Posted on 02/19/2014 4:18:55 PM PST by servo1969
A leading tea party intellectual has turned against the tea party movement’s favorite senator.
Economist Thomas Sowell, who has long been revered among conservatives, has slammed Sen. Ted Cruz in his last two columns, accusing the Texas Republican of being self-serving and comparing him to President Obama.
“Freshman Senator Ted Cruz says many things that need to be said and says them well,” Sowell wrote in his syndicated column Tuesday, before going on to compare Cruz to President Obama. “Moreover, some of these things are what many, if not most, Americans believe wholeheartedly. Yet we need to remember that the same was true of another freshman Senator, just a relatively few years ago, who parlayed his ability to say things that resonated with the voters into two terms in the White House.”
Sowell continued, suggesting Cruz is only looking out for himself.
“Senator Ted Cruz has not yet reached the point where he can make policy, rather than just make political trouble,” Sowell wrote. “But there are already disquieting signs that he is looking out for Ted Cruz — even if that sets back the causes he claims to be serving.”
Sowell seems to have been most recently irked by Cruz’s actions surrounding the Senate vote to increase the debt ceiling. Cruz threatened to filibuster, forcing several Republicans to either vote for cloture or force a fight over the debt ceiling increase. Republican leaders were seeking to avoid such a politically-risky fight and another possible government shutdown in order to focus on the failures of Obamacare heading in to the 2014 midterm elections.
“Senator Cruz’s filibuster last year got the Republicans blamed for shutting down the government — and his threatened filibuster this year forced several Republican Senators to jeopardize their own reelection prospects by voting to impose cloture, to prevent Cruz from repeating his self-serving grandstand play of last year,” Sowell wrote in his Wednesday column. “The Republicans need every vote they can get in the Senate — plus additional votes by defeating some Democrats who are running for the Senate this fall. It can be a very close call. Jeopardizing the reelection of current Republican Senators is an act of utter irresponsibility, a high risk with zero benefits to anyone except Ted Cruz — and the Democrats.”
In his Wednesday column, Sowell also lashed out against the so-called Republican establishment.
“However unjustified Senator Cruz’s actions, the very fact that a freshman Senator can so quickly gain so many supporters, with so much enthusiasm, ought to be a loud warning to the Republican establishment that they have long been a huge disappointment to a wide range of Republican voters and supporters,” he wrote.
Not any more.
He outright lies about it being Cruz et al intending to weaken the GOP, nor does he elaborate just how Cruz could possibly be self-serving after his accusation. It is the establishment RINOs doing the weakening via their collaboration with the liberal Dems, and he makes zero mention of that, which is an oblique defense of the GOP-e.
Iconoclasm is a sad affair, when it is the icon itself who is the iconoclast.
Sowell is assuming that most of the Republicans vote according conservative principles, and in the best interest of the party. This is a wrong assumption based on what we see all the time.
I like Thomas Sowell, but I completely disagree with him regarding Cruz. The reason Cruz has a lot of support is because of the very reasons that Sowell is criticizing him for. Cruz's supporters don't want to go along and get along with the corrupt, devious GOPe.
Cruz does not need to please Sowell or his GOPe buddies.
“I wonder how many of you geniuses actually read the column Sowell wrote. Well, here it is. This is Dr. Thomas freaking Sowell we’re talking about here - a better conservative thinker than any 10 of you (or us) put together. Anyone calling him a RINO is either an idiot or a troll.”
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I had read the article...and thank you for calling me a genius, that was very considerate of you.
If YOU read the article it is literally FILLED with talking points associated with the current RINO war on the Tea Party in general and on Ted Cruz specifically. Need I (or another of the “geniuses” to which you kindly refer) extract those not so subtle RINO attacks for you? Or are you clever enough to see them yourself?
Isn’t Ted Cruz’s wife a member of the Council on Foreign Relations? Without double checking I believe that is the case and was also involved with a North American Union group during and sponsored by President Bush a few years back.
