Monday, September 23, 2013

Ted Cruz Gets Hoisted On His Own Petard

by JASmius

....or, in plain, non-Tea Party English, his Senate Republican colleagues gave him a taste of his own medicine:

Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace says Republicans are turning against anti-Obamacare crusader Ted Cruz in a big way.

Wallace, saying this past week has been one the "strangest weeks" he’s ever had covering news in Washington, revealed Sunday that top-level Republicans are besieging him with all kinds of information to use against the Texas senator prior to his appearance on the show.

"As soon as we listed Ted Cruz as our featured guest this week, I got unsolicited research and questions, not from Democrats but from top Republicans, to hammer Cruz," Wallace said, addressing Karl Rove, a member of the show's panel.

Is this a good thing?  Not at all.  President Reagan invented the 11th Commandment - "Thou shalt not speak ill of a fellow Republican" - for a reason, after all.  The same reason I've been touting for months, going back to the disaster of last November: Now is not the time for conservative division.  To the contrary, now, when we're under siege as never before, and when the comeback opportunities have never been better, is when unity is utterly and absolutely vital and imperative.  Ben Franklin's version was, "Gentlemen, we must all hang together, or we shall surely all hang separately."  Or as the True Messiah said, "Any kingdom divided against itself is laid waste; and any city or house divided against itself will not stand."

But it's also true that, to quote another old saying, "sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander," seeing as how Senator Cruz has been grandstanding through the media at his fellow Pachyderms' expense all year long:

"This was a strategy laid out by [Utah Republican Senator] Mike Lee and Ted Cruz without any consultation with their colleagues," Rove said, referring to pair's well-broadcast efforts to defund Obamacare.

"With all due respect to my junior senator from Texas, I suspect this is the first time the end game was described to any Republican senator. They had to tune in to listen to you to find out what Ted's next step was in the strategy."

Rove stated that Lee and Cruz chose a wrong road when they bypassed the inclusion of their fellow House Republicans.

"You cannot build a congressional majority, in either party, for any kind of action, unless you are treating your colleagues with some certain amount of respect, and saying, 'Hey, what do you think of my idea?'" Rove said.

"Instead they have dictated to their colleagues through the media and through public statements, and not consulted them about this strategy at all."
I know the rote TPer retort to the Architect - some variation of, "Those RINO sellouts wouldn't have listened to Cruz and Lee anyway, and would have obstructed them every step of the way because they're Obama's poodles," or some such rotgut.  But I am forced to challenge the assumption underlying that tiresome, fratricidal posturing: ALL of them are "RINOs"?  Really?  Sure, there are still a few - John McCain and Lindsey Grahamnesty come instantly to mind - but there are actually considerably fewer than there used to be in the old days, to say nothing of when Ronald Reagan first came to Washington.  And need I remind y'all that not a single Republican voted for ObamaCare in the first place?  That the House has voted to repeal that atrocity over forty times in the past two and a half years?  And that the Senate would have as well if Republicans were in the majority there?

But here's another reality check, folks: The same public that allegedly opposes OCare by a significant margin also knows little or nothing about it by an even bigger margin; which does much to explain why that same public kept Red Barry in the White House, expanded the Dem Senate majority and shrank the GOP's margin in the House a year ago.  And no, vote fraud can't explain all of it.  The unpleasant truth is that a majority of American have become so corrupted and dumbed down that they will believe whatever The One's media propagandists tell them.  If they REALLY opposed ObamaCare, it's just not believable that they would have re-elected its namesake.

This is the same public that Ted Cruz has similarly been conning TPers to believe can be swayed to the defund/repeal cause if Republicans launch this banzai charge into the gates of government shutdown hell, and insulting any who simply question the wisdom of such an all or nothing, frontal assault strategy as "the surrender caucus".  Cruz said back in the summer that ObamaCare could be completely defunded without a single Democrat vote in the Senate.  He bullied the House into taking the shutdown bait and attaching the OCare defunding rider to the continuing resolution and then, after they'd passed it, finally, almost tauntingly, admitted the obvious, that there weren't the votes in the upper chamber to pass it.  Which, not surprisingly, royally pissed off House 'Pubbies - including his fellow TPers, who stuck out their necks to exhibit the "courage" he mockingly claimed they lacked and then left them twisting in the wind.

My only critique of Cruz's GOP colleagues is that they leaked to Chris Wallace anonymously, when they should have been tearing the Texas junior senator multiple orifices in full public view - as, in multi-layered irony, Sarah Palin agreed, predictably topping Cruz's divisive grandstanding by demanding that Wallace reveal his sources, which is not just an affront to press freedom but is roaringly retarded as well, as she knows he'll never do that.  But she has her own self-interested, politically ambitious reasons for doing so, just as Cruz does.

Tea Partiers can stick their fingers in their ears and hum at Century Link Field volume, but facts are facts: Ted Cruz is - as is Sarah Palin - an ambitious professional politician with, yes, presidential ambitions.  Cruz wants to be the Republican Obama - a wet-behind-the-ears, ideologically driven freshman senator riding his ethnicity and a tidal wave of hype to the White House.  The difference is that Cruz, for a number of different reasons, doesn't have a prayer in a coven of pulling it off, and frankly doesn't deserve to.  And he gives every appearance of being willing to bring down the Republican Party if he doesn't get his way.  One could almost wonder if Cruz is a Donk mole, snuck into the very inner sanctum of the Tea Party movement for the purpose of bringing about the implosion of the GOP from within, and with it any chance of stopping ObamaCare or the rest of O's communization plans.

Not that it isn't already too late, you understand.  But like with ObamaCare itself, Americans will have to learn that bitter lesson the hard way.

In the mean time, I would settle for less gullibility and more healthy skepticism on TPers' part toward any pol that comes along, spouting everything they want to hear, and calling them to foolish, suicidal crusades that will do nothing but ludicrously raise and then brutally crush their hopes and expectations.

To correct Thomas Jefferson, "One man with a dead man walking."

UPDATE: Cruz and Lee have rummaged up a way around Dirty Harry's "no filibuster" rule regarding continuing resolution amendments: filibuster the House CR itself.  Supposedly this will give Senate Republicans the "leverage" to "force" Reid to "negotiate" away his no-filibuster rule.  Why the Senate Majority Chisler should give a frog's fat leg if the GOP kills the CR he was going to gut anyway, leading to the same shutdown showdown he and his party welcome with open arms, is anybody's guess.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Uh-oh; looks like another Tea Party hero has gone RINO:

Or will TPers now embrace the very "compromise" they've been excoriating at Ted Cruz's behest, just because Rand Paul - Rand Paul!!! - now endorses it?

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