Team Cruz [SuperPac] defends scheme to stop Trump at brokered convention: "It's not cheating"

MofoPolitics ^ | 12/12/15 | MP

[Greetings_Puny_Humans]

Shortly after Ted Cruz told GOP power brokers that Trump lacked the "judgement" to be president, Kellyanne Conway-- who runs Cruz's Keep the Promise I super PAC– defended RNC plans to strip Trump of the nomination at a brokered convention-- even if he wins the majority of votes and plurality of delegates...

KC: No, it's not cheating.

...

Chris Matthews: The candidate who gets the plurality of votes-- the most votes...should be the nominee?

KC: No, I'd have to look at the math.

[Stentor]

If Trump calls him on it before he does, it could get ugly, and the Trumpster can be lightning-fast.

Don't worry Cruzty is fast himself and the Cruzties that support him are relentless.

[Duchess47]

Politicians of all stripes do what is in their best interest it is the people whom you should blame, for failing to vote their interest on an intelligent informed basis...

I think the people who voted for Cruz for Senator thought they were voting on an intelligent, informed basis. He ran as a tea party candidate didn’t he? He went to Washington, immediately supports big government when convenient, makes plans to abandon his Senate position to run for President and now is at the beck and call of very big money. And still misleading his backers.

[Dana1960]

Far as I can tell, Trump fans, here is the answer (there is a bad word in it!):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-hDl6OALv4

[Duchess47]

I had read that, kudos to Carson and Paul. Some integrity exists after all.

[Theo]

I wasn’t insulting you. I was sincerely wondering why you’d be promoting something that is demonstrably untrue. You are either ignorant of the facts, or know the facts and are nonetheless lying about Ted Cruz. One or the other.

“One deportation”? No, you’re obviously not informed on the details of Ted Cruz’s immigration plan. You can start informing yourself here:

https://www.tedcruz.org/cruz-immigration-plan/

Note that the word “deport” or “deportation” is included 11 times in that plan.

[nathanbedford]

My point has to do with the ultimate responsibility for government. It has to do with whether one should vote for the man or vote for the principle. It has to do with whether a society and a culture ultimately gets the kind of government it deserves. It has to do with whether we can bomb Dresden and Hiroshima or whether those bombings amounted to a war crime.

It is human nature to personalize politicians and it is certainly human nature to rationalize our predilections and prejudices. The man on horseback will always have a following. Our founders knew this even before Napoleon came into office and so wrote a Constitution that was designed to cope with venal, imperfect men in office and men who voted them into office. The whole idea of separation of powers, checks and balances, Bill of Rights, is to cope with the imperfections of man.

Dennis Prager has made some very good points on this subject in an old article he wrote to the effect that whether you are a liberal or a conservative depends on whether you believe man is good or evil. Conservatives believe that man is tragically evil and I would add to Prager that that means man is in need of salvation rather than education. In other words, man is a fallen creature liable to all manner of sin and it is folly to believe that any politician, even Washington, Lincoln or Reagan is perfect. Yet it is human nature to indulge this folly.

When a politician changes is position on an issue which we find agreeable we say he has grown and matured. When a politician changes his position to a position we find disagreeable we say he has flip-flopped or sold out. We want him to sell out when we like the result. Let's not kid ourselves, we bear serious responsibility for the government we get.

One of the issues that divides conservatives is the matter of the article 5 movement which I support which invokes the Constitution to restore the Constitution to its original state, one of divided powers and checks and balances. Conservatives who oppose his point of view, and progressives certainly, say that all we need is to load the right people into office and they will observe the Constitution as it currently exists. I say, yes we must find candidates with the highest qualities of character but we cannot rely on a superstar to put right a system which has become perverse or a culture which is circling the drain.

Yes, of course, we need to educate our electorate but we must also recognize our susceptibility to vote for the Kingfish. When we bombed Dresden we were inflicting dreadful collateral damage on the people of that city. Were they responsible for the government over them? Were they responsible for putting Hitler in power and keeping him there, for presiding over concentration camps and the murder of millions of people? When we whore after false gods, when we convince ourselves that this man can do no wrong, we become citizens of Dresden and we are likely to get what we deserve.

