Thread: Ted Cruz, false hope The unctuous Texan is squandering a great chance handed to him

Ted Cruz, false hope
The unctuous Texan is squandering a great chance handed to him by Stop-Trump Republicans
Apr 2nd 2016 | From the print edition

THESE are ghastly times for thoughtful Republicans. If Donald Trump is their presidential nominee in November’s general election, they increasingly fear that the businessman will lead them to a defeat of epic, Napoleon-in-Russia proportions, after laying waste to their support among women, suburbanites, non-whites and those dismayed by thuggish violence. A growing number have decided that the remaining candidate with the best chance of halting Mr Trump’s march to the nomination is Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, who has duly picked up endorsements from such former rivals as Jeb Bush, the ex-governor of Florida, and, most recently, Governor Scott Walker of Wisconsin, whose state holds its presidential primary election on April 5th. But Mr Cruz is an unctuous ideologue whose entire pitch to date has been aimed at the most conservative third of the country, all but ensuring that—if he somehow became his party’s candidate—he would lead them to a merely conventional sort of November defeat.

A remarkable chance has been given to Mr Cruz by colleagues who never imagined they would need him so badly. Handed the battle-flag of the Stop Trump movement, he could attempt to rally Republicans of all stripes behind it. Without betraying his own principles, Mr Cruz could unite conservatives against Mr Trump by pointing out that the tycoon’s promises are impossible to honour, and amount to a cruel trick played on the most unhappy or frightened voters. Mr Trump says he can bully multinational companies to send jobs home. He pretends that illegal immigration can be ended with a border wall and mass deportations. Mr Trump claims that the obstacles to defeating Islamic terrorism are political correctness and squeamishness, proposing to keep America safe with a Muslim entry ban and torture for terrorists.

In living memory, Mr Cruz has rejected such bad ideas as mass deportations, noting in January that America is not “a police state”. He used to be a devoted free-trader. Alas, judging by his rhetoric on the election trail in Wisconsin this week, the Texan is choosing to stick to a narrower path. Trumpeting his second place in the three-man race for the Republican nomination, Mr Cruz calls himself the man to stop Mr Trump. But instead of denouncing Mr Trump’s false promises, the senator has moved to borrow them for himself. Like a snake-oil salesman stealing a rival’s label and slapping it on his own patent remedy, Mr Cruz now addresses himself to workers “with calluses on your hands” and vows to bring “millions upon millions” of highly paid jobs back from Mexico and China. He promises to spark an economic boom so rapid that young school-leavers will find themselves with “two, three, four, five job offers”. Listen carefully though, and the Cruz plan to unleash this miracle is the same that he has always offered: deep tax cuts skewed towards the rich, looser environmental rules and business regulations, the repeal of the Obamacare health law (to be replaced for low-income Americans with cheap but skimpy insurance). His stance on immigration has hardened: he now attacks legal immigration as a job-killer, too.

Addressing a crowd outside a suburban restaurant in Altoona, Mr Cruz rewrote the history of the Reagan era to omit all mention of its spiralling deficits, instead claiming that tax cuts and deregulation triggered an economic boom in the 1980s, funding a military build-up that led to Soviet defeat in the cold war. Mr Cruz promised to pull off a modern-day version of that Reagan miracle with a flat tax and by taking the “boot of the federal government off the neck of small business”. This, he says, would generate “trillions” of dollars in new revenues to fund the military firepower to defeat Islamic extremists. Worries about police states behind him, Mr Cruz now talks of patrolling Muslim neighbourhoods.

Campaigning in Wisconsin, Mr Cruz’s principal charge against Mr Trump is to cast the Republican front-runner as a phoney conservative who has donated to Hillary Clinton and other Democrats in the past, and to cast himself as a unifier. The audiences at Cruz events are not as united as they look, however. For one thing, nobody at the campaign stop in Altoona, or at a later rally in the smoke-stack town of Rothschild, bought the charge that Mr Trump—a man promising to torture terrorists and deport Mexicans—is a secret liberal. “I don’t think [Mr Trump] is a true conservative, but I think he will defend our country,” explained Carolyn Carlson in Altoona, summing up her presidential preferences as “Cruz first, Trump if necessary”. Most importantly, many Republicans explained that they had come to Mr Cruz only lately, after their favoured candidates had dropped out. They now long for the Texan to woo them. Lisa Nelson, a lobbyist, initially supported her local governor, Mr Walker, and the businesswoman Carly Fiorina. Now, she said, she wants to hear Mr Cruz become “less scary on social issues”. The Texan seems uninterested: his stump speech ends with a tribute to “Judaeo-Christian values”.

Gambling on Cleveland

A few in Altoona and in Rothschild praised the third-placed Republican contender, Governor John Kasich of Ohio, who is running as a voice of common-sense moderation, but sadly noted that he trails far behind. A striking number of voters at Cruz rallies in Wisconsin sound anxious and unhappy. “I honestly think that Trump might be more electable,” worried Pete Heineck, a factory worker from Wausau, speaking for many.

