Is it bad to be “all that” conservative?
He’s positioning himself and the movement as mainstream. If I said it, I would say not ‘all that right-wing’, but I’ll leave phrasaology to someone who’s walking the walk at the top levels and not nitpik.
I had this discussion with a conservative friend who fancies himself as moderate. I said, tell me which position Cruz has which is out of the norm? I said Cruz and I are basically eye to eye in views, and my ideas are completely mainstream smalller government ideas.
Cruz is starting to position himself as a common sense conservative who is in the exact tradition of Reagan...and he’s correctly fighting the DC conventional thinking of conservatism and Reagan...and revisiting the historical parallels of the late 70s and Reagan’s rise. I like what I am hearing from these meetings. A whole bunch.
I think he’s making the point that it’s leftists who are becoming more and more extreme. It’s a consequence of that shift that what were once normal viewpoints, this is, Conservative viewpoints, have become “extreme”.
Like Cruz, I don't consider myself to be “all that” conservative, and yet I know that I am more conservative than 99% of the people I come in contact with.
But I would never try to force a women to stay at home or wear a burka or equivalent. I would never burn books or participate in a mob lynching. I wouldn't advocate for the death of sodomites, or seriously push for Jane Fonda to be tried for treason, I wouldn't try to force my religious views on others through government coercion, I wouldn't advocate that beating ones wife should be acceptable behavior, I am disgusted by female genital mutilation, I don't think cutting off the hands of thieves is just, or that apostates should be hung, ect, ect..
so the way I see the world I am not “all that” conservative.
I don’t think so.