Dubya’s Anti-Endorsement of Cruz Couldn’t Have Come At a Better Time

At long last, George W. Bush, the man who left the Republican Party in tatters as he left the White House, has some coattails.

His loose lips at a recent fundraiser last week about fellow Texan Ted Cruz have given the GOP presidential hopeful an invaluable shot of gravitas. And that’s saying something considering how Bush’s own brother, Jeb, has been running away from his family legacy by changing his surname to ‘exclamation point.’

But who wouldn’t rather declare punctuation as kin rather than a former claimant to the White House in this populist uprising disguised as an election? Nothing says vote for me like “I know my relatives either bore or vex you, but let me explain…”

Back to Cruz, though. According to Politico, Bush ’43 sized up Cruz as Jeb!’s toughest Republican opponent before heaping still more praise on him. In fact, big brother George gave Cruz the mother of all establishment endorsements.

“I just don’t like the guy,” Dubya said of Cruz, who previously served the former president as an advisor during his 2000 presidential bid.

I know Cruz’s recent quarterly fundraising numbers were outstanding, but money can’t buy good tidings like that. You mean the ex-president, which every conservative goes out of their way not to mention on the way to deifying Ronald Reagan, doesn’t want you in his exclusive establishment club? The president who refused to openly criticize Barack Obama while the Marxist in the White House was dismantling the country thinks you worthy of his disdain? The ex-president who bottomed out in the polls and handed Congress to Pelosi-Reid has condemned you?

Well, I guess Cruz just won’t be able to call up Dubya when it comes time to abandon free market principles in order to save them or some horse puckey like that. In the meantime, he will just have to settle for being too cool for establishment school. And going into this week’s debate, the timing is outstanding.

Cruz has suffered a similar debate fate to several other GOP candidates the first two go-arounds—being forgotten. Long stretches of time have passed in a crowded field as no question has come his way and opportunities for rhetorical touchdowns have been missed. Yes, he has done just fine so far, but the road to the presidency will ultimately need a breakthrough moment or two.

Because the press likely won’t be able to help itself, Cruz should have such a moment set up on a tee for him on Wednesday, especially with speculation swirling that Dubya’s Bush brother Jeb! is prepping his last gasp. After the moderators try picking a fight between presumed frontrunners Trump and Ben Carson, Cruz’s turn will come to answer a version of the very question that has more or less defined the entirety of his Senate career: “Why is George W. Bush just the latest member of GOP leadership who has a problem with you?”

Cruz may have demurred when he was first asked to respond to Dubya’s “endorsement” last week, but that was then. No need to rush into an opportunity for a political disemboweling when millions are just days away from turning on their TVs to witness such thrills.

Then, when the time is right, you pounce like you’ve just come across a B-list Hollywood actress at the Iowa State Fair, or the overmatched president of the Sierra Club. No need for Cruz to pretend he isn’t dying to answer this question. In fact, if the first question directed at him during Wednesday’s debate doesn’t address Bush’s insult, he should proceed as if it was asked anyway.

Not with animus and bombast, but with winsome precision. Perhaps it’s just a simple matter of style that keeps two Texans from joining in common purpose, Cruz might suggest. Perhaps John Boehner and Mitch McConnell are more to Bush’s liking, what with their untold treachery and antipathy among the base. Or maybe those guys are just a hoot at all those fundraising parties where they collude against the Constitution.

Cruz should consider calling upon the spirit of Charles James Napier, the British Army’s 19^th Century commander-in-chief. When Hindu priests complained to him about the prohibition of Sati – the custom of burning a widow alive on the funeral pyre of her husband – he replied:

Let us indeed. American Exceptionalism. Judeo-Christian heritage. Constitutional integrity. Sanctity of life. Religious liberty. Those are the national customs Cruz has vowed to uphold against the Sati-like perversions of GOP party hacks.

These are the pillars of our liberty the GOP establishment, including the Bushes, outright surrendered to the Left the last few decades. Wednesday’s debate is the perfect time to paint with bold colors the difference between real leadership and the establishment’s failure theater with about 20 million potential voters watching.

To preserve the ideas enshrined in America's Declaration of Independence and protected by the Constitution's limits on government, citizens must rediscover and preserve those ideas, and elect a leader whose fidelity is to that Constitution--one who could measure up to the standards laid out by two early Presidents as that by which they would measure their Presidencies.

Below are the words of the second President of the U. S., John Adams, a signer of the Constitution, who, in his First Inaugural's closing paragraph, laid out his understanding of the qualifications for the Office of President.

Inaugural Address of President John Adams

- (Excerpted & reformatted final words)