Some Republican grandees might languidly reply that angst among Cruz voters does not much matter—they are not endorsing the Texan because they want him to win. They just need him to deny Mr Trump the 1,237 delegates he must have to win the nomination outright, triggering a contested Republican National Convention in Cleveland at which party bosses dream of imposing a more palatable replacement. That is a big gamble. General-election voters currently see a Republican contest dominated by two men competing to offer the harshest, most divisive rhetoric. Mr Trump is a disgrace, but Mr Cruz is not the solution.

http://www.economist.com/news/united...him-stop-trump

The facts are this:

1. Ted Cruz wants to ban abortion across the board without exceptions. He wants to force pregnant girls and women including victims of rape and incest as well as those whose lives and health are in jeopardy into childbirth against their will and wants capital murder charges with death penalties waged against anyone who helps provide the abortion service to help the girl or woman which is not just doctors, but all involved including a girl or woman who performs or attempts to perform it herself. This policy position defies current law, Roe V Wade US Supreme Court Ruling and the constitutional laws of the United States.

2. Ted Cruz wants to deny gay couples the right to marry, despite a US Supreme Court Ruling that settles this matter to the contrary.

3. Ted Cruz believes one day that enforcing US immigration law and deporting illegal aliens is a "police state", but when that wasn't popular, he copy-catted Trump and said otherwise.

4. Ted Cruz supports free trade treason, until he learns it's not popular, and copy-cats Trump and said otherwise.

Ted Cruz has no philosophy. Donald Trump for example has for most of his life since the 1980's, opposed the onslaught of free trade treason and unfair trade policies that suck jobs and industrial investments out of the United States, because Trump has an economic philosophy he believes in, which is protected trade for the benefit of US businesses and American Workers.

Ted Cruz has no heart. He wants to punish gay couples with denial of legal rights through a state recognized marriage that gives them the legal protections concerning property and other financial matters including medical visits and health insurance. He wants to punish and potentially kill pregnant girls and women by using the power of the federal government to force them into childbirth against their will. If anyone believes this is "embracing" women, then these are hugs you do not want.

Ted Cruz is about Ted Cruz. He has no philosophy and no heart. He shrouds himself in one-liners to attract attention, he avoids interviews to prevent being exposed, his rhetoric is carefully scripted, over-rehearsed, and tells you nothing about him or what he really thinks or believes, which is an easy task for Cruz, because he doesn't believe anything. He's an empty shell and why without ever having accomplished anything in his life best I can tell, calls himself the best prepared person to be Commander-In-Chief, a man who filibustered the government to shut it down over health service funding for Obama Care in 2013, and wanted to do it again over health service funding for Planned Parenthood in 2015, neither of which have anything to do with being Commander-In-Chief, and were strategies that failed. Obamacare passed and was funded in 2013. Planned Parenthood was funded and continues to receive his legal funding of health services like every other health care provider in the country in 2015.

Cruz made a big stand against the EX-IM Bank renewal, that cost us multiple manufacturers, including Boeing who 3 months after EX IM Bank renewal was denied, announced its first plant outside the United States in China. This new plant in China will end up costing Americans thousands of the good jobs, great jobs, some of the best manufacturing, engineering and technical services jobs in the United States. Congress ultimately restored the EX IM Bank and renewed it, which resumes government loan guarantees for export financing which helps our US companies producing products in the United States for export to foreign destinations. But Boeing had already announced in September, 3 months after Cruz shut it down and 3 months before Congress restored it. Boeing will likely not back out of the announced plans in China, so the damage is done and it is now permanent. This is failure led by Ted Cruz.

When Trump came out with his ban on Muslim immigrants until we know what's going on and have a proper vetting system, Ted opposed it claiming we shouldn't have a religious test, when this isn't a religious test, it's an ISIS entering the US test, but when that wasn't popular, Ted copy-catted Trump and said otherwise.

Has Ted Cruz had an original thought that wasn't Trump's since he announced? I don't think so. I'm not aware of one.

I'm not sure why people see success or preparedness from failure and copy-catting. Where does this thinking come from? Do they not know the facts? Are they social issue supporters against gays and women? Do they have a finger in the foreign pie of illegal immigration and free trade treason that's bankrupting our country? Or is it as this article claims, someone other than Trump because Trump said something about Rosie O'Donnell or Megyn Kelly or Carly Fiorina they didn't like? Seriously? Are American Voters really placing their bets to save our country on what Trump said to very rich, very powerful women attacking him? Honestly?! Is this equal rights? Is this fairness? They can say anything they want against him or someone else as they do, Trump is not their only target, just their target now, but they can't punch back because they're ... women?!!!

I don't know. It's a mystery why someone like Ted Cruz is even in the US Senate, let alone leading Trump in Wisconsin and number 2 in the race for President on the Republican ballot.

Hopefully this mystery that will solve itself before the primaries are over and it's too late to save our country.

Think hard fellow Americans, this is the last chance, our last stand, to save our country from the ravages of massive immigration and free trade treason, because there won't be another Donald Trump on the scene in our lifetimes to help us save ourselves from either one.