Part of this job involves looking for things to write about two, three, four or thirteen times a day (if you’re Ed Kilgore), and sometimes you have to settle for something a little less than intellectually titillating. This is how I feel anytime I feel the need to write about Ted Cruz.
But, stories about Cruz, his wife and his father are what’s topping the political news aggregators this morning, and the biggest political story of the day is the Republican primary in Indiana.
To begin with, Gallup notes that “Republicans’ views of Cruz are now the worst in Gallup’s history of tracking the Texas senator. His image among Republicans and Republican-leaning independents is at 39% favorable and 45% unfavorable.”
He must be doing something wrong, and I’d suggest that the thing he’s doing wrong is to try to overturn the verdict of Republican primary voters that they have chosen Donald Trump to be their nominee. Last week, I mentioned that Cruz was getting pretty desperate and making people hate him by going after transgender people who sometimes need to use public restrooms. But he hasn’t limited his pandering to Indiana’s roster of Christian conservatives to picking on society’s most vulnerable minority. He’s sent his father out to tell people that God wants them to vote for his son. No, not that son.
In a brief video conversation with [Micah] Clark, [executive director of the American Family Association of Indiana] posted on the AFA Indiana Facebook page, Rafael Cruz made the case for Ted. “I implore, I exhort every member of the Body of Christ to vote according to the word of God, and vote for the candidate that stands on the word of God and on the Constitution of the United States of America,” Cruz said. “And I am convinced that man is my son, Ted Cruz. The alternative could be the destruction of America.”
Cruz’s advocate, Glenn Beck, is traveling around Indiana with the same message, which is that the choice between Cruz and Trump is a choice between good and evil. Even Louie Gohmert is in on the act.
But what’s more interesting than this sad display of politicized and perverted Christianity is the clown car aspects of this race, as Heidi Cruz feels compelled to assure us that her husband isn’t actually the Zodiac Killer and the Cruz campaign tries to fend off accusations that his father Rafael somehow assisted Lee Harvey Oswald in some way in his alleged assassination of John F. Kennedy.
Aside from a few laughs like these, the Republican nominating process long ago ceased to be good entertainment. Watching it just makes me feel dirty, the way I kick myself when I can’t help but rubberneck to see the results of a car accident or when I have to remind myself that a good person doesn’t root for injuries when the Cowboys play the Eagles.
The evidence suggests that, far from God wanting us to vote for Ted Cruz, he’s cast some kind of Oedipal curse on the Republicans.
Maybe it’s because they invaded the wrong country and broke the whole region featured so prominently in the Bible.
OT, but here’s something to write about! (More like a response to your post of the other day.) From @billmon:
Don’t have time at the moment to respond in detail to that.
Briefly, he’s hitting on what I identified as the real source of complaint, which is not really that the big two political parties should be able to choose their own leaders, but that it’s so hard for other parties to get a fair shot. It’s about limiting choice. That’s what really is the problem, not that party members and party leaders and politically active people do the choosing for the Dems and the GOP.
So, in a way, I think Billmon and I probably wind up getting close to the same place, just by dramatically different routes.
Question: If Indies want a party, go for it. Greens do. Libertarians do. Indies are opting out of the process. They could make a party of their own and nominate who they want. And in most cases, the primary elections coincide with other statewide elections anyhow, so no (or little) additional cost to taxpayers. That’s just a lame excuse to try to support the argument.
Billmon’s point is solid.
There are several reasons why third parties don’t work in the United States. Some of them are built in to the system and others can be improved on.
Ballot access is a huge factor. It’s simply harder and certainly not automatic for a third party to even get a candidate on the ballot. In some states, like Pennsylvania, it’s ludicrously difficult.
Then there’s money that gets set aside for the major parties. Until this cycle, the two major parties both got a huge amount of money for their conventions, and they still get millions for security. And, yes, they both use the state mechanisms for their primaries (although not necessarily for their caucuses).
But there’s also the spoiling factor, where a left-wing third party hurts the left in direct proportion to how well they do, unless they somehow win. So, there’s no way to gather strength because you keep helping the right win elections and you keep helping them more and more the closer you get to winning. The same works in reverse for right-wing parties.
In a normal system, Sanders would run as the head of a third party and get a bunch of people elected who would then be in a position, hopefully, to join with other left-wing parties to form a majority coalition. They could make demands, including things like having a member of their party put in charge of Treasury or the SEC or Education or something. And, from that position, they could implement their reforms.
We don’t have that outlet here, so Sanders supporters are forced to choose between Clinton and Trump, which isn’t that hard of a decision but offers little relief if you’re focused on opposing things that Trump and Clinton agree about, or supporting things that both of them oppose.
So, in the end, the process loses legitimacy because it forces a fake kind of consent.
Two parties are a feature of a representative Democracy. What changes is how the parties are aligned but it always shakes down to two parties.
The only way to change that would be to change our system of governing to a parliamentary system which would, of course, mean rewriting our constitution.
It wouldn’t have to be a parliamentary system, just a multi-seat constituency and single transferable vote system. A voter would 1,2,3,4 down a ballot paper in order of their choice. If you’re first preference candidate is eliminated, your second preference vote comes into play. Such systems have a tendency to promote moderation, because you are not only trying to attract no. 1 votes, but no. 2’s and 3’s from your rival candidates as well.
So you could have a general election with Hillary, Sanders, Trump and Cruz all on the ballot paper. If Hillary and Trump end up being the last two candidates standing, it may all depend on how many lower preference votes they have been able to attract from Sanders and Cruz voters. And that depends on your ability to reach out to more than your own core supporters – a skill set not much in evidence in US politics at the present time.
