Freshman Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas is like Jim DeMint on steroids, and that probably means that he doesn’t have much of a future in the U.S. Senate. DeMint burned so many bridges with his colleagues that a position at the Heritage Foundation became more attractive to him than going to work each day with 99 people who hated his guts. But DeMint wasn’t in the habit of having his staff insult other Republican members on a regular basis.
Senator Cruz is pretty obviously going to run for the Republican nomination for president, and he’s positioning himself as the most far-right candidate in the race. Everyone else is a coward. Everyone else is corrupted by Washington. Only Senator Cruz has the steel to fight. Republicans who don’t want to shut down the government have to defend themselves from these attacks, and presidential aspirants will have to be willing to do it in the presidential debates and somehow win the argument with the Republican base. Either that, or they will fall in line with Sen. Cruz. That’s what Sens. Marco Rubio and Rand Paul have done.
The 2016 election is still a long way off, and ObamaCare will be well-established by then. People will be very tired of dysfunction and gridlock by then, too, and there are no signs that the problem will have abated before 2016.
Even though the Republican leadership and consultant class does not want to follow Ted Cruz’s government shutdown strategy, none of them dare argue against the underlying principle, which is to repeal ObamaCare. That will remain an orthodox article of faith that no Republican can deviate from. It’s a sickness.
And Senator Cruz is spreading the disease.
Question: Are they crazy, rational with perverse incentives, or just stupid?
Incentives. But as you just said, “For the foreseeable future, I cannot imagine a Republican who could both win the party’s nomination and 270 Electoral Votes.”
Maybe they (the less idiotic ones) know that. Maybe their incentives are perfectly rational: it’s their goal that is perverse.
They want to destroy all functions of the US government except for police, military, and wealth concentration. They don’t need the White House for that. ‘Insufferable grind’ is all they need.
OT: If this is true, the White House staff are woefully keeping the President out of touch of some substantial criticism of Summers. I don’t trust the source but here it is:
That is a pretty braindead explosion, if true.
Summers, btw, is totally unqualified by temperament and experience for the post.
He’s not braindead, Tarheel. Far from it. It’s just that his undoubtedly large and active brain is so challenged by the necessities imposed upon it in order to be able to keep his many contradictory stories straight that he overloads once in a while.
Bet on it.
If Hollywood still used actors instead of reality show mannequins he’d have a future as a great character actor once his term of office is up.
Then he would have made some real money!
Bet on that as well.
AG
It’s going to be Summers. Obama continues to channel Bush.
In this case, it seems to be less channeling Bush and more channeling either Clinton or Robert Rubin. Or Tim Geithner? Or is Summers a staking horse for Tim Geithner to get the job?
Ten bucks says it won’t be Summers.
Loser donates the money to Boo?
You’re On! Providing “it’ll be Summers” refers to nomination not confirmation. Might be willing to bet on confirmation later, but not right now.
Yes, and this Authoritarian Fascist ideologue is one major domestic terrorist event, or another catastrophic economic downturn, from doing well enough in their primaries to win, and may have a chance to win in the Presidential.
It’s unlikely.
But it’s possible.
I bad times, people turn to sociopaths like him.
And that is something none of us never should forget.
Excellent point about Canada Cruz as a junior Duhmint who has no any long term interests in being a senator—but then what rational non-egomaniac would want to be one? Anyway, it’s clear what his plan is.
Candidate Cruz will present himself to the nation as the Conservative Obama: young, dynamic, of slight experience with one term in the senate, blessed with the “diversity” bonus. Booman has himself acknowledged the apparently high IQ and elitist lineage of future-Fuhrer Cruz, to the extent that IQ and Ivy League dayz can substitute for knowledge, judgment and wisdom, qualities which I maintain cannot be operational in any “conservative” mentality, circa 2013.
Canadian Cruz has indeed risen to the level of movement leader with astonishing rapidity, aided by the amazing eclipse of Boss Rushbo and failure-tainted Moneyman KKKarl Rover. He already (as a junior senator!) issues political insults ala Uncle Adolf and few old Repubs lions seem willing to slap back at him. Afraid already?! Very good progress for the Young Lunatic. Quite remarkable, in fact. To underestimate him is foolish.
As for Obamacare, it’s clear that Repubs (as always) plan to run on nothing but repeals and dog whistles, they certainly have no concerns about denigrating minorities, Obama’s election(s) having enabled the New Racism, to “conservative” delight. But Obamacare is by design an extremely complicated–one could say jury-rigged–program, since its entire raison d’etre was to preserve the absurdly complicated American private health insurance regime and shore up employer-based health care. It will have a lot of moving parts and it relied upon being a broadly applicable nationwide program to succeed. All the moving parts are susceptible to a lot of lies and falsehoods as well, and you can bet those will be widely spewed by our Repub-friendly media.
Team Conservative Head Coach Roberts made sure that all Red States could categorically refuse Obamacare, and the big Repub states are pretty much determined to do so. The rightwing federal courts will also do their part to ruin and obstruct any successful Obamacare implementation; every large federal program depends crucially upon unbiased judicial support in the inevitable litigation which arises—and Obamacare will most definitely not receive that from today’s crop of “conservative” Bushco judges.
So Canada Cruz and his Repub “Repeal!” refrain will only become louder as time wears on. The Right is digging in to permanently oppose Obamacare, it’s what their base has been taught to want, and the Right’s coordinated efforts to undermine it will most likely bear fruit over time. They will never surrender. The American Right has decided Obamacare simply will not be allowed to go forward, and ultimately their absolute refusal will seriously affect the program and substantially taint, if not positively ruin, its envisioned benefits. Even slight Progress must not be permitted.
Stop bashing Canadians.
Anyhow, why wouldn’t you want to be a senator? All you have to do is listen to people blabber on all day and never do anything. It’s like college without the homework, and for this you get offers of bribery and cushy jobs thrown at you.
Well considering that last maybe you wouldn’t want to be a senator for very long…
ain’t he just the dev’lish thang?
Heh.
So we draft Jennifer Granholm and we have a battle of the canooks!
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