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The G.O.P.’s Nasty Newcomer (Ted Cruz)
New York Times ^ | February 15, 2013 | Frank Bruni

Posted on 02/15/2013 6:32:33 PM PST by reaganaut1

WHEN a Vesuvius like John McCain tells you that you belch too much smoke and spew too much fire, you know you’ve got a problem.

And Ted Cruz, a Republican freshman in the Senate who has been front and center in his party’s effort to squash Chuck Hagel’s nomination as secretary of defense, has a problem. He’s an ornery, swaggering piece of work. Just six weeks since his arrival on Capitol Hill, he’s already known for his naysaying, his nit-picking and his itch to upbraid lawmakers who are vastly senior to him, who have sacrificed more than he has and who deserve a measure of respect, or at least an iota of courtesy. Courtesy isn’t Cruz’s métier. Grandstanding and browbeating are.

He sits on the Senate Armed Services Committee, and during its final meeting on Tuesday about Hagel’s nomination, he made such nefarious and hectoring insinuations about Hagel’s possible corruption by foreign influences that McCain, who’d gleefully raked Hagel over the coals himself, more or less told Cruz to cool it. It was an unforgettable moment, and one that Republicans shouldn’t soon forget, because Cruz, 42, isn’t simply the latest overeager beaver to start gnawing his way through the halls of Congress. He’s a prime illustration of what plagues the Republican Party and holds it back.

A fascinating illustration, too. On the surface, he should be part of the solution: young, Latino, with a hardscrabble family story including his father’s imprisonment in Cuba and escape to the United States. But Republicans who look to him and see any kind of savior overlook much of what drags the party down, which isn’t merely or even principally the genealogy of their candidates. It’s the intransigent social conservatism, the whiff of meanness and the showy eruptions.

(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...


TOPICS: News/Current Events; US: Arizona; US: Texas
KEYWORDS: 113th; arizona; chuckhagel; johnmccain; tedcruz; texas
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To: reaganaut1

Anybody the NYT hates is A-OK in my book.


21 posted on 02/15/2013 6:47:55 PM PST by E. Pluribus Unum ("Somebody has to be courageous enough to stand up to the bullies." --Dr. Ben Carson)
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To: Howie66

I’m very proud of my new Senator, as are most of the people I know.

Tells me a lot when the NYT disses him—LOL!


22 posted on 02/15/2013 6:49:50 PM PST by basil (basil)
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To: reaganaut1
Consolidated B-24

You know you're on target when you start catching the flak.

23 posted on 02/15/2013 6:51:05 PM PST by Snickering Hound
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To: reaganaut1

Nancy Pelosi compared Cruz’s behavior to McCarthyism. Growing up in public school history classes, we were led to believe that McCarthy was this idiot Senator with no manners. As an adult, I have to believe that McCarthy was actually a damn good senator. Am I off the mark?


24 posted on 02/15/2013 6:52:12 PM PST by rarestia (It's time to water the Tree of Liberty.)
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To: muawiyah
...24 Senators have put a stop to the request. Apparently all of these guys were paid off...

Were the names named?

25 posted on 02/15/2013 6:52:15 PM PST by Jane Long
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To: reaganaut1

Exactly why we voted for Cruz here in TX. Dewhurst would have been a go along squish—too many of those in the GOP.
He makes me proud of his firecrackin’ ways. Go get ‘em Ted.
Fire up their candy ashes.


26 posted on 02/15/2013 6:53:04 PM PST by tflabo (Truth or Tyranny)
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To: reaganaut1

Go insert your butt-plug pacifier and cool your jets, Frank. The First Amendment applies to straight people too.


27 posted on 02/15/2013 6:54:52 PM PST by Bernard Marx
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To: reaganaut1

I don’t know what it’s going to take to wake up enough Americans to the fact that the Left is at war with the America they hate.

And until we fight back more viciously, without mercy and beyond brutal with these vermin of liberty at the NY Slimes and the rest of the revolutionists and MarxoFascists of the Beltway - we will risk our extermination by the same.

We knew Cruz would get the Palin treatment from the goostestepping stooges of Obama. Let us give these slime balls the same courtesy and call them what they are, and what they are doing.

Time to stop pussy-footing around.


28 posted on 02/15/2013 6:54:56 PM PST by INVAR ("Fart for liberty, fart for freedom and fart proudly!" - Benjamin Franklin)
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To: Snickering Hound

The picture I was looking for. Thanks!


29 posted on 02/15/2013 6:56:08 PM PST by Cyber Liberty (Obama considers the Third World morally superior to the United States.)
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To: jimbo123

Perhaps Frankie should stick to truffles.

We sent TED CRUZ to the Senate for a damned good reason.

So far, he’s doing just what we sent him to do.

Keep up the good work, Senator Cruz!


30 posted on 02/15/2013 6:59:19 PM PST by Howie66 (Molon Labe, Traitors!)
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To: jimbo123

Amazing!

Never heard of Frank Bruni in my life as far as I know, and I didn’t get through the first sentence and I knew what you confirmed.

Vesuvius is a description only a butt boy would use.