Politics becomes more inclusive and less polarising. You can give your number 1 to the Green candidate and your 2 to Sanders and your 3 to Hillary without worrying that your votes may let Trump in. More people are inclined to vote because they have a genuine choice. If you are voting in (say) a constituency with 5 congressional seats, one of the successful candidates could well be a Green if they can muster c. 20% of the vote. In fact 10% of the first preference vote can be enough if the Green candidate can also attract lower preference votes from eliminated minor party or independent candidates.
Yes, there are several good ways to do it; another way is a system like the French presidential system, where there are two ballots (the “two-round system”. Nothing else need be changed.
“representative democracy”???
How so?
Sanders reformers could run downticket and elect legislators to promote their positions. Tea Baggers have certainly made their statutory leaders sweat.
Or will Dems enact a Hastert Rule for themselves?
Cruz is toast. Stick a fork in it, he’s done.
Block that metaphor!
I read the comments at places like RedState and HotAir. (I’m sick that way.) Judging from those, his crafty delegate wrangling definitely proved a pyrrhic victory. Also, after Wisconsin, by cooperating with the establishment in the hope of holding Trump back, he sacrificed his main value proposition.
Well if that’s sick I will join you
Go on over to Redstate and just watch their heads exploding
The best is when someone, in a mixture of bewilderment and despair, suggests that perhaps conservatives bear some small degree of responsibility for their current predicament. A moderator then swoops in and brusquely tells them to shut up.
Yep happens all the time or better yet they are banned
Example This is from today
rae85014 * 29 minutes ago
Agreed, except the part blaming Obama for Trumpism. Part of the problem has been the constant blaming of Obama for every conservative failure the last 8 years.
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streiff Mod rae85014 * 26 minutes ago
not really what I said. But if you don’t think Obama’s response to Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown and his DOJ not prosecuting the NBPP over their voter suppression in Philly and the “beer summit” and the “bitter clingers” didn’t bring this on then I don’t know what to tell you.
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Appears that when voters outside the fundie bubble actually take a look at Cruz, their response is similar to that of liberal/Dem political junkies and those on the Hill.
Possible that if fundie voters took off their blinders, Cruz would creep them out as well.
If fundies had a choice in this election like, say, Santorum, they might well reject Cruz too.
Yup. Even man-on-dog-sex Santorum isn’t as odious as this man for whom smarm leaches from every pore.
I’m just hoping and praying that Trump’s polling numbers hold up today and Ted Cruz can finally be dispatched into nether-regions of political frustration. Then we can get on with demolishing Trump and the party he rode in on in November.
Tailgunner Ted seems the perfect embodiment of American “conservative” orthodoxy, the final perfected version of conservative bullshit. He’s highly “intelligent” (as these things are measured) and he’s clearly Fightin’ To Win, another requirement of conservative bully-boyz.
Yet his personality is apparently too toxic for Repub turds to take? Now that’s saying something.
It would seem the desperate vision of the yearned-for American Strongman decisively trumps decades of conservative claptrap drummed into the heads of the rubes. The way has thus been prepared for the American Hitler, if only the right could find him…
Maybe I’m missing something, but it seems a rather significant thing happened today that is getting buried.
Specifically, the frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination stated as fact that an opponent’s father was connected to the assassination of a previous U.S. president. No matter how much one may loathe Cruz, no matter how much bullshit we have learned to expect from Trump, it is more tragic still that such a thing could happen at all and produce yawns.
If this is the response of the media and the public, then we deserve Trump. Because we have clearly deemed it of no concern that a presidential candidate for a major party can utter such a blatant falsehood and slander, can actually say on the national media such an absurd, vicious and idiotic thing, without anyone taking him to task. Worse, without anyone straying from the belief that he will remain the frontrunner. Without appreciating what should be done to such a candidate, and then doing it.
To respond “well, it just shows Cruz is toast” reveals a lot, none of it good.
He said it on FOX news
All they do over their is lie
That’s why no outrage
Trump’s good buddy is Roger Stone who wrote a book claiming that LBJ orchestrated the assassination of JFK. So, if Stone thinks that the other person in an old photo of Oswald is papa Cruz, that would be good enough for Trump.
Cruz is fascinating because he makes all of these moves that make strategic sense on paper, yet he cannot escape the fact that at baseline, he is this deeply creepy, unlikable asshole and it undermines everything that “strategic Ted” sets out to accomplish. It’s amazing.
killer. I mean Edwards skeeviness just rolled off him in waves but at least I never felt he would be yelling down to me “put the lotion in the basket.” With Cruz I can see that happening.
To put it another was perfect casting for Harry Ellis if they should ever do a Die Hard remake while Cruz is perfect casting for Buffalo Bill in Silence of the Lambs remake.
Trump’s just trolling him now with the JFK thing. He knows he’s got Cruz beat, and he just wants to point out “Look at the kind of outrageous shit I can say about you and still beat your ass, Teddy!”
Then Cruz blows up about him, and Trump trolls him further with that “Lyin’ Ted is unhinged and doesn’t have the temperament to be POTUS” statement that, of course, applies even more to Trump than Cruz.
It’s hilarious. I mean, if you’re Cruz, you’ve gotta be losing your shit. You’ve spent years positioning yourself as the principled conservative outsider-y figure who’ll Stand Up to the Washington CartelTM, and along comes this — borrowing from the good folks at Deadspin — sentient balloon animal covered in nacho cheese who is utterly unprincipled, lives the life of a dick-swinging New York Libertine and is completely insane — and he not only beats you, but beats you with your base in your region.