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Ted Cruz, Weasel
On my first viewing, I was quite moved by this:
Ted Cruz: "I am not in the habit of supporting people who attack my wife and attack my father." https://t.co/LMsN84Z2IT
— CNN (@CNN) July 21, 2016
On my second, I realized a very serious problem with it: By implication, Ted Cruz was fine — absolutely fine — with Trump mocking Ben Carson’s faith, a reporter’s physical handicap, and John McCain’s torture. And that’s just the stuff off the top of my head.
If Cruz had said “Trump’s attacks on my family opened my eyes to his abuses and I repent that I didn’t take a stand against them when others were similarly attacked” then I’d be really moved. As it is… Look, I’m glad to see someone show some spine, but I really wish it wasn’t so nakedly self-interested.
Published in General
You may draw any sort of parallel you like.
However, that doesn’t absolve you of the obligation to explain it, or us of the right to object to it.
It is hard to get in the requisite amount of Cruz bashing to maintain one’s membership in the Ricochet intelligentsia with a poll.
Yesterday, Scott Reusser and I were discussing the Ohio Senate election. We’re both big fans of Portman, and will probably give and volunteer for him. He’s, in general, a strong full spectrum conservative facing a pretty awful opponent. Nonetheless, our conversation dwelt heavily on our disappointment in him not just for supporting SSM, but for doing so on an explicitly self-interested basis (his son is gay). To our minds, that is a reason for recusing yourself from a debate, not a reason for taking sides. I also objected to it when Rubio talked about not reforming SS because he wouldn’t do anything that was bad for his grandmother, although it was helpful that no one I talked to believed that he was serious in suggesting that as a motivation. I mention this to note that, although I’m both not a fan of Cruz and not a fan of convention disloyalty (I never forgave Christie his 2012 speech and always considered that a greater sin than anything that followed), my aversion to a high priority being placed on family stems from a dislike of corruption and a belief that politicians should attempt to follow principled rather than parochial concerns.
While there was no way to make a promise to endorse compatible with an attack, if Cruz had found a policy disagreement with Trump, he’d have allowed himself to make an argument that could be engaged with. Indeed, attacks for not being conservative enough might have been helpful to many downticket races where the candidates would like it if Trump were perceived as less extreme. Instead, he attacked Trump’s character, and specifically did so for attacking women; a line of attack that strongly reinforces Clinton’s most effective effort.
This whole election has been boring, repetitive and tense.
The parallel is the indifference to others’ victimization until you find yourself among them. To be clear, this a very normal, very human weakness, but it is a weakness nontheless.
I’m simply not keen to praise Cruz’s conscience when it failed to register complaint until he was on the receiving end of Trump’s abuses.
Well, from my point of view, Cruz’s speech served as a reminder of the importance of voting downticket no matter what one thought of the presidential race. Which strikes me as rather the opposite of persuading folks not to vote Republican, but I admit there’s a mixture of effects going on:
Some might be persuaded by Cruz’s speech to not vote for Trump, specifically. That is one Republican (or RINO, or whatever) Cruz’s advice could persuade them to not vote for, but if they’re taking Cruz’s advice they will also show up to vote and “vote their conscience” downticket, which presumably will mean mostly voting for Republican candidates, and valuing the downticket races as you think they ought to be valued.
I agree. Cruz’s personal brand is about fighting and about purity. So, last night he showed that he was a fighter, and he showed that he was pure. The fighting is enhanced by the sense that he had a manly motivation, that this was a visceral conflict; most people don’t become a Cruz fan if they think that fighting is about achieving policy aims rather than a sort of Teddy Roosevelt Man in the Arena fantasy. The purity was enhanced by his not clouding his message of division.
I guess part of me thinks that the plan was to make Trump refuse him the spot, which would have given him a better martyrdom. It seems extraordinarily petty of Trump to feel the need to put him on stage. He’d still have been a headline, but there would have been much more focus given to Walker, Rubio, etc. giving arguments that would help conservatives across America get elected.
James, is there anything any candidate could do short of murder that would shake your faith in the Republican Party?
Tom, with all due respect may we assume your Superman cape is at the cleaners and you’ve extra time to write this article since you are not out defending the downtrodden and securing truth, justice, and the American way this afternoon?
This is politics, not the boy scouts. If Ben Carson can get in the arena he can defend himself. Did we post similar articles ridiculing Dr. Carson for his battered wife syndrome when he endorsed Trump? If Carson doesn’t care about his character being impugned by Trump who are you or any of us to hold Ted Cruz responsible for defending Ben Carson?
I agree that Ted Cruz’s early primary tactics were poor, may have cost him the election, but this is a bit rich.
It will most likely depend on who is being murdered, but in reality probably not.
You know, I did donate to the guy.
I agree that that’s a reasonably sound literal interpretation. I’d disagree on two grounds. The first is that the strongest word in the speech is conscience; he’s implying that it’s a morally bad act to vote for Trump, which seems likely to dissuade voters open to that sort of persuasion. As a practical matter, there’s a lot more people who turn out for the Presidential elections than for the others, and persuading them that they don’t want to vote at the top (and conscience references are a pretty good way of persuading people that they do not; Clinton isn’t particularly appealing to Republicans on those grounds, either) is likely to persuade people not to vote, even if you also tell them (rather than persuading them; “conscience” isn’t a strong motivator to vote for a guy you’ve never heard of).
