Posted on 03/31/2015 1:11:32 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
Speaking in New Hampshire last Friday night, Ted Cruz recalled a snarky aside written by New York Times columnist David Brooks, identifying Cruz and Karl Marx as the two people who "believe that power can be wielded directly by the masses." Being lumped in with Marx is a bit unusual for him, Cruz noted, but he's thrilled to be dismissed as a wacky populist by an Establishment shill like Brooks.
Cruz, the junior Senator from Texas and first official Republican presidential candidate for 2016, was keynoting the New England Freedom Conference, put on by Young America's Foundation, a far-right group that's focused on uniting college and high school students to oppose liberalism for more than four decades. YAF and Cruz are kind of perfect for each other: Both present an image that's equal parts youthful optimism, serious intellect, and right-wing absolutism . And naturally, both are pretty obsessed with Ronald Reagan.
At the keynote event, both Cruz and Andrew Coffin, director of the Reagan Ranch in California, which YAF runs, mentioned that when the Texas Republican got married in 2001 he brought his entire wedding party to the ranch as part of the matrimonial festivities. Before Cruz spoke, the organizers played a video that consists entirely of Reagan's contemporaries—Jimmy Carter, Sam Donaldson, George HW Bush and others—calling the Gipper dangerous, ignorant, and otherwise awful.
The final clip, of Keith Olbermann cheerfully saying, "Reagan's dead, and he was a lousy President," draws gasps from the audience. The mental leap we're clearly expected to make is that Reagan was one of humanity's most brilliant leaders of all times, rendering his detractors laughable fools. That might be debatable at best in many other contexts, but here it doesn't even need to be spelled out.
Coffin draws a historical parallel: Like Reagan, Cruz, the first official Republican candidate of 2016, is under attack by people who underestimate the man and fail to grasp the transformational power of a radically anti-government stance. Cruz has said he wants to build "an army of young people," and his speech to the YAF audience feels a tiny bit like Chairman Mao urging young revolutionaries to tear down the political traditions of the previous generation. He urges the students to rise up against the national debt run up by "your deadbeat parents and grandparents."
"I think every young person, after you go in and vote, ought to go out and punch your parents in the nose," Cruz told his young listeners.
After the speech, there's a film that YAF made in response to Occupy Wall Street, a liberal movement that, despite having almost any mainstream political relevancy, remains a bogeyman for the American right-wing. A montage of images sets the terms of the conflict in the film: radical rioters, communist dictators, and dystopian automatons marching in line, juxtaposed with clips of a family buying a house, young people graduating college, and corporate executives looking at pie charts in modern offices. Students are urged to take on their socialist professors and speak out for patriotism and free enterprise. "It's OK to be outnumbered," one narrator promises. "Conservatives are always going to be outnumbered on campus." Music soars.
(VIDEO-AT-LINK)
Other speakers at the conference include Robert Spencer—a long-time Islamophobe who has written that there is "no distinction in the American Muslim community between peaceful Muslims and jihadists"—as well as John Stossel, a noted fan of price-gouging hurricane victims, and Alex Marlow, the editor-in-chief of Breitbart.com. In other words, it's a friendly audience for Cruz, a conservative media darling whose scorched-earth approach to governance has made him a favorite among right-wing activists.
Cruz and the YAF faithful talk about young people as a natural constituency for conservative values—cynical about politicians and worried about government intrusion in their lives. But polling doesn't exactly bear this out, revealing that hard-right young people actually tend to be outnumbered by their more liberal peers. As a group, millennials are disaffected from the political system but also more supportive of a big government than older generations. And, of course, gay marriage is another massive barrier between conservative Republicans and young voters.
Even in the hardcore environment of the YAF conference, only a minority of attendees I spoke with are fans of Cruz. The Tea Party firebrand is disliked even by members of his own party for his doomed effort to somehow stop Obamacare by shutting down the federal government, and recent 2016 surveys show Cruz polling at around 5 percent among likely Republican voters in early voting states.
At YAF's conference in New Hampshire, Eric Dubbury, who's studying the music business at the University of Southern California, told me he's been part of lots of conservative and libertarian events, including other YAF forums. He insists he has the "upmost respect" for Cruz, but he added that he's hoping to work Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker's campaign in 2016. "He's presidential material," Dubbury said of Walker. "He always carries himself with class and dignity. He's a calm, collected person."
Daniel Tiso and Conor Kilgore, two local high school students who worked for a conservative congressional candidate last fall, also said they're not signing on with Cruz. "We're looking for more executive experience in our nominee," Kilgore told me. "We like Rick Perry."
"We think this is [Perry's] year, and we think he can really take the White House," Tiso added.
Still, if there's a group of young people prone to be favorably disposed to a highly educated radical conservative, it's the YAF crowd. Among the Cruz fans here is Zane Richer, an 18-year-old prep school student who responds to my questions in a soft voice and quotes Thomas Jefferson. Richer tells me he became interested in politics while learning about American history in the third or fourth grade. Trying to understand the connections between the classroom lessons and the modern political scene, he started copying out sections of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution each day after school.
Today, Richer is a political blogger in New Hampshire, the first-in-the-nation primary state where YAF held this weekend's conference. And he's a big fan of Cruz. "I think that he is willing to stand for principles, as opposed to flipping on issues," Richer said. "I don't agree with him on everything, but I think he believes what he believes."
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Some good photos at the link.
If he has no chance at the nomination or presidency, is doomed to failure in all that he attempts and is a "wacko bird" then why use up MILLIONS of man hours and forests full of trees writing about him? Where are the Santorum, Huckabee, Bush or Rubio columns? What has Hillary accomplished in life (other than marrying a fast mover) so that the press can question her bona fides?
They don’t lie very well, now do they?!
If VICE is against it, it has to be good.
This person missed his meds. People like this are always entertaining.
” to a highly educated radical conservative”
Dumb sombish....conservatism is antithetical to radicalism : )
They are so scared. It’s quite fun to watch them squirm through the mental gymnastics.
And we are sick and tired of people like Hillary Clinton who bring '60's Ideas to the New Millennium!
(Plus she is barley ten years younger than my Grandmother! :P!)
They had a great show on HBO about a promising possible cure for cancer. It involved injecting viruses like HIV into terminally ill patients.
The cure rate of childhood leukemia has been nothing short of incredible.
great question
“doomed”?
If Cruz increases the youth vote for the GOP by just 10-15% he has made a huge dent.
That’s because she’s still stuck in the 60’s ....
If their parents voted for Democrats, I'm all for this. My kids have no reason to punch me in the nose.
Team Maddow?
Team Brezhnev! egads!
I’m getting old, is that a guy or a gal?
Is it Pat?
What the hell is that?! Seriously is that a dude?
Its a Tomato.
I think Im afraid to ask what a Tomato is…, no, for sure afraid, very afraid
This is the Swiss yodeling team.
Just sayin'.
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