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Not Perfect. Not Complete. But Very, Very Good.
I’m not saying you should vote for him. And I can’t make you vote for him. But here’s why a lot of people will vote for him:
And I can’t say I mind.
Published in Elections, General, Religion & Philosophy
I don’t like all of Cruz’s positions, some of which are pandering. But I’ll vote for him. I trust Cruz on account of he has shown he can take on the hate machine in pursuit of good policy. Most Republicans do not have the strength of character to do that. It’s a top criterion, along with a minimum age requirement.
Running away from the logical extension of your arguments isn’t serious. You want this to be a bashing session of Rubio instead of a conversation about which candidate is best suited to win and further the cause of conservatives.
If you want to be such a stickler about the parameters of the discussion you should only be addressing the content of the clip in the OP. You don’t get to define the direction of the conversation and tell me what is fair to ask.
You can dodge questions about your own credibility and consistency on the issues you raise and care about all you want. I doubt anyone here finds that makes your position worth taking seriously or persuasive, though.
Cruz has shown he is a PR machine for his own candidacy. He hasn’t shown any real courage in terms of actually governing once. His penchant for taking on the “hate machine” endears him to a big portion of the conservative and populist base. It makes him toxic to everyone else. In other words, to most voters, that is voters who aren’t hard core conservatives or populists, Ted Cruz is a smarmy huckster.
Heck no! The American people are a fickle sorry bunch. Wanting lower taxes, higher entitlement spending, a strong foreign policy, but to also stay clear of foreign entanglements. They want cheap consumer goods, but don’t want free trade. They hate Walmart for driving out mom and pop shops, and for refusing to open a store closer to them. They want mandatory seat belt laws, but hate being ticketed when they don’t wear their seat belts. They want the Government to do something, but also to stay out of their hair.
If someone else brought this up in the comments, forgive me, but I just found the Rubio ad the questioner was alluding to.
I certainly don’t find it problematic or worrisome, but I also can’t say I’m a huge fan of it. Do we really want presidents talking about their theology unprompted?
Curious for others’ take.
This ad is to court evangelicals in Iowa. It is perfectly relevant to the voters he is trying to win.
Go ahead and vote for Trump, Manfred. It is obvious that facts and reality are not your thing.
So, man — I didn’t know Rubio is doing this, too. He’s nothing but a PR flack for his own candidacy. Can you imagine anything worse than that? Reagan never would have done that.
I get that, but it’s so politics-free that it could be said by a political liberal Christian just as easily.
Well, yeah, but it couldn’t necessarily be said convincingly by many of the others that Rubio is actually running against, none of whom are politically liberal.
Be tendentious and snarky all you want, I suppose if you can’t take up the points I’ve made with actual arguments snark is the next best thing.
Nothing wrong with PR, it’s a necessary part of politics. The problem is when you’re nothing but PR and even worse, when your PR is so narrowly targeted it makes you ultimately unelectable.
As the would-be-great Ron Burgundy is filmed saying, “That escalated
Quickly”.
I started reading this thread about fifteen minutes ago, and got through the first two pages and found myself encourage by the tone. Then I skipped to the recent page. Ooof, there is some acrimony.
If Ted Cruz, Chris Christie, Carly Fiorina, John Kasich, Rand Paul, Ben Carson, even Mike Huckabee or Jeb Bush were to win the Presidency, I will crack the champagne, hum “Happy Days Are Here Again” and feel the long national nightmare is over. That said, I still think Marco Rubio has the qualities to allow the country to move back to the right, solidly and permanently. Of course he is pandering, he believes winning the election is important for countries sake. I don’t think is insincere.
I believe that we all can hold our opinions in a spirit of good faith and desire for a better country.
If a candidate is telling an audience what they want to hear but he doesn’t really believe it, or if he tells another audience the opposite, then he’s pandering. It’s not pandering to tell them what you really believe, even if they also believe it.