Secondly, elections are won by party line voters. Cruz doesn’t just heighten the tension by validating the Trump-loathers. He also validates concerns that Trump supporters have with the rest of the party; the assumption that Joe Blogs (your town-R) is on your side is weakened when you see the party going after your candidate. Weakening the Republican tendency to vote party line hurts every single Republican candidate for office.
What time will we be posting the Marco Rubio, Weasel post since he came out and endorsed Trump after being called Little Marco and was shouted off the stage by Trump’s henchman Christie?
He pledged to support the eventual Republican nominee. He got a prime time speaking spot at the convention. He either should have honored his pledge or stayed home.
Yes, you are on record having done so. Did that buy you the right to generate this slander?
He didn’t say that though. He did not mention Trump’s name at all except to congratulate him. If people take that statement to mean that voting for Trump is a violation of their conscience then that’s more their problem than Cruz’s.
Trump himself said the pledge was meaningless months ago, yet you hold Ted Cruz to it? Give me a break.
I am fine with Cruz’s actions, and his motivations. Goldburg’s article on NRO pretty much captures where I am.
I know there is a lot of Cruz hate out there. Heck the establishment hates him more than they hate Trump.
I think his message on how to vote is all you can ask of anyone.
Tom, I mostly am with you here, but I am not sure how much this helps Cruz. This may work for him or may not. I am not in the habit of going after pols for having naked self interest. There would be no one left to root for.
There is also a big difference between not praising someone and insulting them.
I think this is what it comes down to. As Brian Watt pointed out,
Cruz – accurately, as it turns out – perceived Trump as competitive enough to make it worthwhile to play friendly in an attempt to later poach Trump’s votes once Trump crashed and burned (something nearly everyone thought Trump would do at first). Many of us surmised this is what had to be going on, even without an audio clip. It just made sense, as the kind of garden-variety Machiavellian strategy one expects in electoral politics. (What the bleep would a guy like Cruz be doing cozying up to Lord Kelo otherwise?) Well, just-competitive-enough-to-have-votes-worth-poaching-but-not-enough-to-win was the wrong estimate.
Of course Cruz still finds himself squirming to live down his prior decision. It’s not like Cruz could pretend he didn’t have a Machiavellian streak after such a miscalculation, though I would bet most of us observe that such streaks are something even relatively honest politicians would find it hard not to cultivate to some degree.
Cruz isn’t suffering for being an unusually Machiavellian politician, he’s suffering for having been insufficiently suave while attempting to be Machiavellian.
And it’s just getting warmed up. Now please excuse me while I find a cave to live in for the next 5 months.
If a candidate murdered a guy, that would certainly impact my belief in the candidate. I don’t think it would substantially effect my belief in the party. If Trump, Scott, Portman, Rubio, or Walker were to go full ISIS and murder a thousand, that would be terrible, but their faults would not be attributable to Toomey or Priebus.
If the party stopped being the party of trade, or the party of free labor, or the party of domestic budget cuts, or the party of law and order, abroad and at home, or the party of life, or the party of Constitutional literalism, the party of the beliefs I held before I had a real sense that the Republican Party existed, I’d reconsider my position. Since it seems essentially inconceivable that on any of those things the Congressional or state parties will reverse their roles in the near term future, that doesn’t give me much pause for concern.
At a Presidential level and with some individual Congressmen and state officers, things are different. I think that Clinton’s foreign policy is likely to be greatly superior to Trump’s. I suspect that she would be less divisive, although she would be very divisive. I suspect that McConnell will be exceptionally good at resisting her harms. Were it not for Scalia’s death, I’d be relatively close to precisely neutral, but two justices means that I lean somewhat toward Trump (I’d have leant toward Cruz slightly more vigorously).
If you’re suggesting that it takes some extraordinary tribalism for me to prefer Toomey to McGinty, Rubio to Grayson, Portman to Strickland, or McConnell as Leader to Schumer, then I’d urge you to look more closely at their records. If, as I suspect you do, you believe each of them to be clearly more impressive, then I hope that you will see that fanatical devotion is not required to find oneself wanting Republican victories in November.
I don’t find Trump to be a useful arbiter of morality. I’m mildly disappointed that you do.
I agree that if there was no pre-existing trope to buy into, his words would not have carried that meaning. I find it hard to imagine that you’re so cut off from the conservative world that you’re not familiar with the context, though.
Rubio pledged to support the nominee on the debate stage, he did so in writing for the RNC. He did so in writing as a condition for entering the South Carolina Primary. He committed to endorsing the nominee when he ended his campaign in Florida. He’s now endorsing the nominee.
Maybe that’s weak of him. Perhaps he should fight more. There’s a lot of sexualized imagery used with insults in this sort of context. I’m not suggesting that he’s above criticism for this, and he certainly gets some.
Turning the other cheek, though, and following through on his commitments is not what it means to be a weasel. Not all insults are fungible.
Speaking of weasels, ferret-shaming is a thing – thought y’all might want to know…
But the insults were personal. Why should Cruz go further and attack the party itself through its new Head? He got booed as it was. He could argue that he showed restraint and good sense. He defended his family, as a man MUST. He did not go beyond that.
I’m mildly disappointed that you think morality has anything to do with political maneuvering.
I am familiar with the context, that Trump fails to live up to what would be required for even the most mild conservative to vote for him in good conscience is Trump’s problem.
If Cruz was so offended by Trump’s treatment of his family, why did he agree to speak? He knows this convention is Trump’s coronation. Why not stay away, like Kasich? Either Cruz’s ego is so big that he thinks he can insult the entire party by pissing on it, or he’s a self-destructive masochist.