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Why I Am Not a Cruzite
Ted Cruz’s electrifying performance at the 2016 Republican National Convention will be long remembered, and deservedly so. At a critical moment, when the party of Lincoln had uncomfortably but nonetheless thoroughly embraced a lifelong Democrat/reality star/violence-abettor – and when few leading Republicans had demonstrated the courage to oppose him — Cruz did. Politicians live for the adulation of crowds and it’s bracing, even thrilling, to see one stand up straight when suffering its jeers. Cruz was particularly effective because he dropped the southern preacher style he affected during the primaries and spoke plainly.
And yet, and yet. One can never quite get over the sense with Cruz that everything is calculated. He took a risk, yes, but there is high potential gain for him in being perceived, whatever happens in November, as the voice of pure Republican conservatism. Cruz was a pillar of strength last night, God bless him. But let’s not forget that John Kasich has not bowed to the orange god either, nor has Mitt Romney, or Ben Sasse, or many others.
There is so much to admire about Cruz – and I don’t doubt that if his plan had worked and he’d been elected, he would have made a good president – but he also must bear some measure of responsibility for what has happened to the Republican Party, and thus, to the country. Together with talk radio and Fox News celebrities, Cruz wove the tale of Republican Party betrayal that so alienated and embittered Republican voters against his own party. From the moment he arrived in Washington, Cruz lacerated Republicans as part of the “Washington cartel.” His specialty was the attention grabbing gesture like the filibuster against Obamacare. It had no chance of success, but positioned Ted Cruz very well with the “base.”
Cruz was crucial in portraying the Republican leadership, which, while not perfect, had certainly held the line against Obama, as corrupt and complicit in everything Obama had done. In June, 2015, for example, he mocked: “Why is it that Republican leadership always cuts deals with Democrats and with Washington and throws overboard the conservatives that, come October and November in an election year, they are desperately asking them to turn out and elect them to power?”
When he won Iowa, he proclaimed it a “victory for every American who has watched in dismay as career politicians in both parties refused to listen and too often fail to keep their commitments to the people.”
And as Trump rose in the polls and became a dire threat to nearly everything conservatives claim to cherish, Cruz adjusted his positions (endorsing deportation of illegal immigrants and their American citizen children, for example, and opposing TPP) and kept praising the New York fraudster. Should Trump apologize for what he said about Mexican immigrants being rapists? Cruz: “I think he’s terrific. I think he’s brash. I think he speaks the truth.” Trump’s critics were “silly” and “politically correct.” Cruz applauded Trump for “taking on the Washington cartel.” As late as December, 2015, after the attack on the handicapped reporter, and after Trump’s references to Megyn Kelly’s menstrual cycle, and after Trump called on a crowd to “rough up” a protester, Cruz called him “terrific.”
Clearly the senator was gambling that the reality star would implode and Cruz would be waiting to net Trump’s fans. That’s a motive, but not an excuse. By praising him so often and so unequivocally, didn’t Cruz help to detoxify Trump? Cruz is a decent and honorable person, but he abetted Trump’s indecency until Trump’s muzzle swung in his direction. And by sowing so much unfair suspicion about the Republican Party, didn’t Cruz help create the “burn it down” mood of 2016, which, in the end, devoured Cruz’s own hopes, along with so much else?
Politicians position, and hedge, and dodge. Understood. But when that positioning comes in the form of undermining a key institution, i.e. the Republican Party, it’s playing with fire. Institutions take decades or generations to build. The Republican Party, for all its faults, was the only vehicle for conservative ideas in our society. Ted Cruz, Laura Ingraham, Ann Coulter, Sean Hannity and the rest picked an ironic time to undermine it, since the Party has never been more thoroughly conservative (at least as reflected in elected officials) as it was in 2016.
Now, with a Trumpified Republican Party, conservatives are homeless and arguably crippled. If Trump wins, the transmogrification of the Republican Party will be total and “conservatives” will become Trumpites. If he loses (which is much more likely), the stain of Trumpism may keep Republicans from the White House for another generation. Either way, conservatism is the loser.
