Posted on 06/15/2014 7:47:10 AM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
Ted Cruz gave a rip-roaring speech at the Texas Republican convention last week, pretty much confirming the speculation that he’s running hard for president (not that there had been much doubt). All accounts are that he was very well received by the ultra-right conservatives of the Texas GOP. They like their Angus steaks bloody and rare and he delivered.
First he laid out his agenda, which is actually quite clever:
… from repealing “every blessed word” of Obamacare and the Common Core educational standards, to auditing the Federal Reserve and standing with Israel and dissidents around the world. He even struck a populist note, saying, “the rich keep getting richer and richer, and everyone else gets left behind,” while those in the “corrupt, bipartisan cabal in Washington” succeed.
Mix together a dash of Rand Paul, a soupçon of Tea Party, a smidgen of standard Washington loathing and even a tiny skosh of Occupy Wall Street and you’ve got the basis for an unusual GOP amuse bouche. Ladle on some Ronald Reagan secret sauce and you’ve got a Republican recipe that actually sounds like it might work:
“There was a time when we had another president, like President Obama, we had Jimmy Carter,” he said to boos. “And all of us remember how quickly things can change.”
The senator, who at times has been a pariah within his own party in Washington and faced tough headlines over his role in the government shutdown last fall, said of Reagan, as he praised him for ending the Cold War: “All of the intelligentsia, all of the cognoscenti, they tittered at such uneducated, Philistine views. He didn’t have the sophistication, he didn’t have the nuance, he didn’t understand détente — which I’m pretty sure is French for surrender.”
He said “cognoscenti.” And his little dig at the French is a very Reaganesque kind of joke.
But he’s right about the bigger picture there as well. The intelligentsia did dismiss Reagan as a clown, to the extent that many of them literally couldn’t believe he could win. It simply wasn’t possible for someone with such a far-right hawkish worldview to become president. Surely someone with these simplistic ideas could never become president. He was nothing but an actor, for goodness’ sake. We know what happened. And one cannot help hearing the echoes of that point of view today when it’s taken as an article of faith that the American people must reject the GOP because of its extremism.
Cruz also made a case for himself as the new Reagan based upon a couple of structural factors that have not been commonly articulated by others:
“In 1980, we saw the Reagan Revolution, we saw in the face of stagnation, in the face of feckless, naive foreign policy, in the face of America getting weaker and weaker, we saw a grassroots movement that turned the country around … that same thing is happening today.”
That shows a conscious pivot from the domestic affairs that have dominated politics since the financial crisis back to foreign policy and national security, which have been traditional Republican strengths. (It’s likely this will become an even greater focus if a Democratic woman gets the nomination, playing into their usual “feminization” strategy in a literal way. Benghazi!™ is just the opener.)
But Cruz is also saying something else. He’s saying that the right-wing Tea Party of 2016 is analogous to the conservative movement of 1980 and that they are poised to take advantage of the opening Jimmy Hussein Obama has made for them.
At first blush you kind of have to wonder if he isn’t on to something. After all, Reagan came in at a time of deep economic … er, malaise. People were tired after many years of a war and the cultural turmoil that accompanied it. Racism was morphing from the old style into the new style, with some white people feeling threatened by a loss of their social and political power. The conservative movement that had been building since 1964 was taking over the GOP and the Democrats, after an intense period of reform in the wake of Watergate, had run out of steam.
Perhaps Barack Obama himself described that period the best when he also famously compared himself to Ronald Reagan in the 2008 campaign:
“I think Ronald Reagan changed the trajectory of America in a way that Richard Nixon did not and in a way that Bill Clinton did not. He put us on a fundamentally different path because the country was ready for it. I think they felt like with all the excesses of the 1960s and 1970s and government had grown and grown but there wasn’t much sense of accountability in terms of how it was operating. I think people, he just tapped into what people were already feeling, which was we want clarity we want optimism, we want a return to that sense of dynamism and entrepreneurship that had been missing.”
Ted Cruz pretty much said the same thing about America today — except he left out one very important word: optimism. If there’s one thing that Ronald Reagan had that none of the avatars of the modern conservative/Tea Party movement have, Ted Cruz especially, it’s a sense of optimism. It’s not that the movement didn’t always, underneath it all, have the fearful revanchist cast it has today. It’s that Reagan was extremely skilled at making that paranoid worldview sound sunny and upbeat so he could appeal to a broad spectrum of the American public. And that is not a skill Ted Cruz has demonstrated thus far. In fact, the comparison one hears most often about Cruz is not the cheerful idealism of Reagan but rather the anger and bitterness of Sen. Joseph McCarthy. (And that’s what his Tea Party followers love about him.)
