Ted Cruz's "Optics" Problem

Charles Hurt writing in The Hill

*  *  *

Real estate mogul Donald Trump has run an outsider's juggernaut campaign, the likes of which nobody has seen in modern politics.

* I SEEM TO REMEMBER A GUY NAMED PEROT...

(*SHRUG*)

* ANYWAY... NOT NEED TO NIT-PICK; I GET HURT'S POINT.

(*SMILE*)

Democrats publicly say they are thrilled to face him in the general election. But, privately, they fret that the master marketer and media maestro is so unpredictable and so original and so fearless that they just might regret getting the match-up they had hoped for.

* TRUMP WOULD BEAT HILLARY LIKE A BABY SEAL!

(*SMIRK*)

Trump has done all this in the face of unprecedented opposition from Establishment Republican Party officials and many principled conservatives who make up the core base of the GOP.

* Er... Um... Uh... IF IT WERE "PRINCIPLED CONSERVATIVES" MAKING UP THE CORE BASE OF THE GOP WE WOULDN'T BE IN THIS PREDICAMENT, WOULD WE?!

(*SNORT*)

* SERIOUSLY... WHATEVER THIS GUY HURT IS SMOKING... I HOPE IT'S LEGAL WHEREVER IT IS HE LIVES!

(*SMIRK*)

At this point in the primary cycle, any other candidate with numbers like Trump's would have been granted "presumptive nominee" status by party bosses as well as any final remaining active candidates.

It is not new that Party Establishment types are terrified of doing anything outside of their regular playbook — like recognizing the game-changing power of an apolitical populist who is winning millions of supporters by turning everything upside down. While the media attention has focused entirely on the exuberant and entertaining traveling carnival nature of the Trump campaign, this overlooks another, deeper problem conservatives have today: Senator Ted Cruz.

In the past eight years, no one has captivated the realistic hopes of conservative constitutionalists the way that Cruz has in this election. On every single issue of importance to conservatives, Cruz is right. He is a walking, living, breathing Supreme Court dissent, masterfully articulated and extensively annotated on paper.

Then, he opens his mouth.

(*PAUSE*)

And people scream.

(*NODDING IN SORROW*)

They run for the exits as if their hair is on fire. They want to take a shower.

Even hardcore conservatives still stewing over the shabby defenestration of Robert Bork find Cruz cloying and unctuous. Leading conservatives who publicly support Cruz's presidential campaign groan in private when he starts talking.

* FOLKS... WHAT HAVE I BEEN SAYING ALL ALONG...

Cruz may entertain himself by impersonating characters from "The Simpsons," but it is hard to get out of your mind that Cruz just might, in fact, be Mr. Burns, with those evil snake eyes and the sharp, downward curved beak.

(*PURSED LIPS*)

Mr. Burns - heartless, robotic, ever-calculating, willing to do anything to maximize profits at his nuclear power plant.

(*SIGH*)

"Who is that firebrand, Smithers?" you can almost hear Cruz inquire of a top campaign staffer as he suspiciously eyes Trump and taps his fingertips together.

(*SNORT FOLLOWED BY A SHRUG OF AGREEMENT*)

Or, maybe he is the unholy spawn of Count Dracula and "The Penguin" from Batman.

(*LOL*)

So, what, exactly, is the problem with Cruz? Why is he so terrible?

For starters, his face and natural demeanor appear bionically opposed to a sunny disposition.

The forced smiles only make him look more demonic.

And because his facial contortions are so clearly faked, he always looks like he must be lying.

("Lyin' Ted," you might say.)

Then there are the promises he makes and the things he says. Again and again in recent years, Cruz promised supporters that he would mount a great filibuster in the Senate and defund ObamaCare. Of course, there was no hope of success since even if he had miraculously managed to get such legislation to the president, the president for whom ObamaCare is named most definitely would have vetoed it. And Cruz knew that even as he repeated his bold promises to frustrated supporters. Even Dr. Seuss got maligned in the spectacle.

