Posted on 09/25/2013 5:10:34 AM PDT by Kaslin
Ted Cruz is no Joe McCarthy, as so many liberals bizarrely claim. But he might be the conservative Barack Obama.
The charge that he's the new McCarthy is something of a compliment from liberals. It means they don't like him, can't really explain why and need to demonize him instead. In other words, he must be doing something right.
For conservatives, the comparison to Obama probably stings more than the McCarthyite smear.
But think about it. Both men have impeccable educational credentials. Obama went to Occidental College, transferred to Columbia University and got his law degree from Harvard. Cruz went to Princeton University, where he was a national champion debater, and got a law degree from Harvard. Cruz's legal career was objectively more impressive than Obama's. He clerked on the appellate court and for Chief Justice William Rehnquist on the Supreme Court. He held numerous prestigious jobs in and out of government. Like Obama, he taught law, but Cruz was also the solicitor general of Texas and argued before the Supreme Court nine times.
National Review editor Rich Lowry identified one plausible source of elite liberal hatred for Cruz: betrayal. "Cruz is from the intellectual elite, but not of it, a tea party conservative whose politics are considered gauche at best at the storied universities where he studied. He is, to borrow the words of the 2009 H.W. Brands biography of FDR, a traitor to his class." (I hate to correct my boss, but Brands didn't coin that phrase).
What liberals hate in Cruz, they love in Obama: a product of an elite education who confirms all their feelings of superiority. Obama took the desiccated ideas of campus liberalism and made them seem vibrant, stylish and even populist.
There are other similarities. But the most relevant one comes in their similar approach to politics (not political philosophy, where they are light years apart).
Both landed in the U.S. Senate, running with larger ambitions in mind and promising to be unstinting champions of their party's principles.
Moreover, both grasp that historically the Senate whittles away presidential timber. Like John F. Kennedy, Obama was there just long enough to run for president. And while Obama was there, his chief goal was burnishing his presidential image, not racking up legislative accomplishments. Cruz has been a senator for eight months, and he already looks like a presidential contender.
In 2012, Obama said the "most important lesson" of his first term was that "you can't change Washington from the inside." You need populist pressure from the outside. This was an odd claim on two counts. First, it's not true. His signature achievement, the Affordable Care Act, was an entirely inside affair, an ugly partisan one involving mercenary horse-trading and countless backroom deals with industry and unions. Second, Obama, the community organizer, always believed salvation lay in organizing a movement. It was the premise at the heart of his 2008 campaign in which he told adoring throngs, "We are the ones we've been waiting for." It says something about Obama's arrogance that his biggest lesson from his first term was that he was right all along.
Still, this conviction led Obama to turn his presidential campaign into a private political army intended to rally his base for his legislative agenda. That effort has failed utterly. Organizing for Action couldn't even organize a congressional vote on gun control, never mind a win.
Cruz's fight to defund Obamacare rests on a similar outsider approach using the Tea Party and allied groups. As he recently told radio host Hugh Hewitt, "The strategy on this all along has been directed not towards Washington but towards the American people. It has been directed towards building a grassroots tsunami."
If Cruz's effort fails -- and I fear it will -- it will be for the same reasons that Obama's second term has been such a legislative dud. The way you bring change to Washington is through elections. After the elections, change comes from the unsightly process of consensus-building (aka sausage-making). Both Cruz and Obama have shown little interest in that approach.
Of course, there are huge differences between Obama and Cruz -- the most important is that they have completely divergent philosophies. That matters most, but it isn't everything. The inside game matters too. Cruz likes pointing out Obama's failures; he should also learn from them.
Obama would have hit the 1 million “I” barrier by now.
The reason they don’t like him - most any politician, pundit or media ideologue, is that he IS the antithesis of Obama and people can see it and immediately recognize in their heart of hearts those aren’t lies he’s spewing.
They absolutely HATE that they cannot under any circumstance, no matter how well prepped and opposition-researched, no matter under what circumstances they try to trap him, beat him in a one-on-one or a many-on-one confrontation and debate of ideas and truth. Instead, they backbite, backtalk, scheme, maneuver and plot against him.
No lies, no false steps - just the truth. And he doesn’t need a teleprompter or puff questions from colluding so-called journalists. He stands virtually alone, with the exception of one or two other Senators and he confounds them. Were this the days of Rome, those other scheming Senators would surround him and put him to the knife.
Is he Ronnie? He certainly has the love of country for it. Is he Tailgunner Joe? Possibly, he’s taking a lot of flak over the target, for sure.
Me? I’m thinking of a line in a movie called Dune...near the end when Paul “Muad’Dib” Atreides pulverizes his final enemy Fyed-Rautha using only his voice.....Paul’s sister says something like, “How can this be? For he IS the Kwisatz Haderach.” And the rains then fell on a desert planet.....
“Both men have impeccable educational credentials.”
Um, sorry, thank you for playing.
Or the professors for that matter. “O’ who?”
Comparing Cruz to the Bamboozler is a stretch. Only one of them has a forked tongue.
No evidence required. Strictly “Because obama” will suffice.
Ted graduated with honors from Princeton University and with high honors from Harvard Law School.
Obama..?
Prove it! Show me his college transcripts.
Ted Cruz is ‘effin brilliant. I haven’t had this much respect for a politician since I served under my CIC Ronald Reagan. I had my 10 Yr old son watch CSpan last night and we prayed for Senator Cruz.
Conservative Obama? Cruz is not anti American.
For a national figure, like nobama, to hide all educational records from which his intellect and ability is based is most curious. Such hiding brings up the question of what is the likely reason or answer for such hiding, with that likely and simplest answer being that there is something in those records that will not support the claims by the hider.
An even an potentially worse issue with this hiding is that of the institutions who are going along with this hiding of the record. At least some part of the reasons these institutions have gained such high respect is their trust by all aspects of our and every other society. Are these institutions now willing to show their willingness to incorporate the Marxist philosophy “The end justifies the means”.
By the way here at 0748, Ted Cruz is still cruising.
Is Goldberg just trying to be purposely controversial and draw more eyeballs to his article with the title of comparing CRuz to Obama? However the comparisons in his context don’t cut the mustard but he does get the eyeballs.
Does the fact that Cruz is right & Obama is wrong mean anything to Goldberg?
Exactly.
Thank you Jonah Goldberg, for revealing your true agenda, so I no longer need to waste my time reading your columns.
Jonah might as well try to compare Reagan and old maid Carter.
I see what he’s trying to do, but he admits it’s impossible so why try?
Oranges and (rotten) apples.
Viva Ted Cruz!
Oh come on, Jonah.
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