encompass such children.
5. See United States v. Wong Kim Ark, 169 U.S. 649, 655–72 (1898).
These statutes provided that children born abroad to subjects of the British Empire were “natural-born Subjects . . . to all Intents, Constructions, and Purposes whatsoever.”
6. 7 Ann., c. 5, § 3 (1708); see also British Nationality Act, 1730, 4 Geo. 2, c. 21.
The Framers, of course, would have been intimately familiar with these statutes and the way they used terms like “natural born,” since the statutes were binding law in the colonies before the Revolutionary War. They were also well documented in Blackstone’s Commentaries,
7. See 1 William Blackstone, Commentaries *354–63.
a text widely circulated and read by the Framers and routinely invoked in interpreting the Constitution.
No doubt informed by this longstanding tradition, just three years after the drafting of the Constitution, the First Congress established that children born abroad to U.S. citizens were U.S. citizens at birth, and explicitly recognized that such children were “natural born Citizens.” The Naturalization Act of 1790
8. Ch. 3, 1 Stat. 103 (repealed 1795).
provided that “the children of citizens of the United States, that may be born beyond sea, or out of the limits of the United States, shall be considered as natural born citizens: Provided, That the right of citizenship shall not descend to persons whose fathers have never been resident in the United States . . . .”
9. Id. at 104 (emphasis omitted).
The actions and understandings of the First Congress are particularly persuasive because so many of the Framers of the Constitution were also members of the First Congress. That is particularly true in this instance, as eight of the eleven members of the committee that proposed the natural born eligibility requirement to the Convention served in the First Congress and none objected to a definition of “natural born Citizen” that included persons born abroad to citizen parents.
10. See Christina S. Lohman, Presidential Eligibility: The Meaning of the Natural-Born Citizen Clause, 36 Gonz. L. Rev. 349, 371 (2000/01).
The proviso in the Naturalization Act of 1790 underscores that while the concept of “natural born Citizen” has remained constant and plainly includes someone who is a citizen from birth by descent without the need to undergo naturalization proceedings, the details of which individuals born abroad to a citizen parent qualify as citizens from birth have changed. The pre-Revolution British statutes sometimes focused on paternity such that only children of citizen fathers were granted citizenship at birth.
11. See, e.g., British Nationality Act, 1730, 4 Geo. 2, c. 21.
The Naturalization Act of 1790 expanded the class of citizens at birth to include children born abroad of citizen mothers as long as the father had at least been resident in the United States at some point. But Congress eliminated that differential treatment of citizen mothers and fathers before any of the potential candidates in the current presidential election were born. Thus, in the relevant time period, and subject to certain residency requirements, children born abroad of a citizen parent were citizens from the moment of birth, and thus are “natural born Citizens.”
The original meaning of “natural born Citizen” also comports with what we know of the Framers’ purpose in including this language in the Constitution. The phrase first appeared in the draft Constitution shortly after George Washington received a letter from John Jay, the future first Chief Justice of the United States, suggesting:
[W]hether it would not be wise & seasonable to provide a . . . strong check to the admission of Foreigners into the administration of our national Government; and to declare expressly that the Command in chief of the american [sic] army shall not be given to, nor devolve on, any but a natural born Citizen.
12. Letter from John Jay to George Washington (July 25, 1787), in 3 The Records of the Federal Convention of 1787, at 61 (Max Farrand ed., 1911).
As recounted by Justice Joseph Story in his famous Commentaries on the Constitution, the purpose of the natural born Citizen clause was thus to “cut[] off all chances for ambitious foreigners, who might otherwise be intriguing for the office; and interpose[] a barrier against those corrupt interferences of foreign governments in executive elections.”
13. 3 Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States § 1473, at 333 (1833).
The Framers did not fear such machinations from those who were U.S. citizens from birth just because of the happenstance of a foreign birthplace. Indeed, John Jay’s own children were born abroad while he served on diplomatic assignments, and it would be absurd to conclude that Jay proposed to exclude his own children, as foreigners of dubious loyalty, from presidential eligibility.
This is the post held by these two men:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solicitor_General_of_the_United_States
This is what the VP would call a "BFD".
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Question for Doug (or anyone)
What is your take on a Rubio Cruz or Cruz Rubio ticket?
Is that tenable?
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Question for Doug (or anyone)
What is your take on a Rubio Cruz or Cruz Rubio ticket?
Is that tenable?
You wouldn't know it by hearing them but they are too much alike in terms of strengths and weaknesses to pick each other.
Ben Carson might be an idea for either of them, make other demographic groups take notice. More likely they pick a woman. I think that is why Nikki Haley is being auditioned, also other moderates like Kelly Ayotte, but they need her seat in the NH Senate. Also Carly Fiorina for either one of them.
Rubio doesn't need Cruz to carry Texas or any red state assuming he consolidates the support of all these conservatives.
Rubio might have been the VP pick if one of the governors was the nominee. I think he turned Romney down. Now the Govs are down to Christy who is not a very good match with Rubio. Christy also could pick a woman.
Maybe Trump picks Cruz, otherwise any conservative nominee should appoint Cruz to the Court.
I wonder who Cruz's runningmate should be. I do not yet see Cruz as a general election candidate. Maybe pick Kasich for his experience and grounding and influence in one key state. For the most part they should be using this 17 person contest for the vetting that is already done.
Hillary allegedly picks Castro from Houston. (?) I think Bernie should pick Joe Biden. 8 years experience.
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Kasich is an interesting choice for Cruz.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_TMOtgQDGiM
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http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/14/us/politics/ted-cruz-starts-to-crack-gop-establishments-wall-of-opposition.html?ribbon-ad-idx=3&rref=politics&module=Ribbon&version=context®ion=Header&action=click&contentCollection=Politics&pgtype=article
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http://scholarship.law.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1129&context=scholar
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Second post
http://scholarship.law.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1129&context=scholar
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I cannot agree with the proposal that anyone who is a citizen for 14 years and renounces any previous sovereign citizenship or loyalty is eligible.
The conclusion that this discriminates the rights of a foreign born citizen of their rights is a big stretch.
Cited as justification is the smaller world we live in with migration being common etc.
This is exactly the reason we cannot allow someone to come here from somewhere else and after 14 years trust them to "renounce" previous allegiance and thus be able to be President.
I am not clear. Examples given include citizens who live abroad and have a baby. Levin keeps citing this with the further extreme of the citizen being military personnel, Well what if that person goes to another country and becomes a citizen of that country? Well if they can keep dual citizenship that may be ok. But what if he/she doesn't?
From the opposite point of view what if a citizen from another country is here on business, or pleasure and happens to give birth here. Is that not ridiculous that that person's baby is automatically a citizen?
The logic can be applied to someone here illegally. There child can become President. Is that not absurd?
Perhaps the citizenship issue should be better decided upon. However we know full well the leftist justices will support interpretations along party lines.
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http://theresurgent.com/ted-cruz-wins-prominent-new-york-city-straw-poll-after-insulting-new-york-values/
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second post
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/jan/19/gov-cuomo-pro-life-conservatives-have-no-place-new/
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https://www.facebook.com/tedcruzpage/videos/10153827788602464/
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Fourth post
Carville on Cruz
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZQA4ww_AnQw
Cruz vs. Van Jones
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b74WUvZHo8s
Cruz to Trayvon's mother:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQAr47xF21k
Cruz on Israel:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OgU4PIErJ4M
Cruz begins at 2:40
Cruz on Jay Leno in 2013-- Ted engaging with mass culture
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EDTD86kssY8
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Crafty,
Very impressive indeed.
Some of the videos are over 2 yrs old though.
The Carville one is amazing but I don't trust Carville's motives.
Cruz is the one for me. Trump probably second and Rubio third for me.
I am definitely one of the Jews for Cruz! :-)
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I deliberately chose some older ones so we could get more of a feel for him before he began running for the presidency.
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Is the establishment fix in for Trump now?
Mark Levin rightly questions the sudden coordinated attacks on Cruz by fellow Republicans including many time loser Dole and a warming to Trump. Did Trump make a deal with the establishment?
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I like Cruz but I don't think his appeal is large enough to win. His rival Trump puts it in stronger terms than that.
One hit against him is that of the other 99 Senators and the other 53 Republican Senators, none of his colleagues have endorsed him. Further, none of the 32 Republican Governors have endorsed Cruz at this point.
Confucious say (okay, Doug says): A leader without followers is not a leader.
(Meanwhile Rubio has endorsements from Darrel Issa, Trey Gowdy, Kristi Noem, Mia Love, Cory Gardner, Mike Pompeo and Iowa Senator Joni Ernst.
http://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2016-endorsement-primary/#endorsements
Correction. Joni Ernst appearing with Rubio today, not endorsing. http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/joni-ernst-to-campaign-with-marco-rubio-on-monday/article/2581323
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I like Cruz but I don't think his appeal is large enough to win. His rival Trump puts it in stronger terms than that.
One hit against him is that of the other 99 Senators and the other 53 Republican Senators, none of his colleagues have endorsed him. Further, none of the 32 Republican Governors have endorsed Cruz at this point.
Confucious say (okay, Doug says): A leader without followers is not a leader.
(Meanwhile Rubio has endorsements from Darrel Issa, Trey Gowdy, Kristi Noem, Mia Love, Cory Gardner, Mike Pompeo and Iowa Senator Joni Ernst.
http://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2016-endorsement-primary/#endorsements
Someone who isn't part of the DC machine? That's an endorsement to me.
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IMHO a fundamental cause at the root of several of our biggest and seemingly most intractable problems is that the House of Reps has lost its will to use the power of the purse.
Who has proven himself to be the exception on this and willing to stand alone if need be?
Sen. Ted Cruz
(Sen. Mike Lee, Sen. Rand Paul too)
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Ted Cruz Likes Being Hated
The Texas senator is running against Republicans as much as Democrats, and he claims Reagan was more loathed in 1980 than he is now.
By Joseph Rago
Jan. 22, 2016 5:41 p.m. ET
920 COMMENTS
Exeter, N.H.
Ted Cruz isn’t running against Marco Rubio or Donald J. Trump or even Hillary Clinton, not really. His real opponent is the Republican establishment, or the permanent syndicate of politicians, lobbyists, donors, business interests and insiders that he calls “the Washington cartel.” Such a thing must exist, because everybody says it does—though this week how much power the establishment possesses became the dominant ontological question of the primaries in both parties.
Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton traded epithets about who qualified for membership. (They’re both right.) Meanwhile, the Republican establishmentarians can’t protect a speaker of the House or prevent the two candidates they abhor the most from surging to the top of the GOP field.
The freshman Texas senator, to adapt FDR’s response to charges of being a class turncoat, welcomes their hatred—if that word is sufficiently forceful, which it isn’t. “You know, when we launched this campaign, the New York Times promptly opined, ‘Cruz cannot win, because the Washington elites despise him.’ I kinda thought that was the whole point of the campaign,” Mr. Cruz tells the audience in well-heeled Exeter, some of whom look like Times readers.
He’s finishing the last leg of the weeklong “Cruzin’ to Victory” bus tour that has taken him around New Hampshire, including north of the White Mountains. Watching Mr. Cruz in a forum where he is trying to be liked rather than detested can be disorienting. He usually begins by explaining what he intends to do on his first day in office and “in the days that follow,” and his talks are brightened by geniality, personability and corny humor that are rarely in evidence in the Senate cloak room.
“Look, would it kill Republicans to crack a joke? Actually, some of them I think it might,” he says. “You know, have a little fun, for Pete’s sake.”
“In the days that follow,” Mr. Cruz continues, “we’ll take on the EPA and the CFPB and the alphabet soup of federal agencies that have descended like locusts on small businesses, killing jobs all across this country. You know, a few years back I was in West Texas. And I asked folks out there, I said, ‘What’s the difference between regulators and locusts?’ Said, well, ‘The thing is, you can’t use pesticides on regulators.’ This old West Texas farmer leaned back, said, ‘Wanna bet?’ ” He affects an adenoidal twang.
The joke gets a laugh, and it is funny, sort of, as long as the listener shares the underlying political assumptions. Also, as long as the listener is hearing it for the first time.
Mr. Cruz rolled out the same wisecrack—word for word, beat for beat, gesture for gesture—the night before at a barn rally in Rye, as he would later that evening at a town hall in Hollis, and the next day at a pizza parlor in Manchester.
“Scripture tells us, there’s nothing new under the sun” Mr. Cruz likes to say, which also applies to his campaign style. Stump speeches aren’t meant for binge eating, and all politicians have their set pieces that each crowd of voters is hearing fresh. What’s remarkable about Mr. Cruz’s discipline is that he repeats the same sentences and fully formed paragraphs.
Check the tapes, and he promises to “finally, finally, finally” secure the borders—three finallys every time. He’ll “abolish” the Internal Revenue Service, “rip to shreds this catastrophic Iranian nuclear deal,” repeal “every word” of ObamaCare, adopt a “simple flat tax,” halt President Obama’s “illegal executive amnesty.” The overall effect of a Cruz event is of a slick but well-rehearsed and workmanlike broadcaster, Jay Leno maybe.