In the end, Cruz utterly and predictably failed and turned the anti-ObamaCare effort into something of a mockery.

(That year a kid in my neighborhood showed up for Halloween dressed as Cruz, carrying a copy of Dr. Seuss's "Green Eggs and Ham.")

With every such stunt, Cruz's grand promises always failed. His only success was raising his own profile, raking in piles of donations and advancing his own professional political career.

(*ANOTHER SIGH*)

(*ANOTHER SAD NOD*)

This is the reason Cruz is so despised on both sides of the aisle in the U.S. Senate — not because he is some kind of heroic stalwart standing up the leadership.

* NO. I DISAGREE. CRUZ IS DESPISED BECAUSE IF HE WERE EVER TO SUCCEED... THESE SCUM WHO PRESENTLY RUN BOTH POLITICAL PARTIES AND HOLD US ALL FINANCIAL HOSTAGE TO THEIR BORROW AND SPEND CRONY CAPITALISM WOULD BE OUT IN THE COLD - NO LONGER THE MOVERS, SHAKERS, AND RAINMAKERS THEY ARE NOW.

Cruz is every bit the Harvard master debater, the professional politician he claims not to be and denounces at every opportunity.

(*SHRUG*)

And if that is not odious enough, he now wears the hat of an election lawyer as he taunts Trump about his own prowess at using arcane and arbitrary electoral rules to wheedle convention delegates out of election losses.

* YEP. IT JUST DOESN'T PLAY. CERTAINLY NOT TO A MASS AUDIENCE!

Now in desperate collusion with hopeless Ohio Gov. John Kasich to block Trump from clinching the nomination, Cruz's campaign issued talking points to supporters, urging them to say: "We never tell voters who to vote for."

(Really? Isn't that the whole purpose of a campaign?)

(*SMIRK*)

A shameless professional politician capable of such blatant and ludicrous distortions will soon become indistinguishable from Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton. Lyin' Ted. Crooked Hillary. Is there any difference?

* YEAH... THERE IS... BUT I GET THE AUTHOR'S POINT.

(*YET ANOTHER DEEP SIGH*)

It is true that Clinton's cackles are like claws on a chalkboard for even many Democrats. But that visceral, revolting antipathy is nothing compared to people's reaction to Cruz.

* AGAIN... DISAGREE. (HRC IS FAR, FAR WORSE!)

Even when he says things you agree with, Cruz sounds and looks like the oiliest money-grubbing television evangelist.

* Um... YEAH... HE KINDA DOES...

(*SHRUG*)

He invokes Almighty God and Jesus Christ at every campaign event. He talks about praying for this and praying for that and then undulates about "God's will." He turns his face to heaven and splays his arms back as if willing to be crucified for his political convictions. He tightens his fists and brings them to his chin as if in prayer.

After imploring and haranguing and intoning, Cruz drops into a prayerful whisper, the way preachers do when they are winding up their sermons. Except Lyin' Ted never seems to get to the end of his sermons. He just goes on and on and on. For eternity, one might say.

(*SNORT*)

* FOLKS... THIS GUY HURT IS RIGHT ON TARGET WITH HIS ABOVE COMMENTARY.

One of his most famous surrogates, Glenn Beck, actually invoked divine intervention in the untimely death of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia as an altar-call to vote for Cruz.

* HE DID! GOD HELP US... HE DID!

All this desperate sermonizing, as if God is sitting on his golden throne in the clouds looking down at His errant creation with all man's problems and for some reason is rooting for Cruz to win the Republican nomination for president of the United States of America.

"I will get that Donald Trump. Finally!" God grumbles, clinching his giant Michelangelo fist.

"Two Corinthians," He scoffs under his divine breath. "'The Art of the Deal' is not even a close second!"

* AND HURT IS FUNNY TOO! (COM'ON... I'M ACTUALLY PUTTING THE ABOVE INTO AN AMUSING MENTAL PICTURE!)