31 posted on 02/15/2013 7:01:14 PM PST by IMR 4350
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To: Cyber Liberty

I thank God we have Ted Cruz representing those of us who voted for him here in Texas to do exactly what he is doing. May he keep a thick skin and a sharp tongue. Having met his father, I trust that Ted Cruz is a “like father, like son” patriot.


32 posted on 02/15/2013 7:02:34 PM PST by T Baden (Tenth Amendment Texan)
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To: basil

Amen, brother!

Now....we have to find a good pardner for Ted to replace John Cornyn in 2014.

Let’s make this happen!

“The stars a big, the stars are bright....deep in the heart of TEXAS....”


33 posted on 02/15/2013 7:03:23 PM PST by Howie66 (Molon Labe, Traitors!)
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To: reaganaut1

The gerbil-smuggler Frank Bruni yet again diagnoses that the republican problem is social conservatism.


34 posted on 02/15/2013 7:04:24 PM PST by crusader71
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To: reaganaut1

“Nasty Newcomer”... Frank’s been overdosing on gay porn again.


35 posted on 02/15/2013 7:05:34 PM PST by Private_Sector_Does_It_Better (I AM ANDREW BREITBART)
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To: FReepers; Patriots; FRiends





click to contribute


36 posted on 02/15/2013 7:07:04 PM PST by onyx (FREE REPUBLIC IS HERE TO STAY! DONATE MONTHLY! IF YOU WANT ON SARAH PALIN''S PING LIST, LET ME KNOW)
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To: rarestia

“Nancy Pelosi compared Cruz’s behavior to McCarthyism. Growing up in public school history classes, we were led to believe that McCarthy was this idiot Senator with no manners. As an adult, I have to believe that McCarthy was actually a damn good senator. Am I off the mark?”

If I may....each and every day that passes, the late Senator Joe McCarthy is being vindicated. His name has been racked through the mud by the same people that are tearing our country apart, today.

He (Senator McCarthy) was spot on from the beginning, for those of you on the Left.


37 posted on 02/15/2013 7:07:31 PM PST by Howie66 (Molon Labe, Traitors!)
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To: reaganaut1
"his nit-picking and his itch to upbraid lawmakers who are vastly senior to him

Seniority is one of the major problems in the senate.

Senators think they are royalty and that once elected the senate seat belongs to them.

How much damage did Robert Byrd do to the country after he became senile but still held a seat in the senate?

LONGEST SERVING SENATORS

1. Robert C. Byrd (D-WV) - 51 years, 5 months, 26 days

2. Daniel K. Inouye (D-HI)- 49 years, 11 months, 15 days

3. Strom Thurmond (R-SC) - 47 years, 5 months, 8 days

4. Edward M. Kennedy (D-MA) - 46 years, 9 months, 19 days

5. Carl T. Hayden (D-AZ) - 41 years, 9 months, 30 days

6. John Stennis (D-MS) - 41 years, 1 month, 29 days

7. Ted Stevens (R-AK) - 40 years, 10 days

8. Ernest F. Hollings (D-SC) - 38 years, 1 month, 25 days

9. Patrick J. Leahy (D-VT) - 38 years, 13 days

10. Richard B. Russell (D-GA) - 38 years, 10 days

11. Russell Long (D-LA) - 38 years, 3 days

12. Francis E. Warren (R-WY) - 37 years, 4 days

13. James Eastland (D-MS) - 36 years, 2 months, 24 days

14. Warren Magnuson (D-WA) - 36 years, 20 days

15. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) - 36 years, 13 days

16. Joseph R. Biden, Jr. (D-DE) - 36 years, 13 days

17. Pete V. Domenici (R-NM) - 36 years

18. Richard Lugar (R-IN) - 36 years

19. Claiborne Pell (D-RI) - 36 years

20. Kenneth D. McKellar (D-TN) - 35 years, 10 months

21. Milton R. Young (R-ND) - 35 years, 9 months, 22 days

22. Ellison D. Smith (D-SC) - 35 years, 8 months, 13 days

23. Allen Joseph Ellender (D-LA) - 35 years, 6 months, 24 days

24. William Boyd Allison (R-IA) - 35 years, 5 months

25. John McClellan (D-AR) - 34 years, 11 months


38 posted on 02/15/2013 7:11:22 PM PST by Iron Munro (I miss America, don't you?)
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To: All

Keep kicking a$$ and taking names Ted...its the reason I voted for you.


39 posted on 02/15/2013 7:14:45 PM PST by jy8z (From the next to last exit before the end of the internet.)
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To: reaganaut1

I think I’ve been more impressed by Cruz than any other newly-elected congresscritter in years. I had a strong notion he was going to be the “real deal” that day I went to that rally of his in the Woodlands, and listened to him speak alongside Palin and DeMint. And I’ve become an incredibly suspicious/pessimistic cuss when it comes to GOP politicians in recent years, to put it mildly. But Cruz seemed to REALLY understand the Constitution, and have a no-nonsense attitude towards those who trample it.

This series of attacks on him by the ruling-class media elites certainly reflect he’s making the right moves.


40 posted on 02/15/2013 7:14:52 PM PST by greene66
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