***
Mr. Cruz’s campaign declined an interview request, citing his congested schedule, and no doubt it was. Still, full disclosure, the senator seems to view the Journal editorial page as the house organ for the establishment. “Of all the friendly media outlets for GOP leadership, none is more potent,” Mr. Cruz writes in the first chapter—titled “Mendacity”—of his 2015 memoir, which recounts “the weapons used against me—mischaracterizations of my motivations, attacks in the press, efforts at ostracism.”
As Mr. Cruz emphatically puts it in Rye, Exeter, Hollis and Manchester: “If you think Washington is fundamentally broken, that there is a bipartisan corruption of career politicians in both parties that get in bed with the lobbyists and special interests and grow and grow and grow government, and we need to take power out of Washington, and back to ‘We the People,’ that is what this campaign is all about.”
Mr. Cruz’s project for 2016 is predicated on a severe claim about the condition of American democracy. Captured by the Washington cartel, the Republican Party is not merely feckless, but, worse, corrupt, and it has become detached from the public to which it is supposed to be accountable.
“Our representatives aren’t representing us. They’re representing large corporations and lobbyists rather than the American people,” Mr. Cruz declared at the Heritage Foundation last June. The “Republican leadership,” he said in a Senate floor speech in September, “will not fight for a single priority we promised the voters we would fight for when we were campaigning less than a year ago.”
He didn’t get the opportunity to finish the thought. When Mr. Cruz’s allotted time expired, not a single colleague supported the procedural motion to extend the hour as a courtesy. “Both the Democratic and Republican leadership are objecting to the American people speaking further,” he concluded.
Mr. Cruz’s critics on Capitol Hill believe he converts differences over strategy into crucibles of purity and principles, and then goes on to assail his opponents as dishonest, illegitimate or motivated by bad faith. Thus he says GOP leaders opposed the 2013 ObamaCare shutdown because they were closet supporters of the entitlement, not because they thought the tactic was futile and would mislead voters about what was politically possible.
In a word, they think he is a supremely self-absorbed show pony. Perhaps relevant: The Ted Cruz 2016 pocket Constitution that his volunteers distribute features a Ted Cruz introduction and a Ted Cruz chrestomathy before the document’s text.
Whatever Mr. Cruz’s motives, his Senate capers seem to be an asset. “In this Republican primary, every Republican says they will take on Washington,” he observes. “Have you noticed that, by the way, in Republican primary, everyone says they’re a conservative? You know, on that debate stage you don’t have a single person stand up there and say, ‘I’m a squishy establishment moderate. I stand for nothing.’ They don’t say that.” (Except for John Kasich.)
“Well, the natural follow-up question is, ‘OK, when have you stood up to Washington?’ Who has taken on Washington, not just Democrats but leaders in our own party?” Mr. Cruz continues. “Because if we’re going to stop the cronyism, the corporate welfare, you’ve got to be willing to stand up to the lobbyists, and stand up to the Washington cartel. And I would suggest, in that regard, my record is materially different from anyone else on that stage.”
One irony is that notwithstanding his reputation, Mr. Cruz tends to nurture a careful strategic indefiniteness about his positions. Last April he published an op-ed in this newspaper with now-Speaker Paul Ryan endorsing fast-track trade legislation, only to turn against the bill for procedural reasons—and after Mr. Trump did. He led the opposition to Mr. Obama’s drone program and Syrian bombing plan three years ago; now he says he’ll make the sand glow to defeat Islamic State.
Mr. Cruz has also executed subtle shifts on immigration and the best approach to oppose gun control, while maintaining, with a lawyer’s exactitude, that he was consistent all along. Like most politicians, he has a talent for reinvention: He’s a purist, in other words, who doesn’t always think, talk or behave like a purist.
Mr. Cruz is fond of drawing historical analogies and offering “a bit of history the media will never tell you,” often having to do with Ronald Reagan. But he can be a revisionist historian.
“Republican leadership loathed Ronald Reagan,” Mr. Cruz explained in Hollis. “They hated him with the heat of a thousand white-hot suns. You think they dislike me. It wasn’t nothin’ compared to how they felt about Ronald Reagan. Now: ’77, ’78, ’79, Reagan didn’t fly out to D.C. and sit down with the old bulls and say, ‘Come on guys, we got to stand for something.’ He knew that was hopeless. They weren’t listening. . . . Instead, he built a grass-roots movement. That tidal wave came in and it changed Washington.”
Well, that was true before the 1976 GOP convention, when Reagan attempted to unhorse a sitting president from his own party. But the well-liked two-term California governor was the odds-on favorite before the 1980 primary. As a concession to the party’s establishment, the Gipper even put a Bush on the ticket.
***
Mr. Cruz’s most spectacular volte-face is on Donald Trump. For months he slipstreamed behind the billionaire, praising his “brash” frankness and validating his supposed conservative bona fides. Once Mr. Trump started to attack Mr. Cruz as he crept up in Iowa, the senator became Dr. Moreau.
“The Washington establishment is rushing over to support Donald Trump,” Mr. Cruz told reporters in Hollis, lambasting the businessman as the “deal-maker” he says he is. “The Washington establishment knows who’s going to keep the gravy train going, who’s going to keep cutting the deals and growing government. . . . He’ll go and cut a deal with Chuck Schumer and Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi, and those deals—he’ll do exactly what John Boehner and Mitch McConnell have done.”
Mr. Cruz is convinced he can defeat this establishment, whatever it is, not least because of his abiding faith in the power of democratic indignation—just as “millions of men and women rose up and became the Reagan revolution,” as he put it in Exeter. “If we stand together, if we stand as one, if we defend freedom, if we defend the Constitution, if we defend the Judeo-Christian values on which this country was built, if we stand as one, as ‘We the People,’ then we will bring back, we will restore, that last best hope for mankind, that shining city on a hill, that is the United States of America.”
A supporter asked him how he thought he could win the election. “We don’t do what the Washington consultants tell us every time,” Mr. Cruz replied. “They always say the way you win is you run to the middle, you run to the mushy middle, you blur the distinctions, you run as Democrat-lite. And every time we do that, we lose. . . .
“What’s abundantly clear is that if we nominate another candidate in the mold of a Bob Dole or a John McCain or a Mitt Romney—all of whom are good, honorable, decent men, they love their country—but what they did didn’t work. We got to do something different. I think the way we win—I think 2016 is like 1980. I think we win by following Reagan’s admonition to paint in bold colors, not pale pastels.”
One question is how well Mr. Cruz’s polarizing methods will wear in the pastel regions of the U.S. that will decide the election. Even in New Hampshire, the second most secular state, he asks the audience to pray for the country every day, appealing to 2 Chronicles 7:14: “If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear their prayers, and forgive their sins, and I will heal their land.”
Another question, for students of history, is whether the modern GOP cartel really has cornered the political market. The establishment Republicans of the Reagan era weren’t moderates but through-and-through liberals, like Nelson Rockefeller and Lowell Weicker. Today they’d be Democrats.
The old order in politics is always dissolving, to be replaced by a new order that will grow old itself and dissolve in time. Mr. Cruz’s campaign may not be exposing the dissolution of the establishment so much as its nonexistence. That’s democracy.
Mr. Rago is a member of the Journal’s editorial board.
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IMHO a fundamental cause at the root of several of our biggest and seemingly most intractable problems is that the House of Reps has lost its will to use the power of the purse.
Who has proven himself to be the exception on this and willing to stand alone if need be?
Sen. Ted Cruz
(Sen. Mike Lee, Sen. Rand Paul too)
Cruz has Nathan Hale like bravery, but not Ronald Reagan like leadership qualities, IMHO. Standing alone might be admirable but is NOT the goal.
They can put that on my tombstone; here Doug stood alone. He found a few like like minded people on the internet, but mostly he stood alone while the world went to hell. But a President can make a difference and a conservative Republican one has a very difficult, uphill and challenging task to do everyday and the central focus of the work is to change hearts and minds, not just energize the people who already agree with you.
Taking a last stand against the liberal budget delays just slightly the force of the tide of leftism. Cruz's efforts weren't organized or strategic. I'm not blaming him, just pointing it out. I'm looking for who can change the tide, who will bring the most people with him, have a lasting effect and make it harder for the country to relapse into leftism when the term is done. And what ticket could lead in the right direction for 16 years, not 4, or zero like failed nominee or a single term President. Who can win the Presidency and bring the House and Senate with them at the same time and keep it, not who is a bold, brave maverick. Trump by his own admission is irrelevant to Congressional elections. He can deal equally well with the mafia or a helpless widow. A Cruz candidacy, if seen as far right and he is one of the 3 farthest right Senators, would likely lose the Senate even if he won the Presidency. People in the middle vote for split tickets when they aren't fully on board with the agenda. Note how Obama brought Republicans to power in Congress. Who can inspire the most people to support change to principles of the American Creed, not just harness the energy of those already pissed off or win off the personal weakness of the opponent?
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"...[Cruz] claims Reagan was more loathed in 1980 than he is now."
Reagan was a two term Governor of California and a two decade leader of the entire conservative movement in 1980, and th second place finisher of the previous cycle, losing only by a whisker to the incumbent President in his own party. He also carried California three more times in 1980, 1984, and with his coattails in 1988. That compares how with Cruz standing alone or losing key votes 97-3. I'm sick of hearing Trump, Cruz (and Obama) comparing themselves to Reagan. A different candidate reminds ME of Reagan but he is no Reagan either. They should run the best way they know how and WE will tell them who compares best with Reagan.
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http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2016/01/the_case_for_ted_cruz.html#ixzz3yHfpvTJF
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Beck appears somewhere 00:25:00, Ignore what comes before that
http://www.glennbeck.com/2016/01/23/glenn-beck-makes-first-ever-presidential-endorsement-for-ted-cruz/
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What Ted Cruz Values
The Texan is repelling millions who believe in an America of the future, not the past.
By Bret Stephens
Jan. 25, 2016 7:22 p.m. ET
546 COMMENTS
Rancho Mirage, Calif.
It’s 70 degrees in this desert oasis, where I’m attending a writers’ festival, and I’m looking up at a vista of snowcapped peaks, cerulean skies and pink clouds that looks like a Bob Ross painting, only happier. But there’s only so much California positivity a man can handle, especially when he doesn’t play golf. That snowbound den of depravity known as Manhattan is calling me home.
With apologies to Billy Joel, I’m in a New York values state of mind.
Maybe I’d be a better person if I got away from the coasts more often, or visited a gun range. Maybe my conservative principles would be less attenuated if I weren’t surrounded, as Ted Cruz put it the other day, by people who “are socially liberal or pro-abortion or pro-gay marriage,” and “focus around money and the media.” Maybe I should start listening to country music, the way Mr. Cruz did after he decided, in good Soviet fashion, that his musical taste ought to be dictated by political considerations.
Republican presidential hopeful Sen. Ted Cruz at a campaign stop Jan. 19 in Freedom, N.H. ENLARGE
Republican presidential hopeful Sen. Ted Cruz at a campaign stop Jan. 19 in Freedom, N.H. Photo: John Minchillo/Associated Press
And maybe I wouldn’t be quite so nauseated by the junior senator from Texas if the cynicism with which he mounted his attack last week on “New York values” weren’t so wholly matched by the sinister taint of an ambitious sophist who takes his audience for fools. Ted Cruz is the guy who made Donald Trump look tolerant and statesmanlike. That’s saying something.
Already it has been widely mentioned that Mr. Cruz’s wife, Heidi, is a senior executive with Goldman Sachs, which isn’t exactly an Iowa values kind of institution, and that Mr. Cruz’s 2012 run for Senate was financed with the help of $1 million in low-interest loans from Goldman. Also noted is that Mr. Cruz owes his political career to the backing of billionaire Peter Thiel, who is libertarian, gay, and perhaps wondering what he was thinking.
And it goes without saying that most of us would prefer the values of the lowliest New York Fire Department cadet over the cleverest Harvard Law graduate any day we need to get out of trouble that isn’t of our own making.
Opinion Journal Video
Editorial Board Member Joe Rago with a look at the Texas Senator's campaign strategy. Photo credit: Getty Images.
But the deeper problem with Mr. Cruz’s assault on the Big Apple isn’t his personal hypocrisy, or his two-bit stereotypes, or in biting the hands that fed him. That’s what we expect of politicians; the priced-in rate of running for high office. It’s the full-frontal assault on millions of GOP voters who, on one issue or another, share some of those dreaded New York values. The senator is trying to do to socially moderate Republicans what Democrats did to their own social conservatives when they barred pro-life Pennsylvania Gov. Bob Casey from speaking at the 1992 Democratic Convention. Yes, kids, there used to be Democrats who didn’t march in lockstep with Emily’s List.
There also used to be a theory of politics that, in two-party systems, it was in both parties’ interests to pitch the broadest possible tent; to have, as the great Si Kenen once put it, “no enemies, only friends and potential friends.”
But that’s not Mr. Cruz’s theory. He believes in the utility of enemies—the media; Washington; his fellow Republican senators; other squishes—because they’re such easy foils and because he’s convinced that polarization works and persecution complexes sell. Who cares about Republican voters in New York (or California, or Massachusetts, or Illinois) when not one of their votes will count in the Electoral College? Why waste time and energy courting the center-right when doing so will earn you the permanent enmity of the permanently angry?
