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....yes, you’re right! An epic fail...trying to have an intelligent discussion with you.
Again, my apologies.
Take care!
Nice try but buying Amway products is so passé.
Those who refuse to see the truth are the last ones to know when they have been had, or set up.
It would not matter to them if the cat has been let out of the bag, as the old saying goes, brick walls tend to wake people up to the truth and reality.
Actually ? Why should any of us let the cat out of the bag when they radically and steadfastly refuse to listen to us or listen to the truth.
All we can try to say to them is that Donald Trump is setting them up for a fall, he is just pulling their chains.
Adolf Hitler thrived off of populism for he was a populist leader until he baited them and hooked them.
Adolf Hitler was also “ successful “ and “ popular “ in Nazi Germany.
Ping!
So long as my choice is winning, I am in a good mood.
You Cruz folks are stark raving nuts.
Hitler?
Trump has been dealing with people for 40 years in his business capacity, giving and taking to make deals.
This you think was Hitler like?
He had to delegate to many department heads, to be successful with his international business empire. You think this was Hitler like?
His employees liked him. You consider him oppressive and a dictator type? You consider this Hitler like?
He is running on Ronald Reagan’s platform and even better due to the immigration things in it. This you consider Hitler like? So Reagan was Hitler like?
Reagan was a populist also. Again, was he Hitler like?
It’s booth a hoot and really sad, you watch you folks talk yourselves into a corner you have no way of getting out of.
You’re self-destructing.
STFU
So Reagan was nothing but an Amway salesman right?
Trump is running on his platform.
You hadn’t noticed after six months?
Yeah, I agree. But I don’t say as much as I could because I realize that folks aren’t listening. Sometines, I say a little, just so, when the day comes that folks say, why didn’t you tell us? Why didn’t you warn us?” I’ll be able to say, “I did, but you wouldn’t listen.”
It’s defining the term and word : POPULISM...
Promises of chicken in every pot.
The reason we have never heard of businessmen considerably more brilliant and financially successful than Trump, better wheelers-and-dealers with YUGELY greater vision, is because they declined to pursue celebrity status through the MSM...
I’m sorry, are they running for President? If not, why should I care?
You and other Trump supporters are being set up and being played for a fool...
He is baiting you guys with all his ( in theory promises ).
Of course, you and other Trump supporters will be the last to know, because you refuse to see the truth.
As the old saying goes, brick walls have way and tend to wake people up to the truth and reality.
Enjoy your little party, because the truth is going to set in very soon.
You only believe what you only want to believe, and I can’t help you with that.
Once again, you demonstrate yourself to be one of the most idiotic people on this forum comparing Trump to Hitler.
There are no nice ways to clearly state what an idiot you are.
Trump has adopted Reagan’s platform, and your pissed off about it.
Buy a freaking clue...
Trump is going to build a wall. Count on it. Everything else is gravy.
Trump has promised no more or less than Ronald Reagan.
Reagan was populist. He appealed to people on dinner table issues. So is Trump.
Dig out your map and try to figure out where you took the wrong turn.
If you don’t like Reagan’s platform, and you don’t realize he was a populist, you’re totally lost in space on this forum.
It’s all “ in theory “ at this point, nothing in stone.
Just promises..... That’s all that Donald Trump is running on.
It was all promises when Reagan ran on them.
What part of this do you not quite grasp?
If it was good when Reagan ran on it, it’s good when Trump runs on it.
Your prediction is more wild ass theory than what he’s running on.
Hitler like? It must be desperation time at the old OK (Cruz) corral.
Sick puppy. Hope you get help.
A new low has been reached by a Cruz supporter :(
Trump is one who can adopt a noblesse oblige spirit if giving back. Do you not know about his quiet acts of kindness? Do you not know that no one who has worked with him is on the Dump Trump buss recept the politicos and others of the cheap labor cartel are bashing him.
Stark Raving Nuts ?
Excuse me, but ?
Guess what ? I am not the one trolling on a Ted Cruz thread getting all emotional, getting mad, telling me to STFU.
There have been many “ Populist “ in history, and yes, some not with the infamous history of Hitler.
Instead of getting all emotional about what I said and saw the name Hitler, stop and think what I was trying to define as what a “ populist “ is.
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