OP, I learned more from your homepage than from all the posts herewith. You sir, are a patriot and a brother.
I have never waited for Ted Cruz! The only person who waits for Ted Cruz is a candy wrapper in a travelodge.
I think the real absurdity is that NO ONE in the Republican universe has been above the call and challenge of being a “true conservative”
I have no problem with people challenging whether Cruz is a true conservative.
I think the evidence is quite good for him.
But what is clearly happening here at FR is now that Trump is beyond that challenge.
It is unacceptable to argue that Trump is not conservative.
That is absurd. Trump realized he was conservative in June. He continues to say things that are not conservative.
He has made as public target #1 the most conservative member of the US congress.
The trashing of Cruz was never necessary. People should be explaining why Trump is conservative not engaging in ad hominem attacks on Cruz.
Hillary is completely of the hook here thus far.
When you hire people like Jeff Roe the rest is pretty much gravy. All it takes is a little research to know Cruz is trying to win by any means possible, in ways that would make a Democrat blush. The leaks have been pouring out of the campaign that spells it all out.
That all said if Cruz wins the nomination I’ll vote for him but I won’t like it much.
You won’t see me engaging in these battles. Vote for whoever you want to.
I watched the MSM (CNN) video and they never said that Carson would make a “big announcement next week” - purely created by the Cruz campaign to support the twisting of what CNN reported. They reported that Carson would take a break; not dropping out. It’s really bad when the imbeciles at CNN have the moral high ground.
Twisting is marginally okay but fabricating the “announcement” part from whole cloth is evil.
Waiting for the plumber as I type so I feel empathy for Cruz getting hurt with all the individual drops of bad publicity.
I didn’t reject Ted Cruz. Lying, ineligible, ‘ambitions over principles,’ Ted Cruz rejected us.
He’s definitely not the conservative he originally appeared to be.
Everything you speak of runs both ways. There are those of us that have picked Trump as our candidate that have been called every name in the book and then some, AND our candidate has ben lambasted.
It seems to be the way of the world. I’m sure I’m about to get attacked just saying this much.
Sadly, the Cruz I respected as a Conservative intellectual; a sincere statesman; a man operating with a conscientious compass, who discussed the issues effectively, at a high level; has gone into hiding behind a conniving huckster, who appears to believe that the end justifies the means; moreover, that if he cannot win, he will do his best to make sure that Donald Trump does not either.
Thus, I have endorsed Trump ("Metaphor For American Conservatism". Thus I have an active thread at Free Republic, suggesting how Trump can counter the negatives that Cruz and certain business interests have concocted. (See "Trump's Road Ahead.")
All of this said, I will still work to rehabilitate Cruz's image, if and when, he ceases the dirty tactics, and goes back to discussing the real image from a perspective that puts the American heritage above his personal ambition. He can still have a major role to play--but not like this.
Your title is a disgrace.
Cruz is an opportunist, not a conservative. He decided to play a conservative, because he figured that would get him elected president.
Many people are finally starting to see the truth, but some still refuse to see it.
Yeah, we should be voting for a foreigner instead.
THEY are the ones dragging this out. At some point it strains our patience.
fwiw
I liked Cruz* until he went negative and started ‘distorting the truth’**.
I was shocked at first, then aghast when he continued the behavior,
until I finally became disillusioned, disgusted and angry with him.
I can put up with a little of this from Trump
but from someone claiming to be a ‘principled conservative’ and Christian,
it is completely unacceptable.
*https://twitter.com/NSentinel1/status/676743481704992768
**https://www.facebook.com/tedcruzpage/videos/10153917713152464/
Principled conservatives don’t cosponsor the Corker Bill and disenfranchise voters.
Just because you believe Ted Cruz is a principled conservative doesn’t mean he is.
Just in case you never noticed, politicians are liars, and Republican politicians in particular are masters of making people think that they are on the same side when they most certainly are not on the same side.
I had no problem with him for any other job just not that one.
But now I do have problems with him. The first was that he ran for an office that he is not qualified for. I would have the same problem if he was 33 years old. Not qualified is not qualified. If he is such a hot shot "Constitutional Harvard Lawyer" then he knows this. That he chooses to try to explain it away means either he is not such a great "Constitutional Harvard Lawyer" or he has allowed his ambition to out run his ethics. A common problem with lawyers.
The second, and one I was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt on, is that he is a lawyer. Law school trains you not to respect and follow the law but how to twist it for your own ends. This tends to result in people who should not be in political office.
Third is the people that he chooses to hang out with. Enough on that subject.
The last has been his behavior on the campaign. What you explain away as being good at the game I find troubling and shady.
So there you go.
I am not overjoyed to have to vote for Trump but, while he is not "The ONE I have been waiting for", he is eligible. I can hold my nose and vote for Kasich if the choice is between him and whoever the democrats nominate.
But I have not spent the past eight years maintaining that O-Bummer was not eligible for the office because he was not a NBC for the exact same reasons as Cruz is not only to turn on a dime and say it is ok because he is "one of us."
I won't do it.
Perhaps because this year is a year where we've had enough of Harvard educated lawyer/politicians who are seen as part of the establishment and are immensely disliked and distrusted?
The more we learned about Ted, the more we dislike him.
You can call Ted Cruz conservative as much as you want but he is not conservative if he is for open borders and/or crazy levels of legal immigration and H1B visas. Which he has favored in the past.
If Cruz gets nominated and elected he will owe the GOPe tremendously so he will do would they want as far “free trade” and immigration. I do not trust Cruz on these two issues.
Thus... Donald Trump is the only candidate who is conservative in the ways that I want to see. In correcting our stupid trade and immigration policies. Trump will build that fence on the Mexican border while Cruz will put in a token 100-200 miles of patrolled fencing and call it a day.
Trump is conservative in other ways too. I will leave this for later but I will say he is pro-Second Amendment and has often talked about this
Why is Ted Cruz slimed? I can only answer for myself. I wanted him. Sent him a couple hundred. Was thrilled that a guy who fought for the Constitution in a place (Congress) that gives it only lip service was running for President! I was a fan of his.
Trump later resonated with me more because he was pinpointing our serious trouble with illegals, Muslim terrorists, and corruption in the parties / establishment. But I still would have been happy with Cruz. I was thrilled that we had at least two good candidates.
But then came Iowa. Cruz handled the mailers and the treatment of Dr. Carson so poorly, to our faces. His defense and pathetic apology was sleazy, no other word for it. But what really clicked me off him was his Victory speech after Iowa. He basically said Gd caused him to win and his opponents to lose. I hate when athletes do that, but I don’t think of most of them as geniuses. Cruz should have known better. That is not how Gd works. And the speech was so filled with self congratulation, so loooong. I thought his speech should be like a motivational speech to his voters, talking about the hard work ahead and such. Nope. Just a Sally Fields self love fest, is what it was.
From that moment forward, I started noticing that the values he spoke about in his televangelist style stump speeches were not ones he lived by. Once I saw that he was phony, I couldn’t unsee it. Real “good Christian men” don’t talk about it so much. They don’t preen themselves with their wondrous piety. When the scandal of his affairs (alleged affairs) broke, I followed the story of the Amanda chick. She clearly was alone with him often and late at night. Of course it all could have been honest hard congressional or campaign work. But put together with all of the things people who know Cruz were saying, and that his marriage is one of great separation, there was way too much smoke for none of the rumor to be true.
Master debater (whoops) Cruz was rattled enough to actually use the sentence, “Trump may be a rat, but I don’t desire to copulate with him.”