Posted on 06/17/2013 12:57:42 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
Via the Examiner, a short but noteworthy clip insofar as it exposes a potential fault line between Cruz and Rand Paul. McCain lumps them together as “wacko birds” but I’m not so sure that’s true of Cruz on national-security issues. His alliance with Paul interests me because it strikes me as a personification of the uneasy libertarian/tea-party alliance. The groups overlap heavily on spending issues, and both are deeply suspicious of Obama’s expansion of government. The master stroke of Paul’s drone filibuster was that he found a sweet spot for both, making the philosophical case for due process while humiliating O for having turned into such a hypocrite about it. Even so, no matter how much Paul sometimes likes to pretend that the tea party is synonymous with libertarianism (for his own strategic reasons), various polls show that it just isn’t so. Tea partiers are more socially conservative than doctrinaire libertarians, they’re more likely to support entitlements, and they’re more traditionally Republican on defense/security issues. That’s not to say that they’re not becoming more libertarian — polls lately show Republicans are more skeptical about NSA surveillance than Democrats are, although that’s probably for partisan reasons — but they’re not all Ron Paul fans either. That’s why Rand is usually quick to claim the tea-party label. The more he gets TPers thinking of themselves as allied with him, then theoretically the more receptive they’ll be to his libertarian ideals.
McCain doesn’t seem to understand the difference between them but comparing Paul’s reaction to the NSA revelations to Cruz’s is instructive. Paul’s first instinct was to organize a class-action lawsuit and accuse the NSA of an “extraordinary invasion of [Americans'] privacy.” Cruz, by contrast, says the revelations are “cause for concern” but urges Fox viewers to reserve judgment until we know more about the programs. And from the looks of it here, his chief objection seems to be that this particular administration can’t be trusted with NSA’s surveillance tools in light of the IRS scandal, not necessarily that any administration can’t be trusted with it. He may very well end up joining Paul’s lawsuit, but I suspect that’ll be aimed at impressing libertarians whose votes he’ll need if he ends up running for president someday just as Rand often tempers his own libertarianism in order to impress more mainstream tea-party conservatives. Cruz’s ally, Sarah Palin (who returned to Fox this morning, although she doesn’t speak in this clip) seems to be taking a position similar to his lately. From her speech at the Faith and Freedom Conference on Saturday:
“The scandals infecting this city, they are a symptom of a bigger disease, and it doesn’t matter if it’s a Republican or a Democrat sitting atop a bloated boot on your neck, out of control government, everybody gets infected, no party is immune,” Palin said. “That’s why, I tell you, I’m listening to those independents, those libertarians, who are saying, it is both sides of the aisle, the leadership, the good ol’ boys in the party on both sides of the aisle, they perpetuate the problem.”…
Palin also took on the “pandering, rewarding the rule breakers, still-no-border security, special interest written amnesty bill,” especially ribbing Jeb Bush for his fertility comment yesterday. “I think it’s kind of touchy territory to want to debate this over one race’s fertility over another, and I say that as someone who’s kinda fertile herself.”
Obama didn’t evade Palin’s lashing, either. “Where is our commander in chief?” Palin asked. “We’re talking now more new interventions? I say, until we know what we’re doing, until we have a commander in chief who knows what he’s doing—well, chief, in these radical Islamic countries, aren’t even respecting basic human rights, when both sides are slaughtering each other as they scream over an arbitrary red line ‘Allah ak-bar’—I say, let Allah sort it out.”
I suspect Cruz would agree with every word, and that her former running mate would disagree with most or all of it. (Palin advocated “Cruz control” for Washington in the speech, in fact.) She doesn’t want any more interventions under a strategist as poor as Obama — but she’s not against intervention in principle. She wants America to listen more to the libertarians, but when it comes to the lousy Gang of Eight bill, she rightly opposes it for its weak border security — even though libertarians are famously comfortable with weak borders. None of this is contradictory; most tea partiers would, I take it, agree that America needs more libertarianism while maybe not quite so much as Ron Paul supporters would prefer. The point is, though, there are real differences between Cruz and Rand Paul and I think we’re getting a hint of one in the clip. And the longer the national debate stays stuck on liberty-versus-security issues, the more obvious I think those differences will be.
Could you explain that in small words for those of us who aren’t lawyers?
“What happened?”
The Obama Administration showed Ted Cruz what they got on him. That’s what.
I wonder what they got on Cruz.
Sarah Palin thinks she’s a different race from Latinos? Surprise, they’re Caucasians too!
Aside from that, I think Cruz is making an important point. The NSA surveillance was secretive but also almost unavoidable because everything is electronic now. But I don’t think even Obama dared (although his successor will) to get individual info out of it. And in any case, he didn’t need it, because he had all of the data voluntarily or mandatorily submitted by Americans - the IRS, state voter registration logs, etc. - that enabled him to target individuals.