Pat Buchanan on Trump's Foreign Policy Speech

By Patrick J. Buchanan

*  *  *

Whether the Establishment likes it or not - and it evidently does not - there is a revolution going on in America.

The old order in this capital city is on the way out, America is crossing a great divide, and there is no going back.

Donald Trump’s triumphant march to the nomination in Cleveland, virtually assured by his five-state sweep Tuesday, confirms it, as does his foreign policy address of Wednesday.

Two minutes into his speech before the Center for the National Interest, Trump declared that the “major and overriding theme” of his administration will be — “America first.” Right down the smokestack!

Gutsy and brazen it was to use that phrase, considering the demonization of the great anti-war movement of 1940-41, which was backed by the young patriots John F. Kennedy and his brother Joe, Gerald Ford and Sargent Shriver, and President Hoover and Alice Roosevelt.

Whether the issue is trade, immigration or foreign policy, says Trump, “we are putting the American people first again.”

U.S. policy will be dictated by U.S. national interests, candidate Trump declared.

By what he castigated, and what he promised, Trump is repudiating both the fruits of the Obama-Clinton foreign policy, and the legacy of Bush Republicanism and neoconservatism.

When Ronald Reagan went home, says Trump, “our foreign policy began to make less and less sense. Logic was replaced with foolishness and arrogance, which ended in one foreign policy disaster after another.”

* TRUE! ALL TRUE!

He lists the results of 15 years of Bush-Obama wars in the Middle East: civil war, religious fanaticism, thousands of Americans killed, trillions of dollars lost, a vacuum created that ISIS has filled.

(*NOD*)

Is he wrong here?

* NOPE! HE'S RIGHT!

How have all of these wars availed us?

Where is the “New World Order” of which Bush I rhapsodized at the U.N.?

(*SILENCE*)

Can anyone argue that our interventions to overthrow regimes and erect "democratic states" in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya and Yemen have succeeded and been worth the price we have paid in blood and treasure, and the devastation we have left in our wake?

(*CONTINUING SILENCE*)

George W. Bush declared that America’s goal would become “to end tyranny in our world.” An utterly utopian delusion, to which Trump retorts by recalling John Quincy Adams’ views on America: “She goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy.”

(*STANDING OVATION*)

To the neocons’ worldwide crusade for "democracy," Trump’s retort is that it was always a “dangerous idea” to think “we could make Western democracies out of countries that had no experience or interest in becoming Western democracies.”

We are “overextended,” Trump declared; “We must rebuild our military.”

(*HALF-NOD*)

* TRUMP IS CORRECT THAT WE'RE OVER-EXTENDED. AS TO "REBUILDING" OUR MILITARY... WHAT TRUMP IS CALLING FOR ISN'T THROWING GOOD MONEY AFTER BAD AND FEEDING THE SAME MILITARY-INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX THAT HAS TIME AND AGAIN PLACED ITS NEEDS - AND ITS GREED - ABOVE THE NATIONAL INTEREST. NO... WHAT TRUMP SEEMS TO BE CALLING FOR IS RATIONALIZING AND REORDERING OUR SPENDING PRIORITIES TO CREATE THE SORT OF MILITARY AMERICA REQUIRES TO DEFEND OURSELVES AND OUR VITAL NATIONAL INTERESTS AS WE RATIONALIZE OUR ALLIANCES AND REEXAMINE EXACTLY WHAT "SERVING THE NATIONAL INTEREST" ACTUALLY ENTAILS.

Our NATO allies have been freeloading for half a century.

* TRUE!

NAFTA was a lousy deal.

* ALSO TRUE! (OBVIOUSLY TRUE!)

In running up $4 trillion in trade surpluses since Bush I, the Chinese have been eating our lunch.

* YEP...