The answer to that one lies in Cuyahoga and Pinellas and Loudoun counties—those purple lands in Ohio, Florida and Virginia where swing voters still decide elections in this country. Mr. Cruz needs to answer how he plans to win 50.1% in those states, not 70% of the Bible Belt. Such an answer is available to a Republican nominee, but only one who doesn’t demean other people’s values even when he doesn’t share them. Mr. Cruz needs to study old Ronald Reagan clips to understand the difference between having strong beliefs and being an insufferable jerk about them.
In the meantime, let’s put in a word for those New Yorkers and their values: the immigrant strivers; the capitalist-philanthropists; the skyscraper builders; the professional classes of lawyers and publishers and doctors and money-managers and (even) journalists; the cops; the opera lovers; the headline writers at the New York Post; the people who believe their true identity lies in the near future not the ancestral past. This is the America of aspiration and competition, of honest self-reinvention, of getting along in crowded places, of letting the smaller differences slide.
Mr. Cruz has the personal biography to have made New York’s story his own. He made other choices. I know plenty of New Yorkers won’t be shy about telling him what he ought to do with himself, and the rest of the Republican Party should take their views—and maybe even their values—to heart.
Write bstephens@wsj.com
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Cruz made a big mistake with his comment about NY values. OTOH as Levin pointed out we know what he meant with regards to NY being a Democrat stronghold (Boomer is not a Republican, nor was Pataki, though Gulliani seems to be somewhat of an exception) and part of the DC establishment.
That said it was a tactical error. Yet the author of this piece from the WSJ was certainly never a fan of Cruz so we know where he is coming from too. The WSJ is part of the establishment.
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Cruz made a big mistake with his comment about NY values. OTOH as Levin pointed out we know what he meant with regards to NY being a Democrat stronghold (Boomer is not a Republican, nor was Pataki, though Gulliani seems to be somewhat of an exception) and part of the DC establishment.
That said it was a tactical error. Yet the author of this piece from the WSJ was certainly never a fan of Cruz so we know where he is coming from too. The WSJ is part of the establishment.
Bret Stephens is a very thoughtful, anti-Obama, foreign policy oriented conservative and always a worthwhile read IMO. Don't let the Pulitzer Prize make you think he is establishment.
I don't think Ted Cruz thought he made a mistake saying NY values, nor when he continues to lump Rubio in with Schumer. It's an intentional dig that plays with the base without regard to how it plays further.
From the piece: "...those purple lands in Ohio, Florida and Virginia where swing voters still decide elections in this country. Mr. Cruz needs to answer how he plans to win 50.1% in those states, not 70% of the Bible Belt."
Far more eloquent, but that is what I have been saying about Cruz. Like Trump, he is trying to win a strong plurality in a divided field but he is not even talking to the other voters needed to be President.
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Agreed, Rubio is the far better choice in this regard. Cruz's theory essentially is that moderation (Dole, McCain, Romney) fails to bring out the base and that he can win by so doing.
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https://stream.org/cruz-dares-take-king-corn/
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https://stream.org/cruz-dares-take-king-corn/
Integrity.
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Integrity.
I agree in the context of the Iowa caucuses. More impressive if his position was in conflict with the special interests of Houston and Texas than Iowa.
The important thing is to articulate how this needs to be not ended alone, punishing Iowa, but ended in the context of ending all these boondoggles for all special interests in all states, to be persuasive on that and to get it done.
The government is the referee of the level playing field of production in America, not an investor, supplier, competitor, contributor or board member.
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Agreed, Rubio is the far better choice in this regard. Cruz's theory essentially is that moderation (Dole, McCain, Romney) fails to bring out the base and that he can win by so doing.
True that this is Cruz's strategy if in fact he has one for the general election. In truth, you need both strategies. You must turn out the base AND win the middle.
One take from Romney 2012 is that he lost by 5 million votes while 6 million white voters stayed home. But whites split 60/40 for Romney, not 90/10, and Romney especially wasn't strong with the ones who stayed home. Cruz has turned other factions of the party against him opening the door for other problems, a centrist third party challenge for example.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2016/01/28/cruz_trump_and_the_missing_white_voters_129465.html
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http://www.mrconservative.com/2016/01/68912-ted-cruzs-secret-history-was-just-leaked-this-changes-everything/
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http://www.mrconservative.com/2016/01/68912-ted-cruzs-secret-history-was-just-leaked-this-changes-everything/
I really hope Cruz makes it.
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Frankie's recommendation does a nice job of fleshing him out as a man. I too liked it, but a tough night for Ted last night. The "likability" factor has always been a weak link for him and he did not do himself any favors last night. Even Chris Wallace smacked him back a couple of times.
A question to him included Rubio's attack about the three defense appropriation bills against which Cruz voted and he ran out of time (deliberately I suspect) addressing other aspects of the question first. Rubio was able to get in the additional point that the only defense spending bill that Cruz has voted for was Rand Paul's bill of big cuts. I suspect Rubio will continue to make hay with this.
I thought Cruz's discussion of ethanol was nothing less than masterful. Though likely to go over the head of the national audience, the Iowa audience, which is intensely interested in this and extremely well informed about it, I think will appreciate the nuance and how deftly he answered accusations of having flip flopped.
For those who can follow legalistic parliamentary nuance closely, I think Cruz did answer the question about having flip flopped on legalization (and Megyn Kelly acknowledged this to Ted in a quickie post debate interview) Ultimately, for those inclined to support Cruz his invocation of Sen. Sessions will suffice as far as this point goes, but I suspect many people are going to sum it up as described by Chris Christie.
Great opening statement by Ted. Humorous, likable, alpha mode in setting the tone.
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https://www.tedcruz.org/tax_plan/
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https://www.tedcruz.org/tax_plan/
I tried to make my argument against this previously over here:
http://dogbrothers.com/phpBB2/index.php?topic=2419.msg93351#msg93351
1) Question: What is happening or has happened recently in American politics that makes Cruz (and Crafty and ccp) think that America is suddenly poised to go from the current, all-out attack on income and wealth to eliminating the income tax altogether or in Cruz' case lowering the rate to a flat tax of 10% next year. With Trump leading the Republicans and 90% tax rate advocate Bernie leading Trump by double digits, we about to cut by 3/4 (75%) the tax burden of the rich. Sorry, I don't believe that.
2) The Cruz, Subtraction Method, Tax Inclusive, Business Transfer Tax is a VAT (Value Added Tax). http://taxfoundation.org/blog/ted-cruz-s-business-flat-tax-primer His denial of that label is to avoid, not take on the debate. A consumption tax or VAT would be GREAT if it was instead of an income / production tax. A 16% VAT would be acceptable if it was capped at 16%. A 10% income tax along with a small VAT would be great if it were constitutionally capped at 10%. Capping it isn't possible and isn't even proposed. What no one will explain to me is how they think that conservatives starting a new layer of taxation in America will turn out to be a good thing in the long run after liberals raise it all up. They will and it isn't.
3) The inclusive Business Transfer Tax is on ALL transactions, ALL revenues, not just on profits like an income tax. The 16% rate doesn't work if you exclude ANYTHING. Write in exceptions and raise the rate accordingly. So in addition to labor, we are going to put a 16% new tax on the price of new homes, used homes, new cars - right after we bailed out the car companies, etc. Are you people kidding? If you were starting from scratch, fine, but what you have here is massive disruption without any plan for a transition. "Wouldn't it be great if..." isn't a plan. Yes, the collapse of auto companies takes down entire related industries, entire cities, towns, regions, even states. Yes, the housing industry can collapse the economy, it already did. You can't shut down construction and the trades without hurting employment in the short AND MEDIUM run, and if the system collapses and we change course midstream, there is no success in the long run either. If the government bears the cost of displaced workers, you aren't going to cut spending either.
4) Even with dynamic scoring, the Cruz plan comes up short on revenues.
5) Someone please explain to me how and why they believe a future Dem President and a future Dem Congress won't keep the Cruz VAT, raise it up to European levels AND restore business and personal income tax rates back to at least where they were before. If you believe they never again control and will not do that, I have a block of North Minneapolis I would like to sell you - poised for a major comeback.
Respectfully, Doug
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'Frontrunner' Ted Cruz is a natural born citizen. Who knew?
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/ruling-ted-cruz-is-a-natural-born-citizen/article/2582259
"The Candidate is a natural born citizen by virtue of being born in Canada to his mother who was a U.S. citizen at the time of his birth," the board said, explaining Cruz met the criteria because he "did not have to take any steps or go through a naturalization process at some point after birth."
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This should go in the Trump thread, not one of his better moments.
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on apparent false information given to voters that Be Carson was dropping out *before* the caucus. How did this happen?
Sarah Palin
Dirty Politics: Witnessing Firsthand It's Always Heartbreaking, Never Surprising
Thank heavens Donald Trump opened so many eyes to the lies, corruption and total lack of accountability that come so naturally to the permanent political class. And Sen. Ted Cruz was spot on when he once noted that "millions of Americans are asking for accountability and truth." Which is why it's so curious - and saddens us - this lack of accountability with the lies of Cruz's own campaign.
Cruz's campaign chairman, U.S. Representative Steve King, is lying, and good for Dr. Ben Carson for calling this out. King, who's previously asked for and received my endorsement, time and resources to support his own election, is still lying about my altruistic support of Mr. Trump, and he's refused to provide any evidence to the contrary. And, this U.S. Congressman actually lied to his own constituents on behalf of Cruz, regarding a good man, Dr. Carson. He told voters Carson was dropping out of the Presidential race immediately before the Iowa caucus, causing a relative uproar inside the process, so the word would spread and he could rack up more votes for his candidate, Cruz. That's a dirty trick. Dr. Carson deserved better. The voters deserved better!
Where is the accountability for these political actions? Very sad; typical Washington tactics. THIS is why "the status quo has got to go."
Our friend Dr. Carson put it so well:
"As Christians, of course we accept people’s apologies, we also have to ask ourselves is this acceptable to us, the American people, or should there be some accountability? There should be some consequences for things. You don’t just say ‘oh, okay, sorry… okay let’s move on.’ The damage was done to me, it wasn’t done to them.”
We've had eight years of a reckless President, accountable to no one, pushing this country to the brink. Why would we ever take a risk repeating that? We are never going to turn this country around if we keep electing "more of the same." Just like conservatives have been preaching in opposition to Obama's political tactics for years: actions speak louder than words.
The Cruz Campaign's actions to destroy a good man's efforts to serve are no different than Obama's practice of not holding anyone accountable. Typical politics. Typical politicians.
Here's background:
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Doug,
I am not sure I follow you with regards to Cruz tax plan that a VAT is ok with constitutional caps and what is to stop a Dem pres and congress from simply reversing this?
A dem pres and congress can reverse any thing.
So what makes anything Rubio can do NOT subject to the same reversal?
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Doug, I am not sure I follow you with regards to Cruz tax plan that a VAT is ok with constitutional caps and what is to stop a Dem pres and congress from simply reversing this? A dem pres and congress can reverse any thing.
My point about const'l caps won't happen, just a hypothetical solution. Think 38 states when new amendments are discussed. Neither side has that kind of control. If we did, we wouldn't have this problem or need the limits.
I am too wordy but a VAT is a big government, socialist tool. Crazy for a conservative R to hand this seeliberal Dems, I very strongly believe.
If we were starting from scratch and if it would never be raised and the other taxes would never come back, the Cruz plan is a great one. We aren't, it will, they will and it isn't.
Yes they will of course work to undo whatever Rubio can accomplish, but don't give them more weapons to turn against us.
Lower the rates to 25% instead of 35 if you want but you still have to get through the Tim Russerts of today. If you can't demonstrate that it doesn't blow up the deficit, cut Granny off the meds and starve the poor while giving tax cuts to the rich, then you let them paint Hillary or Bernie as the responsible one.
So maybe Rubio's thinking is this has to be done incrementally this time. Simplify, deregulate lower some rates and see some growth come back, then go for larger reform.
Cruz thinking as I see it is to pull a Herman Cain. Go big and bold for the conservative primaries with something that will never pass and won't work if it did.
In addition to killing the housing market, (16% federal tax on rent?), we are going to add a 16% tax on healthcare, medical devices, drugs? I don't think so. A large part of those are paid by Govt so put a tax on a tax? A 16% tax on defense spending? Start making subtractions and the rate goes up. A 24% VAT, 30%?
My two cents. Crafty likes the Cruz proposal but I don't see how he answers these objections.
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Well, I'm off shortly for six hours of working with one of America's heroes so not much time, but basically any tax can be changed or increased. Cruz's proposal was designed by Art Laffer, someone whom I respect, particularly when it comes to tax issues! I have heard/read Art explain it, and Ted explain it and what I heard made good sense to me.
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Well, I'm off shortly for six hours of working with one of America's heroes so not much time, but basically any tax can be changed or increased. Cruz's proposal was designed by Art Laffer, someone whom I respect, particularly when it comes to tax issues! I have heard/read Art explain it, and Ted explain it and what I heard made good sense to me.
No doubt Art Laffer is among the best ever on the topic. [Although not necessarily an expert on playing game theory with Chuck Schumer, the msm and the left.] The Cruz plan was also written by Stephen Moore who defends it here today:
http://www.investors.com/politics/viewpoint/stephen-moore-which-candidate-has-the-fairest-tax-plan-of-all/
Neither of them address my concerns and Moore introduces an additional concern:
"Imports are taxed at the flat rate when they are brought into the U.S. ..."
