Posted on 10/19/2017 3:18:00 AM PDT by markomalley
Ted Cruz spent Wednesday night's nationally televised tax debate portraying his counterpart Bernie Sanders, along with the Senate's other top liberal, Elizabeth Warren, as the face of the Democratic Party.
The CNN debate was supposed to be about the Republican tax plan. But, starting with his opening comments, Cruz tried to reframe the conversation to focus on the Vermont senator's vision of transforming the U.S. into a high-tax country with Nordic-style social democracy.
"Bernie and the Democrats want every one of you watching today to pay more in taxes," Cruz told the audience in his first comments.
After an early skirmish with Sanders over the estate tax, Cruz informed him that "you and Elizabeth Warren represent the heart of the Democratic Party."
Later, he mused that "the lesson the Democratic Party took from [the 2016] election was Hillary Clinton was too moderate, and I think the Democratic Party is the party of you and Elizabeth Warren."
Sanders, an independent, ran unsuccessfully for the Democratic nomination during the 2016 campaign.
The two senators, representing opposite the two ideological extremes of the upper chamber, only really debated the elimination of the estate tax, of all the provisions of the GOP tax plan, in depth. Otherwise, they spoke about taxes at a high level of abstraction, with Sanders highlighting inequality trends and Cruz turning to the Reagan era for justification for new tax cuts.
For most other points in the 90-minute debate, they veered off into disagreements about the costs and benefits Sanders' proposals, such as for campaign finance reform, single-payer healthcare, government-provided college, and more.
In response to a question from a Danish citizen, Sanders went into an extended riff on the merits of Denmark's model of government, and then later accused Cruz of red-baiting for equating Scandinavian social democracy with failed socialism in Cuba and elsewhere.
It was a debate that both were eager to have, with Sanders making the case that people would pay more in taxes if they saved on the other end with government-provided services, and Cruz noting that Sanders was endorsing higher taxes for the middle class.
"You've seen two fundamental visions of government," Cruz said in his closing remarks, concluding that "Bernie admitted –they want to raise taxes on all Americans."
In before the LyingTed bots.. or those cruzlam accusers.
I still like Ted .
Seems that my post didn’t make it in before a “never Trumper”! Mom, I liked Cruz in the primaries but he lost. Time to let it go!
Me too.
Ted did well, but missed a chance to tie in a breaking news story. Yesterday Soros announced he was transferring $18B to a new liberal organization he was founding. Thus saving $7B in Bernie’s precious Estate Taxes. Bernie’s fine with selling off family business assets and shutting down their jobs to pay an envy driven tax bill. But Evil Inc. must be able to continue past his forthcoming (age 87) death, funding liberal jobs and causes. Ted stated the real rich didn’t pay the death tax as they could afford enough lawyers and accountants to get around it. But he’d missed the perfect example.
Well, if the Bernster is waxing on the merits of the Danish Government. . . why hasn’t he emigrated there ??
Ted Cruz the self-proclaimed "constitutional conservative" that signed onto the Corker bill? The bill that voted away the Senate's constitutional right of veto on the Obama/Kerry Iran deal. Giving/frontloading Iran pallets of cash? Possibly the worst foreign policy deal ever...That Ted Cruz?
Ted Cruz better thank god Trump won or Ted Cruz and 98 other Senator's might have blood on their hands for signing onto that scam.
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