Posted on 11/30/2015 9:00:27 AM PST by Isara
I often come away from the conservative/Christian conferences I’ve attended around the country with the feeling that we’re trying to drive the car by hitting the gas and the brakes at the exact same time.
Although I have met many wonderful people at those events, and received no shortage of inspiration from the speeches I have heard, there is also a shadow that looms over everything. This shadow taunts us with visions of an army, whose soldiers run away or whose weapons jam right at the very moment in the fight when resolve and execution matter most.
And those shadows have names.
McCain. Romney. Boehner. McConnell. We may preach the antithesis of their failure theater at our gatherings, but they snuff out our song nonetheless with equivocation and platitudes. We may wave the flag for a new birth of freedom, but they break off the flag stick and stab us in the back with it.
Wash. Rinse. Repeat.
Are we are tired of it? Yes. But how tired are we, really? Many in the conservative punditry class seem like they would give anything for Donald Trump to stop upsetting the applecart so they could simply go back to peacefully writing their nagging columns about what’s wrong with Democrats. All the while never really coming close to drawing the enemy’s blood or actually risking their lives, fortunes or sacred honors. My colleague here at CR, Daniel Horowitz, not-so-graciously refers to this far too prevalent wing of the conservative movement as the “thumb suckers brigade.”
We insist that isn’t us. That we are the tried and true foot soldiers of American Exceptionalism. That if only we had our chance to seize the battlefield’s high ground, we’d take it and never look back.
Well, then, this Christmas is the time to ante up.
A field general with an organizational army of over 100,000 volunteers. A supply train of cash as rich as anyone could hope to amass. A consistent track record of putting principle over position. And the valor to be the first one to charge into battle, and take a bullet for the cause, is standing taller than we could have possibly hoped for when the 2016 GOP presidential field began auditioning last January.
His name is Ted Cruz, and while I have long been a supporter of his, I am also stunned by the simple arithmetic now undeniably calling his name forward.
The deepest presidential field in our lifetime, including the last two Iowa Caucus winners, figured to be a battle royal from the outset. So many respectable candidates would be vying for the same conservative base that even a narrow top three finish would be viewed as a huge success.
Yet with a dozen candidates still in the race, there are only two left who, barring disaster, seem to have a shot at securing 30 percent of the vote when the Iowa Caucus sorts things out roughly 60 days from now: Trump and Cruz.
If you are an actual conservative who has supported somebody other than Cruz up to this point, let me put in plainly: I couldn’t care less what your inner child thinks about that. In politics, it is the rare man who should be considered bigger than the movement. And if that does happen, such a man will have grown to that stature exactly because he is the most capable embodiment of what that movement stands for and hopes to achieve.
Everybody has had a chance at pulling the sword from the 2016 presidential stone. If Huckabee, Santorum, or Rubio (or several others) had built the campaign Cruz has, I would happily be on board. But they didn’t. Cruz did.
A population of die-hards who have attended more conservative book signings and rallies than they can count should no longer be starry-eyed about what is going on here. We can’t proceed as if we are little more than baseball card collectors or NASCAR fans obsessed with a single driver.
None of our gatherings have frankly been worth a warm pile of spit if we can’t coalesce now around a man who can grant American Exceptionalism the booster shot it desperately needs. So if you have a book shelf at home full of preachy tomes and autographed conservative memorabilia, but are still waffling about the path to victory in this race, you missed the whole point of our movement. If indeed a movement we really are, as opposed to an industry.
The 2008 and 2012 Iowa Caucus/GOP presidential primary involved a genuinely difficult decision for voters. That is not the case this time. Either gather around Cruz, on behalf of the values that won the American Revolution, or Trump’s “burn it down” French Revolution will likely win.
For this cycle is about revolution, which is why all the non-revolutionary candidates have been weighed, measured, and rejected by GOP primary voters. And this revolution will be televised, too. It’s just a matter of which revolution’s mission—American or French—will smile for the cameras.
