Posted on 09/26/2013 5:50:56 AM PDT by honestabe010
Ted Cruz: Delusional or Ingenious?
by Brian Woodward
As I intermittently listened to Senator Ted Cruz’s filibuster, or more correctly, his elongated speech, I heard all the arguments that have been trotted out before. He is right that this monstrosity of the Affordable Care Act will be incredibly burdensome on society. However, this is not about ideas it's about tactics. It is tiresome to hear politicos and pundits act as if the defunding of the bill is feasible.
Senator Cruz knows that he cannot win and in waging this campaign he will needlessly incite increased division within the Republican party. He is a man who clearly has ambitions for the Presidency just eight months into his Senate term. He saw how Rand Paul became a star when he filibustered over the usage of drones. This was a calculated machiavellian move by Cruz to become a face of the Republican senate and party. It is not that there is anything wrong with this message but the house of representatives has passed resolutions repealing part or all of Obamacare over 40 times. Why is it now that he has chosen to take up the House’s cause and push for a continuing resolution to fund all parts of the government except for Obamacare?
Strategically as a person seeking political power it is probably a solid move on the Senator’s part. However, how often do politicians deliver on big promises? The answer is rarely. By taking the senate floor and reading from Dr. Seuss as he did, he screamed out to the nation “look at me”. He asserted his piety and love for liberty and law while he conducted a futile exercise in effecting policy, but most likely a profitable one in terms of gaining celebrity.
Politicians are some of the most narcissistic people one will ever encounter. It is part of the job description: “Think and act like you are important and others will perceive that you are”.
If you want to help the American people, and if you want to enrich and better the lives of your constituents do not waste their tax dollars and resources on a doomed plan. Obamacare may be a travesty but wasting time trying to defund it when there is no, and I mean absolutely zero possibility that this would ever be signed into law, is wasteful and irresponsible.
I hope that our elected officials will start to pour their efforts and energy towards legislation that is pragmatic. This showmanship and posturing from the junior senator from Texas is ill conceived and ultimately detrimental to the Republican party. Ted Cruz does not care about Obamacare, it does not affect him. He cares about advancing his political career, and he seized the opportunity. Can we really blame him?
How about doing the job his was hired to do!
George Washington was delusional too when he thought a rag-tag bunch of farmers with flintlocks could take down the mightiest nation on Earth.
What was clear from all of the media coverage, even the pseudo conservative media, was that they simply cannot conceive that someone might fight something purely out of a sense of conviction.
For D.C. and the pundits, its all about the game.
Obamacare won't be stopped and now he is on record warning about this pending disaster.
He demonstrated courage even in the face of failure.
Brave and brilliant!
Dr Suess is to Cruz what Murphy Brown is to Quaille.
But it won’t stick this time.
The only scenario in which Cruz loses is if Obamacare is passed and people like it. In all other scenarios he wins, sooner or later.
WRONG all over! Ted Cruz is a new Senator and has been fighting the conservative fight since he took office. This is just the latest in his demonstration of representations. This is what he was elected to do. This is what he said he would do. Mark Levin pegged it last night. Cruz is on a mission to grow the movement. His efforts in his "speech" were successful. The Senate phone banks are overwhelmed with citizens calling. Republicans are starting to question if they are serious and are starting to e held accountable for what they promised they would do. The republican party needs to be divided into conservatives and RINOs. This is the only way to draw a distinction between the parties. The last time the GOP had both houses and the presidency, they blew it. They were like drunken sailors. They split and disenfranchised the party.
Ted Cruz working to be President? I don't know about that. But if we could get him in there, I'd vote for him. I have never heard Ted Cruze say anything that would suggest he running for President. He talks about transferring power back to the states and the people. He sounds like one of our founding fathers re-incarnated. And its refreshing. Ted Cruz is starting to give me some hope.
The existence of flesh that penned this article is upset because his friends are being challenged and made fools of. That is, his Republican buddies are angry at being upstaged and put under fire to honor their commitments to save us from this national disaster.
“For D.C. and the pundits, its all about the game.”.....
and their re-election.
Please fix the link and post Woodward’s contact information. He NEEDS to be contacted, repeatedly. Let him know he is now on the wrong side as well.
Eventually, the two critical players in the defeat of Obamacare will be seen as John Roberts and Ted Cruz. They both played a strategic game, and seem to be winning.
To start with, Roberts was in a box. Justice Kennedy is known for always voting with the liberals when it matters, and he was counting on being the swing vote that would declare all of Obamacare constitutional. Roberts could not beat that 5-4 majority.
But as Chief Justice, one of the few authorities he has is to determine *who* writes the majority opinion, but only if he is in the majority. So instead of voting against Obamacare and losing; he voted for Obamacare and wrote the opinion.
And this resulted in a home run for conservatives, though few realized it at the time. Because Roberts said that Obamacare was constitutional *as a tax*, *not* as a mandate.
Leftists in the US pushed through FDR’s New Deal and LBJ’s Great Society as mandates, which meant that once passed, they could just defend it against Republican attacks, an easy job, because Republicans would need a 2/3rds majority in both houses of congress to defeat it.
