Cruz’s terrifying reinvention: How the most detestable senator is repackaging himself for November

Salon ^ | April 8, 2016 | Heather Digby Parton

[2ndDivisionVet]

Cruz's odds of winning the nomination are steadily increasing, and we should bey very, very afraid

On the occasion of longshot presidential candidate Ted Cruz’s campaign launch back in March, The Onion published a satirical piece about subscribers to TIME magazine bracing themselves for the awful, “inevitable” day when they would open their mailboxes to find themselves staring at a picture of Cruz on the cover under a headline like “The Game Changer” or “The Firebrand.” It was an absurd joke that went so meta that this week when TIME actually put Cruz on the cover, they also ran a story about The Onion’s piece from a year ago. Our politics have become very, very surreal.

TIME’s cover story is headlined, “Likable Enough?,” accompanied by a fetching portrait of Cruz with a mischievous look on his face and a lovely ice blue tie. He looks exceedingly likable and once you read the stories within, you’ll have to conclude that the man whom virtually everyone with the misfortune of knowing him finds repulsive is terribly misunderstood. Where you might have thought the man was a doctrinaire rightwinger, steeped in religious fanaticism and radical free market extremism, you will find out that he’s actually a good old boy, a salt of the earth populist. (One hopes for his sake that nobody leaves a copy lying around on the yachts of some of the billionaires who’ve been writing ten million dollar checks on his behalf. It could get awkward.)

In an interview entitled “Ted Cruz Embraces Economic Populism,” a very slick Cruz says:

[B]oth parties, career politicians in both parties get in bed with the lobbyist and special interest. And the fix is in. Where Washington’s policies benefit big business, benefit the rich and the powerful at the expense of the working men and women.

Now the point that I often make, and just a couple of days ago in Wisconsin I was visiting with a young woman who said she was a Bernie Sanders supporter. And I mentioned to her that I agreed with Bernie on the problem.

But I said if you think the problem is Washington is corrupt, why would you want Washington to have more power? I think the answer to that problem is for Washington to have less power, for government to have less power over our lives.

This has always been the American right’s clever little take on “populism.” Sure, sure, folks, those rich guys and big business are bad, very bad. But it’s all because they’re bribing politicians to give them what they want. The best thing to do is slash taxes, reverse all regulations and get rid of consumer protections so they won’t need to bribe politicians because they’ll have everything they want! Then the power of the markets will be unleashed and you can be rich too!

Throughout the interview, this wily Ivy League educated lawyer presents himself as the champion of the working class, the guy whose only concerns lie with the single mom who works as a waitress and the dad who lost his job down to the plant and can’t get ahead. But in reality his record on economics is one that only a Koch Brother could love. And even they can’t stand him.

Still he’s presented as some sort of iconoclast who defies the usual right-wing classification because he opposes the Import-Export Bank and ethanol subsidies, both of which are obscure little libertarian totems that will have exactly zero effect on the lives of those waitress moms and unemployed dads for whom he purports to care so much. Most of his economic agenda will actually devastate them and everyone they know.

For instance, he’s one of the few Republicans to actually believe that the U.S. should return to the gold standard. This is a fringe position held by acolytes of Rand Paul and Glenn Beck, which the Washington Post WonkBlog noted is held by virtually no experts anywhere. The Post quotes University of Chicago professor Anil Kashyap saying that “love of the gold standard implies macroeconomic illiteracy.” (And needless to say, calling a goldbug a populist is to take a hallucinogenic trip down the yellow brick road, if you know what I mean.)

Cruz is not just a run-of-the-mill deficit hawk — he is for a balanced budget amendment combined with monumental tax cuts (and the total abolition of the IRS) which would require disastrous cuts to thousands of vital programs. Everyone knows he favors repealing the Affordable Care Act; he led the quixotic rightwing hostage taking effort to shut down the government and default on the debt in order to make that happen. It doesn’t take much to imagine the chaos and pain that would ensue as tens of millions of waitress moms and unemployed dads lose their insurance.