A 16% tariff that no one in the world will retaliate against. Seriously?
I fully agree in principle that income tax rates need to be lower and splitting the public sector burden between production and consumption would be ideal in a perfect world. Politically, I find the whole thing naive, that we will either drop income tax rates on the rich to 10% next year or that if we did they wouldn't just go right back up in the aftermath to where they started or worse leaving us with one more level of taxation brought to you by conservative Republicans. 40% of Republicans think the rich pay too little tax now (one poll says). What percentage of the 2016 general electorate think the income tax burden on 'the rich' should be cut by 3/4 in the face of $20 trillion of debt?
Frustrating me further is that Marco Rubio's plan to not tax capital gains at all is also politically unrealistic and his top rate is too high to get excited about it as a major reform.
Worst of all is that these two plans that will never become law would both be wonderful for me personally with my life savings tied up in assets that can't be sold because of punitive taxation.
Next step politically would be to decouple these plans from these politicians. Whoever wins gets to pick and choose the best elements from all the plans and take into account a) the political implications and the fact that it has to go through the House and Senate, b) the transition, and c) the aftermath.
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I am sorry to have to point out Stephen Moore being disingenuous (from the link above):
"Rubio and his allies are charging that the flat tax that imposes a low tax rate on the broadest possible business tax base, which includes wages and salaries and benefits, will quickly rise from the teens to the twenties or even 30%.
What is ironic about these attacks is that the rates Rubio imagines would still be lower than his own plan’s income tax rate of 35%.
It’s hard to imagine that the two most relentless anti-big-government crusaders in Congress, Rand Paul and Ted Cruz, have a secret tax plan to supersize the government."
1) The Rubio point is that the income tax rate will most certainly rise back up AND they have introduced a new layer of taxation that will stay forever and go up.
2) It is NOT Cruz who will raise it; it is the liberals who will follow.
3) Rubio's rate is 0%, not 35% on the majority of investment income, so Moore is falsely comparing two different things that will never happen.
The ball IMO goes back into Paul Ryan's court. We need a tax plan that the entire party and movement can get behind and win with, not unrealistic ideas over which we can snip at each other.
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Doug,
My sense is the only way to lower rates is to get rid of loopholes.
When i see rich with living on large estates paying less property tax than myself because of BS farm deductions for having a few corn stalks or a bee keeper than we got to get rid of deductions.
That in my view is the only way to get a few of the 49% who pay nothing to grudgingly go along.
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Doug,
My sense is the only way to lower rates is to get rid of loopholes.
When i see rich with living on large estates paying less property tax than myself because of BS farm deductions for having a few corn stalks or a bee keeper than we got to get rid of deductions.
That in my view is the only way to get a few of the 49% who pay nothing to grudgingly go along.
Agree. And vice versa. If you want people with choices to maximize their productive power, pay on every dollar and not quit or hide, the rates have to be lower.
And your other point is paramount, how do you get the '49% who pay nothing' to see the necessity of lowering rates on the productive to grow the economy? It has to be based on a positive belief in the future. If you are young (or female or black or Hispanic or gay or ?) that an opportunity-oriented society is better than Soviet style of dictated benefits society (that is collapsing) and if you are old, that you feel that same way for the opportunities and future for your children and grandchildren. These are concepts that can be sold to minimum wage workers and retirees, not just entrepreneurs and investors. Even a person in legitimate need of government safety net support needs to understand that we need a healthy, vigorous private sector to make that possible.
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Here are some current income tax rates over at the countries that decided to rely more heavily on the VAT tax:
Sweden 56.90%
Portugal 56.50%
Denmark 55.60%
Belgium 53.70%
Netherlands 52.00%
Spain 52.00%
As G M might say, luckily that could never happen here.
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"And your other point is paramount, how do you get the '49% who pay nothing' to see the necessity of lowering rates on the productive to grow the economy? It has to be based on a positive belief in the future. If you are young (or female or black or Hispanic or gay or ?) that an opportunity-oriented society is better than Soviet style of dictated benefits society (that is collapsing) and if you are old, that you feel that same way for the opportunities and future for your children and grandchildren."
I agree with you.
You tell the 49% you won't get anything if the payers cannot keep and invest most of their money. Somebody HAS to pay for them. Also don't you want for yourself or your children to have the opportunity to get wealthy? Or to be doomed to a life of working for the State?
So how is Marco going to do this?
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https://www.facebook.com/tedcruzpage/videos/10153865533127464/
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https://www.facebook.com/tedcruzpage/videos/10153865533127464/
Good messenging, lively music, still no attempt to answer the objections to it.
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I confess at the moment I simply don't have the energy to enter into it and have simply engaged in "appeal to authority"; the clip is simply proffered as an example of how the plan is being marketed-- which is important too.
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https://danieljmitchell.wordpress.com/2016/02/05/more-arguments-against-the-value-added-tax/
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Let's take this over to the Tax Policy thread.
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I confess at the moment I simply don't have the energy to enter into it and have simply engaged in "appeal to authority"; the clip is simply proffered as an example of how the plan is being marketed-- which is important too.
Fair enough on the appeal to authority. I will agree that Art Laffer is the perhaps best economically, but I would not put his political instincts above Reagan's.
Dan Mitchell from Heritage and Cato with a PhD from George Mason is someone I trust also.
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http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2015/11/04/ted-cruz-introduces-bill-designate-muslim-brotherhood-terrorist-organization/
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https://www.facebook.com/tedcruzpage/videos/10153883450512464/?pnref=story
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http://www..com/big-government/2015/11/04/ted-cruz-introduces-bill-designate-muslim-brotherhood-terrorist-organization/
Cruz has balls.
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Yeah he does.
Check out this promo clip!!!
https://www.tedcruz.org/l/to-be-a-clinton/
Then there is this simple reminder from reality , , ,
http://www.weeklystandard.com/polls-cruz-would-fare-5-points-better-versus-clinton-than-trump-would/article/2001034/?utm_medium=social&utm_source=t.co&utm_campaign=20160211_TWS-blog-cruz-best-trump-general-1_twitter&utm_content=TWS
My SWAG is that at this moment Rubio's edge in this regard in this moment is in serious question , , ,
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I LOVE that he remembers the role of our invasion of Iraq in getting Kadaffy to cough up his nukes and become pliant to us and that Hillary & Baraq enabled him to be overthrown and killed anyway , , ,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uDmuwyHR0ZQ
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I LOVE that he remembers the role of our invasion of Iraq in getting Kadaffy to cough up his nukes and become pliant to us and that Hillary & Baraq enabled him to be overthrown and killed anyway , , ,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uDmuwyHR0ZQ
Cruz is actually smart and has a grasp of the issues. A rare quality in politicians.
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A real mensch! 8-)
http://www.msfanpage.link/ted-cruz-walks-out-of-christian-dinner-over-pro-israel-comments/
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Another one of Cruz in fine form
http://www.ijreview.com/2016/01/527018-527018/
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Wow. His conversation with the corn farmer is "off the charts"
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https://www.facebook.com/tedcruzpage/videos/10153891837577464/
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http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2016/02/16/tragedy_and_choices__129669.html
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http://www.redstate.com/saragonzales/2016/02/17/ongoing-ted-cruz-response-trump%E2%80%99s-lawsuit-threat-pretty-epic/?utm_content=buffer32f34&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=buffer
http://twitchy.com/2016/02/17/116000-dscc-ted-cruz-hands-out-list-of-trumps-donations-to-dems-says-file-the-lawsuit/?utm_content=buffer845be&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=buffer
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By Kimberley A. Strassel
Feb. 18, 2016 6:58 p.m. ET
184 COMMENTS
Texas Sen. Ted Cruz’s campaign on Thursday found itself in rough but increasingly familiar territory. It wasn’t talking about policies or consistent conservatism. It was instead trying to explain why it had photoshopped a fake image of Marco Rubio shaking Barack Obama’s hand.
It’s a true saying in politics that if you are denying or explaining, you have a problem. By that standard, Ted Cruz may have a problem.
For months now, Mr. Cruz has run a focused and rigorous campaign. He marked out the voter groups he needed to win Iowa, and delivered targeted messages. He slipstreamed behind Donald Trump, siphoning off his voters. He’s been militantly on message, with the argument that he’s the only “consistent” conservative in the race.
All that discipline got pushed aside on Wednesday, when Mr. Cruz instead felt compelled to spend a long news conference defending against accusations of lies and dirty campaign tactics.
Opinion Journal Video
Assistant Editorial Page Editor James Freeman analyzes the latest WSJ/NBC News poll of South Carolina voters. Photo credit: Getty Images.
Most of the ensuing headlines were about Mr. Cruz’s “bring it on” response to a threatened Donald Trump lawsuit. But this overlooks what he spent most of the event doing—denying that his campaign had anything to do with fake Facebook pages or underhanded push polls.
This is a tough place to be three days out from a vital primary, and Donald Trump is surely grinning. Up or down in this race, Mr. Trump always has a megaphone, and for the past weeks he’s used it almost exclusively to blast one message: Ted Cruz is unethical. It’s a particularly rough charge because—unlike disputes over policy or records—accusations about character sometimes have a way of seeping into the voter conscience, and are harder to dispute. And they can snowball.
Mr. Cruz provided the opening for this with his campaign’s decision on Iowa caucus night to suggest to voters that Ben Carson was suspending his campaign, and to urge them to vote for him instead. Mr. Trump wanted Mr. Cruz disqualified for “fraud.” Dr. Carson accused him of “deceit” and “lies” and “dirty tricks.” Mr. Cruz blamed it on a “mix-up” and apologized.
Yet before the dust had settled, reports came out of a Cruz campaign mailer sent to Iowa voters. The outside contained giant red letters reading “VOTER VIOLATION” and the words “public record” and “further action needed.” Inside, the mailer warned recipients of “low expected voter turnout” in their area, claimed that their voting record might be publicized, and pushed them to caucus. The Iowa secretary of state, a Republican, blasted the Cruz campaign for misrepresenting his office and Iowa election law.
A new controversy has since sprouted in Ohio over another Cruz mailer. This envelope bears Mr. Cruz’s name, as well as big black letters reading: “Check Enclosed.” Inside there is a check, only it is made out to Mr. Cruz from the recipient—along with an appeal to make a contribution. Ohio Republican Chairman Matt Borges complained that the letter—with its suggestion of a government check—was “shady” and went “right up to the edge.”
Mr. Cruz’s problem is that these shenanigans have laid the groundwork for his campaign to be accused of far worse deeds in South Carolina. Mr. Trump used the most recent Republican debate to charge the Cruz campaign with orchestrating push-poll calls that trashed the other candidates. Recipients reported that the calls came courtesy of Remington Research, an outfit started by Mr. Cruz’s campaign manger.
The Rubio campaign meanwhile tagged the Cruz campaign with ginning up a fake Facebook page that falsely claimed popular South Carolina Rep. Trey Gowdy was switching his support from Mr. Rubio to Mr. Cruz.
These accusations were the subject of Mr. Cruz’s news conference Wednesday, in which he vehemently insisted his campaign had nothing to do with the Facebook page or the push-poll calls. (Remington has also denied it did the calls.)
Yet the theme is pulsing, and it got more fuel Thursday when the Rubio-Obama photoshop story broke. Cruz spokesman Rick Tyler at first claimed the campaign would never use a photo that wasn’t authentic. Then he reversed and claimed that the Rubio campaign was “petulant” and “piddly” to even care about a fake photo. Which inspired a Twitter frenzy of people posting their own photoshopped pictures of Mr. Cruz hugging Mr. Obama and various unsavory characters—to make a point.
Mr. Gowdy, a former prosecutor who is very popular in the state, was so appalled that he cut a video. “My fellow South Carolinians do not mind tough politics, but it has to be fair, it has to be accurate—the truth matters.” He lambasted the photoshopping.
Mr. Cruz used his Thursday presser to score the other campaigns for leveling some of their accusations with “no evidence,” and suggested it was they who were playing out of bounds. In what’s proving a low-tactic campaign year, he may have a point. His problem is that memes—right or wrong—have a way of attaching to, and then defining, campaigns. And right now, there is only one Republican defending against the “dirty tricks” line.
Write to kim@wsj.com.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6W5e7AwqksU
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6W5e7AwqksU
Thank you, angry dwarf!
If I were Cruz, I would use that in my ad.
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http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/ruling-ted-cruz-is-a-natural-born-citizen/article/2582259
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http://www.glennbeck.com/2016/02/22/cruz-fires-communication-director-over-falsified-video/
That photo-shopped pic of Rubio and Obama would have been the last straw for me . . .
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http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/01/ted-cruz-supreme-court-conservative-213497?o=1
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https://www.facebook.com/FoxNews/videos/10154088737201336/
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http://www.newsmax.com/Headline/limbaugh-signal-audience-cruz/2016/02/29/id/716726/
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https://www.facebook.com/tim.ob/posts/10208734963551736
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Fiorina's endorsement could prove useful, especially if she continues as a surrogate speaker for Cruz and McCain's daughter has the regular gig on FOX's Outnumbered.