The frustration of those who support the ‘establishment’ acceptable candidates is palpable these days, it appears Trump and Cruz have them very worried… Yet none of them are at all able to see the parallels with the Goldwater/Reagan years.
It appears there is a changing of the guard in the Republican party, and as is to be expected, those on the losing end are not one bit happy about it. Well, having been on the minority side in this party since Reagan, I’m having a hard time feeling much sympathy for those who once told me to shut up and vote for the lessor of evils.
So, I will just tell them what they told me so many times. Its (Hillary / Sanders) or (Trump / Cruz) and unless you want more of what we have seen the last 8 years you gotta get on board…
I would vote for Cruz in the general and would get on board, but unless Hillary is indicted, I think he will get crushed.
I will not get on board with Trump. He will be ruinous to the GOP, conservatism, and most importantly to the country.
I will write in a candidate or not make a selection for president if he is the nominee.
I think it is the honest thinking of an honest man who believe that the voters have a right to know what is in his heart.
As opposed to playing games about Marble Collegiate Church.
Beautifully said. All of it.
You just said exactly the same thing and didn’t explain anything about narrowly targeting things. So that’s the criteria now?
Just talk and not proof other than that the Dems, the media and the GOP establishment types don’t like Cruz. That’s not insubstantial but they are the enemy — so what can you do. You go to war with the army you have not the army you want.
BTW, PR is always narrowly targeted — by definition. If it’s not then they call it a speech.
I guess it would bother me if we weren’t in the environment that we currently find ourselves.
Evangelicals are a group of people who have clearly held themselves out as a bloc to be fought over and won, so they have nobody to blame but themselves in this regard when get what they have asked, nay, begged for: to be courted, and hard, by Presidential candidates.
Politicians are responsive to their constituencies. Who knew?
Thank you so much for this. iPad typing so please self correct.
Look, I hate these religious auditions but they are inevitable. I hear two things from Marco that should provide comfort for believers and non believers alike. Thing number 1 is nearly unheard of in americanity these days because it interferes with direct cash transfers between audience and mega preachers with fleets of private jets. The thing is sin. One syllable three letters that change everything, inside and out. I want a sinner like me in charge. Preferably one who confesses his own sin and recognizes his need for a savior. But failing that how bout an unbeliever who confesses his own failings and does not claim to have all the answers or govt programs to solve every problem. Howzabout challenging the rest of us to step up and take some of the responsibility and use our God or Zeus given talents to do something besides piss moan and watch football.
Thing number 2 is closely related, provided sin or failings are humbly confessed. It is the critical and worldview changing concept of neighbor. Luther’s expositions on this are vast and all would benefit from contact, at least in passing, with his (Christ’s) teachings re: neighbors.
Trump fails the sin test (pun intended) and gives me a rash with his self aggrandizing bs based on faulty towers, casinos and moronic tee vee shows. He knows everything he is the best richest handsomest devil alive. Blah blah blah I don’t even hear it, my brain automatically deletes.
Cruz and pops Rafael the fake preacher have the same attitude but cloaked in fake Christian rhetoric . It may be even scarier than trumps obvious but amateur pandering to evangelicals. Cruz seems unacquainted with his own sin tho pretty much everyone who knows him recognizes it instantaneously and wants to punch him. He thinks he’s superior and “anointed” by God almighty to “take back” the 7 mountains of America for Christ. Sound crazy? Why yes it is and everyone should scoff at me then immediately google Cruz + dominionism. It’s toxic, dangerous theology and if he believes even half of it I don’t want him anywhere near the WH if it can be prevented. As for cruz’s concept of “neighbor” I don’t even want to say what I suspect. Suffice to say I think it is born of extreme arrogance and manmade crackpottery.
So yeah, give me a “wise Turk over a stupid Christian” as Luther once quipped. In Marco I actually see a wise Christian and someone who knows the role of faith and knows his own place, relative to himself and God and also to himself and his neighbor.
Apparently, being a PR flack is only a sin if your last name is not Rubio.
I am not in the tank fro Cruz. I am against Rubio, who right now, is saying openly, he is for Amnesty for law breakers. Cruz and Trump are not.
