When the junior Senator from the once great state of Texas hit the 2016 Republican Presidential primary campaign trail he took the ghosts of former Senator Joe McCarthy and Republican President, Tricky Dick Nixon with him.
Joe McCarthy suffered from paranoia. In the 1950’s during the Cold War McCarthy saw a Communist behind every bush. He directed ruthless political witch hunts after suspected Communist subversives, thereby ruining the reputations and careers of many innocent people. Like a true Republican McCarthy fomented fear about communists. Are you living next door to a Communist? His main goal was to mask his unimpressive record in the U.S. Senate when McCarthy was up for re-election.
Former President Richard Nixon also suffered from paranoia. He convinced himself that someone was always out to get him. Baby boomers will remember CREEP (Committee for the Reelection of the President) and Watergate. Nixon was known as the master of break ins, bagmen and dirty tricks. The Watergate scandal led to Nixon’s resignation. It was that or impeachment and possibly prison.
It should be interesting to note that when Joe McCarthy held his inquisitions, adding names to his growing black list of suspected Communist subversives, he didn’t attempt to hide behind the cloak of religion to justify his evildoing.
When Nixon’s bagmen, directed by the President, broke into a whistleblower's psychiatrist’s office in order to obtain fodder for a character assassination hit job, the President didn’t use religion to distract we the people from his criminal activities.
Ted Cruz promotes himself as a devout fundamentalist Christian, though many among the religious clergy might find his policies, political ideologies, narcissism, hypocrisy and mendacity as anything but. That said, it seems that the more conservative Republican Presidential candidates, like Ted Cruz, feel the urge to wear their fine Christian values on their sleeves, at least while on the Iowa campaign trail.
Perhaps they are trying to masquerade their records of having pursued every avenue to cut social safety nets, repeal health care for 22 million Americans, refuse federally expanded Medicaid and having made every effort to hallow out the middle class. This, of course, is the GOP method of paying for its tax breaks for its donor class. It’s called trickle down economics.
Except that nothing trickles down.
And so the current Republican version of Christianity would have to define Jesus Christ as a ruthless, unforgiving free market capitalist who hated the poor. The GOP Jesus probably looks like David or Charles Koch.
”The GOP Holy Wars”
Just prior to the Iowa Caucuses the GOP candidates competed for the title of most holy.
DES MOINES — IN the final, furious days of campaigning here, it was sometimes hard to tell whether this state’s Republicans were poised to vote for a president or a preacher, a commander or a crusader.
The references to religion were expansive. The talk of it was excessive. A few candidates didn’t just profess the supposed purity of their own faith. They questioned rivals’ piety, with Ted Cruz inevitably leading the way.
”The evangelical or apostate”
A rally of his devolved into an inquisition of Donald Trump. Speakers mocked Trump’s occasional claims of devout Christianity. Rick Perry, the former Texas governor, pointedly recalled Trump’s admission last summer that he never really does penance.
Cruz, in contrast, “probably gets up every morning and asks God for forgiveness at least a couple of times, even before breakfast,” Perry told the audience.
If one believes Jesus is a clone of Charles or David Koch it is easy to imagine both Rick Perry and Ted Cruz prostrated on their knees, beating their chests, begging for forgiveness for failing to get the votes needed to do the Koch’s bidding. Please donate to my campaign! I promise to be a good boy and deliver your agenda next time.
So, now that we know Ted Cruz is the holiest one among the Republican Presidential candidates, as deemed by Ted Cruz and Rick Perry, let’s discuss Ted Cruz’s fine Christian tricks during the Iowa campaign.
Ted Cruz's Iowa Mailers are more Fraudulent Than Everyone Thinks
It seems that Ted Cruz found himself in a bit of hot water after his campaign distributed disingenuous Karl Rove type flyers to Iowa voters. Intentionally disguised, the mailers appeared as official state issued documents.
Given its obsession with political science, it’s no surprise that the Cruz campaign decided to adopt the “social pressure” techniques to turn out voters in Iowa for Monday night’s caucuses. On Saturday, Twitter came alive with pictures from voters in the state who received mailers from the Cruz campaign. At the top of the mailers, in a bold red box, are the words “VOTING VIOLATION.” Below that warning is an explanation:
Below is the explanation.
You are receiving this election notice because of low expected voter turnout in your area. Your individual voting history as well as your neighbors’ are public record. Their scores are published below, and many of them will see your score as well. CAUCUS ON MONDAY TO IMPROVE YOUR SCORE and please encourage your neighbors to caucus as well. A follow-up notice may be issued following Monday’s caucuses.
Karl Rove must be very proud of Ted Cruz. There’s nothing like misleading and threatening voters with voting scores and public humiliation.
Iowa’s Secretary of State condemned Cruz’s deceitful mailers.