This was Obama doing meta-data for political purposes. He and his minions were using the NSA for market research. He wanted to see the trends and know where to direct his political attacks. For him it was all about remaining in power.
I don’t think Snowden, an Obama voter, will connect him with this, so I hope somebody else does manage to make the connection.
I don’t trust ANYONE is DC. Cruz is becoming one of ‘them’.
Sure; for reference what I wrote:
the NSA surveillance is a clear, blatant violation of the 4th, 5th, and very-arguably 6th amendments — this is, of course, not taking into acount that the system could easily be used to blackmail and is just begging to be abused in Ex Post Facto law. (If the 4th, 5th, and 6th don't protect you, why should the Ex Post Facto law prohibition?)The NSA surveillance is a violation of the 4th Amendment, obviously, because real things are being searched. The fifth is being violated because the content of your communication [your 'speech'] is being used against you, forcing you to testify against yourself — even the "we're only looking at metadata" case they claim [but I don't believe] is violative of the 5th in this way: your contacting someone [or them you] can flag you as a
terrorist.
The Sixth though requires that the charges brought against you are defendable; the FICA-court
is not, it is a closed and secret court [see the Star Chamber].
The way this could be [ab]used by lawmakers via Ex Post Facto law is obvious. One example: they could make expression of any anti-government
sentiment illegal and then filter the e-mails [and possibly phone-calls] for violators.
That’s my conclusion.
They’ve gotten to all of them.
They can make noises but they can’t cross the line.
Cruz, Palin, Lee ...
Um, sorry folks, the die is cast. Believe what you may. Put your trust in sources you accept.
I’ll trust Cruz, Palin, and Lee. I’ll not trust ANY interpretation.
Case in point:
http://www.cruz.senate.gov/record.cfm?id=344081
Many thanks.
Also, the fact that the George W. Bush administration’s director of NSA and Vice President Cheney came out in support of Obama on NSA surveillance didn’t help.
“The man who served as the director of the National Security Agency under former President George W. Bush said that President Barack Obama has been more transparent about top secret surveillance programs than his predecessor.
Gen. Michael Hayden, former NSA director, praised Obama for resuming those programs.
‘We should just take a sense of satisfaction that what we were doing, once candidate Obama became President Obama, he saw that these were of great value and frankly, were being very carefully done,” Hayden told CNN. “National security looks a little different from the Oval Office than it does from a hotel room in Iowa.’
Hayden applauded Obama for making the details of the NSA’s data collection available to members of Congress.
‘Frankly, the Obama administration was more transparent about this effort than we were in the Bush administration,’ Hayden said. ‘I mean, they made this meta data collection activity available to all the members of Congress. Not just all the members of the intelligence committees.’”
Former Vice President Dick Cheney added his voice to the debate by arguing that the surveillance programs are necessary if terrorist attacks are to be stopped. He told Fox News Sunday that Edward Snowden, who leaked classified information about the existence and extent of the surveillance, is a “traitor” who has damaged national security.
As vice president after the 9/11 terrorist attacks that killed 3,000 people in 2001, Cheney helped design the controversial system, leaked by Snowden, for keeping track of the public’s emails and phone calls.
I’m not sure what I’m reading here, an attempt to explain Ted Cruz, Sarah Palin and Rand Paul or an attempt to make them all look bad.
My “evolving” conservatism is libertarian (live and let live), christian (God without doctrinaire denominational baggage) and about downsizing government in a literal way (no phony accounting trick “spending cuts”). The Founders and the Constitution stand as our guide and we have drifted far away from the vision of both.
I like where all three (Sarah, Rand and Ted) are coming from in a general way knowing they are all outsiders (not perfect) and right now we need as many outsiders as possible in the fight with the GOP-E and their nonsense.
Of the three, I think Sarah is the most in line with my thinking right now.
I don’t see anything wrong with Ted’s approach. I just have to wonder what info he is seeing. Remember,,we are only seeing the media stuff. Being dependent on the media sucks and it’s hard to be patient.
There are instances of Bush’s Secret Service clamping down on critics and protesters of Bush. I hate to say it but they are out there. Google it. 2003, 2004,,private citizens feeling they were targeted because they spoke out against Bush. I am not saying it was right/wrong,,I am saying it did not start with Obama and if we go shooting our mouths off half-cocked, the consequences could be very very bad. I want to hear where Ted is getting his info. I hope it’s via some direct channels and not dependent on news reports.
It won’t hurt any of us to learn more.
What a bunch of babble this is ...
Breaking??
gak...
Where in the heck did that statement come from? Got a link?
I have never heard or read anything that Gov. Palin even considers race in her statements anywhere about anything.
From her speech.
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