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?
Trump and Cruz are a tag team.
It was headed for the bizarre, that could have been avoided had you not started out at bizarre.
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.
French Revolution. Good comparison.
Obama’s eligibility has nothing to do with his performance as President. The fact that he is a Marxist leftist does.
He’s right at the top in Iowa, and that will change perceptions.
Vote for the candidate who spent his life learning and defending it, not the "Let's Make a Deal" candidate.
And I’m grateful to trump that the Bush candidacy is dead. Now it is time for the actual conservative to come to the forefront. It would be nice if trump graciously stepped aside for an actual conservative, and would campaign for him. But I have come to expect nothing gracious from trump. It’d be nice if he surprised me.
BFL.
I support Cruz but I think we really need some of both. Trump is a very valuable asset in his brash unrelenting drive. The media and the establishment just don’t know what to do with him. Cruz on the other hand provides a sharp intellect and I think having both of these guys on one ticket would be unstoppable. Personally where I’d love to have Cruz ultimately is on the Supreme Court.
You know, Jay, about a million years ago, I remember walking into a voting booth and casting a vote. For a very dangerous man, much like they are saying about Trump now. But I was young and stupid, as we all are at that age. It was my first vote, and I remember my hand shaking when I signed the roll...it felt official. And I went to bed not knowing, because I had to get up early the next morning. I did what I thought was right. Everyone said he was nuts, a bigot, and would start WW III. Imagine my surprise; this Reagan character was elected president.
Cruz won’t deport anyone (already on the books), won’t build a wall (already on the books). There’s more, but that is plenty for me.
Many Trump supporters here are ready to burn the country down together with our Constitution.
Concern trolls are concerned.
The one started on July 4, 1776.
5.56mm
So far I only have seen one poll that says that. The Q poll.
It didn’t change perceptions for Huck.
.
How long have you been so concerned?
.
Your post suffers from extreme incoherence.
If the Supreme Court were not to survive to 2025, it would not be the doing of President Cruz. It could only be from the actions of the kenyan anti-christ currently usurping the office. But he would need to accomplish that before January 20, 2017. If he did accomplish abolishing the Supreme Court in that timeframe, then Sen. Cruz could not be appointed in 2017, no less 2025.
This is ridiculous. A typical liberal attack, strange that I read it here from a freeper. The attempt to sling mud at Trump using negative stereotypes and hope some sticks is getting old. It actually adds to Trump’s support from the general public who are tired of the lies and partisan politics. So keep it up.
The ONLY way a revolutions happens at all, is if Cruz is elected.
I will not vote for a vrony capitalist. trump is a crony capitalist.
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