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2016/03/09/meghan-mccain-stuns-with-comments-on-ted-cruz-honestly-i-have-been-hesitant/?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Firewire%20-%20HORIZON%203-10-16%20FINAL&utm_term=Firewire
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https://www.facebook.com/danny.prince.tennesseewebstore/videos/1139641316049026/
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Crafty,
Good video of Cruz (in previous post) answering the left wing verbal terrorists.
Notice how the MSM has totally ignored his great responses (to my knowledge) but are happy to report Donald's? Donald could learn from this - but we now know he never does.
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FG pisses off the right people :-D
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2016/03/cruz-names-anti-muslim-paranoic-as-top-adviser.html
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https://www.facebook.com/1647033725520528/videos/1693823974174836/
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second post
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/432597/endorsement-ted-cruz-can-win-it-all
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http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/433107/cruz-right-about-empowering-law-enforcement-prevent-terrorist-attacks?utm_source=jolt&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Jolt03232016&utm_term=Jolt
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https://pjmedia.com/trending/2016/03/24/watch-muslim-patriot-defends-ted-cruz-call-to-monitor-islamic-communities/
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Good to see him show some apparently real emotion (and good politics)
https://www.facebook.com/tedcruzpage/videos/10153996328207464/?pnref=story
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Good to see him show some apparently real emotion (and good politics)
https://www.facebook.com/tedcruzpage/videos/10153996328207464/?pnref=story
His opponent, a master of winning these types of exchanges, walked right into a baited trap.
No tweets (at this point) from DT since this one - that didn't fly:
"I didn't start the fight with Lyin'Ted Cruz over the GQ cover pic of Melania, he did. He knew the PAC was putting it out - hence, Lyin' Ted!"
No Donald. By law, Cruz didn't coordinate the Pac's ad and he disavowed it immediately after. He is the liar unless he has evidence of a campaign felony to bring forward. His sudden silence answers that. The original ad would have gone unnoticed. It was Trump who drew attention to it. And it wasn't an attack; it was her proud work product - the cover of a major magazine.
Ted's points are spot on. Real men don't do this, threaten to attack wives.
On radio, it sounded like a very carefully worded press release attack. On video, you could see he was most certainly not reading this but emotionally and methodically making the case.
He landed a punch with his scared to debate him accusation too, drawing the contest back to issues and readiness. Cruz needs to elevate that challenge. There is no doubt now that Trump fears being in an issues debate, one on one, with Cruz right now and plans to never do that.
Trump illustrates his shallowness with the side by side wife comparison series. Trump's third wife looks like a better supermodel, a dream girl, and Heidi Cruz looks like a First Lady.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cMgaqhTZBlg
I must say, some of the Christian stuff was , , , uncomfortable.
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Looking for that picture/drawing someone did of Ted looking all gangster , , ,
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https://pjmedia.com/spengler/2016/03/25/ted-cruz-our-last-best-hope/
America needs something better than a feedback loop for popular resentment. We need a real leader. America's elite is arrogant and corrupt, but the state of the American people is just as alarming. America had 90% adult literacy in 1790, when only half of Englishmen and a fifth of Spaniards and Italians could sign their names. We had the best educated, most motivated, and healthiest workforce in the world by an overwhelming margin.
Now Americans aged 16 to 24 rank at the bottom of a 22-country evaluation of numeracy, literacy, and technological problem-solving.
Poor student performance should be no surprise: America's family structure is falling apart. Nearly 30% of non-Hispanic white children are born out of wedlock, as well as 53% of Hispanics and 73% of African-Americans. When Reagan took office, 18% of all American births were to unmarried mothers. By 2014 the figure was above 40%.
Catch-up ball doesn't begin to describe our predicament. We need nothing short of a great national turnaround. There are two Republican candidates who made clear from the outset that it isn't business as usual -- Ted Cruz and Donald Trump. Another Romney wouldn't be relevant.
Our elites, to be sure, have sold us down the river. There's unlimited capital for investors to buy foreclosed homes, while half of Americans can't raise a down payment or qualify for a home mortgage. The Pentagon and the defense contractors slated a trillion dollars for the F-35, the biggest lemon in the history of military aviation, crowding out every other acquisition program in the military. Our tech companies have become a conspiracy to suppress innovation, managed by patent trolls instead of engineers. The financial industry ran the biggest scam in history, the subprime bubble of the 2000s, and the Obama administration hasn't sent a single miscreant to jail (it just slapped multi-billion dollar fines on the banks' stockholders, that is, your pension fund or 401k). The Clintons are a criminal enterprise, as Peter Schweizer showed in his book Clinton Cash. The foreign policy establishment treated the world like a giant social experiment and wasted blood and treasure to make the world safe for democracy.
The result is the most corrupt and cartelized economy in American history. For the first time since numbers were kept, new business has contributed next to nothing to employment recovery since 2009, as I reported here March 2. But Donald Trump encourages magical thinking. Repeating, "We're going to make America great again" by kicking out Mexican illegals and repatriating jobs from China is nonsense.
Our elites are rotten, but the people are hurting and confused. After the generation of the Signers of the Declaration of Independence, America has done a terrible job of forming elites. But we still need leaders who can uplift us, teach us, and inspire us. Self-educated outsiders like Abraham Lincoln and Ronald Reagan have been our ablest leaders, not the valedictorians of Harvard or Yale. Lincoln might have been self-educated, but he was the best thinker of his generation. Reagan also was self-taught, but he had a broad and detailed grasp of foreign policy and understood Robert Mundell's supply-side economics early on. They were also profoundly good men.
==========================================
Ted Cruz is the a gifted outsider with unique leadership capacities. He has a brilliant grasp of Constitutional law from his service as Texas' solicitor general, a granular understanding of business economics from his service at the Federal Trade Commission, and a clear vision of what America should and shouldn't do in foreign policy. He was an academic superstar at Ivy League universities but never let his success flatter him into complacency. He has deep religious conviction. He also has the will to lead. It's not surprising he isn't popular among his Senate colleagues: if Cruz is elected president, it will shut down a corrupt and cozy game. He has the brains to understand the problem and the guts to clear the obstacles to a solution.
Donald Trump's popularity rests on his knack for handling politics as reality television. Americans always have distrusted elites, but today's popular culture takes this to a pathological extreme. We find it oppressive to admire anything that is better than us. Instead, we identify with what is like us. That's why we listen to singers who sound like an average drunk with a karaoke machine instead of Frank Sinatra. That's why reality TV is so popular. Everybody gets to be a star. We like to watch ourselves in the mirror. This blend of narcissism and resentment is toxic. Trump's bling-and-babes lifestyle has become a national paradigm for success. We're not Trump's constituents; we're a virtual posse.
We keep hearing that Trump is a businessman who will "get things done." That is utterly wrong: the most successful businessmen are very good at very limited number of things. Great entrepreneurs, as George Gilder wrote, are the kind of people who sit up all night thinking of better garbage routes. Trump is not even a particularly successful entrepreneur; if he had put the $100 million he inherited in 1978 into an index fund, he'd have twice as much money today. As a casino investor, he doesn't compare to Sheldon Adelson, who came from poverty and now has ten times Trump's wealth. In fact, Trump has the worst possible kind of background for a president: as the child of wealth running a private company, he is used to saying "Jump," and having his lackeys say, "How long should I stay in the air?"
Trump doesn't read. He brags about his own ignorance. Journalist Michael d'Antonio interviewed Trump at his New York home and told a German newspaper:
"What I noticed immediately in my first visit was that there were no books," says D'Antonio. "A huge palace and not a single book." He asked Trump whether there was a book that had influenced him. "I would love to read," Trump replied. "I've had many best sellers, as you know, and 'The Art of the Deal' was one of the biggest-selling books of all time." Soon Trump was talking about "The Apprentice." Trump called it "the No. 1 show on television," a reality TV show in which, in 14 seasons, he played himself and humiliated candidates vying for the privilege of a job within his company. In the interview, Trump spent what seemed like an eternity talking about how fabulous and successful he is, but he didn't name a single book that he hadn't written.
"Trump doesn't read," D'Antonio says in the restaurant. "He hasn't absorbed anything serious and profound about American society since his college days. And to be honest, I don't even think he read in college." When Trump was asked who his foreign policy advisers were, he replied: "Well, I watch the shows." He was referring to political talk shows on TV.
Trump voters may not read, either, but they should want their president to know something about the problems he proposes to address.
====================
Trump is horribly wrong about big issues. America's economic problems are not due to Mexican immigrants or Chinese imports, as I wrote in this space last July. I give him credit for punching through the "Islam-is-a-religion-of-peace" idiocy peddled by George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and Hillary Clinton. A plurality of Americans (46% to 40%) support his proposed ban on Muslim immigration. That's the wrong way to go about it; the right way is to treat the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization, as Cruz proposes, and then roll up its supporters. I also give Trump credit for lambasting the awful Iran nuclear deal earlier this week at the AIPAC conference. Cruz did it a lot better.
Unless Hitler or Goebbels were to rise from the grave and run for president, I will not vote for Hillary Clinton; in a Trump-Clinton race, I will vote for Trump without a second's hesitation. One can't exclude the possibility that Trump might be a good president; he knows little and makes things up as he goes along, and might conceivably stumble on good solutions. But it is much more likely that he will preside over America's continuing decline while saturating us with self-consoling rhetoric.
We are in deep trouble. We need a president who can lead us out of our economic and moral slump. I fear that Ted Cruz is our last, best hope before we follow former superpowers like Britain down the slippery slope to national mediocrity.
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https://www.facebook.com/Cruztovictory2016/videos/222541641424380/?pnref=story
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This WSJ editorial fails to note that the charge is made by a Super PAC, not by Cruz. Shame, WSJ!
March 31, 2016 7:08 p.m. ET
301 COMMENTS
Ted Cruz keeps saying he wants to unite the Republican Party’s factions to defeat Donald Trump. But you wouldn’t know it from his campaign in Wisconsin, where his Super Pac is aiming its fire at John Kasich.
Exhibit A is the false ad that the Super Pac Trusted Leadership is running nonstop in Wisconsin that accuses Mr. Kasich of being funded by liberal baron George Soros. “Millionaires working side by side with George Soros are bankrolling [Kasich’s] super PAC,” the ad says as the text “Hundreds of thousands of dollars from George Soros” flashes on the screen.
This claim is as dishonest as Mr. Trump’s charge that the Texas Senator is owned by Goldman Sachs because his wife worked for the New York bank. Mr. Soros hasn’t donated a penny to the Kasich campaign. The alleged “millionaires” bankrolling the governor are Stanley Druckenmiller, who helped manage Mr. Soros’s Quantum Fund between 1988 and 2000, and former Soros Fund Management chief investment officer Scott Bessent, who left the fund last year.
According to the Federal Election Commission, Mr. Druckenmiller has contributed $450,000 to the Kasich Super Pac New Day for America. Mr. Bessent has chipped in $200,000. The implication of the ad is that both businessmen are liberal by their Soros association, as if all Americans should be accountable for their employer’s politics.
Messrs. Druckenmiller and Bessent have donated mainly to GOP candidates, reflecting their belief in free-market policies. Mr. Druckenmiller donated $103,375 to the Jeb Bush Super Pac Right to Rise USA and $123,000 to the National Republican Congressional Committee last year.
The Cruz ad is also counterproductive if he wants to win the nomination at the GOP convention—or the Presidency in November. The Real Clear Politics average shows Mr. Cruz running three points ahead of Mr. Trump and leading Mr. Kasich by 14 points in Wisconsin. Instead of whacking Mr. Kasich, the Texan should target Mr. Trump so the New Yorker finishes third. This would deny Mr. Trump more delegates and would hurt his narrative that his nomination is inevitable.
Mr. Cruz also needs Mr. Kasich to peel away delegates from Mr. Trump in the eastern primaries later this month where the Texan is often third in the polls. Mr. Cruz finished a distant fourth behind Marco Rubio and Mr. Kasich in Massachusetts and Vermont, and outside the Maine caucuses he hasn’t won more than 12% of the vote anywhere in the Northeast.
Mr. Cruz wants to force Mr. Kasich out of the race so the Texan is the only alternative to Mr. Trump. That’s also why he attacked Marco Rubio in Florida, where Mr. Cruz had no chance of winning. But he shouldn’t overestimate his appeal. Wisconsin Republicans may give him a victory to stop Mr. Trump, but millions are doing it while holding their nose. The best argument Mr. Trump still has, amid his many mistakes, is that Mr. Cruz is emerging as his main opponent.
Mr. Cruz isn’t likely to get enough delegates to win the nomination on the first ballot at the Cleveland convention, so he will need the help of many of the Republicans his campaign has done so much to alienate the last two years. His smear of John Kasich underscores the doubts that he’s too divisive to win in November.
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For the first time in recent history, California could decide the GOP nominee. Recent polls have shown the race here in the Golden State to be within the margin of error.
We need your help to bring a victory to Cruz on June 7th.
Volunteers from around the state have been calling their neighbors to spread the Senator’s conservative message. We hope you can join them by signing up to make calls from home on our i360 Call from Home System. By using the links below, you learn how to operate our call from home system as well as have thorough instructions, login details, and which survey you should use.
