Friday's Thoughts: Debates Round-up, Christmas Songs, and Star Wars

By Kit

My last post before Christmas. What a year its been, trying to consistently write a weekly post for this site. It's been difficult, especially with schoolwork but I'm glad for the positive responses I've gotten from you folks.

Now, let's get on with the show.

Tuesday's Debate We had a debate this week. The expected (and possibly hoped for) Trump/Cruz clash did not occur. Cruz deflected from attacking Trump and Trump, interestingly, did likewise. Instead the big clashes were Bush/Trump and, the highlights for me, Cruz/Rubio.

So let's score the Top 8 Candidates.

Trump: Trump was Trump. Though slightly less than usual but still Trump with outlandish calls to kill the families of terrorists (WTF?!) and issuing proposals that, as Jon Gabriel of Ricochet once pointed out, nearly always seem to involve bigger government. He is a populist strongman with a nationalist streak in the vein of Huey Long.

He is also a clueless clown, flubbing a question on the nuclear triad. True, I didn’t know what it was but… I am not running for President of the United States.

However, he did gain a few points with me by promising not to run as an independent. For now, at least. He made He was at zero before (if not in the negatives) so it was not a huge bump. He is still at the bottom for me.

Cruz: Did ok but he made a flap, possibly fatal one (but fatal missteps are declared far more often than they occur) when he said he never supported legalization of illegals when in fact in 2013 he proposed a bill to do just that. He claims it was a poison pill but he advocated on several networks, including for some time after it failed. National Review is giving him hell on this, and, to a certain extent, Fox News as well, while his supporters are trying to craft him as some kind of Machiavellian genius —who lies to stop bills he doesn’t like.

Carson: Still not ready for primetime. Should be running for Congress. Next!

Rubio: My pick as “winner”, even though there really was not a standout winner. But I found myself leaning back to him. He took on an attack on immigration and handled it well. And, no, he did not “dodge” the immigration question, unless dodging means giving a clear and well-crafted answer that clearly outlines a position you don't like in a possibly appealing way. You can say you don't trust him, you can say you don't like his answer, but it was not evasive.

I have some problems with him, true, but he never seems off his game. He has handled himself incredibly well in the debates. He always knows his stuff. That requires some homework. In this primary system, that is sadly a huge plus. He also looked a bit older than in previous debates, where he unfortunately had a Chairman of the College Republicans look to him.

Christie: Rubbed me the wrong way. His butting in during the Rubio/Cruz debate on NSA and attacking them for “just discussing” instead of making decisions shad, to me at least, a stench of pro-executive, anti-legislature strongman Mussoliniism to it. Though it appears to have played well with most people.

Carly: Ok. Her campaign for VP continues apace. Her failed attempt to pull a Christie during one of the Rubio/Cruz clashes was rather sad.

Jeb: Had his best night but that is not saying much considering how poor his nights have been so far.

Kasich: Who? Oh, right, him. He was… there.

He kind of seemed like the Larry Gillmore of the night. He was there.

Any thoughts?


Bad Christmas Songs

First, my least favorite: “Last Christmas”, “Christmas Shoes”, “Grandma Got Run over by a Reinder”, and “Do They Know It’s Christmas” are at the top of my hate list. “Christmas Shoes” is probably my least loathed of them because I rarely heard it but, yeah, its awful. “Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer” is annoying and “Do They Know Its Christmas” is “LOOK AT HOW CARING WE ARE” twaddle. At least “Last Christmas” has a cheesy, 80s so-bad-its-good vibe to it, even if it is annoying.

Good songs? Pretty much any of the classics and the hymns. There are some mediocrities such as “Rock a-Round the Clock” and “All I Want For Christmas” but for the most part this season is full of good songs; “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas”, “We Wish You a Merry Christmas”, “Jingle Bells”, “Silver Bells”, “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer”,

Your favorites? Least favorites?

Star Wars

Well Star Wars premieres tonight, I plan to see it tomorrow. Anyone who dares spoil it for me will be force-choked. But not to death. No, for death they will be tossed bound and gagged into a Sarlacc pit to be digested over the course of a thousand years.

Merry Christmas.

