Posted on 04/07/2015 2:50:31 AM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
No, the Texas senator isn't likely to capture the GOP ticket. But his brand of conservatism poses its own threat.
Since Ted Cruz first announced his candidacy, much has been made of his chances of winning, his arrogance and his extreme conservative views. But most of the controversy over his candidacy centers on his lying.
It is no surprise to any of us that politicians lie. We generally assume they stretch the truth to get elected, to denigrate their political foes, and to bolster their images. But Cruz may just represent one of the biggest liars in recent history. In fact, he may be a whole new form of political liar.
The Daily Beast reports that, “Cruz’s Politifact track record for publicly asserted falsehoods is the second-highest among front-runners, totaling 56 percent of all statements they’ve looked at.” And Matthew Rozsa tell us that “Googling ‘Ted Cruz lies’ pulls back an astonishing 7,890,000 results, and on Twitter, the two phrases are basically synonymous.”
The trouble with this angle on Cruz’s misstatements is that it presumes that Cruz is, in fact, lying. But lying depends on the liar knowing that what he is saying is false. Cruz shows no signs of such awareness. As Ann Marie Cox points out in her survey of Cruz’s lies, there’s more going on here than just a politician’s twisting of the truth or a partisan spin on data. She wonders whether it is time to take seriously the idea that he really believes what he is saying. “There are objective falsehoods that show Cruz could just be looking at a different set of data. Other, more telling whoppers show that Cruz isn’t just looking at different data, he’s living in a different universe.”
That different universe is Cruz’s world of misinformation. He doesn’t lie because lying would require that he actually know the truth. And that is what makes Cruz an even greater threat to the health of our democracy than all of his lies put together. Cruz represents a turn in GOP politics where political beliefs operate more like religious fervor than reasoned inference.
Researchers have long worried about the connections between democracy and public knowledge. For obvious reasons, an informed electorate is a key part of a strong and effective democracy. Voters need to have relevant facts in order to make good choices at the polls. But research by Brendan Nyhan and Jason Reifler explains that there is a vast difference between an uninformed public and a misinformed one. An uninformed pubic is ignorant, but a misinformed one is delusional—and that’s far more dangerous.
This distinction is essential. An uninformed voter can have contact with the truth and learn from it, but a misinformed one already believes an idea that’s wrong. Think of Cruz’s delusional comments about climate change, the number of IRS agents, and crime rates rising in areas with stricter gun control laws. Each of these examples indicates a whole new level of political “lying,” since each represents fiercely held beliefs with no basis in fact. This is not a case of simple stupidity. It’s a case of deeply believing something that’s just wrong.
If you care about truth and think it should influence political decisions, this is highly disturbing. But it gets worse. Nyhan and Reifler further suggest that those who hold misinformed beliefs are even less likely to learn from correcting information than those who have no clue.
That means that for those who think like Cruz, there is virtually no amount of data, reality checks or facts that can persuade the deluded citizen to give up their false ideas. This is the mindset of the Tea Party, the Koch brothers, and many on the far right. Nyhan and Reifler refer to this as “motivated reasoning.” What they find is that people who are attached to falsehoods perceive any correcting information as partisan and flawed. So conservatives don’t perceive science as information. To them, it’s just a liberal agenda. In other words, they don’t believe the truth.
And there’s more. Not only do those with false beliefs practice “motivated reasoning,” we also now know that any challenge to their beliefs is likely to “backfire.” Nyhan and Reifler found that when conservatives who thought there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq were exposed to news stories correcting that view, “the correction backfired.” That is, “conservatives who received a correction telling them that Iraq did not have WMDs were more likely to believe that Iraq had WMD than those in the control condition.”
This means that exposure to the truth not only failed to adjust their views to reality, it actually made them believe in their false ideas even more strongly. This is why Cruz’s candidacy is really scary. This is not a case of a politician strategically using lies to advance a career; his whole career is dedicated to advancing a political platform built on a delusional view of the world. The catch is that to those who think like Cruz it isn’t delusional, it makes perfect sense.
Cruz’s misbeliefs are part of a longer story of how the GOP has come to be redefined by a vocal, aggressive, highly visible faction that has decided that any facts that contradict their worldview are merely liberal bias. This is what Stephen Colbert called “truthiness.” Think back to the lies of Paul Ryan at the 2012 RNC or to Anderson Cooper’s confrontation with Michelle Bachmann over her penchant for lying. Recall also the research showing that viewers of Fox News actually know less about the world than people who watch no news of any kind.
But really if we want to peg the rise of a misinformed GOP on a politician we would have to start with the George W. Bush administration.
Back in 2008, we learned the Bush administration made 935 false statements in the lead-up to the Iraq war. Yet today, despite multiple bipartisan reports confirming no WMDs were found, a significant faction of the U.S. public still cling tenaciously to the idea that the war there was just. A recent poll conducted by Farleigh Dickinson University found that 40 percent of US citizens still think there were WMDs in Iraq.
But falsehoods are only the tip of the iceberg. The bigger problem is the emotional attachment to the falsehoods. The new GOP is increasingly connected to a sense of constant threat and a persistent worry that the nation and its values are under attack. When we combine a great distortion of reality with a party politics based on fear and extremism, we threaten the viability of a functional political system. That, of course, was exactly what Cruz did when he led the government shutdown of 2013.
Democrats, too, hold dear to their beliefs. It’s part of human nature to want to resist information that contradicts with the way we see the world. Psychologists call the practice confirmation bias, and define it as the tendency to interpret information in ways that support our preconceptions. And yet, we don’t all resist correction of our false beliefs to the same degree.