(*SIGH*)

This may be rankest heresy to America’s elites, but Trump outlines a foreign policy past generations would have recognized as common sense: Look out for your own country and your own people first.

(*ANOTHER STANDING OVATION*)

Instead of calling President Putin names, Trump says he would talk to the Russians to “end the cycle of hostility” if he can.

(*NOD*)

This writer served in President Reagan’s White House...

* YEP! HE SURE DID!

...and the Gipper was always seeking a way to get the Russians to negotiate.

(*NOD*)

He leapt at the chance for a summit with Mikhail Gorbachev in Geneva... and Reykjavik.

(*ANOTHER NOD*)

“Our goal is peace and prosperity, not war,” says Trump, “unlike other candidates, war and aggression will not be my first instinct.”

* LET ME REITERATE, MY FRIENDS; CRUZ'S CHOICE OF NEOCON CARLY FIORINA AS HIS CHOSEN RUNNING MATE...

(*PAUSE*)

...DEMONSTRATES TO ME THAT CRUZ MAY WELL HAVE MORE IN COMMON WITH THE NEOCONS (THE BUSH FAMILY, LINDSEY GRAHAM, JOHN MCCAIN) THAN WITH RAND PAUL, RON PAUL... OR RONALD REAGAN FOR THAT MATTER.

* AND SPEAKING OF RAND PAUL...

(*SIGH*)

BOTH RAND PAUL AND RON PAUL SHOULD LOGICALLY BE SOUNDING THE ALARM BELL CONCERNING FIORINI - JUST AS I HAVE BEEN DOING.

Dwight Eisenhower ended the war in Korea and kept us out of any other.

* YEP.

Richard Nixon ended the war in Vietnam, negotiated arms agreements with Moscow, and made an historic journey to open up Mao’s China.

* YEP.

Reagan used force three times in eight years. He put Marines in Lebanon, liberated Grenada and sent FB-111s over Tripoli to pay Col. Gadhafi back for bombing a Berlin discotheque full of U.S. troops. [Please note:] Reagan later believed putting those Marines in Lebanon, where 241 were massacred, to be the worst mistake of his presidency.

(*PURSED LIPS*)

(*NOD*)

Military intervention for reasons of ideology or nation building is not an Eisenhower or Nixon or Reagan tradition. It is not a Republican tradition. It is a Bush II-neocon deformity, an aberration that proved disastrous for the United States and the Middle East.

* TRUTH...!!!

The New York Times headline declared that Trump’s speech was full of “Paradoxes,” adding, “Calls to Fortify Military and to Use It Less.” But isn’t that what Reagan did - conduct the greatest military buildup since Ike, then, from a position of strength, negotiate with Moscow a radical reduction in nuclear arms?

* YES! THAT'S EXACTLY WHAT REAGAN DID!

“We’re getting out of the nation-building business,” says Trump.

* FROM TRUMP'S MOUTH TO GOD'S EARS! I PRAY TO GOD TRUMP GETS THE CHANCE TO TURN THIS DREAM INTO REALITY!

“The nation-state remains the true foundation for happiness and harmony.” No more surrenders of sovereignty on the altars of “globalism.”

Is that not a definition of a patriotism that too many among our arrogant elites believe belongs to yesterday?

* YES. YES IT IS. GOD BLESS DONALD TRUMP. AND IF CRUZ WERE HALF THE MAN I ONCE THOUGHT HIM TO BE HE'D BE ECHOING MY SENTIMENT - AT LEAST WHERE TRUMP'S FOREIGN POLICY AND TRADE POLICY ARE CONCERNED.

* AND AGAIN FOLKS... BOTH RAND PAUL AND RON PAUL SHOULD BE LAUDING TRUMP'S SPEECH - AND RAILING AGAINST CRUZ'S DECISION TO DECLARE THAT IF GIVEN THE NOMINATION HE WOULD PUT NEOCON CARLY FIORINI A HAIR'S BREATH FROM THE PRESIDENCY.