The Ted Cruz Train Wreck

[hepcat]

No, she really meant it. She told one of her friend's that she knew it was the best way to make you like her.

Whoops.

I wasn't supposed to say anything.

[LawBeefaroni]

Shoot 'em in the dark

If Donald Trump is your drunk uncle at Thanksgiving then Ted Cruz is the charming sociopath your sister brings to Christmas. During a speech at the Rising Tide Summit in Iowa, the freshman senator from Texas whipped the crowd into a frenzy by suggesting Pres. Barack Obama wasn’t doing enough to defeat radical Islam.

Cruz thinks he can do better. “We will utterly destroy ISIS,” he said. “We will carpet bomb them into oblivion. I don’t know if sand can glow in the dark, but we’re going to find out.”

That’s right, Ted Cruz just promised to nuke the Middle East if elected.

Unlike Hillary I don't think he said nuclear.

Yeah, everyone knows you don't carpet bomb with nukes.

Of course everyone should also know that you can't carpet bomb or nuke ISIS into oblivion. It doesn't work that way. Eliminating ISIS will require ground troops and no candidate, not even Cruz or Trump, have the balls to promise to commit the necessary US ground troops.

It's all pretty sounding rhetoric from those who don't understand the situation, or choose to misrepresent it, directed at those who don't understand the situation, and refuse to try.

[tgb]

Then again, setting Fallout V in Kabul might change things up a little bit.

[El Guapo]

Also, we probably do know if we can make sand glow in the dark.

[Rip]

It is all crap talk designed to get the reluctant morons on board.

No different than Obama talking about transparency or Hillary talking about going after Wall Street. The non-morons know better and the morons need motivation to get to the polls. Routine politics.

[hepcat]

The non-morons know better and the morons need motivation to get to the polls. Routine politics.

You must be pumped to vote now!

[Jeff V]

The non-morons know better and the morons need motivation to get to the polls. Routine politics.

You must be pumped to vote now!

[hepcat]

I tease, I tease. Rip knows that in spite of the ribbing, I do actually like him.

[Rip]

I tease, I tease. Rip knows that in spite of the ribbing, I do actually like him.

No worries, kinda sweet on you as well.

[Unagi]

" "

[tgb]

I tease, I tease. Rip knows that in spite of the ribbing, I do actually like him.

No worries, kinda sweet on you as well.

[Kraken]

P J O'Rourke on Ted Cruz. Pretty good rant.

If you goddamn millennials get off P.J. O'Rourke’s lawn and into a voting booth, we could actually have a decent president.

A plea to America’s Youth!

Now is the time for all good millennials to come to the aid of their country!

Young people of the U.S.A., you must save our nation. Because America’s old people have gone completely insane. Look who they’re supporting for president.

The 2016 presidential campaign is the most severe case of American mass psychosis since the Salem witch trials of 1692. In fact, it’s worse. What kind of witch hunt leaves Goodwife Hillary not dunked in a pond, pressed under stones or fastened by the ankles in the It-Takes-A-Village stocks?

And Hillary is, arguably, the front-running candidate possessed by the fewest demons. (Although watching her head spin around while she spews campaign vomit is scary.)

Enter Ben Carson. Caldron boiling.

Eye of Newt (Gingrich), facts of fog,
Hare of brain, tongue of blog…

Bernie Sanders is going to and fro in the earth.

And then there’s Trump—Landlord of the Flies.

No one knows what caused mature adult Americans to lose their minds. Maybe it’s long over-due LSD flashbacks. Perhaps sharing cute kitty videos on Facebook is an Alzheimer’s trigger. Or it could be post-traumatic stress syndrome from when you kids came home with neck tats and nipple piercings.

Anyway, crazy old people are to blame for the presidential frontrunners. Who else answers the phone in the middle of dinner when “asshole political pollster” is on the Caller ID?

And crazy old people will be to blame for whichever spawn of Satan slithers its way into the Oval Office.

The whole electoral process is in the hands of don’t-trust-anyone-over-the-age-I-was-under-when-I-was-saying-don’t-trust-anyone-over-that-age.

Eighty-six percent of Republicans and voters who “lean Republican” are on the wrong side of 30. That doesn’t make the blue states hip and happening. Eighty-two percent of Democrats and voters who “lean Democratic” are likewise.