He plans to completely deregulate Wall Street and has been endorsed by the Club for Growth, which describes its mission as “cutting taxes, controlling federal spending, personal accounts for Social Security, ending the death tax, eliminating the capital gains tax, fundamental tax reform, providing true school choice and minimizing government’s role in our daily lives.” Every one of those goals are designed to benefit the wealthy at the expense of the average citizen.

Those are just some of his economic policies, all of which are as conservative as it gets. For all we know, he may even believe his own hype — conservatives have been selling trickle down as a great boon to the middle and working class for decades. It’s possible that he just hasn’t noticed that all of this hocus pocus has been tried and has failed miserably to benefit anyone but the 1 percent. But Cruz is a very cunning politician and the smooth way he uses populist-style rhetoric to sell a plutocratic agenda makes it likely he knows exactly what he’s doing.

Ted Cruz saying he’s fighting the elites on behalf of the working man sounds very nice. But let’s just say that the big money boys won’t be disappointed if his agenda is enacted. Indeed, they’ll be ecstatic. And surely the media must know this. Calling him a “populist” because he trash talks Washington just like Bernie Sanders shows just how eagerly the press allows themselves to be gulled into a sexy story line. And this one looks distressingly like something we might see cooked up in Grover Norquist’s basement: The “everyman” populist Cruz, slayer of RINOs, vs. the ancient establishment drudge Hillary Clinton, defender of the corrupt Washington cartel. And that’s ridiculous. Ted Cruz is so deeply wedded to laissez faire, free market ideology that he makes any Democrat, whether Clinton, Sanders or even Joe Lieberman look like William Jennings Bryan by comparison.

All presidential finalists get an opportunity to be looked at with fresh eyes by the press when it starts to look as if they have a serious chance. But it behooves the media not to get carried away into total fantasy in order to set up a preferred story line. Ted Cruz is a very smart guy and has been underrated throughout this campaign. But ultra conservative Republicans aren’t voting for him because of his winning personality or “populist” economics. They’re voting for him because he a far right fanatic just like they are. Just because he isn’t Donald Trump it doesn’t mean he isn’t also a demagogue. He’s just a different kind.

[2ndDivisionVet]

That is what she goes by.

[Smokin' Joe]

It doesn’t take much to imagine the chaos and pain that would ensue as tens of millions of waitress moms and unemployed dads lose their insurance.

No, thanks to Obamacare, my insurance provider has quit carrying health policies. So it doesn't take much to imagine anything. What it takes imagination to see is having insurance again.

[SmokingJoe]

“Conservative Treehouse” is about as conservative as Pravda when Leonid Brezhnev was in power. They are neither conservative nor a tree house.

[Smokin' Joe]

But then again Trumpian logic is in a class by itself.

ayup!

[uglybiker]

Just a hunch, but I bet it ain’t her photo on match.com, either. ;-)

[Rufus Shinra]

Yes, he can be both GOPe and a Trojan horse, the two go hand in hand. He doesn’t want to appear as establishment, he wants to look like an outsider to appeal to the anti establishment crowd. But in reality he grew up working for Bush back in 2000, and he even hired scum bag Neil Bush as his campaign finance advisor.

So he would like to appear he’s out there for the common middle class, but he is just another Bush and Goldman Sachs operative...oh, but somehow he forgot to put the big loan he got from them on his campaigns finance forms when first running...yeah, I’m not buying that. He’s a lawyer, he doesn’t forget paperwork.

[Rufus Shinra]

I’d welcome the opportunity to have a logical debate with a Cruz support actually, without degenerating into name calling. I consider myself a logical person, and maybe I’d actually learn something from a likewise individual. So private message me if any of you would like, tell me why you support Cruz over Trump and I’ll do the same as to why I support the opposite.

[Just mythoughts]

I notice the author neglected Cruz’s VAT tax proposal. A VAT tax is not conservative, but, it does fit with his running mate’s North American Union plot.

[SubMareener]

Ted Cruz: “[B]oth parties, career politicians in both parties get in bed with the lobbyist and special interest. And the fix is in. Where Washington’s policies benefit big business, benefit the rich and the powerful at the expense of the working men and women.”
- - - - - - -
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Cruz
Rafael Edward “Ted” Cruz (born December 22, 1970) is an American politician and the junior United States Senator from Texas. He is a candidate for the Republican nomination for President of the United States in the 2016 election.

