Do either of these guys look "spellbinding" to you??
From today's Houston Chronicle
Rick Santorum endorses Ted Cruz, says Senate hopeful possesses ‘the wow factor’
U.S. Senate candidate Ted Cruz picked up another big-name endorsement Thursday when former presidential hopeful Rick Santorum said on Glenn Beck’s radio show that “Ted Cruz is spellbinding, a tremendous orator and principled.”
Spellbinding? Really? Maybe you two should get a room.
I don’t know much about that “tremendous orator” thing either. His campaign ads come across kinda wimpy, if you ask me.
David Dewhurst and Various Secret PAC Forces have pretty successfully cast Ted Cruz as utterly unprincipled. If their dubious stories are to be believed, Ted Cruz is the attorney representing a Chinese company that ripped off American tire technology. Thus, Cruz is siding with the Evil Chinese versus the perfectly honest American businessman.
Cruz has managed to attract the attention of the Tea Party. Ron Paul and son not-named-for-Ayn-Rand have been stumping for him. Even Caribou Barbie has given him an endorsement, and now Rick "Ick Factor" Santorum has tagged Cruz with the much-coved “Wow factor”.
Although Santorum didn’t mention front-runner David Dewhurst by name, there was little doubt that he was homing in on the lieutenant governor’s Achilles heel: his desultory campaign style. On Michael Berry’s KTRH talk show later in the morning, the former Pennsylvania senator said Cruz had “the wow factor.” That’s not a term commonly associated with Dewhurst, who continues to lead in all the polls, although some polls show Cruz narrowing the gap.
Dewhurst doesn't exude anything other than a sense of entitlement... and the ability to spend lots and lots of money on ads making Ted Cruz out to be the Embodiment of Evil. Rick Perry’s endorsement of his lieutenant governor Dewhurst is not seen as having quite the cachet as Caribou Barbie’s anointing of Ted Cruz.
“We need people who strongly can communicate and deliver the message on a variety of fronts,” Santorum said. Cruz’s passion and his eloquence are “hugely important.”
Passion... spellbinding... Rick: I'm really starting to worry about you. I know things have been pretty lonely now that you're off the campaign trail, out of the spotlight. Maybe you should talk this over with your priest or something.
But, I digress... Why do these "true conservatives" place so much more importance on "delivery" rather than "message"? Do they believe that even the most witless, incomprehensible, or malevolent message sounds “spellbinding” if you can deliver it with "passion"? Is the dog-whistle successful only because it hits the right frequency to ignite some primal limbic brain reaction in the target audience?
Passion and authenticity seem to be the basic prerequisites for the prototypical Tea Party candidate. Positions on the issue? Yeah, maybe, but what we need right now is someone who will go to Washington and kick Obama’s ass, literally and figuratively.
Here's the standard bland Tea-Party-friendly "message" from the Ted Cruz for Senate web site
Pass a Balanced Budget Amendment
Repeal Obamacare
Reduce the Size and Spending of Government
Defend the Constitution
Amazingly, every ad I’ve seen here in the Houston market for our GOP candidates will all “take on Obama”. I guess that’s pretty bad news for Mitt Romney, who has concluded that Texas is not worth a day of his time campaigning (although he does plan to show up here to raise money after our primary).
I guess he's afraid that W will give him an enthusiastic public endorsement. Or maybe our trees are the wrong height. My guess is that he doesn't want to get stuck eating BBQ or Tex-Mex at some greasy picnic table with the Great Unwashed. He's pretty picky about food on the campaign trail. You never know what's in it. If someone handed him a taco, he'd probably have the Secret Service turn it over to the bomb squad.
So, where were we... Oh, yeah. Sorry. Either the GOP candidates figure they’ll have Obama to kick around for another four years, or they figure that “taking on Obama” is the #1-rated dog-whistle for the low-information voters. If so, we can expect to hear it again in 2016 and 2020, even after Obama's out of office.
After all, these are folks who fervently believe that in his second term, the socialist Kenyan Muslim imposter (who is, by the way, black) Obama will be implanting RFID chips in everyone as part of Obamacare so that he can track them and take away their guns. No. Really.
Cruz, a Tea Party favorite and former Texas solicitor general, picked up an endorsement from Sarah Palin earlier this month, as well as support, financial and otherwise, from the Club for Growth, the Tea Party Express and FreedomWorks. Those groups see Dewhurst as the next establishment politician to fall to a Tea Party insurgent, just as longtime Indiana Sen. Richard Lugar fell to Tea Party stalwart Richard Mourdock earlier this month
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There are already rumblings across Texas that we will be the next state for a Tea Party takeover. At least I think those were the rumblings. If could have just been some seismic settlement out in fracking country.
Santorum told Berry he is trying to come to Texas before the May 29 primary, but if not he’ll be making calls on the candidate’s behalf.
Okay, wait. What? He’s already hedging his bets? What else does Santorum have on his plate that would keep him from showing up in Texas? He’s abandoned his ill-fated campaign for the presidency. He’s not on the Veep Watch List. He's not out giving inspirational lecture tours.
Do you think he might be worried about being in the physical presence of the “spellbinding” Ted Cruz? Is that why he wants to assist from afar?
“I have a lot of confidence that he has exactly the character and the skills and the convictions that we need in the U.S. Senate,” Santorum told Berry
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With Ted Cruz, it’s always a good idea to consider the possibility of convictions. It wouldn’t be the first time Texas sent someone to Washington that had that problem.