Posted on 02/19/2014 11:14:41 AM PST by jazusamo
Senator Ted Cruz is a hero in some Republican circles — and the opposite among many of his Senate Republican colleagues.
At this crucial juncture in the history of America, internal battles within the only party that can turn things around are the last thing Americans need. Moreover, each side in this political civil war has all too many valid criticisms of the other.
The Republican establishment’s criticisms of Senator Cruz are criticisms of his rule-or-ruin strategy, which can destroy whatever chance Republicans have of taking back the Senate in 2014 and taking back the White House in 2016. And, without political power, there is no real hope of changing things in Washington.
Senator Cruz’s filibuster last year got the Republicans blamed for shutting down the government — and his threatened filibuster this year forced several Republican Senators to jeopardize their own reelection prospects by voting to impose cloture, to prevent Cruz from repeating his self-serving grandstand play of last year. The Republicans need every vote they can get in the Senate — plus additional votes by defeating some Democrats who are running for the Senate this fall. It can be a very close call. Jeopardizing the reelection of current Republican Senators is an act of utter irresponsibility, a high risk with zero benefits to anyone except Ted Cruz — and the Democrats.
However unjustified Senator Cruz’s actions, the very fact that a freshman Senator can so quickly gain so many supporters, with so much enthusiasm, ought to be a loud warning to the Republican establishment that they have long been a huge disappointment to a wide range of Republican voters and supporters.
(Excerpt) Read more at spectator.org ...
I am like you in your comments and since I have read thousands of pages of Sowell over fifteen years I have to ask myself what have I understood wrongly about the tactics of Cruz, Lee and the others.
My wife says that the nation is doomed and gets so disgusted with this stuff she says, in effect, that the end should come to us now. I on the other hand remember the comments by Kirk that a sea change can always occur and we are just the right instance away from something that changes the whole drama. We have spent a hundred years letting the government get so large and now we can’t understand why we can’t change it.
I agree completely that Sowell is brilliant and sincere.
I went back yesterday and read the two part series on the tea party from November and he did some criticizing but nothing like these Cruz articles.
I think I understand what he’s saying but at the same time he’s overdoing it with Ted Cruz, in my view. Like a few said up thread, I wonder if he has it in for him but I don’t remember Sowell going after anyone on our side like this before.
Not at all, and the political parallels are terrible. I set aside all of the Cruz vs the GOPe hoo-ha, and distill it to the point that a serious thinker like Sowell is warning that we are on the Weimar-Nazi Germany trajectory.
He could as easily written the column the other way, telling the GOPe to accommodate to Cruz, but to end the internal divisions, because the same exact great danger is imminent, and we may be at the “Point of No Return” beyond which the event horizon clamps shut like a giant Venus Flytrap, and we find ourselves imprisoned in a dictatorship.
Sowell is screaming “TYRANNY DEAD AHEAD! WAKE UP AND TURN THE SHIP AWAY FROM THE ICEBERG!”
He could have referenced many historical precedents where a rising tyrant plays the coalition partner while assuming all the real levers of power. The Bolsheviks did it in the nascent Duma in 1917, playing against all of the other parties, and finally striking with a virtual coup/revolution. It’s an old song, probably happens in every other south American or African coup and / or “revolution.”
Sowell is screaming “TYRANNY DEAD AHEAD! TURN NOW!”
God Bless Ted Cruz. I wish we had more like him.
Your points are well taken — especially the “Turn Now.”
It is a shame that we have people in Congress that are so weak kneed that it takes a freshman Senator to start a rukus and then his own party is the most uncomfortable.
After reading Mr. Sowell's extemely inappropriate analogy between Ted Cruz allegedly dividing the Republican Party and the ascension of Hitler to the status of dictator due to a divided coalition of non-Nazis in Germany, I dusted off my copy of The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich and found that there is simply no way an intelligent informed conservative could make that analogy.
Ted Cruz is standing against the dictator while Bohner and McConnell are poised to surrender their power to Obama in a vain attempt to head off an attempt to force them to live up to their commitments to the principles upon which they ran for office and obtained their positions of power.
If Sowell wanted to make a more correct analogy he could have compared Bohner and McConnell to Franz von Papen the supposed middle of the road fence sitter who decided to throw in with the Nazis in order to head off the Communists.
In Germany in 1933 there was either going to be a communist coalition or a Nazi coalition. There was no possibility of Germany going in a direction towards liberty. In fact there were no parties that were advocating anything even approaching a libertarian direction. Germany was headed for a totalitarian regime either run by Commies or Nazis.
Ted Cruz has offered us a choice for Liberty and the GOPe is busy trying to destroy the Tea Party and instead form a coalition with so called Moderate Democrats in order to keep guys like Ted Cruz out of Washington.