It’s not entirely impossible that the conditions are ripe for a conservative comeback. Enough time has passed from the Bush Iraq debacle for them to reclaim their standard national security gripe about wimpy Democrats. The economy is stalled at best. And the reform spirit that ushered in the Obama administration spent itself on Obamacare and seemingly has nothing left. It’s not entirely daft to compare this moment to that moment in 1980.
But it’s highly unlikely that the Reagan revolution would have happened without Ronald Reagan. Ted Cruz is no Ronald Reagan. And neither is anyone else.
Sad...
I don’t think that either Santorum or Huckabee can fill Ted’s shoes.
They are really frightened of Ted Cruz.
And Sarah Palin. And Reagan.
Looks like Cruz is in good company.
Hope the GOPE doesn’t throw him overboard to satisfy the media and go with a Dole/McCain/Romney hybrid.
Personally I don't go by feelings, as a conservative I think.
Facts carry much more weight with me than emotions, you know those warm fuzzy feelings, liberals put so much trust in.
Just Saying!
Authoress has two last names. Major red flag.
Such pretentiousness is the handmaiden of bad writing. It is usually a compensation for (well deserved) feelings of inferiority.
Like a joke that falls flat, the effect is humiliating for the jokester but the uneasy embarrassment spreads to the audience.
CRUZ WILL NOT HIDE HIS PAST AND HIS GRADES EITHER.
MORRIS ALBERT
“Feelings”
Feelings, nothing more than feelings
Trying to forget my feelings of love
Teardrops rolling down on my face
Trying to forget my feelings of love
Feelings, for all my life I’ll feel it
I wish I’ve never met you, girl
You’ll never come again
Feeling, woo-o-o feeling
Woo-o-o, feel you again in my arms
Feelings, feelings like I’ve never lost you
And feelings like I’ll never have you again in my heart
Feelings, for all my life I’ll feel it
I wish I’ve never met you, girl; you’ll never come again
Feelings, feelings like I’ve never lost you
And feelings like I’ll never have you again in my life
Feelings, woo-o-o feeling it,
woo-o-o, feeling again in my arms
Feelings
“Heather Digby Parton, Class “A” Certifiable nut case.”
You got that right! I’m going back to her site to read her “articles” purely for sadistic entertainment value that Lefties can be as stupid as that.
That’s a h#ll of a way to live, BTW. Does she check under her bed every night for any racists, sexists, bigots, homophobes, Islamophobes, or just plain nasty rightwingers?
Anyway, President Ted Cruz in 2016! If he makes liberals like her go all crinkly-toes, then he must be doing something right.
Talk about Snarky? That comment was uncalled for. I don’t have anything against Cruz. I am just going to keep my powder dry until I am convinced that he isn’t just another opportunistic politician. By the way, inasmuch as he is a Lawyer, does anybody know where he stands on Tort Reform in regards to our Health Care System?
I don’t get a warm feeling ...
__________________________________
Use your brain rather than your emotions. I can tell you that there are many people here in Tennessee that would vote for Ted Cruz in a nano-second. I’m one of them. Cruz is well educated, has a sound base of conservative principles and sound religious morals, speaks well (without notes or technological assistance, is quick-witted...and has the cojones to STAND for those principles against all comers. ...AND he does so as a gentleman. Classy!
Gee, She left out Ted’s Opening Remark....after flying in from DC, he opened with.......
“ITS GOOD TO BE BACK IN THE UNITED STATES”..........
I doubt it, as she probably "just knows" they are there...
.
Listening to some of the Cruz supporters on these threads kind of reminds me of the zeal of the former supporters of Retired Congressman Ron Paul. When you said anything that might be construed as critical of Paul you could expect a deluge of personal attacks. If Cruz ends of being the Republican nominee, I will support him, but until that happens, I will keep an open mind on all the potential candidates and will compliment them when I think they are right about an issue and criticize them when I think they are wrong.
/johnny
Every Cruz thread I read has you making a similar type comment. For someone who has nothing against Cruz, you post quite a bit about how you don’t like him. Perhaps you should find a board where the owner hasn’t endorsed Cruz.
Yes he supports tort reform: http://lmgtfy.com/?q=ted+cruz+tort+reform
Your posting history says otherwise. Yet here you are attempting to sound both principled and reasonable, while you are actually neither.
Whatever your personal animus is with Cruz, don’t expect to receive a friendly reception with your comments here.
A lot of people use “blessed” to mean something like “stinking”. I don’t think they mean anything offensive to what is truly sacred.
I have a question....
If Obama is an illegal POTUS due to being born in Kenya to an American mother, how can Cruz be elected when he admittedly was born in Canada to an American mother?
Can’t bitch about one and embrace another. Its hypocrisy.
BTW, I absolutely adore Ted Cruz! I really want him to run.
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