People who actually vote in presidential elections are, on average, nearly 50. The highest voter turnout is among those who are 60+.

“Primaries?” you ask. “Whoa, what are they, primarily?” And, “What’s up with them being all whenever and wherever, during weird months in states I’ve never heard of?”

In fact, nobody votes in primaries. In 2012, when the entire country was supposedly full of the political hots and bothers, just 15.9 percent of the electorate cast a primary vote. We don’t know how old these primary-voting nobodies are, but I’m guessing their average age is dead.

Brain-dead, for certain.

Therefore I’m asking you young people to make an enormous sacrifice. I’m asking you to find a presidential primary and vote in it.

But that’s not all I’m asking. I’m asking you to make a much greater sacrifice, a terrible sacrifice.

I’m asking you to find a Republican presidential primary and vote in it.

Here’s why.

Americans over 30 are such deranged maniacs that Hillary Clinton might not be heinous and abominable enough for them. A Republican frontrunner could be elected.

You say, “Oh, go on, get outta here.” Surely Ben Carson will be checking himself into the memory-care facility soon. And it can’t be long before Donald Trump is exposed as a Democratic double agent and goes into hiding at the Chappaqua safe house, or wherever it is Hillary has Bill stashed.

But now there is another Republican frontrunner. Ted Cruz. He’s ahead of Trump in the Iowa polls. He’s closing in on Trump in the national polls. There’s even an NBC/Wall Street Journal poll with the two of them in margin-of-error territory—Trump 27 percent, Cruz 22 percent.

Call it “margin-of-terror.” Cruz is way too close to being electable. He’s got the crazy thing going for him, but it’s crazy like a fox or, anyway, like a Fox News broadcast. In contrast to one GOP frontrunner I could name, Cruz knows who’s buried in Lenin’s tomb. And, in contrast to another, he isn’t angling to get a sweetheart deal on a hotel and casino in Raqqa as a reward for inflaming anti-American hatred worldwide.

Ted Cruz could beat Hillary Clinton. He’s 161 years younger than she is—in dog years. Dogs are all we’ve got this election cycle, so it’s a fair measure.

Cruz has a national political record going back only as far as his Senate race in 2013. Clinton is dragging a hundred miles of public policy toilet-paper-trail stuck to her campaign shoe.

Hillary reminds every man in America of his first wife. Voters are 47.9 percent male. And 47.9 happens to be exactly the percent of the popular vote that won George W. Bush the presidency in 2000.

We need Cruz Control.

I know, I know, you young people are saying, “P.J., you’re an elderly and unhinged Republican yourself. What’s up with getting your plaid XL boxers in a wad over Ted Cruz? Isn’t he your kind of guy?”

No, he’s not. I mean, OK, yes, I like Ted’s flat-tax idea—the same clever plan for tax reform that put Steve Forbes in the White House in 1996.

And usually I am, like Ted, opposed to stricter gun controls. But Cruz told radio host Hugh Hewiit, “the simple fact is the overwhelming majority of violent criminals are Democrats.” So maybe gun purchase background checks should include a question about party affiliation.

Cruz seems a little clueless on foreign policy. I don’t think carpet-bombing ISIS will work. Didn’t they pretty much invent the carpet over there?

Cruz doesn’t believe in climate change. That’s nonsense. I’ve been around for a long time. Climate change is real. Temperatures go up in the summer and down in the winter every year.

Cruz opposes legalization of marijuana. I have two teenage daughters. I worry about them. And marijuana is a drug that makes teenage boys drive slow.

Cruz opposes gay marriage and adoption by gay couples. Ted, you idiot. We want the Republican Party to win elections. What do you call people who get married and have children? You call them Republicans.

The rest of the Ted Cruz’s platform is just the standard-issue delusional right-wing ravings that keep anyone to the left of me (and practically everybody is) from even thinking about voting Republican.

Take a Thorazine or something, Ted, and stop the anti-immigrant rants. I’m 68. What am I supposed to do, raise my own children? Plus you’re practically an immigrant yourself, Ted, or would be if we cared what crosses between Alberta and Texas. You Canadian, you.

And stop the anti-abortion rants. As I mentioned, I’ve got teenage daughters. If abortion laws need any tweaking, it’s this: The woman gets to decide what to do with the baby. And I get to decide what to do with the boyfriend.