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Mona, Claire and you are my favorite attractions on Ricochet. I was never a Cruz supporter, for many of the reasons you outline. When we had been winnowed down to the final three I believe I was the only commentor that tried to advocate for Kasich here, despite his admitted peculiarities.
But I think you are absolving your Beltway friends and colleagues too easily. With all respect, I think they have been complete wusses in comparison to the Democrats on issue after issue, because both love K Street more than their districts. Last week Congress refused to pass a bill to fight the Zika virus, because McConnell would rather lay down for Harry Reid and Planned Parenthood when they mention of the word filibuster. Reid has never been reluctant to jettison the filibuster when it served his purpose. This week Paul Ryan is doing mass mailings touting his dedication to fighting illegal immigration, despite being the most adamant libertarian open borders Republican in Congress. He’s looking into the abyss that swallowed Eric Cantor.
Cruz tried to wake the elites up to what is going on out in the hinterlands, I don’t think that effort was for pique or was not well intentioned.
Hi @rebark – Mona has disliked Ted Cruz for years and will often find justifications (both reasonable to borderline psychotic) to make her case. Yes, I feel she is unfair to Cruz. In regards to Cruz during the campaign – everyone was maneuvering against each other. She has a ‘thing’ for Rubio, so do I but in the anti/opposite way. Yes, Cruz ‘drafted’ behind Trump, trying to appeal to his backers (Mona was denigrating them). That happens in campaigns.
I’d consider the rift between conservatives like Mona and I to be just as large but in many ways deeper than Trump supporters and conservatives like me. I consider her ‘The Establishment’, the ‘GOPe’, the ‘problem’ that hatched Trump. She considers Trump, Cruz and their supporters as essentially the same: Anti-Establishmentarians, the Angry – ‘Burn it All Down’ crowd.
Rubio won Minnesota and DC
Cruz won a whole lot more than that.
He seems calculated because he has almost total recall and his brain works faster than ours. Is he right? Do his positions and points hold together? Is he consistent? But you have 4 ti 8 years to sort it all out and probably will.
This isn’t myth it’s math. Most of the Republican voters did not want Trump as their nominee. Many of the current Trump supporters didn’t want Trump as thier nominee. Did you? A majority of the delegates at the convention wouldn’t choose Trump as thier nominee if given the choice. He won fair and square because the RNC has an inept process. Next time, maybe they can let the primaries decide the top three, and let the convention delegates choose from those three at the convention. Just an idea.
As a big Cruz fan, I hate being reminded of how friendly Cruz was to Trump before the primaries, but Mona Charen is telling the truth. In Ted Cruz’s defense, early in the primaries, Tea Party conservatives were more worried that Jeb Bush would roll over the really solid conservatives with his massive cash advantage. Worrying about Jeb seems silly now, but his advantages seemed formidable at the time. Cruz probably saw Trump as a unique opportunity to get past Bush and get a solid conservative elected president. It seems to me, painfully, that without Trump, Cruz would have won.
I agree with this whole comment. I still will not listen to Need to Know because of Mona’s vitriol against Cruz during the 2013 shutdown
I think that is exactly correct Mona. I think Cruz’ other mistake was he never proposed specific policy solutions based on conservative principles. It was always only “I am the only true conservative in this race”. Hannity, Ingraham, Coulter and to a lesser Levin will bear a large part of the blame if the Republicans do not defeat Hillary Clinton this year.
I don’t know where to start this is so complicated – at least as I see it.
Absolutely. The right has split three ways, not two. (Maybe more than three – it’s so complicated)
These people find Cruz to be as much of a threat as Trump, maybe more.
I see elements of the establishment, or let’s call them opportunity Republicans, glomming onto Trump, and Trump can be co-opted by these people in his quest to win. This is how some base their charges of Trump being ‘establishment’. I disagree. At this point, these people haven’t taken enough control for that label.
