I'm sure you know that Ted Cruz won the Republican Senate runoff in Texas yesterday, beating David Dewhurst -- who, despite the fact that he's Rick Perry's lieutenant governor and a Perry loyalist, was deemed insufficiently conservative in this race, a race he was once heavily favored to win. I'm enjoying Think Progress's roundup of Cruz's craziest positions and pronouncements:
Ted Cruz Believes George Soros Leads A United Nations Conspiracy To Eliminate Golf: ... Cruz published an article on his campaign website claiming that [the UN's Agenda 21] is actually a nefarious plot to "abolish 'unsustainable' environments, including golf courses, grazing pastures, and paved roads." To top it off, Cruz lays the blame for this global anti-golf conspiracy at the feet of a well-known Tea Party boogieman -- "The originator of this grand scheme is George Soros."I read this after looking at the Texas results, I look at results of GOP primaries in other states, I see the complaints of Steve LaTourette and Richard Hanna about GOP extremism, I notice that Tommy Thompson is struggling in a GOP Senate primary race in Wisconsin -- and I can't help thinking that, if there's an open Republican presidential primary in 2016, it's not going to go the way the last two have gone, with a guy suspected of being a "RINO" triumphing because there are just enough old-guard non-purist Republican voters. Next time, it's going to go like one of these Senate primaries.
...The Constitution provides that Acts of Congress "shall be the supreme law of the land," and thus cannot be nullified by rogue state lawmakers. Cruz, however, co-authored an unconstitutional proposal claiming two or more states could simply ignore the Constitution's command and nullify the Affordable Care Act so long as they work together...
At a campaign event earlier this month, Cruz touted another of the Tea Party’s favorite conspiracy theories, claiming that "Sharia law is an enormous problem" in this country....
Which means that if Chris Christie really wants to be president, he's crazy to do things like what he did yesterday, which was to break ground on a solar farm in Hackensack. It means that Mitch Daniels, if he runs, will be raked over the coals for having urged a social-issues "truce." It means Bobby Jindal's youthful participation in an exorcism could be a selling point, not a liability.
If Romney loses this year, there isn't going to be a guy with a gazillion dollars rallying not-completely-crazy Republican voters and beating extremists by outspending them. It means there'll be just a bunch of extremists competing to out-extreme one another -- basically, this year's field without Romney. (I'm completely discounting the possibility that Jon Huntsman could be the Romney of 2016 -- I think he's seen as so far to the left that he's to the GOP what Joe Lieberman is to the Democrats, or maybe what Zell Miller is.)
I think 2016 could be the year we finally see full-metal crazy at the top of the Republican ticket. And maybe -- finally! -- the mainstream press will understand what the party has been for years. (Though I doubt it.)
9 comments:
"And maybe -- finally! -- the mainstream press will understand what the party has been for years. (Though I doubt it.)"
The MSM will continue to carefully prepare and bake the turds, and make them palatable for the 6-11% of the people who aren't batsh*t insane, just stupid, ignorant, and/or lazy.
The other 45% might think that Attila the Hun was too Liberal.
My pick, off the top of my head?
I'm thinking Jim DeMent in 2016 - maybe with Allen West as his VP.
There won't be a Republican Party.
'Course with the race-riots the whites will start upon Obama's re-election, there probably won't be a country.
There's a worldwide conspiracy to eliminate golf? Awesome! Where do I sign up?
Charles Pierce is not persuaded:
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There are those innocent souls who believe that the current raging extremism that is driving the Republican party will run its course, like a fever, and then the party will take to its bed and return to cool reason, and to its role as an honest partner in the business of governing the Republic. Well, lass' sie nach Texas kommen, kids. They are going to continue to slake their thirst with salt water, and the rest of us are going to have to live with the delusions that follow. What happened in Texas was in every sense a "runoff." Something's gotten into the water supply for all of us.
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http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/ted-cruz-texas-senate-runoff-11248276
This is coming from my Marxist roots, but I just don't see politics and political philosophy as independent from the economic substructure. If the Republicans look crazy compared to past decades, it's because the way we produce has changed. I think (I could be wrong, of course), but I think that the notion that extremists have taken over the Republican party, that the corporate media hasn't noticed, that the Democrats are just haplessly trying to find some compromised middle and so keep drifting rightward themselves, that all these things are just accidents we happen to be living through in the 2010s is equivalent to trying to understand an iceberg by checking out its tip.
More likely to me is that the politicians and media are well-paid employees of zillionaire plutocrats and pretty much do only what those zillionaire plutocrats allow them to do.
Everyone knew when the economy began to crash in 2008 how to fix it. We'd been there before. Massive stimulus. The fact that we didn't do that reflects not some strange fact-resistant economic theory but, as Chris Hedges says, that out plutocrat masters no longer think there's enough profit incentive in appeasing the underlings. We've entered the stage of capitalism in this country where the plutocrats know the US as a profit engine is going down, and they're looting the country as they prepare their escape.
The politicians et al.--kabuki. I could be wrong. I wish I were. But I don't think so.
So it's not crazy to think there's a George Soros conspiracy to eliminate grazing pastures and paved roads?
But golf courses, well, that's going to far?
And maybe -- finally! -- the mainstream press will understand what the party has been for years. (Though I doubt it.)
I'm sure there were *millions* in Germany through the 1920s and 1930s who, like so many American liberals, were just *sure* that the people would wake up to the conservative threat before it was too late.
Of course, those millions were wrong. And we are, too. No one's going to wake up. The news anchors in Louisville today were practically standing on their desks and cheering the mobs of hateful zealots who came out to Chick-fil-A to show their solidarity for the conservative hate movement. We're just going to keep rolling down this road, and the powers that be, and many of the people, will love every minute of it.
Conservative extremism flourishes because millions of people love it, the love the hatred of others, and they love being able to destroy their enemies.
Not to be repetitive (I hope), nor too mundane for this discussion, nor overly quixotic, but: the Dem running against Crazy Cruz is a good ex-state-legislator named Paul Sadler. Naturally, he's a horribly underfinanced underdog down here - but if anyone has a spare dime or two, please check his website and please consider helping if you can. We have to start somewhere in Texas, & this race is a good a place as any.
End of unpaid political ad .
I love you libs...I think you'd like Canada a lot. Very liberal, free heath care, don't like any confrontation, and they say eh and aboot. I don't think that people were cheering people from chick-fil-a has anything to do with a hate movement. Just because the owner supports traditional marriage the brain dead lefties go all crazy. Who cares, honestly. It had nothing to do with hate. Should the Bible be re written too so it says Adam and Steve?
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