Instructions: Click Here
Script: Click Here
Once familiar with the system, we ask that you:
1. Forward these details to fellow supporters who want to join the effort.
2. Begin organizing call banks in your area.
With questions, please reach out to mbrown@tedcruz.org or for your own personal log in.
Please join our Facebook group by clicking the link below to stay connected with the team, volunteers, and be informed on campaign activities in the state.
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Best,
Jason Scalese
Cruz for President
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Ted Cruz used the "New York Values' pejorative in Iowa against Trump. Resenting the east coast power, urbanites and country club Republicans is something that resonated with the 27% furthest right of the furthest right that go to Iowa caucuses, enough to win by a smidgen in a very crowded field. Not helpful now.
At the time I said that was a mistake. Checking the record I see that bth Bret Stephens and ccp made that observation first: http://dogbrothers.com/phpBB2/index.php?topic=2408.msg93613#msg93613
My criticism has been that Cruz is running for first place in the most conservative lane (of which I am a member) instead of running for President. Saying things like 'New York values', or just picturing Rubio with Dick Durbin or Chuck Schumer are red meat to conservatives but doesn't mean a thing to the middle who you also need to win.
Reagan won the middle and united the party by defeating the left, not by attacking the RINOs.
Now Cruz desperately needs Republican votes in New York, and he needs to unite the center and the near right with the far right in order to win.
The strategies he used to get this far worked, but some of his tactics were mistakes.
His background coming into this was to argue strict constitutionalism to people who should be experts on that (Supreme Court Justices), and to win from the right in a state that is perhaps furthest to the right. What he is trying to do now, taking his message to NY Republicans and to the public is something he has never attempted before. I wish him the best.
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On perhaps the defining issue of the 2016 Republican primary, Senator Ted Cruz falls well to the right of Ronald Reagan, who supported granting legal status to millions of undocumented immigrants.
He opposes abortion even in cases of rape and incest, and has called for a federal amendment that would allow states to avoid performing or recognizing same-sex marriages.
He wants to return to the gold standard, abolish the Internal Revenue Service and create a tax structure simple enough for Americans to file on postcards.
He has criticized Donald J. Trump on deportation policy. From the right.
Throughout his Senate career, Republican opponents have cast Mr. Cruz as a master of the ill-considered — a “wacko bird,” as Senator John McCain of Arizona once called him — whose seemingly reckless pursuits were thought to place him well outside the mainstream.
Yet a close reading of Mr. Cruz’s policy prescriptions, influences and writings over two decades, combined with interviews with conservative intellectual leaders and Cruz allies, suggest two powerful truths about the man who might yet assume the mantle of modern conservatism.
He would be the most conservative presidential nominee in at least a half-century, perhaps to the right of Barry Goldwater, testing the electoral limits of a personal ideology he has forged meticulously since adolescence.
And he has, more effectively than almost any politician of his generation, anticipated the rightward tilt of the Republican Party of today, grasping its conservatism even as colleagues dismissed him as a fringe figure.
Now, even Mr. Cruz’s staunchest Republican enemies tend to criticize him most forcefully on tactics — lamenting his leading role in the 2013 government shutdown, for instance — but not on substance, where they have generally arrived at equivalent positions.
“Nobody has been more assiduous than Cruz at staying on the same page as the conservative base of the Republican Party,” said Ramesh Ponnuru, a conservative author and senior editor of National Review, who first met Mr. Cruz when they were students at Princeton University. “That said, it was also the man meeting the moment. He was always a constitutionalist conservative, and then constitutionalism became cool among conservatives.”
There have at times been perceptible shifts from Mr. Cruz during the campaign, in both tone and substance, coaxed by the resonance of Mr. Trump’s populist anger and hard-line positions on trade and immigration.
But at its core, Mr. Cruz’s brand of conservatism is the product of decades of careful study and manifest intellectual firepower, fusing a host of historical strands into what he has called “opportunity conservatism.”
As a teenager, growing up in Houston, he earned money delivering speeches on Friedrich A. Hayek and Ludwig von Mises, expounding on free-market principles at Rotary and Kiwanis clubs.
The epigraph for his senior thesis at Princeton, which focused on states’ rights and the Ninth and 10th Amendments, quoted James Madison: “You must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.”
When he captured the Republican nomination in his 2012 Senate race, Mr. Cruz said he was “walking in Uncle Milton’s footsteps,” to honor the 100th birthday of the economist Milton Friedman.
He is fond of invoking Mr. Reagan’s Cold War dictum (“We win, they lose”), Margaret Thatcher’s dismissal of socialism (“The problem with socialism is, eventually you run out of other people’s money”), and even, at times, President John F. Kennedy.
“I intend to have in the office of president what J.F.K. used to refer to as ‘vigaaaahhh’ in defending the Constitution,” Mr. Cruz, now 45, told voters in Iowa in January.
Some citations are more familiar to conservative audiences than others.
On economic policy, he has at moments turned to Ayn Rand, the libertarian heroine lionized by the right, and John Rawls, the liberal political philosopher who argued for a compact protecting the “least advantaged.”
References to Mr. Rawls have dwindled since Mr. Cruz began his presidential candidacy last year. “I don’t think Rawls focus-groups in Iowa,” Mr. Ponnuru joked.
It is clear that Mr. Cruz, whose campaign did not make him available for an interview, is most animated by constitutional fights over what he views as overreach by the federal government, particularly on matters of religion. He speaks often of his triumphs as solicitor general of Texas, which included the successful defense of the state’s right to display a Ten Commandments monument at the Capitol.
He is a creature of the Supreme Court, counting Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist as a former boss and Justice Antonin Scalia as a friend whose strict constructionist views helped shape his own.
And arguing last year against a federal ban on marijuana — despite his personal opposition to marijuana legalization at the state level — Mr. Cruz recited Justice Louis D. Brandeis’s belief in the states’ role as “laboratories of democracy.”
Indeed, conservative thinkers have sensed in Mr. Cruz an array of less likely forebears: the faith-focused morality of Jimmy Carter or George W. Bush; President Obama’s disdain for Beltway think-tank consensus; the fictional exploits of Frank Capra and Jimmy Stewart.
“There’s a little bit of ‘Mr. Smith Goes to Washington,’” said Peter D. Feaver, a national security strategist under Mr. Bush and a political-science professor at Duke University. “The, ‘I’m going to pursue this even if everyone else is mad at me because this is right.’”
Mr. Cruz seems to take uncommon pride in communicating uncomfortable policy positions to potentially hostile audiences. Mr. Ponnuru likened Mr. Cruz’s opposition to ethanol subsidies in Iowa — once considered heretical in a presidential primary — to Mr. Goldwater’s unpopular suggestion in 1964, while campaigning in Tennessee, that the Tennessee Valley Authority should be sold.
On matters of foreign policy, Mr. Cruz is viewed much more warily by mainstream Republicans. His pre-Senate career dealt little with international affairs, many say, and his first term has contained some notable shifts.
Mr. Cruz entered the Senate in 2013 as part of the Tea Party wave, brandishing a libertarian streak that became more pronounced after revelations of government surveillance tactics, courtesy of Edward J. Snowden.
But in the years since, as the national dialogue has grown more consumed by security threats like the Islamic State, Mr. Cruz has recalibrated considerably, leaving an impression among some conservative thinkers that he is merely groping for the median position of the base.
Most notable during the campaign has been his pledge to “carpet-bomb ISIS into oblivion,” which has earned a rebuke from military leaders who define the term specifically as the blanket bombing of even civilian areas. Mr. Cruz has argued his iteration can be more targeted.
“He means an overwhelming air campaign,” his longtime national security adviser, Victoria Coates, clarified in an interview.
Peter Wehner, a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center who served under Mr. Reagan and Presidents George Bush and George W. Bush, said Mr. Cruz had been “a little hard to find on the spectrum” of conservative foreign policy.
“The latest incarnation for him is a sort of realist school of overwhelming military force, but he’s constantly criticizing nation-building,” Mr. Wehner said. “I have a feeling he’s more of an amateur in that area.”
The introduction of a national security team last month failed to inspire universal confidence: While the list included some well-respected members of the Reagan and Bush administrations, it also had Frank Gaffney Jr., viewed by many as a fringe conspiracy theorist who has suggested that President Obama is Muslim.
“Being critical of Frank is a cottage industry,” said Ms. Coates, whose own résumé — she is better known as an art historian — has been questioned. “The fact of the matter is, he has been one of the few fearless voices speaking out against the problems of radical Islam.”
Other concerns are more semantic. Mr. Cruz has been criticized for appearing to use “neo-con” as a pejorative, and for characterizing his foreign policy views as falling “somewhere in between” two polar extremes: the libertarianism of Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky and the hawkishness of Mr. McCain or Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina.
He speaks often of Reagan-style “peace through strength,” reminding crowds that the largest country Mr. Reagan invaded was Grenada.
But some conservative foreign policy experts see a crucial difference, implicit in a February speech outlining his military plans in South Carolina.
“Cruz’s defense speech was couched as being Reaganite, with plans to increase military spending substantially,” said Gary J. Schmitt, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. “But the caveat was getting the economy fixed first. Reagan increased defense spending even while deficits soared.”
Mr. Wehner worried generally that Mr. Cruz had displayed an “intellectual rigidity” that afforded him little latitude to adapt.
Mr. Cruz has long trumpeted his “consistent conservative” credentials as a strength, proudly recalling his teenage days as part of a team of students who toured event spaces in Texas and wrote out the Constitution on easels.
Robert P. George, his mentor and thesis adviser at Princeton, said that he was most struck by “the consistency from the time when he was a student to now.” Many conservatives cite Madison and Tocqueville, he said, but “Ted has actually read them.”
Mr. George’s most memorable lesson was in humility. In his book, Mr. Cruz writes of receiving a graded paper from Mr. George, seeing a “C+” on a folded corner of the first page and panicking. “With white knuckles, I folded the corner over,” he wrote, “and on the front was written, ‘Just kidding! A.’”
Mr. George’s goal was simple. “I thought he should at least have a few moments’ experience,” he said, “of not being the smartest guy in the class.”
Kitty Bennett contributed research.
Find out what you need to know about the 2016 presidential race today, and get politics news updates via Facebook, Twitter and the First Draft newsletter.
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There is something about liberal writers that they feel compelled to lie in the first sentence.
"Ronald Reagan, who supported granting legal status to millions of undocumented immigrants."
No. Reagan agreed to legal status in exchange for ..... , ..... , and ..... that all didn't happen. That doesn't imply he would favor open borders today after being taken to the cleaners earlier and while we are under attack by terrorists and ISIS is building camps just off our southern border.
Continuing into the article:
"Throughout his Senate career, Republican opponents have cast Mr. Cruz as a master of the ill-considered — a “wacko bird,” as Senator John McCain of Arizona once called him — whose seemingly reckless pursuits were thought to place him well outside the mainstream."
It was only the Senate's wacko birds that called him a wacko bird. The issue at hand was to fund a Democrat program that was unconstitutional by any fair reading of the law and the constitution and that they were elected to de-fund. Wacko bird is political term for anyone who still supports limited government this long after the country abandoned that principle.
Cruz's Presidential view of abortion, like Rubio is that it is a matter for the states - that in the most restrictive states would all allow exceptions for rape, incest and life of the mother.
Cruz's view on marriage is that a man and a woman become a husband and wife, OMG, exactly what both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton believed as recently as 2010. It was the Clinton administration support of DOMA that made it a federal issue.
"Carpet bomb ISIS into oblivion". “He means an overwhelming air campaign,” his longtime national security adviser, Victoria Coates, clarified in an interview.
That's how I took it too. Nothing is his personality makes you think he will skip intelligence briefings or ignore the best advice of his military strategists while in office, like his predecessor many times did at our peril.
"He wants to...abolish the Internal Revenue Service and create a tax structure simple enough for Americans to file on postcards."
I wonder if POTH readers find that offensive...
"He wants to return to the gold standard [and abolish the IRS]"
I don't think that means abolish the Federal Reserve, like some want to do and as the sentence seems intended to portray. Every competent economist would put gold prominently in their "basket of goods' for measuring and targeting the value of the dollar.
"As a teenager, growing up in Houston, he earned money delivering speeches on Friedrich A. Hayek and Ludwig von Mises, expounding on free-market principles at Rotary and Kiwanis clubs."
This is also quite good news. I have not heard this side of him and guessed that he was weaker than some at explaining the value of free market economics.
" counting Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist as a former boss and Justice Antonin Scalia as a friend whose strict constructionist views helped shape his own."
That's not really out of the mainstream, don't they all still have to take an oath to be 'strict constitutionalists' while in office?
"...Mr. Cruz’s opposition to ethanol subsidies in Iowa..."
G M, Re: Sen.Ted Cruz takes on King Corn Ethanol, January 27, 2016:
"Integrity."
Interesting that Iowans respected that. Not to cut their subsidy alone, but to put an end to all crony government.
My complaint of Cruz so far is that he has aimed his campaign entirely at people who already agree with him. He has no experience moving a politically divided state to the right on policy. But he has the benefit of timing and of facts on the ground. We have just tried 10 years of a leftist policy direction and it failed to accomplish anything positive the leftists were promising.