But where Ted Cruz goes completely off the rails is when he refuses to criticize Donald Trump. Refuses to criticize Donald Trump? That’s inconceivable. That’s impossible. That’s like… like… Nicki Minaj refusing to wear an outfit because it’s too revealing. Like Ben and Jerry refusing to sell Leonardo DiCappuccino Ice Cream. Simile fails me.

I’m ethnically Republican. (I know you young people understand Identity Politics.) My grandmother was born in the 19th century near Springfield, Illinois, where the only Democrat anybody had ever heard of was John Wilkes Booth.

Please, please help put a regular doofus Republican on the ballot.

I know you young people are comfortable with Hillary Clinton. She’s familiar. You’re used to her. She’s the spitting image of the worn-out, bitter, sarcastic Second Wave feminist adjunct professor teaching your Gender Studies class. Easy A, if you can wade through the Betty Friedan crap.

But what if America decides to drop that course? What if Americans just can’t stand another minute of Clinton smug and Clinton smirk?

Every presidential election needs two candidates, neither of whom will cause you to leap off a bridge or move to Ted Cruz’s Canada if the other one wins.

When America doesn’t have two candidates like that, bad things happen.

In 1968 one candidate was Hubert Humphrey. He was a doofus and LBJ’s butt boy and nobody really liked him. But he was mostly harmless.

The Republicans also could have run a doofus nobody really liked. They had plenty available, such as Nelson Rockefeller and Mitt Romney’s dad, George. But they failed to nominate someone who was mostly harmless.

Instead, He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, Richard Nixon, won the election with 60.7 percent of the popular vote. And, pay attention here, 1968 was the first time 18-year-olds had voting rights.

Young people, don’t let this happen to you.

You have the power. There are 53.5 million of you between the ages of 18 and 29. There were only 32.9 million primary voters in 2012 (total, Republicans and Democrats). You have a 163 percent advantage.

Just pick any regular doofus Republican polling below 13 percent—Rubio, Paul, Kasich, Fiorina, Pataki, the Jebster, whatever. They’re mostly harmless.

And they’re definitely harmless compared to the crazy old people currently in control of the whole electoral process. You know, people like me.

[Pyperkub]

Love it! There are some good zingers in there...

[Kraken]

I doubt that Millennials will vote in any great numbers until they can do it on their phones (not that they read O'Rourke in the first place). If they did, Bernie would sweep the D nomination.

[Jeff V]

It's been too long since I've read PJ. Thanks for posting!

[Max Peck]

If it's OK for a politician to use their children in campaign advertising, should it not be OK for commentators to criticize such use?

The Washington Post ignited a debate over the role of children in U.S. presidential campaigns when it published - and then retracted - a political cartoon portraying Republican candidate Ted Cruz as an organ grinder and his daughters as monkeys. It followed a new Cruz campaign TV ad in which the Texas senator shares with his wife and two young children faux Christmas stories entitled, “How Obamacare Stole Christmas” and “The Grinch Who Lost Her Emails,” a reference to Democratic presidential contender Hillary Clinton. The debate dominated cable news television and social media. The Washington Post pulled the cartoon by Pulitzer Prize winner Ann Telnaes. Telnaes said that since Cruz used the girls in a campaign video, she was justified in putting them in her cartoon, which was on the Post website on Tuesday before editors removed it.

Cruz, rising in polls ahead of next November's election, said at a campaign event in Oklahoma that he expected to be attacked but not his daughters. "If folks want to attack me, knock yourself out," he said. "... I signed up for that, that's fine. But my girls didn't sign up for that." Cruz responded to the cartoon on Tuesday with an email to supporters that, according to NBC's website, featured the cartoon. He sought $1 million in contributions in 24 hours to "send a message to the Washington Post."

The Post said its policy generally is to avoid children in its editorial section. "I failed to look at this cartoon before it was published," Post editorial page editor Fred Hiatt said. "I understand why Ann thought an exception to the policy was warranted in this case, but I do not agree."

Of course, the internet cares not for the sensibilities of WaPo editorial policy:

[GreenGoo]

I expect nothing to be untouchable by media that is primarily satire. So South Park, Cracked.com, TheOnion.com (even family guy I guess) have an open ticket. Do whatever you want. I don't have to like it.

