Alex Pareene understands that Ted Cruz is just a smarter, more cunning, version of Michele Bachmann. I mean, you know what a pain in the ass it is for Mike Enzi to raise enough money to fend off a primary challenge from Liz Vader-Cheney? That’s a lot of phone calls, a lot of sucking up. Ted Cruz just talks crazy and the money flows in like water. Create enough heat and passion in the base and you don’t need to spend all your time on the telephone asking car dealers to give you money. Hell, the nutjobs might even nominate you as their presidential candidate. If that happens, you’ll never have to work another honest day in your life. You can give paid speeches, have people ghost write a half dozen books, try your hand at radio, or get a cot at the Fox News studio. It’s a scam, people. Call it the Palinization of the Republican Party.
If there is a God, he created Ted Cruz to punish John McCain for what he did in 2008.
The conservative movement doesn’t need to pass legislation, or burnish it’s national image. Those are purely unnecessary in terms of achieving conservative goals.
The left invests a great deal of energy criticizing an arsonist for not carrying a blueprint.
I think Cruz is the end game. He’ll get nominated in 2016, the Republicans will get burned badly, and the teabaggers will no longer have cover to claim the only mistake was not sticking with their values. That’s what I’m hoping anyway.
It may be a scam but men like him are nevertheless dangerous. If he’s the Republican candidate and the Democratic candidate is caught in a scandal just before the election, the result could be tragic.
In your scenario, when Cruz loses it’ll be because he betrayed his principles. Or he wasn’t conservative enough, or [insert euphemism for not being white enough]. And the media, of course. The Liberal Media will be to blame, too. And all the people who want Free Stuff. And, and, and. It will be everybody’s fault but theirs. It always is.
Funny how the party of privilege has remade itself as the Biggest Victims In The Universe.
If Cruz runs to the middle in the general, you’re right. If he sticks to his schtick, they’ll blame the electorate for being stupid, unprincipled, unrepentant moochers, but they will have to wake up to how out of step they are with the rest of the country. It’s happening already. At those moments when they see how fucked they are. But for now they can still retreat back into their “everyone really agrees with us” bubble.
I don’t think you really understand what makes these people tick. This will not stop until the party is regionalized not just in the presidency, but in the house and senate. And then it will die.
OT:
It’s still a long way to 2016. And the NSA issue is not going away. Consider this.
Bruce Sterling: The Ecuadorian Library or, The Blast Shack After Three Years
I find myself wondering if that explains some of the personal hostility. We suspect that these self-righteous, bumbling, figures-of-fun are the heroes we daydream about being–but are not.
Hang on. No. This is bullshit.
Let’s be clear about something here. Assange faces prosecution in Sweden on charges of rape, sexual molestation and unlawful coercion. If you’re going to let your hatred of the NSA turn you into a rape apologist, you have definitely lost perspective.
That’s a whole lot of additional victims just to punish John McCain….
It is kind of God if the Bible’s style.