It will be interesting to see how Cruz can adapt to a general election race. I fear he will be painted as too far to the right before he really can start. I'm sure that is the point of pieces like this, putting an extremist spin on quite reasonable positions. His policies are the most likely to succeed, if tried, of any the remaining candidates.
Hugh Hewitt on Meet the Press Sunday called for a unity ticket of Cruz-Trump, Ted Cruz and the smarter Trump, his daughter Ivanka, that is. Try running the war against women campaign against her!
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Duhhhhhh:
http://www.drudgereport.com/
Of course the greatest city in the world.
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"My complaint of Cruz so far is that he has aimed his campaign entirely at people who already agree with him. He has no experience moving a politically divided state to the right on policy. But he has the benefit of timing and of facts on the ground. We have just tried 10 years of a leftist policy direction and it failed to accomplish anything positive the leftists were promising.
"It will be interesting to see how Cruz can adapt to a general election race. I fear he will be painted as too far to the right before he really can start. I'm sure that is the point of pieces like this, putting an extremist spin on quite reasonable positions. His policies are the most likely to succeed, if tried, of any the remaining candidates."
There is merit to this. I confess to being disappointed with Cruz's lack of crisp, deft answers to predictable left wing attacks.
Also, someone asked "What state will Cruz win that Romney did not?" This is a fair question.
Rudy Giuliani says that the EDC and her running dogs in the Pravda will know how to hit simple fast balls like Cruz but will be thrown off stride by Trump's unpredictability and that is why he is supporting Trump.
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"Rudy Giuliani says that the EDC and her running dogs in the Pravda will know how to hit simple fast balls like Cruz but will be thrown off stride by Trump's unpredictability and that is why he is supporting Trump."
I don't support Trump but Giuliani is partly right on this.
Not that NY matters but Cruz took a distant third. 86% of NY Republicans don't want the conservati e alternative to Trump. He couldn't find a district he could win. New York Values as a slur sounded good to the furthest right of the Iowa GOP, meanwhile we hear no realistic plan about how he would implement his tax plan or turn around this economy.
Cruz got into a fight on radio with Sean Hannity yesterday. It was ugly and both were wrong. Cruz won't admit he can't get to 1237 before the convention and keeps repeating his canned line like they accused Rubio of doing. Hannity is being blockheaded about what can or should happen in a convention. If you are short of that threshold, you are in the same boat as everyone else short of that threshold. http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2016/04/19/ted_cruz_lectures_hannity_this_notion_of_voterless_elections_is_nonsense.html
All we have done since the first debate is drive people away and make Hillary and Obama seem reasonable.
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"Obama seem reasonable."
Doug,
Do you think that is why Brock's poll numbers are back over 50% of late?
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4cpqoVqqDGk
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4cpqoVqqDGk
Good ad! I like the way they show Huma in charge and Hillary clueless.
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http://www.sfgate.com/news/politics/tedcruz/article/Republican-John-Boehner-calls-Ted-Cruz-Lucifer-7380917.php
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http://www.nationalreview.com/article/434916/ted-cruz-why-he-lost
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Ted Cruz: The Mullahs and Their Missiles
By TED CRUZMAY 13, 2016
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Credit Doug Chayka
Washington — ON Monday, the Iranian military’s deputy chief of staff announced that the Islamic Republic had successfully tested yet another ballistic missile — this time, a high-precision midrange weapon with a reported reach of 2,000 kilometers, or 1,250 miles, and with a degree of accuracy that he claimed to be “without any error.” If these statements are true, the entire Middle East, including Israel, is within the reach of the mullahs’ missiles.
It was not revealed if this missile had its genocidal intent actually inscribed on it, as other missiles recently tested by the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps have — with the inscription in Hebrew “Israel should be erased from the map.” But it hardly matters. The mullahs’ objectives are plain enough for anyone with eyes to see: The Iranian regime is continuing its determined march toward not only a nuclear weapon, but also the means to launch it, first against Israel and then against the United States.
This reality makes all the more inexplicable President Obama’s steadfast faith that, since the election of President Hassan Rouhani in 2013, Iran has been charting a “more moderate course” to the detriment of the old-time hard-liners, and that Mr. Rouhani and his administration would be reliable partners in negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program.
To give credit where credit is due, the regime in Tehran has been frank and open about its continued hostility toward America and Israel. In the months since the Obama administration and the other permanent members of the United Nations Security Council plus Germany (the group commonly referred to as the “P5 + 1”) concluded the deal with Iran called the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the Revolutionary Guards have tested at least four ballistic missiles. Flush with the $100 billion they claim to be getting in assets unfrozen under the deal, the mullahs have gone on a spending spree, finally purchasing, among other things, the Russian S-300 missile system, which is now being delivered to them.
Who can forget the searing images of American sailors on their knees with guns pointed at their heads by our “moderate” partners this past January? Just last week, in the course of receiving an official delegation from the Gaza-based militant movement Palestinian Islamic Jihad — which the State Department designated a terrorist group in 1997, for its efforts to destroy Israel — the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, reiterated that the prime directive of the Islamic Republic remains, as it has been since 1979, to wage war against the United States and Israel.
On Saturday, Iran’s foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, that trusted counterpart to Secretary of State John Kerry, publicly affirmed to the Iranian Parliament that the same supreme leader who had just said doing harm to America and Israel was his key objective remains the ultimate arbiter of Iranian foreign policy. And as a final reminder of how the Islamic Republic conducts itself toward America, on Monday Amir Hekmati, a former United States Marine, sued the government of Iran for the brutal torture inflicted on him over the course of more than four years of arbitrary detention by Tehran.
Enough. The mullahs’ policy is, by their own admission, unchanged. It is the same one that inspired the so-called revolutionaries of 1979 to take 52 Americans as hostages for 444 days, and motivated murderous attacks on Israelis and Americans from Buenos Aires to Beirut to Baghdad over the subsequent decades. The only thing that is changing now is the potential scale of this violence, as they seek to replace truck bombs and roadside explosive devices with the most destructive weapons on the planet and the means to deliver them.
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The sensible thing to do now is to face this reality, however unpleasant it may be, and do what we can to bolster our defenses and those of our allies.
As a first step, I look forward to working with my congressional colleagues this week and in coming months to make sure that President Obama’s failure to sufficiently fund Israel’s missile defense programs in his latest budget request is reversed. Shockingly, even after admitting that the nuclear deal with Iran places Israel in greater danger and making assurances that support for the Jewish state would be increased, the president could not find a single dollar to put toward procurement for the David’s Sling or Arrow-3 missile defense systems, which are being jointly developed by the United States and Israel.
We have all been impressed by the success of Israel’s Iron Dome air defense system, which targets short-range rockets and was implemented with the generous assistance of American taxpayers. But as the recent Iranian medium-range missile test proves, rockets fired from Gaza are not the only threat Israel faces.
Providentially, David’s Sling, which guards against such ballistic missiles, is ready to go online this year; it will be followed by the Arrow-3 system to protect the Jewish state from longer-range weapons. Rather than starving these programs, Congress should seize this opportunity to reaffirm our commitment to Israel’s security and so to our own. That would send the leaders of the Islamic Republic an unmistakable signal that there are at least some in Washington who still take them at their word, and will act accordingly.
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http://www.glennbeck.com/2016/05/22/washington-state-gop-convention-supports-cruz/
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cDPZc7UA94Q
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"This will be an interesting convention. Whatever happens, Ted Cruz is quite simply the most amazing leader the Republican Party has produced since Reagan as far as im concerned. http://politistick.com/freethedelegates/ "
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I like Caroline Glick, but I'm not sure if that linked matched up with the subject. Here is an older piece:
http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Our-World-Ted-Cruzs-American-restoration-442831
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"I’m not going to speculate now only because you all know the situation may change by this afternoon, let alone between now and the convention.” Scott Walker, free the delegates
- True, but DT is mostly likely to gradually improve (slightly) as a candidate between now and the election.
"several hundred GOP delegates are planning a revolt against Trump, and to select a unifying candidate who can actually defeat Hillary Clinton."
- No such thing (unifying candidate who can actually defeat Hillary Clinton) under these circumstances to persuade the 30-40% who prefer Trump to get behind a different guy who did not win in the primary process.
"Whatever happens, Ted Cruz is quite simply the most amazing leader the Republican Party has produced since Reagan as far as im concerned"
- Cruz is more conservative than Reagan but as a leader: he failed to bring any Senators with him to the right (Mike Lee was already there), he failed to consolidate the primary vote on the right losing perhaps half of it to Trump, and failed to even try to reach out at all to the center and pull them to the right. It turned out the other way around, the center started reaching out to him as the last alternative to Trump and he failed to woo more from the center than Trump or to successfully 'prosecute' Trump's candidacy, like Christy did to Rubio, when it came down to the Trump-Cruz head to head. The final straw was Indiana. Trump was wrong on the economic case he was making there. Cruz had organization, plenty of money, a limited market size, a conservative state, and the head to head matchup that he sought for so long and could not, did not, make the case. Now we go forward trying to defeat Hillary and the left stuck using the wrong economic arguments. We would have better off without Ted Cruz in the race and without him in the race next time too. He was part of what choked out support for others who might have gone further, IMHO.
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Fair points all. I simply found it interesting the consciousness of Ted reached her to conclusions similar to those of Glenn Beck.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wDu2fWId8CA
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https://www.conservativereview.com/commentary/2016/07/2016-cruz-effect-ensured-conservative-gop-platform
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According to Mark Levin. Mark who I like a lot and usually agree with offers his opinion , one which I highly disagree with here. IMHO this is just a bad political mistake. It does nothing but offer help to Hillary and her side. It does nothing to make Cruz look better and just angers those who already don't like him and does make him look more like "lyin" Ted then someone standing on principle.
In the end I don't think anyone is going to vote or not vote for Trump based on Cruz's refusal to endorse. But him saying vote your conscious when he knows full well the choice is Trump or Clinton. What is that supposed to mean? If he was to rightly insulted by Trump partly because of Trump's disgusting insults to his wife in the early campaign then he should have just stayed home. Like the Bush family who are staying home - and rightly so. Trump's personal insults are inexcusable. If we say family first that means family first . Party second. Just my 2 cents. I think Levin in trying to be too "true" in ideology sacrifices good political and strategic sense:
https://www.conservativereview.com/commentary/2016/07/cruz-stays-true
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Even representative King states what many feel about Cruz's performance and he really hated Trump.
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/rep.-peter-king-cruz-more-of-a-disgrace-now-than-ever/article/2597207
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To be fair, Cruz's classless appearance was preceded by Trump being classless in the way he defeated Ted Cruz for the nomination. That doesn't mean this was the right answer.
Ted Cruz never was the right guy for the job. He did remarkably well to take second place. Second place deserves a prime spot on the podium - for the purpose of bringing the different factions together.
The party's nominee owns the convention. Cruz' petulance makes Trump looks gracious for letting Cruz have the podium and say whatever he wanted to say.
Kasich wouldn't go to the convention in his own state. Rubio videotaped it in - as if he hadn't set aside this week for traveling to Cleveland or didn't want to speak in front of a crowd. I'm disappointed in Rubio too but at least he gave his support to the nominee and the ticket with strong and persuasive reasons. This has been a lousy process in a year where the table was set for success. Oddly, it was Trump who set the bad tone and Trump who they feared wouldn't support the party's ultimate nominee.
Take a close look at the Pence speech if you want an example of what a true conservative can find as positives on the Trump side of a Hillary-Trump matchup. Hillary is the status quo for everything that is wrong. Judged by his actions of putting out a list of possible Supreme Court nominees, a rock-solid VP choice, his tax plan, his border security plan, his calling out of ISIS for what they are, Trump is something completely different and better than Hillary and the status quo in nearly every direction and dimension. If you are Ted Cruz and are too bruised by the ugly primary process to see that or say that, decline the opportunity to speak.
Every speaker at a convention may be trying to boost themselves by boosting the nominee. Ted Cruz did neither, committed 'political suicide'. Win, lose or draw for Trump this year, Ted Cruz will never unite this party.
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Good analysis.
Yes Trump started it with his adolesscent disrespect of Cruz's wife, and his "Lyin' Ted" campaign, but Cruz blew it big time last night.
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http://www.nationalreview.com/article/438154/cruzs-stand-conservatism-lion-ted&source=gmail&ust=1469211828279000&usg=AFQjCNEsxiSrqZpeV9mMgV5-W0hVOMD5iQ?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Daily%20Trending%20Email%20Reoccurring-%20Monday%20to%20Thursday%202016-07-21&utm_term=NR5PM%20Actives
"Donald Trump insulted Cruz’s wife, (presumably) planted false tabloid stories about him in the National Enquirer, and suggested, completely baselessly, that his father might have been involved in the assassination of President Kennedy. Beyond these outrageous personal insults, it is clear that Trump’s conservatism, such as it is, has little in common with the limited-government, pro-federalism conservatism of Senator Cruz."