I don’t trust any of them, really, but at least I am going to go for the guy that is saying the right thing, over the guy who is not.
Let’s hear it for smarmy hucksters, then! (If he ever talks about “governing” the way GOPe does, as if it’s a good thing, it may turn me against him.)
The criticisms against Cruz are weak tea, aren’t they? It is just parroting of the GOP establishment or the media or the Dems.
I’m not against Rubio. I like him a lot. I just like Cruz more. And I can’t stand the Democratic-Republican-Media Complex attacks against one of our candidates. Especially this early in the campaign. Let’s let things go through the mill here and see how things shake down.
I especially hate the hysteria against Cruz. It’s all ginned up out of nothing. At least nothing that really matters in the long run. But, it does matter to the actual identities of the people who will be in power and so the underhanded crap does fly. I’m amazed at how many underhanded things are done against Cruz and with the prime complaint against him is that he goes against the establishment (a good thing overall) and the other complaint is that HE is underhanded.
Whoa. Such venom. I am nothing but appreciative of Rubio’s virtues and expect great things ahead for him. Right now he is unseasoned and young and his response showed it. The Founders did a much better job on this subject. Had Rubio channeled them it would have been awesome. He muffed his chance. Too bad. But one can not expect too much from such a political neophyte and he has shown skills beyond his years to this date.
But to your venom, nothing I said in criticism had the slightest whiff of endorsement for Trump – it was all in your imagination. Sad. “Anti-Rubio Derangement Syndrome” maybe?
This matches my thoughts and intuitions on Rubio. Nice. I think he will be president one of these days. I doubt it will be this cycle but I think it’s been a very good education for him. He will be formidable at his peak.
I don’t want them to do so from the Oval Office, in a way that implies state endorsement of particular theology. (I don’t mean that I do not want them to ever mention God, or quote the Bible, obviously).
But other than that, yes, actually. First, I really do want to know what influences them — or even what they chose to pretend influences them. I don’t have a religious litmus test (if I did, I would presumably be leaning Cruz). But I want to know, basically, if a candidate believes himself accountable to a higher power, and on what grounds.
Second, I do not share Rubio’s theology — I am not Catholic — but, in America in 2016, his confidence in stating his faith outright doesn’t raise any realistic fear that he’ll impose Catholicism in any way. It brings hope that others with deep convictions will continue to be able to act on them as Rubio himself evidently does.
I thought his answer was quite effective and accomplished exactly what he wanted. Sure, it could have been improved by us armchair typists…
But curious who you’re for, if experience is your issue. Cruz has less. Rubio had at least one role in actual governance as Florida House Speaker.
All things being equal I prefer experience. But at this point, I have bigger problems politically or substantially with the only people in the field with more than Rubio (Bush, Kasich, Christie).
Oh, I didn’t mean to suggest that he would, and fears that candidates would do this usually strike me as silly and/or ignorant. That said, I’d rather hear a candidate talk about his values rather than his theology (with the suggestion that you can extrapolate the latter from the former).
To be clear, though, this is not something I’m losing sleep over.
No, I didn’t think you did. But I don’t think I expressed my point well. So to try again: I agree that fear of Rubio imposing Catholicism (or any form of Christianity) in America in 2016 is utterly unfounded. What is not unfounded is the fear that those who do have a strong religious faith may find their ability to practice it threatened. In this environment, I believe it’s healthy when someone like Rubio confidently says what he believes.
I suppose I like it because it’s somewhat politically incorrect — on an issue that actually matters. (Not impressed by political incorrectness in the form of sheer rudeness.)
As for values vs. theology, since the values derive from the theology I want to hear the source. For one thing, it can be most interesting when a candidate’s values — as evidenced by political positions or personal life — are pretty clearly in conflict with his alleged theology.
Nobody’s going to win my vote by a speech about their religion. I’m too cynical and too informed for that. But I prefer Rubio’s upfront approach, all else being equal.