Enough already. Enough of this bashing of Ted Cruz for voting on cloture for TPA.
In order to place blame on Cruz for that vote you must be able to unequivocally establish several unprovable propositions:
1. That Ted Cruz knew or should have known that the provisions of the subsequent trade treaty (TPP) would be, on balance, negative for the American economy. You must be able to impute future knowledge to Ted Cruz at the time of the cloture vote on TPA.
2. You must be able to establish that proposition for a time in which no treaty had been negotiated.
3. That it was knowable at the time of the TPA cloture vote that foreign trade negotiators would consent to negotiate with the United States if our negotiators did not possess fast-track authority authorized by TPA even though they declared that they would not.
4. You must be able to prove that proposition when history unequivocally demonstrates the contrary.
5. If you concede the treaty negotiations would not have occurred in the absence of TPA, you must then unequivocally demonstrate that no treaty would be better for the American economy while other nations participated in a treaty arrangement, a treaty agreement which of course is unknowable and certainly unknown to Ted Cruz at the time of the cloture vote.
6. You must be able to establish unequivocally the proposition that TPP would have failed a two thirds majority in the Senate when it eventually arrived there for confirmation and you must impute that knowledge to Ted Cruz at the time of the cloture vote when no one has any idea what will be in that treaty. You must prove unequivocally that TPP would have been defeated by a two thirds vote.
7. If you can establish these propositions, you must then establish unequivocally the propositions that Donald Trump will somehow negotiate a better treaty deal, that Donald Trump would get fast track authority from Congress (or you must establish that other nations will deal with Trump without it), that Donald Trump will not start a trade war which tragically arms the American economy, that all of this and answers to all of these imponderables will have been known to Ted Cruz at the time he voted cloture on TPA.
Stop already with this mindless bashing of Cruz for a perfectly rational vote and a purely conservative vote in keeping with more than a century of American conservative practice concerning the negotiation of treaties on trade and other issues.