[JLAGRAYFOX]

Look I love Ted Cruz...he is terrific....but he has very limited appeal outside of a dedicated conservative following. Now....Ted is not going to become the GOP POTUS nominee...no matter how the media frames & pushes him. The Republican Establishment RINOs, hate both Ted Cruz and Donald Trump. Trump they cannot defeat...but Cruz they will support until they can push Trump off to the side, and they will then tear the ground out from under Cruz, in a New York minute, and replace him with a McCain or Romney type, weak sister...who will get politically slaughtered by Hillary Clinton!!!

Trump is the one ...for this election cycle. He will draw millions of non-Republican cross votes from across the entire political spectrum!!! Fact is: Trump & Cruz combined as POTUS & VP are landslide winners...no matter what the Republicans, Democrats and media moan about (they are all in sheer panic state)!!!

Americans all, IMHO....you got one shot left...if you blow it.....you not only lose the coming election...you will lose your counnot do ittry & freedom!!! Iowa voters, vote enmasse for Donald Trump...it’s the only choice you can make and win the general POTUS election!!! Cruz....excellent gent that he is, cannot do it this election cycle!!!

Support Donald J. Trump for POTUS & Ted Cruz for VP!!! Asimply terrific, winning ticket!!!

[sitetest]

They don’t “have to a poly like everyone else.” They don’t go the back of the line. They get an “expedited” process back to the states. You are inferring an expedited process for all applicants. And your god is happy to let you believe it.

[CottonBall]

I’ve read it, many times. it is disappointingly vague. “1” was an example, you know that. don’t be silly.

[CottonBall]

My god?

Cruz supporters sure like to insult instead of sticking to the issues.

He’s not a god, he’s a man. A real man. not the kind that says things behind closed doors while begging for miney

[usafa92]

Cruz is more GOPe than most people think. I would not be surprised if he was the contingency plan for the GOPe all along. I’d explain in detail, but I’m in not mood to hear the Cruz people at the moment.

[nathanbedford]

I cannot associate your rewriting of the truth of Ted Cruz's biography with having anything to do with reality. Of all the Republicans who have gone to Washington and turned coat and betrayed the conservative movement, Ted Cruz stands as a shining exception.

I am appalled that the people who support Donald Trump have been taken in by him. I just ran across a reply I wrote on this forum on November 27, 2009 which speaks again about the folly of falling for the next Huey Long, a description which fits Donald Trump perfectly but certainly not Ted Cruz.

Here is that lengthy reply:

Now we want to blame Obama because we are disillusioned.

When we as a society eternally ricochet from candidate to candidate always hoping and too often believing that this time this man will produce the magic which will excuse us from our own willful dereliction of duty as citizens, the results are not only predictable but inevitable.

This quadrennial lusting after a political savior is fully in keeping with our human natures. But it does reflect well on us. It is an ignoble trait because it reveals us to be intellectually lazy and emotionally dependent. We were flim flamed by Obama not just because the media worked the crowd while he was on stage, we were taken in because we wanted to be taken in. We were vulnerable because we had not done our homework long before Barack Obama became a household tongue twister. Most of us have an inchoate understanding of our political process and a thoroughly distorted notion of constitutional governance. We have no well considered political philosophy so we seek not to evaluate policy but to judge the man. In the television age that rapidly deteriorates into a beauty contest.

In that televised beauty contest it is Katie Couric who controls the lighting, the camera angles, the editing, and the background music. Is it any wonder that conservative candidates get treated no better than Miss California? Is it any wonder that Barack Obama is literally treated as a Messiah? Is it any wonder that the best of Sarah Palin and the worst of Barack Obama are left on the cutting room floor?

Why do we yield the likes of Katie Couric power over ourselves? Why do we permit ourselves to be so deceived? Why do we want to be taken in by such a transparent siren as, "yes we can," or, "we are the one," when such bumper stickers are not intrinsically compelling, rather, by any objective test are simply mindless?

We are beaten on the one hand by the cynics who say, there is no difference among politicians, it matters not whom you vote for, they are all the same, and apathy, therefore, is the only rational reaction. It is the only way to save yourself from the liars. The only choice is not to choose otherwise you are participating in the sham and, God forbid, you will look foolish.