DO you believe Antony Sutton was a tool of the Hoover Institute or that he was exposing them along with exposing much that they would rather not have ever seen the light of day? I recall that he was forced out of the Hoover Institute for his revealing scholarship and writings.
Isn’t it annoying that one who has not read the article tells others to read it, even when those others have indeed read it?
We conservatives need a leader right now, and I don't see anybody stepping up except Sen. Cruz. And, oh yeah, mcconnell is DEAD in this years election.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/3124780/posts?page=1
This link has the thread discussing part II of his column published today.
In it he drills down on how the Republican leadership is missing the boat.
Oh, yes to get the things you outlined the Founding Fathers
did compromise.........with each other. And, if you thing they
did not then you need to go back and study some American
History. As to the GOP establishment, they need to be identified,
isolated, and dealt with. We don’t go tossing folks into that
category because they write an article that is critical of a current
conservative bell cow.
Oh sure, you’re a genius. That’s why you fail to understand Sowell’s main point, and thusly throw out a LIFETIME of the man’s record based on your interpretation. I don’t necessarily agree with his main point, but he does have one. The difference between you and me is that, for all my possible mental deficiencies, I’m still not dumb enough to throw around silly accusations of Thomas freaking Sowell being a RINO.
A man’s words speak the loudest when those and his actions are the same.
The Founders were all like-minded and there were no compromises even with each other. With all due respect, I think you mistake their character; the compromising types would not have had the strength of character to shake off the misrule of George III.
Senator Cruz’s filibuster last year got the Republicans blamed for shutting down the government …That is a liberal talking point. I would have thought such things to be far beneath Sowell.
Sowell had the threat of the left and where we are today under his full and robust skill set when Cruz was in grade school.
The idea that Sowell has a beef with Cruz is out of the blue off base.
Sowell sees the party divided and worthless. He is naming the party’s active players in the division and shouting that we are going to hell in a hand basket and this is no time to try and reorganize or purge the party and no time to run an ineffectual party. We are watching our republic in its last gasps.
Out of the blue, when it is Sowell attacking Cruz with blatantly liberal talking points? Off base when Sowell refuses to go beyond that and actually form a coherent idea beyond innuendo and invective of how Cruz may be an impediment to any way forward for conservatives (i.e. without the rest of the GOP following his lead)?
Sowell’s critique of the GOP-e is soft-peddling. Rather than put the blame where it lies and outright accuse Boehner and the rest of being what they are (liberals and collaborators), he instead paints the liberal left as all-powerful and irresistible and tries to foster a shred of pity for the “surrendering” GOP-e. Furthermore, he even goes so far as to imply that it’s time to surrender. He has undone everything that we thought he stood for, here. That is a lack of faith, and it is faith that defines conservatism.
Thanks servo1969.
I never could understand the cheerleading for Sowell...who basically preaches the same Free Trade rhetoric that every Democrat pushes, including Obama.
Cruz is a threat to Liberal globalists everywhere
Sowell talks out of both sides of his mouth in this ridiculous column. Thanks servo1969.
I am having a very hard time getting past the wife part.
Two things make me nervous about Cruz
1) Harvard Law grad
2) Wife is a Managing Director @ Goldman Sachs
Either one arouses suspicion
The combo has me wondering...
The last one would bother me more...
I support Cruz because he actually has Americans best interests at heart. Sowell is a big supporter of failed Liberal Free Trade policies...many of those policies that rob America of its soverignty and national determination
Me neither...
“But there are already disquieting signs that he is looking out for Ted Cruz — even if that sets back the causes he claims to be serving.”
What would those be? Taking 3 million dollars to support amnesty? No, wait. That was Marco Rubio....Praising Obama to the skies while ignoring his constituents and hanging out with Syrian terrorists? No...that was John McCain. Closing down a bridge for political reasons? Oh yeah, that was Christie. Way to be obscure.
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