Perhaps having learned their lesson from the Cliven Bundy racist meltdown, the Republican candidates for president who once jumped on the Bundy bandwagon are staying out of the Bundy boys' attempts to overthrow the federal government by seizing the visitors' center of a wildlife refuge in remote Oregon.
Sen. Rand Paul jumped to Cliven Bundy's support early on, when the Nevada rancher, his sons, and a bunch of trigger-twitchy terrorists had a standoff over Bundy's refusal to pay the millions he owes to the federal government and all of us as taxpayers for grazing his cattle on public land. Back then, Paul claimed states rights. "There is a legitimate constitutional question here about whether the state should be in charge of endangered species or whether the federal government should be." He also personally met with Bundy and reportedly one of the sons, and they talked about states rights and "education policy." Sure. Why not. A few months later we saw Mr. Bundy telling the world the things he "know[s] about the Negro," and Rand Paul slunk quietly away. Thus far he's mum on the Oregon situation.
Likewise, Sen. Ted Cruz has yet to weigh in. When Bundy's decades of being a scofflaw resulted in his cattle being seized, Cruz blamed it on President Obama. The stand-off was "the unfortunate and tragic culmination of the path that President Obama has set the federal government on." Cruz apparently has no opinion now on government overreach in Oregon. Nor does Donald Trump, Ben Carson, nor Mike Huckabee, all of whom had nice things to say in general about Mr. Bundy and "his spirit, his spunk," as Trump put it.
It's probably wise for these guys not to stick their necks out this time. After all, Dwight and Steven Hammond—the actual ranchers who the Bundy boys say they are there to avenge—can't put enough distance between themselves and the Bundy boys, having their lawyer tell anyone who will listen that "[n]either Ammon Bundy nor anyone within his group/organization speak for the Hammond Family."
As federal land seizures and armed insurrections go, this one is shaping up to be rather lame, getting about a dozen actual insurrectionists and attracting only some D-list politicians. Who are also racists. But when you've lost Rand Paul and Ted Cruz for your government-hating demonstrations, you're definitely losing.
Monday, Jan 4, 2016 · 6:03:20 PM +00:00
·
Joan McCarter
They’ve definitely learned their lesson, or at least Cruz has.
“Every one of us has a constitutional right to protest, to speak our minds,” Cruz told reporters at campaign event in Iowa, according to NBC News.
“But we don't have a constitutional right to use force and violence and to threaten force and violence on others,” he said. “And so it is our hope that the protesters there will stand down peaceably, that there will not be a violent confrontation.”