Posted on 11/25/2014 11:55:57 AM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
The New York Observer excerpted some choice lines from Ted Cruz’s meetings with various prominent Jewish leaders in New York City this week.
He’s definitely doing prep work for 2016 and, thanks to gross mischaracterizations of him by both Republicans and Democrats, he is probably quite underestimated all around. He is also smart enough to turn this to his advantage in these early stages of the election cycle. Responding to a question inspired by one of the more popular narratives — he can’t win — that Democrats and moderate Republicans are eerily in sync on, Senator Cruz had this to say:
Mr. Boteach said, “You are arguably the strongest U.S. Senator when it comes to Israel. But if you run, can you win? You’re seen as a champion of the tea party. And the media tends to caricature.”
Mr. Cruz replied, “Historically, the media has had two caricatures of Republicans. We are either stupid or evil.”
“Sometimes both!” volunteered one of the lunchers.
Mr. Cruz laughed and continued. “Reagan was stupid, according to the media. George W. Bush, Dan Quayle, stupid. Nixon was evil, Cheney was evil. I sort of take it as a backhanded compliment that they’ve invented a new caricature for me—crazy. At the end of the day, that caricature doesn’t trouble me because it’s fundamentally false. The American people have a history of making up their own minds.”
Mr. Cruz said that as groups who might be skeptical—like the one in this room—come to know him, doubts will be dispelled and stereotypes will be shattered.
He is right about this and the will guarantee that his detractors will expend a lot of effort trying to falsely define him.
Cruz surprised some by saying:
"I don’t think I’m all that conservative. And it’s interesting. Reagan never once beat his chest and said, “I’m the most conservative guy who ever lived.” Reagan said, “I’m defending common sense principles—small businesses, small towns.”
The senator is correct about this as well. The Democrats were hijacked by ’60s era radicals and have been drifting ever-leftward for at least forty years. Republican moderates, driven by a desperate need to be liked, tend to get caught up in the wake of the Democrats and drift along with them, even if slowly and behind them. So, relative to a political class that is moving away from the American people, Cruz might seem uber-conservative. Real conservatives, however, don’t have a malleable set of political principles to work with. We’re where we have always been on the political spectrum, and a lot of the American people have always been here with us.
When you look at a red/blue map after the last election, the Democrats are ideologically and geographically at the outer edges of America. They’re literally a fringe party right now.
Ted Cruz isn’t an extremist, no matter how many times Democrat hacks and the John McCain crowd say he is. He’s aligned with regular Americans who are tired of Washington raiding our wallets.
Kennedy would be conservative compared to the current Democratic party.
Ibid.
Yep. He’s right.
Plus, he smarter than alll of the demonic-rats and RINOS put together.
Common sense is ever less common.
Is it bad to be “all that” conservative?
And he shutdown the gov over Zerocare, which the public is now starting to realize was a good thing and shows Cruz knows which fish are the most important to fry first.
They have moved so far left in the past decade that Hillary is now too conservative to be their nominee IMO.
He’s positioning himself and the movement as mainstream. If I said it, I would say not ‘all that right-wing’, but I’ll leave phrasaology to someone who’s walking the walk at the top levels and not nitpik.
I had this discussion with a conservative friend who fancies himself as moderate. I said, tell me which position Cruz has which is out of the norm? I said Cruz and I are basically eye to eye in views, and my ideas are completely mainstream smalller government ideas.
Cruz is starting to position himself as a common sense conservative who is in the exact tradition of Reagan...and he’s correctly fighting the DC conventional thinking of conservatism and Reagan...and revisiting the historical parallels of the late 70s and Reagan’s rise. I like what I am hearing from these meetings. A whole bunch.
I think he’s making the point that it’s leftists who are becoming more and more extreme. It’s a consequence of that shift that what were once normal viewpoints, this is, Conservative viewpoints, have become “extreme”.
I like the angle he’s going for here.
Very smart way to disarm them early and turn it back on them.
In a personal letter to vice president Nixon in 1960, Reagan described JFK this way.
“I do not include Kennedy’s acceptance speech because beneath the generalities I heard a frightening call to arms. Unfortunately he is a powerful speaker with an appeal to the emotions. He leaves little doubt that his idea of the “challenging new world” is one in which the Federal Govt. will grow bigger & do more and of course spend more. I know there must be some short sighted people in the Republican Party who will advise that the Republicans should try to “out liberal” him. In my opinion this would be fatal.”
“One last thought,— shouldn’t some one tag Mr. Kennedy’s bold new imaginative program with it’s proper age? Under the tousled boyish hair cut it is still old Karl Marx—first launched a century ago. There is nothing new in the idea of a Govt. being Big Brother to us all. Hitler called his “State Socialism” and way before him it was “benevolent monarchy.”
Like Cruz, I don't consider myself to be “all that” conservative, and yet I know that I am more conservative than 99% of the people I come in contact with.
But I would never try to force a women to stay at home or wear a burka or equivalent. I would never burn books or participate in a mob lynching. I wouldn't advocate for the death of sodomites, or seriously push for Jane Fonda to be tried for treason, I wouldn't try to force my religious views on others through government coercion, I wouldn't advocate that beating ones wife should be acceptable behavior, I am disgusted by female genital mutilation, I don't think cutting off the hands of thieves is just, or that apostates should be hung, ect, ect..
so the way I see the world I am not “all that” conservative.
[ Like Cruz, I don’t consider myself to be “all that” conservative, and yet I know that I am more conservative than 99% of the people I come in contact with.
But I would never try to force a women to stay at home or wear a burka or equivalent. I would never burn books or participate in a mob lynching. I wouldn’t advocate for the death of sodomites, or seriously push for Jane Fonda to be tried for treason, I wouldn’t try to force my religious views on others through government coercion, I wouldn’t advocate that beating ones wife should be acceptable behavior, I am disgusted by female genital mutilation, I don’t think cutting off the hands of thieves is just, or that apostates should be hung, ect, ect..
so the way I see the world I am not “all that” conservative. ]
We are all “Constitutional Moderates”, which is scary considering how far the leftists have gone...
or seriously push for Jane Fonda to be tried for treason, ....What? Are you a Communist or something?
There's a 78.6% chance that you just made that up...
They always have been. But their infiltration and domination of the schools and media have created a mirage.
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