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http://www.nationalreview.com/article/439583/iranian-ransom-illegal-maybe?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Daily%20Trending%20Email%20Reoccurring-%20Monday%20to%20Thursday%202016-09-01&utm_term=NR5PM%20Actives
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http://www.redstate.com/brandon_morse/2016/09/19/ted-cruz-calls-end-us-refugee-program-light-terrorist-attacks/
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https://www.conservativereview.com/commentary/2016/09/heres-why-ted-cruz-will-vote-for-donald-trump
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My son has been having good fun with this for a couple of days. He says (unconfirmed by me) that Cruz "liked" and incest clip.
http://thehill.com/blogs/in-the-know/in-the-know/351113-colbert-mocks-cruz-at-emmys-for-liking-porn
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seems like good policy and good policy from Ted:
Marc F.,
There are many things to be thrilled with in the tax bill that the Senate passed last week, but the one thing I am most proud of is an amendment I inserted to that allows families to use their 529 college savings account to pay for K-12 education, and it also applies to homeschoolers.
This is a major win for families as it allows more parental control -- not government control -- on what school your kids can go to! I am confident that it will included in the final bill.
The amendment allows parents to use their 529 college savings account for K-12 expenses. If your public school is great, you can use it for that. If it's not, you can use it for private schools. You can even use it for religious schools or homeschooling.
Democrats are sounding alarms because they don't like anything that isn't controlled by government bureaucrats, but you and I know better.
There is nothing more important than our children's education which is why I have always been a passionate supporter of school choice. It works because parents decide where their kids go to school -- not ZIP codes.
The Student Choice Amendment is a huge victory for our families and for liberty. But we still need your help to make sure it becomes law.
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https://www.dailywire.com/news/31945/sen-ted-cruz-rousts-late-night-host-jimmy-kimmel-emily-zanotti?utm_source=cnemail&utm_medium=email&utm_content=061818-news&utm_campaign=position1
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https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/411782-five-takeaways-from-cruz-orourkes-debate-showdown
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https://www.daybydaycartoon.com/comic/the-most-interesting-man-in-the-world/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+DayByDayCartoon+%28Day+by+Day+Cartoon+by+Chris+Muir%29
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8WYzjzkpeA0&feature=share
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=2&v=65KgiGdUb04&feature=emb_logo
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https://www.politico.com/news/2020/04/28/cruz-bill-pentagon-china-film-215942
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https://www.theepochtimes.com/ted-cruz-pushes-bill-to-stop-hollywood-from-censoring-films-for-chinese-communist-party_3333904.html?__sta=vhg.qblkmhbwphzxphzemdsbg%7CFQI&__stm_medium=email&__stm_source=smartech
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https://www.nbcdfw.com/news/local/watch-u-s-sen-ted-cruz-expected-to-get-his-hair-cut-at-dallas-salon-a-la-mode-friday/2366118/?_osource=SocialFlowTwt_DFWBrand
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that mask Ted is wearing looks they were made out of some woman's panties
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Dunno how practical this would be in legal terms, but love the sentiment:
A Way to Take Back Portland
My bill would hold officials accountable for failing to protect their constituents.
By Ted Cruz
July 21, 2020 7:16 pm ET
‘Every city, every town, burn the precinct to the ground,” read a sign in the “autonomous zone” Antifa rioters established in Portland, Ore. Another: “The only good cop is a dead one.”
The area radicals took over in Portland last week is the second autonomous zone lawless criminals have set up in the city during the eight weeks of riots since the death of George Floyd.
Fringe progressives have also set up autonomous protest zones in six other cities in the past few weeks—in Asheville, N.C.; New York; Philadelphia; Richmond, Va.; Seattle and Washington.
These radicals hate the police, reject the rule of law, and are intent on terrorizing their communities. In Seattle, police were forced to abandon the precinct building in “CHAZ” and city officials told the police they could respond to calls for help only in the event of mass casualties. Families and business owners were left to fend for themselves.
In Portland’s antifa-occupied land, Fox News reports, “businesses have racked up millions in property damage and lost sales, and hundreds of thousands of Portland residents have stayed off the streets for six weeks.”
And in the autonomous zone in New York, “local residents—even those who say they support the camp’s politics—have complained that it has turned into a disorderly shantytown where violence has occurred,” according to the New York Times. Mayor Bill de Blasio has allowed the zone to thrive and, despite the pandemic, has tolerated squatters convening there without social distancing. By contrast, Mr. de Blasio had the entrance to a playground in a predominantly Orthodox neighborhood welded shut to keep out children and sent the police to break up a gathering of Jews mourning the loss of a beloved rabbi.
This is not the American way. Local leaders who allow rioters to destroy lives and businesses need to be held accountable. That’s why I’m introducing the Restitution for Economic losses Caused by Leaders who Allow Insurrection and Mayhem Act—Reclaim for short. The bill would hold state and local officials liable when they abdicate their legal duty to protect the public in cases where death, serious bodily harm or significant property damage have occurred.
Specifically, my bill would allow for treble damages, meaning a plaintiff could be awarded triple the amount of the damage done to his property. It would also establish a federal cause of action, which would empower victims of violence in autonomous zones to take legal action against senior local or state lawmakers who have tolerated or encouraged radicals to take over the area. Finally, when politicians refuse to defend innocent Americans, this bill would remove or limit federal funding under grant programs that supply important law-enforcement and crime-prevention programs for local governments.
As public officials, our first responsibility is to protect our fellow citizens. Any politician who willfully ignores that sacred duty is in gross violation of that oath. It’s time to restore civility, hold government officials accountable, and take our cities back.
Mr. Cruz, a Republican, is a U.S. senator from Texas.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yLr1m14NO50
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yLr1m14NO50
Lying’ Ted. Sad!
TuCa just ended his presidential aspirations.
I am done with him.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yLr1m14NO50
Lying’ Ted. Sad!
TuCa just ended his presidential aspirations.
I am done with him.
Right on right fighting. A dream come true for some.
Like a left designed commercial from covering the stories of the day, chasing shiny objects.
Close to zero percent of our scarce and precious media time is spent pursuing conservative principles.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yLr1m14NO50
Lying’ Ted. Sad!
TuCa just ended his presidential aspirations.
I am done with him.
Right on right fighting. A dream come true for some.
Like a left designed commercial from covering the stories of the day, chasing shiny objects.
Close to zero percent of our scarce and precious media time is spent pursuing conservative principles.
Doug, are you tired of endless GOPe failure theatre? Tired of fakes that say the right things but side with the Dems once they are installed in DC?
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Man, Tuck really anally raped Ted there , , ,
I've liked Ted for a long time, but his life experience is The Law-- a very narrow basis for presidential aspirations. I don't see him as well suited to work effectively in the muddy waters of American racial politics, nor well prepared to exercise executive power-- contrast DeSantis.
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Man, Tuck really anally raped Ted there , , ,
I've liked Ted for a long time, but his life experience is The Law-- a very narrow basis for presidential aspirations. I don't see him as well suited to work effectively in the muddy waters of American racial politics, nor well prepared to exercise executive power-- contrast DeSantis.
DeSantis has the best potential to actually be able to effectively engage the swamp. So they’ll go after him even more ferociously than they did to Trump.
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https://rumble.com/vt0s0t-wild-eyed-loon-ted-cruz-rips-biden-judicial-nominee.html?mref=22lbp&mc=56yab&fbclid=IwAR0KLwx8viYYHDVE9r7Ivm-M8lAIDMP7sMBD91-eHZPk1wBx7iWVOBikeAg
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Ted is amazing
this is the best I ever heard
him
my only disagreement is when he says he does not know why Democrats would ignore the wild eyed hatred of this nominee for half the country and still vote for someone like that
this is the best example to me of Dershowitz's famous remark that Cruz's talent is "off the charts"
the Dems response:
yawn and give us a liberal rebuff
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https://nypost.com/2022/07/17/ted-cruz-scotus-gay-marriage-ruling-was-clearly-wrong/
we don't need this now
for God's sake!!!!
:x
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Legally his logic is sound, but politically this is major flatulence that will lead to major turbulence.
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Stop being afraid of the deviants.
https://nypost.com/2022/07/17/ted-cruz-scotus-gay-marriage-ruling-was-clearly-wrong/
we don't need this now
for God's sake!!!!
:x
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A substantial majority of the population now favors gay marriage. Coming on top of Roe's overturn, a push on this would arouse the Dem base and give them a great shiny object to distract from what they are doing to our country.
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A substantial majority of the population
now favors was gaslighted into pretending to support gay marriage.
If the public really supports it, then a constitutional amendment should sail right through!
A substantial majority of the population now favors gay marriage. Coming on top of Roe's overturn, a push on this would arouse the Dem base and give them a great shiny object to distract from what they are doing to our country.
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I have accepted gay marriage
I want gays to vote for our side....!!!
Ted need not show how smart he is with legal arguments, and instead start showing how smart he is with political strategy!
" Coming on top of Roe's overturn, a push on this would arouse the Dem base and give them a great shiny object to distract from what they are doing to our country."
Between Thomas' comments and now this the Dems already have that shiny argument.
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quote author=ccp
"I have accepted gay marriage"
[Doug] Me too.
"I want gays to vote for our side....!!!
"
[Doug] Absolutely.
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Crafty: "Legally his logic is sound, but politically this is major flatulence that will lead to major turbulence."
[Doug] Exactly. There is a difference between wrongly decided case and good or bad policy, and Ted Cruz forgets he is a Senator not a Supreme Court Justice. Furthermore Texas is a politically divided state and what is said and done in Texas is headlines in Minneapolis (yesterday) and elsewhere.
Democrat overreach is how we got this opportunity to win elections and govern.
Also, there is a difference between precedent that needs to be overturned and precedent that shall stand. In abortion, (women's and pregnant people's privacy), people seem to forget there is a (potential?) life at stake. With gay and lesbian marriage, real people alive today relied on that ruling. Overruling Roe 50 years later doesn't change the life of Roe or her baby or anyone else who had a legal abortion. Overruling gay marriage puts marriages in doubt. Marriages have enough doubt without government help. From my read of Alito in Dobbs, the draft, Alito and others would find gay marriage wrongly decided but not overrule it. A bunch of worrying over nothing.
G M is right, (even if sarcasm is detected):
"If the public really supports it, then a constitutional amendment should sail right through!"
That is how you recognize a right today that was NOT an unenumerated right in the 1700s.
Republicans should lead that effort. You want gay support? Do something for them. Since it's not going to be taken away, make it official. That's how you fix both a wrongly decided case and the threat they face that REPUPLICANS want to take away their rights and their dignity (in their view), when in fact it is Republicans who want gays to have more liberty and security, keep more of what they earn, and travel and heat and cool their homes reasonably and affordably, and so on.
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http://ace.mu.nu/archives/conservatives%202040.jpg
(http://ace.mu.nu/archives/conservatives%202040.jpg)
quote author=ccp
"I have accepted gay marriage"
[Doug] Me too.
"I want gays to vote for our side....!!!
"
[Doug] Absolutely.
--------------------------------------------
Crafty: "Legally his logic is sound, but politically this is major flatulence that will lead to major turbulence."
[Doug] Exactly. There is a difference between wrongly decided case and good or bad policy, and Ted Cruz forgets he is a Senator not a Supreme Court Justice. Furthermore Texas is a politically divided state and what is said and done in Texas is headlines in Minneapolis (yesterday) and elsewhere.
Democrat overreach is how we got this opportunity to win elections and govern.
Also, there is a difference between precedent that needs to be overturned and precedent that shall stand. In abortion, (women's and pregnant people's privacy), people seem to forget there is a (potential?) life at stake. With gay and lesbian marriage, people relied on that ruling, on that law. Overruling Roe 50 years later doesn't change the life of Roe or her baby. Overruling gay marriage puts marriages in doubt. Marriages have enough doubt without government help. From my read of Alito in Dobbs, the draft, Alito may find gay marriage wrongly decided but not overrule it. A bunch of worry over nothing.
G M is right, (even if sarcasm is detected):
"If the public really supports it, then a constitutional amendment should sail right through!"
Republicans should lead that effort. You want gay support? Do something for them. Since it's not going to be taken away, make it official. That's how you fix both a wrongly decided case and the threat they face that REPUPLICANS want to take away their rights and their dignity (in their view), when in fact it is Republicans who want gays to have more liberty and security, keep more of what they earn, and travel and heat and cool their homes reasonably and affordably, and so on.
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Olsen
not Cruz
https://www.americanbar.org/news/abanews/publications/youraba/2018/july-2018/at-the-aba--ted-olson-looks-back-on-the-fight-for-marriage-equal/
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https://slate.com/human-interest/2013/06/most-gay-couples-aren-t-monogamous-will-straight-couples-go-monogamish.html
MUST. CONSERVE. HARDER!
Keep surrendering to the left until total victory!
Olsen
not Cruz
https://www.americanbar.org/news/abanews/publications/youraba/2018/july-2018/at-the-aba--ted-olson-looks-back-on-the-fight-for-marriage-equal/
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"Keep surrendering to the left until total victory!"
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I believe we could have held the line at two genders.
G M: To limit a political movement to people to the right of me (and to the right of Ted Cruz) is going to be a very small party.
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Coming soon:
"The conservative case for illegal alien drag queens in every classroom".
We need their votes!
"Keep surrendering to the left until total victory!"
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I believe we could have held the line at two genders.
G M: To limit a political movement to people to the right of me (and to the right of Ted Cruz) is going to be a very small party.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=51UYizYVHJA&t=121s
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bf9r-3RidAQ
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JffM3mCtAZE&t=249s