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Cruz'n For a Bruiz'n

Ted Cruz has announced that he intends to seek the GOP nomination for President. Forget it. He’s finished. Here are my thoughts...

● What Does He Really Want?: It’s obvious to anyone who is the least bit impartial that Cruz cannot win the nomination or the general election. So why is he running? What does Cruz want?

In most instances, the answer to why a fringer runs for President is simple: they want attention. Some, like Tom Tancredo or “B-1” Bob Dornan, want their one issue discussed. Others, like Ralph Reed, are looking for name recognition, which they can then parlay into a fundraising empire which will make them rich. Others, like Fred Thompson run because their wives push them. So which is Cruz?

Well, as odd as this sounds, I think Cruz actually sees himself as President. I have no proof to back this up, but here is what I’ve seen. Cruz has run a classic presidential campaign since arriving in Washington:

● First, he has the classic insider background – Harvard grad, worked in Washington, worked on campaigns.

● Secondly, like Obama and others before him, he has scrupulously avoided creating a legislative agenda which can be used against him. If he were truly the partisan he claims, he would be lobbing legislative bombs like Ron Paul or Bernie Sanders.

● Third, he has followed the classic strategy of shoring up his flank first by pandering to the far-right fruitcakes who decide elections in the South. But even more importantly...

● Fourth, Cruz has played his followers for fools by very carefully caveating every... single... thing... he’s... said... over the past two years. Remember when he opposed immigration reform? Actually, he didn’t. He opposed the particular bill, but made it clear he supported reform. Ditto on every other issue. In doing this, he thinks he’s left himself room to now move to the center with the media being unable to prove that he has changed positions. This is a standard tactic.

What this tells me is that Cruz has been cynically building a record (and avoiding a record) so he can shape his own campaign as needed, while simultaneously shoring up the mouth breathers long before he has to pander to the center. This is not the strategy of a partisan, it is the strategy of a chameleon who genuinely thinks he can make it all the way to the White House. Essentially, he is the mirror image of Obama in a ten gallon hat. But he has problems...

● Cruz Has Miscalculated The “Base”: Despite Cruz apparently following the classic modern campaign plan for winning the election, Cruz has several problems. His first, is that he has miscalculated when it comes to “the base.”

Cruz’s strategy involves winning the self-described base before the primaries begin so he is free to run as a moderate on the national stage. This is something the Democrats excel at. What Cruz doesn’t understand, however, is how mentally ill the far right has become. What he doesn’t get is that they have become so obsessed with purity that they need constant reinforcement that their leader is just as obsessed as they are. That means that the minute he stops spewing the same nonsense they spew, they will begin to suspect something is wrong with him. And the moment he tries to sell himself as a moderate, they will turn on him as a betrayer. Cruz thinks they will accept a wink and nod and stay quiet as he tricks the public at large, but that is not who these people are. They want their leader to unapologetically foam at the mouth.

● Cruz Has Also Miscalculated The Public: Despite Cruz caveating everything, which he thinks will give him the ability to sell himself as a moderate, Cruz seems to have misunderstood his own reputation with the public. Cruz’s battles with the GOP, which the public already views as too extreme, have painted him as an extremist among extremists. And once the public has an image of you, it is virtually impossible to change that image.

This is true of GOP primary voters too. For a couple years now, polls have shown that only 40% of GOP voters have held a positive view of Cruz, even as other candidates have scored well into the 60% range. He can’t really undo that. That means he can't win the public to win the general election and he can't win enough primary voters to win the primaries... even assuming the base doesn't turn on him.

Worsening his problem, his supporters are clustered in the evangelical states. Apart from the South and Iowa, Cruz is likely to find that he has negligible support. That means that all Bush needs to do is hang on for the Northeast and the West Coast and he will crush Cruz with insurmountable numbers.

● Cruz Faces Money Problems: Finally, Cruz has so turned off the GOP money men that he will never get the funding he needs to organize and run a genuine campaign. This will hurt him after the first couple primaries.

As I see it, I actually do think Cruz thinks he can win this. He thinks he owns “the base” at this point and that he can now tack left to win the public. He will run as an outsider with Washington experience, but common sense. And he thinks this will let him hold the base while winning over enough moderates to cruise (pun intended) to the White House. I think he’s wrong on all counts though.

