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?
Geesh, Cruz can’t even get above 11% in polling.
He doesn’t excite enough people.
All of that is meaningless. Trump has had the epiphany that we ALL want EVERYONE to have... Government is the problem.
Sorry, but Trump will do exactly what you want him to do, despite your concern trolling.
Trump is a natural born citizen. Cruz is not. This country went for a candidate in 2008 who was also NOT a natural born citizen. How well did that work out?
I’ve tried to point this out numerous times. One of the requirements for the nominee.. They MUST move the needle to win. Trump moves the needle.
Can’t we have both?The bull in the China Shop Trump followed by the poet Conservative Cruz. It could take all 16 years to recover from the disaster that Obama gave us!
"What would President Cruz do? Do American citizen children of two illegal immigrants, who are born here, the children, get deported under a President Cruz?" Kelly asked.
Donald Trump, she said, "has answered that question explicitly."
"Megyn, I get that that's the question you want to ask," Cruz said. "That's also the question every mainstream media liberal journalist wants to ask."
Asked whether it is an unfair question, Cruz said that it is "a distraction" from solving the issue.
"You know, it's also the question that Barack Obama wants to focus on," Cruz retorted.
"Why is it so hard? Why don't you just say yes or no?" Kelly asked.
Cruz's response: "Because, Megyn, we need to solve the problem. And the way you solve the problem is you focus where there's bipartisan agreement first. Once we've secured the border, once we've proven we can do this, once we've stopped the Obama administration's policy of releasing 104,000 violent criminal illegal aliens in one year. Once we've solved that problem, then we can have a debate, then we can have a conversation."
source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2015/08/26/morning-plum-megyn-kelly-nails-it-on-why-donald-trump-matters/
Very misleading, oversimplified and inaccurate. A perfect propaganda tool.
Cruz is the candidate conservatism has been looking for since Reagan.
Cruz is going to win it all because he is ‘among the evangelical Christians who are anointed as KINGS to take control of all sectors of society’ as so stated in the Seven Mountains mandate....
I disagree on this part of your argument and let me explain here.
He is conservative on the things that matter to me and has been so for a long time:
immigration
trade
political correctness (which is gonna kill us before the other two things do, btw!)
But these are the very issues that the self-described conservatives in this race are completely wrong about. They also happen to be the only things that if they go unresolved, will mean that, in my lifetime that the term “conservative” will go the way of the term “rotary phone.”
Comical hit piece on Trump...Trump is miles ahead of Cruz while never saying a negative thing about CruZ...Apparently Cruz has to go negative on Trump in hopes that he can even begin to play catch-up...
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.
We've been hearing this 'values' thing now for decades and it just turns out to be rhetoric...
You people can't seem to grasp that the majority take Trump's position...
Cruz is not going to fix Washington...We know that...It needs to be torn down and started over...
Either Cruz or Trump will be in the news related to the election come September 2016. I’m not saying it wouldn’t be nice, but mark my words.
I won’t vote for the crony capitalist. Under any circumstances at all.
I can’t even read the responses.
Everyone who thinks Cruz would even be considered as VP are dreadfully wrong.
Those who think Cruz would ACCEPT VP are nuts. Why would a brilliant man with well founded conservative credentials ruin his career to babysit the new whiny baby in chief? Duh.
I agree with you. Cruz has baggage that his supporters are ignoring. I would be happy with him on Trump’s ticket but I do not think he will be able to win this election in the Presidency slot. He is not popular outside the conservative camp. I think he has compromised to get money to campaign and favors are owed to his larger supporters. I agree completely that he is not popular on the hill and that things will be an uphill battle for him that may result in an inability to put his ideas into action.
Trump on the other hand is a candidate that is inspiring people to cross the aisle and haas shown much more general support. Trump is better suited to clean the stable. His tenure would set the stage for Cruz or another conservative to follow and accomplish more than they could at this time.
Your logic would result in a country where only billionaires could get elected. I don’t see my interests aligning too well with interests of the all-billionaire government. Well unless I get a billion dollars, then we’ll see eye to eye.
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