We are beaten on the other side by the myth makers, both those who lionize and those who demonize. So Camelot was constructed around a psychotic and compulsive sex addict and a man who was addicted to psychotropic drugs. This myth was so firmly attached to the American psyche that literally no debauchery committed by his youngest brother would disillusion Massachusetts voters. It is folly to underestimate the power of the myth which idolizes an individual. That was why I posted so many times before the last election that Barack Obama had to be morally destroyed or the election was lost.

Equally, demonization myths are not to be underestimated. The myth this is seemakers have denigrated Eisenhower, Ronald Reagan, George HW Bush, George W. Bush, Dan Quayle, and Sarah Palin, to mention some obvious examples, as stupid. Consider the myth that Richard Nixon is evil. This was well planted and nurtured long before he became president as a result of this politicking against communists in California and his association in the Alger Hiss affair. When Nixon was revealed to be as corrupt, but perhaps no more corrupt than Roosevelt, Kennedy, or Johnson who had recently preceded him in office, he could not escape the consequences for essentially the same acts which they had committed but for which they received no contemporaneous scrutiny and no adverse sanction.

We are beaten into the belief that our solution is in the person and not in the philosophy. We are beaten into the belief that we find truth by identifying the most trustworthy messenger. So if we believed Walter Cronkite we believed that the Vietnam war was lost. If we believed the successor to Walter Cronkite, Dan Rather, we believed that George Bush cheated his way out of combat in Vietnam. If we believe those scientists that the media tells us we should believe, we are alarmed at global warming. If we are conditioned into accepting the truth of the message because we accept the trustworthiness of the messenger, we will accept the emotionally easy path of voting for the man and not the philosophy. We will be eternally seeking a Messiah and we will be eternally disillusioned.

By the way, we are not immune from this distemper here on Free Republic where one often reads that some opinion or another ought to be dismissed because the author of it is a liberal. This is the path of know nothingness , isolation, and minority status. This is the conservative world, our beliefs are the correct beliefs and they can stand scrutiny and challenge. To withdraw from the Fray is to commit our belief system to corruption, to a gradual death because we cannot correct ourselves. Is insupportable unless you believe that all conservatives are infallible all the time. It is not the man who brings us the truth but the truth which illuminates the man. No better example of this exists than the biography of Sarah Palin.

As long as we as a commonweal whore after the emotional release of surrender to a false Messiah, statists will have the advantage over us. Our commitment is to the principles of conservatism and not to an individual, not even Sarah Palin, not Glenn Beck, and not Rush Limbaugh. Our belief system is righteous and fully capable of meeting every test the left can throw at it. The one thing it cannot overcome is that folly which infects the rest of our culture.

[don-o]

Nail, meet hammer. Top notch right there!

[Theo]

Trump’s plan ( https://www.donaldjtrump.com/positions/immigration-reform ) isn’t much different from Cruz’s plan ( https://www.tedcruz.org/cruz-immigration-plan/ ). And yet you find Cruz’s plan vague? They overlap a lot ...

[St_Thomas_Aquinas]

Right on, right on.

[CottonBall]

it is in deportation. he lets them stay, for the most part.

It’s the 2nd best plan out there though.

[SampleMan]

Good post. I keep reposting on the same theme in numerous threads. i.e. Believe is something, not someone. Vote for servants of the Constitution and of liberty. People will disappoint, but ideals will not.

No candidate is the end all, not unless your desired end is a cult of personality. I deeply admire John Adams and Winston Churchill, but they were both far from perfect.

[Theo]

Cruz “lets them stay, for the most part.”

That’s really not the case, CB. His policies will result in more forced deportations, and many more self-deportations (which is a real thing).

[lewislynn]

You went a long way with one long sentence and no < P > to make a point I never got. But thanks for the reply?

[lewislynn]

Keep the Promise I super PAC is as phony as the candidate they pretend to support.

They don't want Cruz anymore than they want Trump.

If Cruz had the balls that Trump has he'd send them a letter asking them to cease...Or do what he does best, challenge them to a debate.