“Today I was shown a piece of literature from the Cruz for President campaign that misrepresents the role of my office, and worse, misrepresents Iowa election law. Accusing citizens of Iowa of a “voting violation” based on Iowa Caucus participation, or lack thereof, is false representation of an official act. There is no such thing as an election violation related to frequency of voting. Any insinuation or statement to the contrary is wrong and I believe it is not in keeping in the spirit of the Iowa Caucuses.
Additionally, the Iowa Secretary of State’s Office never “grades” voters. Nor does the Secretary of State maintain records related to Iowa Caucus participation. Caucuses are organized and directed by the state political parties, not the Secretary of State, nor local elections officials. Also, the Iowa Secretary of State does not “distribute” voter records. They are available for purchase for political purposes only, under Iowa Code.”
Of course Ted Cruz is unapologetic. According to him, Cruz has every right to scare and bully voters on behalf of himself and his ambitions. Cruz will never fail to resort to dishonesty and fear whenever opportunity knocks.
In Iowa, although voter-registration information is free and available to the public, voter history is not. That information is maintained by the secretary of state, who licenses it to campaigns, super PACs, polling firms, and any other entity that might want it. So was the Cruz campaign accurately portraying the voter histories of Iowans? Or did it simply make up the numbers?
Shaming and mortifying voters is OK in Ted Cruz's world.
The Cruz mailers have been widely condemned by Iowans. “I just wonder how many of these went out to people who might seriously believe they committed a violation or were embarrassed that their neighbors might know about their alleged voting record,” Braddock Massey, a Rubio supporter who lives in West Des Moines and received one of the mailers, said.
Donna Holstein, who was listed on one of them, was upset to learn that she had been given a failing grade and that her neighbors might be told whether she participates in the caucus. She told me that she has voted consistently but that she can’t this time because of a disability.
“I’m crippled, so I can’t go to the caucus,” Holstein said. She was not happy about being shamed in front of her neighbors. “That’s what you call a bully,” she said about Cruz’s tactics. “I wish he would quit.”
I am sorry but Ted Cruz will not quit until voters make him do so. The dirty trickster from Texas won the Republican primary in Iowa. Fear and religion work better in some states than in others.
In the meantime, Texans are learning a lot about its junior Senator for whom so few of us voted, since he’s been on the Presidential campaign trail.
We have learned that the self-promoted anti-government outsider is actually an insider who helped W. steal FL in 2000.
And after Cruz participated in the effort to deliver the absolute worst President in recent U.S. history, the W. administration wanted absolutely nothing to do with him.
It’s no secret that nobody likes Ted Cruz.. He’s an arrogant, self-important elitist who believes he speaks for God himself. His face is one of the most punchable on the planet and his screechy voice makes you cringe with disgust. When he starts on one of his “righteous” rants you can’t help but hope a light fixture falls on his head, leaving him forever incapable of speaking.
Donald Trump wasn’t kidding when he said that everyone in congress hates Ted Cruz. Cruz refuses to deal or compromise within his own party, nevermind across the aisle. A Cruz presidency would be nothing short of a disaster for this country.
That’s today’s perspective. Today, we know all about the whiny toddler that is Ted Cruz. But what about his past? Is he somehow new to the idea of being hated?
As it turns out Donald Trump is right about one thing. No one, not even members of Cruz’s own right wing extremist neocon Party, likes Ted Cruz.
So before Ted Cruz took on the role of ultra-conservative nutbar teahadist, he was a moderate conservative inside the Bush/Cheney 2000 campaign. As the aide inside the campaign tells it, Cruz isn’t just a big jerk now, he was a big jerk then:
Ted Cruz will continue to use whatever means necessary to promote his ambitions. Scaring and humiliating Republican Party primary voters is part of his schtick.
He sounds a lot like that guy who shows up for the neighborhood cookout uninvited with a tin full of liver and onions and a six-pack for himself. Apparently, the best way to end a meeting was for Ted to walk in. “People wouldn’t go to a meeting if they knew he would be there,” said the aide, “It was his inability to be part of the team. That’s exactly what he was: a big a**hole.”
Voters have been warned. A handful of Texans elected a clone of Joe McCarthy and Tricky Dick Nixon into the U.S. Senate.
Don’t make the same mistake, America. The last thing we need is another Republican Texan in the White House. As is stands today, we continue to pay the price for W.’s cowboy diplomacy, his tax cuts for the rich, while he stuck the stinking shit stuffed enchilada of tax cuts and his unfunded wars on the backs of middle class taxpayers. The donor class got richer, especially those in the military industrial complex. Wall St. crashed, thanks to winks and nods from W. and his Administration. W.’s Treasury Secretary, Hank Paulson, was only too happy to empty the U.S. Treasury into the pockets of Wall St. in order to bail out the high stakes gamblers. The gamblers got off. American homeowners were not so lucky.
This is how Republican Presidents operate. Especially those from Texas and Florida.
Ted Cruz is loathsome even to the most loathsome Republican President in recent U.S. history.
He is definitely not a nice guy with whom to have a beer, either. Like Karl Rove, former Senator Joe McCarthy and President Tricky Dick Nixon would be proud of Ted Cruz.