Cruz graduated from Princeton University in 1992, and from Harvard Law School in 1995. Between 1999 and 2003, he was the Director of the Office of Policy Planning at the Federal Trade Commission, an Associate Deputy Attorney General at the United States Department of Justice, and domestic policy advisor to George W. Bush on the 2000 George W. Bush presidential campaign. He served as Solicitor General of Texas, from 2003 to 2008, appointed by Texas Attorney General, Greg Abbott. He was the first Hispanic, and the longest-serving, Solicitor General in Texas history. From 2004 to 2009, Cruz was also an adjunct professor at the University of Texas School of Law in Austin, where he taught U.S. Supreme Court litigation.

Cruz ran for the Senate seat vacated by fellow Republican Kay Bailey Hutchison, and in July 2012, defeated Lieutenant Governor David Dewhurst, during the Republican primary runoff, 57%–43%. Cruz then defeated former state Representative Paul Sadler in the November 2012 general election, winning 56%–41%. He is the first Hispanic American to serve as a U.S. senator representing Texas, and is one of three senators of Cuban descent. He chairs the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Oversight, Federal Rights and Agency Activities and is also the chairman of the Senate Commerce Subcommittee on Space, Science and Competitiveness. In November 2012, he was appointed vice-chairman of the National Republican senatorial committee.

Cruz began campaigning for the Republican presidential nomination in March 2015. During the primary campaign, his base of support has mainly been among social conservatives, though he has had crossover appeal to other factions within his party, including libertarian conservatives. His victory in the February 2016 Iowa caucuses marked the first time a Hispanic person won a presidential caucus or primary.
- - - - -
Seems like a “career politician” pretending to be an “outsider” by being obnoxious to his colleagues. This “restorer of the Republic” on the outside, and GOP-e on the inside is similar to the “Trojan Horse”: Gift on the outside, Greeks on the inside.

There is, however, one thing of which Ted Cruz can’t be both! Either Ted Cruz is a original-intent Constitutionalist and therefore ineligible to be President
or he is a living-document Constitutionalist and eligible to be President.
It is one or the other, but it can’t be both.

[wiggen]

I’ve been in finance some 35 years and while i support Cruz i do disagree with large swaths of his economic platform. That doesn’t bother me because i don’t think theres any chance of returning to a gold standard or implementing some of his other notions. But as to the rest of the article i say this. What does the author want? Is our current economic model working? Is our government working? The entire status quo has warped beyond repair. Can they defend the IRS? Sure we need some method to assure tax compliance but nothing says the current model works. Its what we have, like a vast number of other programs, it’s what we’re comfortable with, it’s whats been rigged to the benefit of the few. Our government needs a shakeup at the very least and i believe he’s the right man to do it.

[wiggen]

Man you’re using the loosest definition of the word logic

[driftdiver]

Most detestable? Trump’s puppets said they loved Cruz. That Cruz was one with them.

[ronnie raygun]

He’s detestable because he’s a christian only and the gays are threatened

[Pravious]

“Libtards are afraid. Finally, there is a conservative at the helm.”

Yes, they’re afraid... of Trump.

Clearly, the talking points memo of the day is: “Ted Cruz isn’t a nasty, repellent guy. He’s really a great guy, and... oh, are we SOOOOO afraid of him running!”. Yeah. SURE they are.

[Mechanicos]

Logic: Globalism is not conservative. Cruz is a Globalist. Therefore Cruz is not Conservative.

[RedWulf]

>He’s detestable because he’s a christian only and the gays are threatened

I don't have any evidence, but Cruz doesn't strike me as a very Christian. He doesn't tithe or donation to charity despite making millions(My own family always tithed no matter how poor we were), he lets his wife work an 80 hour a week job so his kids end being raised by strangers(My dad worked a job he hated so my mother could stay home and raise us), and he reminds me a lot of the flim flam TV preachers I used to watch growing up. He just feels phony to me.

Jesus said:
By their fruits you will recognize them. Are grapes gathered from thornbushes, or figs from thistles?