Indeed, there is research that suggests there is a vast difference between a liberal’s ability to accept a new take on the world than a conservative’s. To put it simply, part of what it means to be liberal is to be open-minded. That means liberals are open to information that might change a perception. In contrast, conservatives are defined as resisting change and as emotionally attaching more strongly to their beliefs. What we find with Tea Party politics, though, is a far more extremist version of Republican beliefs than we have ever seen before. Michael Grunwald of Time calls the new GOP an example of “reality-defying extremism and chronic obstructionism and borderline surrealism.”
The poster boy for this extremist, reality-bending faction of the party is Ted Cruz. As the Washington Post reports, “Cruz isn’t [just] running for president—he’s running to be the leader of a new GOP.” And that’s no lie.
******
Sophia A. McClennen is Professor of International Affairs and Comparative Literature at the Pennsylvania State University. She writes on the intersections between culture, politics, and society. Her latest book, co-authored with Remy M. Maisel, is, Is Satire Saving Our Nation? Mockery and American Politics.
I second the question. Anybody see any actual "lies" cited in the piece?
Not. One. Single. Documented. Example.
PROJECTION. When liberals attack, it is because it is something they have done or are planning to do.
After the 2004 elections, Robert Kennedy, Jr. wrote a detailed article first accusing George W. Bush of tampering with voting machines in Ohio and secondly how it could be done. Fast forward to 2008 and 2012, and what happened? Voting machines all over the country were tampered with, IN EXACTLY THE WAY KENNEDY DESCRIBED.
It is amazing how much VENOM she pack into the first 3 sentences. Almost as amazing as her failing to list one lie that Cruz told in a story that she wrote to convey what a huge liar he is.
Simply review presidential history.
Governors don’t have a much better track record verses senators or anyone else for that matter. There been really bad ones across the board.
Writing an article about lying by lying. Show me the lies, liar.
Oh, she did.
They are frightened because they cannot pretend that he is stupid...and he fights back. The liberals don’t know how to handle an opponent who isn’t a patsy.
Goodness gracious, he’s sure got them in a tizzy.
That’s what I was waiting for. Any actual lies? Have yet to hear or read of one.
I had to read closely to find the lies. She mentions three, none of which are actually “lies.”
Lie #1. He disagrees with leftist group-think on global warming. He is anti-science.
Lie #2. He believes cities with strict gun control have higher crime rates.he makes the fatal conceit of thinking free citizens should defend themselves.
Lie #3. “The number of IRS agents.” She doesn’t explain this.
The author is insane. And to think she is a professor somewhere teaching young skulls full of mush.
I guess the author just can’t accept the truth
What’s dangerous is the current level of insanity exhibited by the left. They are positively bat-sh** crazy.
ok, I stopped reading after several paragraphy. Does the author actually mention any of the lies that Cruz supportively said. Author talked about multiples lies without mentioning a single one. A search of google of lies doesn’t prove anything, it could be 1 lie written multiple times by multiple leftist media and then repeated ad nasuem the same 1
Exactly! Searched for at least one example...nada.
Any right minded-ed thinking to this ‘Professor’ must be ‘extreme conservative” and as for the most lies told and the great number if ‘googled’, different universe, etc. Snort! how soon will US forget the falsehoods told by our current pResient would be found when given the same scrutiny? The faux-knowledgeable one is ASing US. Attempting to apply to Cruz the many negatives that their own great idol owns. This —not only shows their fear, but their ignorance as well. Check the underwear -you’ll more than likely find it needs changing.
the author attempts to define a lie as words spoken that disagree with the left. If someone say something that is incorrect, thats not a lie, the person is simply wrong. You have to know what you said is wrong to be considered a lie and the author want to relax that rules that define a lie so it could be all encompassing
Truth be told, basically the author lied about Cruz lying
Over the past 100 years (or so) we have had 8 presidents with prior gubernatorial experience:
Theodore Roosevelt
Woodrow Wilson
Calvin Coolidge
Franklin Roosevelt
Jimmy Carter
Ronald Reagan
Bill Clinton
George W. Bush
With the exceptions of Ronald Reagan and Calvin Coolidge, the remaining six have been unmitigated disasters.
That's hardly an encouraging record.
And Reagan wasn’t a great president because he was a governor. He was a great president because he understood what America was all about, loved liberty, limited government and free markets, and knew how to sell it.
I like a lot of what I know about Scott Walker, but the fact is that he appears to be a supporter of amnesty/immigration reform -- which is a deal killer as for as I am concerned.
Ted Cruz is the ONLY consistent, articulate conservative candidate who seems to understand the proper role of the federal government in all respects.
I believe that when one looks at the whole pack, Cruz is the only one who has the brains, the principles and the experience to save this country, if in fact it can be saved after 100 years of Progressive leftist infestation by both parties.
This person is using alinsky's rules for radicals and the precepts of 1984 to maximum effect {for the article}.
Black is white, right is wrong, peace is war.
An uninformed pubic
I think I see where her priorities are centered...
Based on the many, many articles I have read by or about modern college professors, this author is pretty typical.
That's why colleges today are moron factories dedicated primarily to leftist indoctrination and stuffing young skulls full of mush with even more mush.
I truly question the judgment of anyone who decides to go to college today to study any sort of degree program other than STEM and maybe business) -- especially if they have to go into debt to do it.
“Googling ‘Ted Cruz lies’ pulls back an astonishing 7,890,000 results”
My Googling “Obama lies” pulled up a measly 98,400,000.
Proof positive that Ted Cruz Lies. / sarc
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