Philadelphia, March 4, 1797
“. . . as something may be expected, the occasion, I hope, will be admitted as an apology if I venture to say that
- if a preference, upon principle, of a free republican government, formed upon long and serious reflection, after a diligent and impartial inquiry after truth;
- if an attachment to the Constitution of the United States, and a conscientious determination to support it until it shall be altered by the judgments and wishes of the people, expressed in the mode prescribed in it;
- if a respectful attention to the constitutions of the individual States and a constant caution and delicacy toward the State governments;
- if an equal and impartial regard to the rights, interest, honor, and happiness of all the States in the Union, without preference or regard to a northern or southern, an eastern or western, position, their various political opinions on unessential points or their personal attachments;
- if a love of virtuous men of all parties and denominations;
- if a love of science and letters and a wish to patronize every rational effort to encourage schools, colleges, universities, academies, and every institution for propagating knowledge, virtue, and religion among all classes of the people, not only for their benign influence on the happiness of life in all its stages and classes, and of society in all its forms, but as the only means of preserving our Constitution from its natural enemies, the spirit of sophistry, the spirit of party, the spirit of intrigue, the profligacy of corruption, and the pestilence of foreign influence, which is the angel of destruction to elective governments;
- if a love of equal laws, of justice, and humanity in the interior administration;
- if an inclination to improve agriculture, commerce, and manufacturers for necessity, convenience, and defense;
- if a spirit of equity and humanity toward the aboriginal nations of America, and a disposition to meliorate their condition by inclining them to be more friendly to us, and our citizens to be more friendly to them;
- if an inflexible determination to maintain peace and inviolable faith with all nations, and that system of neutrality and impartiality among the belligerent powers of Europe which has been adopted by this Government and so solemnly sanctioned by both Houses of Congress and applauded by the legislatures of the States and the public opinion, until it shall be otherwise ordained by Congress;
- if a personal esteem for the French nation, formed in a residence of seven years chiefly among them, and a sincere desire to preserve the friendship which has been so much for the honor and interest of both nations;
- if, while the conscious honor and integrity of the people of America and the internal sentiment of their own power and energies must be preserved, an earnest endeavor to investigate every just cause and remove every colorable pretense of complaint;
- if an intention to pursue by amicable negotiation a reparation for the injuries that have been committed on the commerce of our fellow-citizens by whatever nation, and if success can not be obtained, to lay the facts before the Legislature, that they may consider what further measures the honor and interest of the Government and its constituents demand;
- if a resolution to do justice as far as may depend upon me, at all times and to all nations, and maintain peace, friendship, and benevolence with all the world;
- if an unshaken confidence in the honor, spirit, and resources of the American people, on which I have so often hazarded my all and never been deceived;
- if elevated ideas of the high destinies of this country and of my own duties toward it, founded on a knowledge of the moral principles and intellectual improvements of the people deeply engraven on my mind in early life, and not obscured but exalted by experience and age;
and, with humble reverence, I feel it to be my duty to add, if a veneration for the religion of a people who profess and call themselves Christians, and a fixed resolution to consider a decent respect for Christianity among the best recommendations for the public service, can enable me in any degree to comply with your wishes, it shall be my strenuous endeavor that this sagacious injunction of the two Houses shall not be without effect.
With this great example before me, with the sense and spirit, the faith and honor, the duty and interest, of the same American people pledged to support the Constitution of the United States, I entertain no doubt of its continuance in all its energy, and my mind is prepared without hesitation to lay myself under the most solemn obligations to support it to the utmost of my power.
And may that Being who is supreme over all, the Patron of Order, the Fountain of Justice, and the Protector in all ages of the world of virtuous liberty, continue His blessing upon this nation and its Government and give it all possible success and duration consistent with the ends of His providence.” - John Adams, First Inaugural

Then, the Author of our Declaration of Independence and President of the U. S., Thomas Jefferson, in his 1801 Inaugural Address laid out what might be considered to be "qualifications" for the American presidency:

(Excerpt, "Our Ageless Constitution," p. xiv, reformatted)
"Let us, then, with courage and confidence pursue our own Federal and Republican principles, our attachment to union and representative government. Kindly separated by nature and a wide ocean from the exterminating havoc of one quarter of the globe; too high-minded to endure the degradations of the others; possessing a chosen country, with room enough for our descendants to the thousandth and thousandth generation;
- entertaining a due sense of our equal right to the use of our own faculties, to the acquisitions of our own industry, to honor and confidence from our fellow-citizens, resulting not from birth, but from our actions and their sense of them;
= enlightened by a benign religion, professed, indeed, and practiced in various forms, yet all of them inculcating honesty, truth, temperance, gratitude, and the love of man;
- acknowledging and adoring an overruling Providence, which by all its dispensations proves that it delights in the happiness of man here and his greater happiness hereafter
—with all these blessings, what more is necessary to make us a happy and a prosperous people?
- Still one thing more, fellow-citizens—a wise and frugal Government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned.
- This is the sum of good government, and this is necessary to close the circle of our felicities.
"About to enter, fellow-citizens, on the exercise of duties which comprehend everything dear and valuable to you,
- it is proper you should understand what I deem the essential principles of our Government, and consequently those which ought to shape its Administration. I will compress them within the narrowest compass they will bear, stating the general principle, but not all its limitations.
- Equal and exact justice to all men, of whatever state or persuasion, religious or political;
- peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none;
- the support of the State governments in all their rights, as the most competent administrations for our domestic concerns and the surest bulwarks against antirepublican tendencies;
- the preservation of the General Government in its whole constitutional vigor, as the sheet anchor of our peace at home and safety abroad;
- a jealous care of the right of election by the people—a mild and safe corrective of abuses which are lopped by the sword of revolution where peaceable remedies are unprovided;
- absolute acquiescence in the decisions of the majority, the vital principle of republics, from which is no appeal but to force, the vital principle and immediate parent of despotism;
- a well disciplined militia, our best reliance in peace and for the first moments of war, till regulars may relieve them;
- the supremacy of the civil over the military authority;
- economy in the public expense, that labor may be lightly burthened;
- the honest payment of our debts and sacred preservation of the public faith;
- encouragement of agriculture, and of commerce as its handmaid;
- the diffusion of information and arraignment of all abuses at the bar of the public reason;
- freedom of religion; freedom of the press, and freedom of person under the protection of the habeas corpus, and trial by juries impartially selected.
These principles form the bright constellation which has gone before us and guided our steps through an age of revolution and reformation. The wisdom of our sages and blood of our heroes have been devoted to their attainment. They should be the creed of our political faith, the text of civic instruction, the touchstone by which to try the services of those we trust; and should we wander from them in moments of error or of alarm, let us hasten to retrace our steps and to regain the road which alone leads to peace, liberty, and safety."

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