If you market yourself as a "serious" source of news and opinion, I think you do need to self-censor somewhat. I have no problem with this cartoon in general, but I would expect more from certain sources and I would be disappointed to find it there.

If Cruz is including his family as an active part of his campaign (rather than just photo ops) then they should expect to be criticized. That's just the nature of politics. If people are going after his family because it's easy, that's a different thing.

That Cruz has asked for 1 million dollars to "show those fatcats in washington the post", then it's pretty clear that he'll do anything to win. He's more concerned with milking the outraged public than any sort of concern over how his children are treated by the media.

[Max Peck]

I expect nothing to be untouchable by media that is primarily satire. So South Park, Cracked.com, TheOnion.com (even family guy I guess) have an open ticket. Do whatever you want. I don't have to like it.

If you market yourself as a "serious" source of news and opinion, I think you do need to self-censor somewhat. I have no problem with this cartoon in general, but I would expect more from certain sources and I would be disappointed to find it there.

Political cartoons are inherently satirical, regardless of where they are published.

[GreenGoo]

I expect nothing to be untouchable by media that is primarily satire. So South Park, Cracked.com, TheOnion.com (even family guy I guess) have an open ticket. Do whatever you want. I don't have to like it.

If you market yourself as a "serious" source of news and opinion, I think you do need to self-censor somewhat. I have no problem with this cartoon in general, but I would expect more from certain sources and I would be disappointed to find it there.

Political cartoons are inherently satirical, regardless of where they are published.

But where they are published is not.

[Jeff V]

If he doesn't want the little monkeys to be fair game, then HE should keep them out of the limelight. When he weaponizes his children as pawns in his power play, then he should fully expect the can and will be used against him at every opportunity.

[Rip]

Sometimes the image is enough and you don't need to mock them.

[GreenGoo]

Rip, I know your heart is as black as coal, but those pictures can be found in every family's photo album. admittedly I don't know the context behind them, but they aren't inherently weaponized (as Jeff V put it) nor mock worthy (certainly not *especially* mockworthy beyond the cheesy stuff all families do).

Unless you hate happiness, chlidren's smiles and family in general. In which case, have at it I guess.

[Max Peck]

Rip, I know your heart is as black as coal, but those pictures can be found in every family's photo album. admittedly I don't know the context behind them, but they aren't inherently weaponized (as Jeff V put it) nor mock worthy (certainly not *especially* mockworthy beyond the cheesy stuff all families do).

Unless you hate happiness, chlidren's smiles and family in general. In which case, have at it I guess.

He's either letting us know that he doesn't understand metaphor (i.e. the Cruz cartoon is mocking how the Canuckistan Candidate used his children, not what his children look like) or he's admitting that his Hillary fetish extends to her daughter. Possibly both.

[Rip]

I guess you will need to explain weaponized to me. Every political candidate with kids since the beginning of politics has paraded them around as part of their "family image" for the campaign.

Clinton's did it, Kennedy's did it,Obama does it, they all do.

It was nothing that the Obama’s hadn’t done with their own daughters. The Post covered that effort in February 2012, dutifully noting without a hint of disapproval that Sasha and Malia would soon be part of their father’s re-election campaign. “They’re ready to go,” First Lady Michelle Obama declared to reporters traveling with the First Family. Reporter Krissah Thompson quoted a former Democratic polling analyst offering a glowing recommendation for that choice. “It’s a way to humanize them, and it’s also a way to signal youth and vitality,” Gillespie said. “It helps when you have an attractive family to use as a backdrop.”

That argument has since disappeared. After a deluge of criticism in social media, Post editor Fred Hiatt removed both the cartoon and Telnaes’ defense of it. In its place, Hiatt noted that he had not approved the cartoon for publication, and left a terse conclusion. “I understand why Ann thought an exception to the policy was warranted in this case, but I do not agree.”

Actually, it might be interesting to see why the Post’s editors “understand” that position. After all, the same newspaper published a dozen or more articles about an obscure Capitol Hill staffer’s social-media complaints a year ago about the Obama daughters’ taste in clothes. The coverage heavily featured criticism of Elizabeth Lauten and contained nearly no references to a defense of her actions, “understandable” or not. Lauten resigned shortly afterward. One has to wonder whether the Post will harangue Telnaes into a similar decision. So far, though, consistency has not been the Post’s strong suit.

http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Columns/2 ... s-Violated

[Unagi]

I guess you will need to explain weaponized to me.

