Is there something wrong with Senator Ted Cruz or does he just love being loathed? He seems to try so hard to get people to dislike him. Is there a point to this effort? Is it a hook that he feels will grab primary voters so that he can reel them in then have them catapult him into the position of Republican nominee?
For the sake of argument, let’s say that it is a hook to garner primary voters and it works. Once he wins the nomination and has to become a viable general election candidate, will he be able to do it? Even if he could temper his taste for being as close to the extreme right as humanly possible without actually being there and manage to scratch-and-claw his way back toward the center, does he love being despised so much that he simply could not bear to make himself likeable enough to win a general election?
Senator Ted Cruz is like Donald Trump’s fraternal twin brother; he does not look exactly like him or act exactly like him but he has many similar traits so, therefore, in essence is the virtual Donald Trump. He is The Donald in disguise, so to speak. He doesn’t look like The Donald but politically he walks like The Donald and talks – in a much more refined way – like The Donald so he must be… Well, you get the picture, don’t you?
Senator Cruz has said and done a lot of dumb stuff but recently it just seems that he has lost it. He has wrapped himself cozily in the endorsement of Troy Newman, the President of Operation Rescue and made some outlandish statements when he was asked during an interview on a radio show with Hugh Hewitt, what he thought about the shootings that occurred at the Planned Parenthood facility in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Here is how he responded to that question along with a few other, if not dumb but certainly unnecessary, comments that he recently made.
According to the ABC report, Hugh Hewitt asked Senator Cruz “about claims made by some that anti-Planned Parenthood rhetoric by conservatives could have inspired the shooting that left three people dead.” Senator Cruz responded “You want to talk about inflamed rhetoric, Black Lives Matter has been caught, their protesters on film, chanting ‘pigs in a blanket,’ ‘fry `em like bacon.’ Now that is hateful rhetoric, and I don’t see any reporters asking Hillary Clinton when she meets with Black Lives Matter whether she agrees with those sentiments that we should be murdering police officers, Cruz said Monday”.
During that same interview Senator Cruz said “[Democrats] go in and fight to give the right to vote to convicted felons. Why? Because the Democrats know convicted felons tend to vote Democrat.” He also said that people view Democrats as being soft on crime because they appoint judges to the bench who release violent criminals. In addition, based on an article in The Hill by Mark Hensch dated November 30th, Senator Cruz said ” Every time you have some sort of violent crime or mass killing you can almost see the media salivating, hoping, hoping desperately that the murderer happens to be a Republican so that they can use it to try and paint their political enemies, he said.”
Normally, I would not use so many direct quotes from articles published by someone else but I thought that this time it was important for me to do so in order for you to get the full impact of Senator Cruz’s statements in the event that you did not read those articles. It is important that you get the full impact of his words because a person who is running to hold the office of the most powerful person in the world should avoid using this kind of rhetoric even under tremendous pressure and stress let alone use it when it is totally unprovoked and uttered on impulse.
No matter how angry and discontent that they might be, I cannot believe that the majority of the Republican electorate would want a Donald Trump or anyone like him, no matter how smooth and articulate that they might be – most times, as their nominee and certainly not as president of all of the people. If they do, there must be something wrong with the Republican electorate; they have too many other highly qualified candidates to choose from.
Of course, being a solid Democrat I submit that all of them pale when compared to Hillary Clinton who has more experience and is the best qualified among the entire field of candidates to fill the job. However, in the event that she should win the primary election but come up short in the general election – which is not impossible, it is paramount that neither Donald Trump nor anyone like him becomes president.
Howard Dean was on the All In With Chris Hayes show on, I think it was, December 1st and during his segment he commented on how Republican politicians were manipulating voting before he added, “But the voters will ultimately win.” Although the adverb ‘ultimately’ – though warranted, just before win is somewhat discouraging, he is right; voters will win. And so it is that the voters will determine who is like Donald Trump. For the record, in my opinion that person is anyone who spews the same kind of rhetoric that Mr. Trump does and embraces his perspective on the issues domestic and/or foreign.
In a little bit less than a year we will know who the successful 2016 presidential candidate is. Here’s to hoping that it will not be The Donald or anyone like him!
Eulus Dennis