The vanquished establishment, the ‘principled’ establishment are on the sidelines carping and plotting. They are ‘reluctant Hillary’. One of the reasons they are out is because of their reluctance to fight. Their seeming contentedness to hold onto the status quo and a strategy of centrism and compromise with Democrats contributed to their reluctance to ever take the ‘gloves off’.
Trump is largely a symptom of the failure of this, now vanquished, establishment to recognize profound changes, the failed tactics of perpetual compromise with a committed and ruthless opponent (the left) and the false feelings of entitlement to the votes despite their protestations on major policy positions.
The other split is between conservatives, real conservatives all, who differ on matters of manners and decorum as well as how deeply they suspect they are being played by Trump. Here it is simply a matter of degree, that is how much you are revulsed by Trump and how much you suspect his motives.
The last ingredient here is also a matter of degree, which tends to override the above dynamic. How much one fears the left in control of power.
This last dynamic illustrates the fundamental split.
Yes.
I want someone who thinks (calculates) before he acts.
As opposed to someone who shoots from the hip. Haven’t we had enough of that?
Mona’s assessment is exactly correct.
The reason that we are likely to face yet another generation of leftist domination despite a horrific Dem candidate is because our side has become a cross between George Wallace Trump voters and Barry Goldwater Cruz absolutists, while the public is elsewhere.
Pray tell, what is untrue about Cruz’s allegations here? The rise and success of Trump, Cruz, Carson, Christie, etc. was primarily due to the GOPe’s promise-breaking. The Republican leadership may claim to be “conservative,” but their actions did not match their rhetoric. Instead of fighting for principles, instead of keeping the promises that won them the House in 2010, and the Senate in 2014, the Republican leadership repeatedly backed down and made deals with a crippled Democratic congressional caucus and an increasingly unpopular President.
Cruz may be snarky at times, and is perhaps cynically opportunistic (e.g., in endorsing some of Trump’s rhetoric before he became Trump’s target) . . . but he speaks the truth about how the GOPe betrayed its own voters.
Duane Oyen:
Mona’s assessment is exactly correct.
The reason that we are likely to face yet another generation of leftist domination despite a horrific Dem candidate is because our side has become a cross between George Wallace Trump voters and Barry Goldwater Cruz absolutists, while the public is elsewhere.
Yeah our side does some really dumb stuff. Like remember when we had JEB convinced he could be President, he was leading in the polls and had the donors locked up with $100 million to spend. The public and most Republican votes were else where.
Or when we convinced Rubio he needed to get into the gutter to fight Trump. He made a penis joke and then went away. Probably would have been better staying classy and eloquent.
Lots of voters, candidates and politicians made lots of mistakes that got us where we are. Since some people hated Cruz before it is easy for them to blame a bad outcome on people the already disliked
Count me here.
This whole post just feels so irrelevant at this moment.
Cruz appears to have irreparably damaged his future career, that this just seems like needless piling on.
She does hate him with a passion.
I heard Ben Shapiro give a pretty good analysis of the likely reasoning that Cruz used in deciding to give the speech he gave. According to Shapiro, Cruz thought that he could “split the baby”. Also, according to Shapiro, Trump outsmarted him. Trump set him up knowing the content of the speech well in advance and had his hardcore partisans ready to cause havoc at the end of the speech. He himself made sure to draw attention away from Cruz by entering the hall in the middle of the speech.
I was a Cruz supporter in the beginning, but lost faith in him when he refused to stand against Trump along with the other primary candidates. When he alone stood against Trump I rejoined his supporters. He is a politician. Has all of the faults commonly found among politicians. However, when we look at the two candidates running for the presidency and the other 15 or so who started in the primaries, Ted Cruz has far more of the things we conservative want in a president than any of the others had. There is no perfection in this pursuit. Now, we are left with the dregs, two of the absolute worst people ever to run for this office. As if his early faux pas were not enough, Trump went on a lengthy, disjointed, rambling, and incoherent rant about Ted Cruz proving once again that Republicans have nominated a four year old. God help us!
Open primaries. Why do we let dems and independents choose our candidates?