Having them in a commercial where they are sitting down to listed to you tell them a tale about "The Grinch Who Lost Her Emails". Follow?

[GreenGoo]

When you go negative and include your kids in attack ads, for a start. That's a textbook example of "weaponizing". That you are confused between "here I am with my loving family" as opposed to "tell us again about the boogeyman, Daddy" is just you being obtuse.

That Ted understands that there is an unwritten rule is a good thing. That he doesn't understand that it doesn't give him carte blanche to include his kids in negative campaigning without consequences is either unbelievable stupidity or a calculated attempt to reap rewards of the "victim" card. That he thinks he can be the victim while attacking is hilarious.

All that said, Trump has basically made all these subtle nuances and etiquette pretty much moot. I doubt I would be shocked to see pictures of Hillary over a cauldron with Cruz's kids in it (already dead of course) or Cruz with horns laughing maniacally with his finger on the big read button with a big "die, muslims, die!" speech bubble over his head.

[Isgrimnur]

Yeah, that's a little different than just having them in an ad to raise your awareness.

[Zarathud]

Rip doesn't understand how condescending it is to make jokes about your opponents bedtime tales. Or that a negative campaign ad including telling those jokes to your children is pretty damn despicable. He's drunk too deeply from the well of Clinton hate that even their family photos at Disneyworld are something to be mocked.

[Rip]

Oh, I understand. I just don't see it as important.

Either way he is flipping it to his political benefit. He is getting attention and sympathy over this. It is opening wallets for him when he desperately needs it. He should send that cartoonist a Xmas card.

Myself I don't mind that cartoons or any of the other criticism/mockings of political people's kids. Palin went through it no reason Cruz shouldn't.

[hepcat]

Palin is a bad example. They had tv shows based on them. That particular group of scumbags sought the limelight...and still do.

[hepcat]

The Brutalism of Ted Cruz

[Jaymann]

No wonder his children look like monkeys.

[Defiant]

If this is accurate, then the "natural-born citizen" may be an issue after all:

The Constitution provides that “No person except a natural born Citizen . . . shall be eligible to the Office of President.” The concept of “natural born” comes from common law, and it is that law the Supreme Court has said we must turn to for the concept’s definition. On this subject, common law is clear and unambiguous. The 18th-century English jurist William Blackstone, the preeminent authority on it, declared natural-born citizens are “such as are born within the dominions of the crown of England,” while aliens are “such as are born out of it.”

I'm skeptical, though, since I would think this analysis of the term would have been brought up before, and this is the first I'm hearing of it.

[hepcat]

I don't believe any of our presidents have been born in England (beyond those who were born in the United States before it became the United States, that is), so we've been electing bogus leaders for around 200 years now.

[LawBeefaroni]

I don't believe any of our presidents have been born in England, so we've been electing bogus leaders for over 200 years now.

Several were, I'm pretty sure. America being an English colony and "within the dominions of the crown of England." Certainly Washington, Adams, Jefferson...

But Blackstone could have made that statement before the US even existed, being an 18th-century English jurist.

[hepcat]

I actually updated my less than serious reply with an eye towards that before you replied.

[LawBeefaroni]

I actually updated my less than serious reply with an eye towards that before you replied.

Wry wit? Are you sure you weren't born in England?

[hepcat]

The only wry I deal in is spelled rye.

[Holman]

I don't believe any of our presidents have been born in England, so we've been electing bogus leaders for over 200 years now.

Several were, I'm pretty sure. America being an English colony and "within the dominions of the crown of England." Certainly Washington, Adams, Jefferson...

But Blackstone could have made that statement before the US even existed, being an 18th-century English jurist.

Of course no potential president could have been born in the U.S. at the time the Constitution was drafted, but all of the first seven were born in American colonies that later became the new country. Martin Van Buren, the eighth president, was the first born as a citizen of the United States.

I have no strong opinion of Cruz's natural-born status except that it's delicious to see birther logic devouring its own.

[hepcat]

I have no strong opinion of Cruz's natural-born status except that it's delicious to see birther logic devouring its own.

This is also my absolute favorite thing right now. It would only be better if Trump (who was one of the driving forces in the Obama birther crap) was also dragged into it as a victim.