Posted on 01/12/2016 11:31:24 AM PST by Isara
David Brooks' all-out assault on Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) has reached unforeseen heights today with a column in which he labels Cruz "brutal" and un-Christian for his harsh rhetoric against the left. Here's Brooks' reprehensible, religiously bigoted attack:
Cruz is a stranger to most of what would generally be considered the Christian virtues: humility, mercy, compassion and grace. Cruz's behavior in the Haley case is almost the dictionary definition of pharisaism: an overzealous application of the letter of the law in a way that violates the spirit of the law, as well as fairness and mercy.
What, pray tell, did Cruz do so wrong?
Brooks opens with the supposedly terrible tale of Michael Wayne Haley, who was arrested for stealing a calculator from Walmart in 1997, and sentenced to 16 years based on law sentencing repeat criminals. As Brooks tells it, prosecutors incorrectly applied that law - but that brutal, awful Cruz defended the law all the way up to the Supreme Court.
First off, he doesn't tell the whole story of the case. Under Texas law of the time, stealing a calculator would normally be a misdemeanor. But Haley had been convicted twice already of theft, which put him in the category of "state jail felon," meriting two years in jail. He had two prior felony convictions, too, including attempted robbery. The mistake the prosecutor made: he said that the attempted robbery happened "after the first felony had become final," which elevated his state jail felony to a second degree felony punishable by up to 20 years in prison. So what did the prosecutor actually do wrong? The robbery offense occurred three days prior to the date of his conviction for the first felony. So the prosecution messed up the calendar to the tune of three days.
The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals ruled with the state that this error made no real difference. Cruz defended that ruling because he wished to uphold state supremacy when it comes to application of its own criminal law.
That's not quite the unflinching brutality Brooks would have you know about. So he just makes up the case to his liking.
It's Cruz's rhetoric, not his behavior, that Brooks claims makes him un-Christian:
But Cruz's speeches are marked by what you might call pagan brutalism. There is not a hint of compassion, gentleness and mercy. Instead, his speeches are marked by a long list of enemies, and vows to crush, shred, destroy, bomb them. When he is speaking in a church the contrast between the setting and the emotional tone he sets is jarring….The fact is this apocalyptic diagnosis is ridiculous. The Obama administration has done things people like me strongly disagree with. But America is in better economic shape than any other major nation on earth. Crime is down. Abortion rates are down. Fourteen million new jobs have been created in five years. Obama has championed a liberal agenda, but he hasn't made the country unrecognizable.
That's what the establishment thinks - they think things are okay, and that pointing out that they aren't is catastrophic thinking. Barack Obama has made the America unrecognizable - a country where Christian bakers are fined for living their religion, where journalists fear government wiretapping, where the IRS targets political opposition, where the government forces you to buy health insurance at point of gun. Brooks still likes Obama, as he always did.
What Brooks truly object to, of course, is that Cruz doesn't see the government as a tool for imposing Brooks' version of Christian charity. Brooks cites George W. Bush, Mike Huckabee, and Rick Santorum as candidates who "emphasized the need to lend a helping hand to the economically stressed and the least fortunate among us" - by which he means that they used government to impose their "charity" on those who already give charity and lead Christian lives. This is a question of policy, not rhetoric - there are few American politicians who have spoken with more apocalyptic vigor than Huckabee and Santorum.
And the proof of Brooks' cynicism comes just a little later in his piece:
Cruz's programmatic agenda, to the extent that it exists in his speeches, is to destroy things: destroy the I.R.S., crush the "jackals" of the E.P.A., end funding for Planned Parenthood, reverse Obama's executive orders, make the desert glow in Syria, destroy the Iran nuclear accord. Some of these positions I agree with, but the lack of any positive emphasis, any hint of reform conservatism, any aid for the working class, or even any humane gesture toward cooperation is striking.
In other words, Cruz's desire to fulfill basic promises Republicans have been making for decades makes Brooks uncomfortable, and his rhetoric about crushing opposition makes Brooks even more squirmy in his nether regions.
David Brooks is the reason Republicans lose - and that even if they win, they do virtually nothing. He believes that so long as the intellectual class, people like him, run things, all will be well. But if an intellectual like Cruz speaks to the common conservative, vowing to minimize government and remove it from the compassion-at-the-point-of-gun business, he's the problem.
Jesus never talked about imposing charity at point of sword. That's all David Brooks. Behind those wire-rimmed glasses and carefully pressed khakis, behind that soft and nice rhetoric, lies a petty tyrant seeking a rationale for the continuation of a large government doing what elites like he want.
Brooks is guilty of religious persecution. What a vile man.
The editorial section of the Times is having an absolute cow over Cruz and Trump. Sunday Week in Review was hilariously hysterical! Both of them were called, let’s see, Hitler/George Wallace/Strom Thurmond/Vlad the Impaler. It was a beautiful thing to see; it must mean one of these guys is going to win.