I see a lot of signalling that he's a good Christian but actual Christian deeds seem lacking. Anyone have some links to the good things Cruz has done for people?

[John Valentine]

I admire your ability to know the minds of the Framers as well as you claim to. The only problem with your assertion that the Framers would not have intended Ted Cruz to be a natural born citizen is wrong.

This issue has been a passion of mine for at least twenty years, and although I once held views closer to yours, much study and analysis of contemporary writings tells a very different story and leads inexorably to the conclusion that what the Framers meant by Natural Born Citizen is one whose circumstances of birth and family descent made him a natural member of his culture and society. While place of birth might be one of those circumstances, it is only one and probably the least determinative. Family connection was primary. Read Vattel.

[G Larry]

It’s always good to have the right enemies.

[dynoman]

"Repackaging" - that's funny. It's necessary because Ted "A Time For Truth" Cruz isn't what he professed to be - "the only principled candidate in the race".

---

"Political consultant Jeff Roe, who is based in Kansas City, is Ted Cruz's campaign manager — and the architect of the Texas senator's surprising first-place finish.

Roe is hardly a household name even amongst the political chattering class. (He has less than 6,000 Twitter followers.) Locally, he's most famous for commissioning the mean-spirited ad that upset State Auditor Tom Schweich and may have factored into his suicide, at least according to former U.S. Senator John Danforth, who blasted "politics that has gone so hideously wrong" in his funeral oration. Roe has been labeled "the Karl Rove of Missouri" — and the people calling him that don't consider it a compliment.

But as last night's results proved, he knows what he's doing. Cruz didn't just hold off all the other candidates vying for Iowa's large block of conservative voters. He did it even while beating Donald Trump. It was a wild, complicated race, and you have to respect the guy who figured out how to propel any candidate, much less one who's thoroughly loathed by everyone he meets, to victory.

In an interview with Chris Wallace a few weeks ago, Roe discussed a few secrets to his success — namely, a simple message and strong branding. Roe comes across as intensely analytical. He doesn't just know how long the average voter looks at a mailer (17 seconds); he knows how long he wants you to look at one touting Cruz (45 seconds). "When we communicate with the voter, we want it to be simple, clear and reinforce our candidate's brand," he says. For Cruz, that was "strong Christian conservative leader."

A recent New York Times Magazine piece delved more deeply into how Roe & Co. made those words resonate for Cruz, who'd hitherto been identified mostly as a conservative, not necessarily a Christian. Writes Robert Draper,

"One morning early in January, in the lobby of a public library in Onawa, Iowa, I listened to Cruz’s campaign manager, Jeff Roe, as he explained a central challenge of his previous few months. ‘‘Prior to March 23,’’ Roe said, ‘‘if you were to word-cloud ‘Ted Cruz,’ which we do every day — take all the Google mentions and Internet searches, dump them into a file and form a cloud — you can’t find ‘evangelical.’ ’’ In other words, voters were largely unaware of the Tea Party firebrand’s religious faith. To convince evangelicals that Ted Cruz was the ‘‘righteous’’ candidate, Roe told me, his team needed to sell him as such, from the very beginning: ‘‘Regardless of what you’ve got in the bank, you’d better determine the narrative of the campaign, and show that’s who we are, every day."

Last night's results suggest that effort worked beautifully.

Yes, Iowa is unusually dominated by evangelicals, and yes, if Mike Huckabee and Rick Santorum are any indication, Cruz faces an uphill battle to get the Republican nomination, much less win a single state. But we have to hand it to Roe. Never before has a candidate that so many Americans find this intensely annoying managed to make it this far."

http://www.riverfronttimes.com/newsblog/2016/02/02/missouris-own-jeff-roe-was-the-wind-beneath-ted-cruzs-iowa-wings

---

Nothing like this is coming out about the Trump or Kasich campaigns. If there was anything like this going on with Trump the media would be screaming it from the rooftops.

[Mechanicos]

Muslim Prince Hamzah Zpszyoq6hll likes your arguments on Natural Born Citizen since they apply to him exactly the same way.

Think about this. Your arguments allow for the ISIS raised child of a raped American missionary in Syria to be our president.