I heard Mark Levin mention that a revered columnist that he respected wrote a couple of columns in the last few days that were so far off the mark that he couldn't believe it. He was obviously referring to Sowell, but he didn't mention him by name.
I think Sowell owes Ted Cruz an apology for trying to link his principled stands to the capitulation of the squishy middle in Germany that led to the ascension of the Nazis in 1933. It was a disgusting way to make a stupid point.
I believe the real news is, what is happening right now is the GOP is involved in a huge struggle about itself.
There is a strong wing, which wants to keep the GOP for itself, and wants to cooperate with liberals in this regard. This part of the GOP has been winning for a long time, and holds a very large amount of power.
There is a growing wing however which says enough of that. There are some things we disagree about (trade, etc) but what this is about in part, is whether the GOP wants to stand as a true alternative.
Our current GOP is stubbornly refusing to compete.
It is not my decision, but I’m certainly ready to climb on board with the competition.
I think Sowell is calling out the solid conservatives and in essence asking do you want to win the power to save our nation or do you want to be right.
Sowell hates Washington and political machinery so much that he is not registered with the Republican Party.
The idea, by some, that he is some sort of Rino establishment apologist is so contrary to the facts of his life for the last thirty years that it beggars the imagination.
We haven’t had 24 months of Cruz in office and he could do a Rubio or a Phil Gramm at any point and the luster would pass. We are like a bunch of South Americans constantly looking for the “man on the horse” , the next Bolivar.
I am thrilled with both Cruz and Lee but somehow I don’t think our next President is going to come out of Congress.
The GOPe long for the good old days in the “loyal opposition” where nobody slammed them. It’s so much easier to glide along in 2nd place than to struggle. Cruz is upsetting their designs.
What Sowell did, and not the way that I would do it, was throw the specter of imminent tyranny onto the table for discussion. I agree that politically, Germany in 1932 is a terrible analogy for the USA in 2014. Be that as it may, it will now be acceptable for other mainstream pundits to speak openly about the process of tyrannization that is now underway.
Thomas Sowell being a conservative black man is not now nor will he ever be a "mainstream pundit." He was always considered a right wing commentator. That is what makes this stab in the back of Ted Cruz so treacherous. While warning of the dangerous path we are headed on, he has engaged in firing shots at the people who are on the front lines fighting against that tyranny.
We are not going to end up being subjects to a tyrannical government because of men like Ted Cruz. We will end up there because of appeasers and cowards like Boehner and McConnell. We need an army of principled conservatives and we are stuck with an army of appeasers and turncoats.
Again I can't believe Sowell took this road. His point about the coming tyranny is lost by the fact that he is pointing his weapons at his own soldiers while at the same time giving ammunition to the enemy. Cruz is now caught in the middle, being attacked from all sides for simply standing for the principles he was elected to defend.
Treachery is common in warfare. I just didn't think I'd see it from people like Sowell.
I don’t understand his thinking in calling out Cruz, instead of the GOPe Quislings and cowards. But at least he put the Weimar-Nazi Germany idea out into the memestream. Who else of Sowell’s stature has done so?
Ted Cruz for one. He has called the Obama and his Administration "lawless." He caught a lot of flack for that.
I think that such is true of the majority of the Republicans in congress.
However, Sowell has never carried water for that crowd. Yet we have him here saying despite that crowd’s lack of message and leadership being constantly poor and there stupidity in ignoring the conservative wing, Cruz has to take a pragmatic look focused on our eminent disaster of a communist future.
And Mark Levin, and others. But I welcome every national figure warning about imminent tyranny. The Cruz vs. the GOPe angle is regrettable, but I’m glad Sowell compared 2014 to 1932.
In a way, he's become part of the extablishment game. By that I mean that he's treating it like a sports event, in that it's always better if "your" team wins. Win, then change.
But that's not what would happen. Even with a majority in the HOR, we haven't won. Too many Republicans want to maintain the status quo, which means constitutional conservative principles are just not part of the game.
Under GWB, for awhile the 'pubs had everything....we got TARP, expanded interference in education, the pharmaceutical program for seniors, bailouts, the Patriot Act, a really stupid war in Iraq.
It's quite the opposite of what Sowell says. We lose if the status quo Republicans get majorities without having to listen to their base.
The sick irony is that happened to the dems with Obama. Would those who supposedly believe in peace have put up with recreational war mongering from a 'pub president? Would they tolerate the high unemployment rates among black men? Fact is, they've been marginalized by Obama.
As usual — fabulous post well worth reading a few times. Much nutrition for thought.
To borrow from Elvis: “Thankyouverymuch.”
I am glad to see Levin explain this. So many of us do not understand how Hitler took over.
http://www.redstate.com/diary/aglanon/2014/02/20/thomas-sowell-makes-case-ted-cruz/
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