Brooks is a heterophobe.
It’s bigotry
But also, this is the greatest thing that has happened to him for a while.
He is getting publicity.
Nobodys like to ride coat tails.
No one cared what David Brooks said before this.
It was David Who?
He likes to call others “loons”, e.g. Michelle Malkin.
Brooks had proven He is the loon.
If anyone needs to mention him, he should be referred to as David The Lunatic Brooks.
But Brooks loves Hussein, just brimming over with compassion and humility when he says things like “I won”, and “They bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun”, and his handler ValJar says things like “After we win this election, it’s our turn. Payback time. Everyone not with us is against us and they better be ready because we don’t forget. The ones who helped us will be rewarded, the ones who opposed us will get what they deserve. There is going to be hell to pay. Congress won’t be a problem for us this time. No election to worry about after this is over and we have two judges ready to go.â€
Yes, Brooks’ hero Hussein and his cabal are just models of Christian humility and soft speech.
“is to destroy things: destroy the I.R.S., crush the “jackals” of the E.P.A., end funding for Planned Parenthood, reverse Obama’s executive orders, make the desert glow in Syria, destroy the Iran nuclear accord.”
I think these are worthy Conservative goals and would help our economy and the quality of life in America, they would also make Americans more safe, including for the unborn and we would be propagating our own workforce.
That strikes me as a lot of specifics, all positive, and all with a great deal of emphasis. Government is always a danger, and it has become a threat to freedom. Scaling back government in its worst embodiment is a positive emphasis.
IRS has been targeting conservatives, and the next liberal/socialist in power will do the same thing if we leave that corrupt agency intact. Eliminating the threat is a positive.
EPA has been harming the environment and harming individuals. Again, wiping them out and letting the states do their job is positive.
Planned Parenthood murders the unborn and then sells body parts for profit, and putting an end to that government subsidized horror is a positive.
Reversing evil is always a positive, so a blanket repeal of all Obama executive orders, executive actions, and administrative regulations would be positive.
Pretty much everything Cruz campaigns on is positive, and his emphasis on policy and on details makes that a long list. There is no greater aid for the working class than giving them the freedom to earn a living without government obstruction.
The clown is FEBAR: FEminized Beyond All Recognition
Brooks has swallowed the left’s complete “Ministry of Truth” perspective on the world. Up is down. Good is evil. Evil is good. Obeying God is satanic. Love for the Law of God is evil and worse, unkind. Etc.
I wonder if he thinks the rules of English and proper publication are cruel to the disenfranchised illiterates. Or if he thinks the traffic laws are unmerciful to the speed-challenged. Or maybe he thinks the laws of nature with its physical consequences are too brutal and unfair to couch potatoes, drunkards, drug addicts, Twinkie-holics, etc. Or maybe gravity is unfair to those who like to jump off buildings. Anyway, how dare anyone warn anyone that jumping off tall buildings is harmful.
Maybe those are lame examples, but the point is, right and wrong are defined in many areas, not just moral ones. Good and bad, right and wrong, have been contemplated and defined by all generations of people. Brooks is condemning Cruz while doing the exact same thing himself. He is just defining them in reverse. Good is now evil. Evil is now good. Cruz, to Brooks, is satanic.
The New York Times ran a story, and basically the narrative they put forward is that a man in Texas stole a calculator and was improperly sentenced, due to a procedural error by a State of Texas prosecutor, to 16 years in prison wrongfully applying repeat offender rules, when the criminal should have at most received 2 years in prison, and when that error was discovered, Ted Cruz fought to unjustly keep the man in prison for the full 16 years.
The narrative.... Ted Cruz tried to keep an man in jail for 16 years for stealing a calculator even though the original sentencing was in error... what a horrible monster.
The reality: a lower court had already released the criminal, who was now a free man on bail, pending the outcome of these legal proceedings. Ted Cruz and the State of Texas fully acknowledged that the State of Texas was in error, that the sentencing was in error, but objected to the defense motion that the man's freedom be based on "procedural-default doctrine". The concern was that basing it on that doctrine would have wider ranger implications and set bad precedent. Solicitor General Ted Cruz sought to have the case remanded back to the State of Texas courts to allow for the issue to be resolved on "ineffective assistance" grounds, which he fully indicated was, in oral arguments before the Supreme Court, the path the State of Texas would follow. The Supreme Court agreed, sent the case back to Texas, and the court re-sentenced the man, who was already out of jail, to time served.
If he is a Republican, Richard Nixon was a card-carrying member of the Communist Party.
“Brooks is supposedly a Republican but any time I hear him he’s always knocking the Republican Party or individual Republicans.”
Brooks is the ultimate liberal weenie-dog who will roll over on his back, wag his little politically correct tail and allow the jihadists to slit his throat. He’s not worth saving.
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