However, *taxes* have special rules in the constitution. They *always* require only a *simple majority* in congress to change, create or destroy. This means that instead of the insurmountable 2/3rds majority, Republicans only need simple majorities in both houses of congress, *and* the president’s signature, to strip ALL taxation from Obamacare.
And thus kill it.
That was the hard part, for which John Roberts gets all the credit.
But what about Ted Cruz? Conservatives are becoming a very powerful block in the house, and will likely soon take over the leadership as well. But the senate is a much harder nut to crack.
The Tea Party has done exactly the right thing in the senate by targeting the RINOs. Because the RINOs have done more to defeat conservative legislation than the Democrats. They must be purged, in the long run. But in the short term they must “have their feet held to the fire”, politically, with the idea of ending Obamacare.
If scoundrels like McCain and Graham have their way, the US would forever continue to be harmed by Obamacare. But each election there are now fewer and fewer RINOs. If the rest of the Republicans in the senate are forced to, they likely will come on board to eliminate Obamacare.
In this case the false premise is that Cruz is delusional for advocating a course of action which cannot succeed. But there is no reason in principle why the House of Representatives cannot defund Obamacare, which it has done. The practical difficulty arises not from the constitutional power to fail to fund Obamacare, it comes from the probability that Republicans will defect to the Democrats' cause.
Again, as a matter of principle, there is no reason why the Republicans cannot hold fast in the face of a government shutdown by the Democrats except that the author "knows," and many others expect, that the Republicans will cave. Suppose Republicans do not cave? The government shuts down and the parties plead their case to the nation.
Does the author presume that the Republicans have a worse case to make? Does the author presume that the people will not give the Republicans a fair hearing for their better case? Does the author presume that the media will so distort the Republicans position that they will not get a fair hearing from the people? Does the author dispute the fact that it is the Democrats and not the Republicans who are actually shutting down the government?
Whatever the authors underlying suppositions, he presumes the Republicans will cave under pressure, presumably because they lose the public-relations battle and get blamed for shutting down the government which, in fact, the Democrats and not the Republicans will have shutdown. Why is this conventional wisdom? Does it make Ted Cruz delusional because he does not accept this conventional wisdom?
The author concedes that Obamacare is a "travesty" yet he blames Ted Cruz for the pusillanimous cave-in he anticipates from Republicans. Is that because Ted Cruz is somehow morally deficient for creating a situation in which the Republicans will be forced to reveal their cowardice? What impels the Republicans to be cowards? Fear of losing their seats.
The author stipulates that, "It is not that there is anything wrong with this message" in trying to defund this "travesty," so he criticizes Cruz not for the contents of this message, not for the honesty of the message itself, but because it causes "divisions" in the ranks of the Republican Party.
In other words Cruz is dividing Republicans who do the right thing from those who are cowards. Why does Cruz do this, the author does not reveal his psychiatric credentials but he assures us that it is because Cruz is ambitious. In other words it is wrong for Cruz to stand on principle to obtain higher office because in doing so he causes cowards perhaps to lose their offices who run from principle to protect their office.
And so, proceeding from a false premise, wallowing in hypocrisy, the author stands truth on its head.
“he will needlessly incite increased division within the Republican party.”
It is not “needless” to separate the leftists statists within the Republican party from the conservatives.
We need to know who stands for freedom, and who for slavery.
Thank you, Ted Cruz, for shining a light on the rats.
:: He is a man who clearly has ambitions for the Presidency ::
The MSM meme appears.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1L1HnV7Ta4KjxtatrJUepWnf41aXDznHqogVYL2zDxkc/edit?usp=sharing — brianallenwoodward@gmail.com
I am usnure how to fix the error in the original link but i posted it in the comments.
the original link posted on the thread should work now
Ted Cruz is a leader, McCain/McConnell are pussies!
ted cruz did not fight the fight when it was actually up in the air for obamacare to pass, people like tom coburn did, and all Cruz is doing is being a political opportunist, he practically admits that himself with him voting for the resolution he spoke 22 hrs against. Read a little bit, familiarize yourself with power and politics and do not be so trusting of Harvard grads with Texas drawls.
Cruz affiliated himself with the Heritage Foundation and began to campaign against Obamacare in the summer of this year. Half the people who criticize him call him an upstart, now you call him a Johnny-come-lately, which is it?
I suggest you "read a little bit and familiarize yourself" with the times of which you so authoritatively speak.
You have no evidence whatsoever documenting that Ted Cruz is an "opportunist."
There is no such thing as a politician who is not an opportunist in one sense of the word. When George Washington showed up at the Continental Congress when they were looking for a general to command the Army was it coincidence that he was wearing his uniform, or was he an opportunist?
When Abraham Lincoln made his speech at Cooper Union which helped propel him into the presidency, was he an opportunist?
There is no politician who was more of an opportunist than Winston Churchill, thank God he was exactly that. When asked to agree that Lord Halifax would be a better Prime Minister then he in 1940, Churchill remained stony faced and got the job. Was he an opportunist?
If Ted Cruz is an opportunist, give me an army of them and a world of opportunities will open for all of us.
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