As I wrote here earlier this week, Trump could be unstoppable if he wins Iowa. While his loyalists are people conservatives have often shared common cause with in recent months, and who are justifiably angry by the state of their country and their personal fortunes, let us not pretend we haven’t known all along how raw and unfocused the Trump road into the future will likely be.
And I say that as someone very appreciative of Trump undeniably destroying Jeb Bush and the GOP establishment’s stranglehold on the primary process. Our movement owes him a debt of gratitude for that. But let us also not pretend, on the other hand, that someone who held progressive positions on virtually every meaningful issue just a couple of years ago is really one of us.
If the conservative movement has been about anything other than glorified water cooler talk these many years since Ronald Reagan walked off into the sunset, there is a far better way for them to champion their cause. The pagan-progressive moment that is currently unravelling us has the most to fear from Cruz. If only we will acknowledge he has done everything we have asked for from a standard bearer. He has fought every fight we’ve ever asked someone to take on, and built a professional campaign the likes of which we’ve never seen from a conservative presidential contender.
He has earned our movement’s support. Now it is time for our movement to show it is one, after all, and put all our book sales and sold-out conferences where our mouths have been since the Reagan Revolution.
If not now, at this tipping moment for America, then when?
Lol!! So true- how many times have those questions been answered??
It’s like they’re not listening ;)
There is always an opposite and equal reaction. If they get out of your business, then they are going to get into somebody else's. That generally means the working middle class picks up the slack.
It was Trumps’ job, at the time, to take care of his business.
This has been the RINO argument for YEARS that has landed us in the mess we are in now..
NO MORE!!!!
apparently some of the long time “ conservative Freepers” aren’t so conservative and back to square one in support of a RINO...sigh
GO TED GO!!!!
THANK YOU! Well said.
YES YES YES!!! This says it all...
It still is. He is always talking about his net worth and gets offended when someone says it is less than what he says. Money is how he defines himself and it will continue to be true.
I am not listening to them. I believe this because I do not think Cruz can win the national election. Neither can the others in the race. Trump can win it.
just my own opinion
According to his own brand image, that is. People who trust Trump, are in reality trusting the brand image of "genius businessman" he created for himself in pursuing celebrity status through the MSM. If not for the MSM, few here would ever have heard of Trump, any more than they have heard of Donald Bren, a real estate mogul much like Trump who is so much BETTER at the art of the deal that he is worth four times MORE than Trump.
Trump is famous for being a "business genius" ONLY because he has spent the past 10 years or so marketing that brand image of himself to the American public.
Four years ago, a conservative blog was on top of it. Trump supporters, heed the difference between a trusted brand image and reality.
Fortune magazine as well makes a pretty good point about exaggerated notions of Trump's vaunted business "genius" here.
And so much emotion disguised as logic. The ONLY reason you have heard of Trump is because he marketed himself to the American public as a business genius. That you are unable to look that truth in the eye should be a warning to you.
Please see my post 119.
Obviously the Conservative Review does not care about ou illegal immigration problem.
And no doubt you believe that he'll "be so good at the military your head will spin," as he assured Hugh Hewitt while declining to give a single detail as to HOW he would accomplish it ... and also gave a hint as to what he considers "unfair" treatment: if he's tossed a question about a topic on which he is ignorant, even if many think he should be informed on that topic, he will cry, "It wasn't fair!!! It was a 'gotcha' question!" Waaah!
Me, I see the handwriting on the wall. Trump is an arrogant windbag who, if he is elected, will be a constant embarrassment to everyone who voted for him.
Beware and READ THE HANDWRITING ON THE WALL.
And the more firmly you squeeze your eyes shut to handwriting on the wall that you NEED TO READ and heed.
There are enough people disgusted with this Party Politics that if Trump runs 3rd Party, he'll mop the floor with Cruz and Hillary...People are just plain sick of it...
Because the donor happens to be The Donald, don't you see???? He gets a pass because he talks back to, and usually over, reporters and has audiences eating out of his hand!!!
Don’t you think you’ve posted that false information enough times in one thread???
I ignore crystal balls. My mom had a very bad experience with one once.
If you like cads, you are a fool.
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