Am I right? Thoughts?

BTW, the media has written their first article calling O’Malley “the new JFK.” Put a fork in Hillary, she’s done.

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The Democrats Won't Win By Losing

One of our readers referred me to an interesting article last week. The article was at Politico and it was titled “Good News, Democrats, You’re Going to Lose!” The gist of the article is that the Democrats will be better off losing the Senate to the Republicans, as appears inevitable. The article makes some interesting points, but ultimately it is just sour grapes and it relies on biased assumptions.

According to the article, the issue is this. The Republicans will win the Senate. Far from being upset by this, the Democrats should be ecstatic because “the Democrats will get to kick back with a large tub of buttery popcorn and watch the Republican soap operate hit peak suds.” Specifically, the author thinks the Tea Party candidates will turn the Senate into a “sit-com” as “grandstanders like Rand Paul and Ted Cruz” go to war with the GOP leadership. This will push the Republicans to the loony fringes and turn the public off. Hence, in 2016, the public will be ready to embrace the Democrats with big sloppy wet kisses.

As proof, the author claims that Mitch McConnell has mapped out a confrontational strategy with Obama, whereby the Republicans will include all kind of fringe things in budget bills and dare Obama to veto them. He also claims that while the Republican leadership has defused the worst landmines in the primaries, they’ve done this by papering over their differences with their fringe. Finally, he notes that the Republicans no longer even talk about the things they normally stand for like cutting taxes.

I would add that, superficially, there is additional support for this in proclamations by fringers like Mike Huckabee who threatened this week to leave the GOP for failing to obsess enough about gays and abortion.

So this all sounds reasonable, right? Well, no.

The problem with this idea is that it fundamentally misunderstands much of what is going on. For starters, when has the opposition not mapped out a confrontational strategy against a president from another party... especially such an unpopular president? This idea means nothing, especially as McConnell is far too savvy to be pulled into anything stupid. In fact, even the author notes that the GOP leadership killed off any more shutdowns. So why should we believe that once McConnell controls the Senate, with few Tea Partiers in the Senate, that McConnell will suddenly let them run wild or embrace their lunacy to keep the peace? Don’t forget, this is the man who just successfully defended himself against the combined weight of every single Tea Party group in the country to win a crushing win in his primary.

Next, the author completely underestimates the importance of what happened in the primaries. The leadership didn’t rid itself of the fringe by “papering over” their disagreements! Ha! They went to war with the fringe -- Ted Cruz even whined about fringers being carpet-bombed by the evil leadership. The result was a party that crushed its fringe and retook control over itself. Not a single Tea Partier won a victory in this primary over an establishment candidate. And the effect has been dramatic. Indeed, since the end of the primaries, notice that you hear almost nothing but whimpers from the likes of FreedomWorks and the nutjobs who lost. Most disappeared back into the woodwork and the rest are busy trying to salvage their fundraising. Even Cruz has barely said a word against the party in months.

So what about calls to break away? Going into the primaries, the fringers genuinely thought they had the backing of the people. But the primaries exposed them as what they are – a fringe, even within the GOP. They know now that forming a separate party would do nothing but make them even less relevant. So now we know that not only can the party afford to lose them, but they can't afford to leave the party. This has become a paper threat.

For these reasons, this author is flat out wrong if he believes the GOP will stage a civil war. Not to mention, the Senate isn’t that kind of place anyways. The Senate is not a democracy and the Senate leader has too much power for a couple of malcontents to cause any real trouble. All they can do is talk, and the GOP leadership has an effective strategy to neuter that now.

As for not talking about tax cuts, the reason is that no one is listening to that issue. The Republicans have failed to sell the benefits of tax cuts for too long and the issue has gone cold. Instead, the public is worried about a lack of job, the cost of healthcare, the damage of Obamacare, the effects of the failure of Obama’s presidency, and protecting our society from intruders and foreign diseases and foreign religious nuts. You don’t talk tax cuts in that atmosphere.

The author also takes a shot at the GOP for failing to implement the recommendations of their post-2012 “autopsy,” but again, that shows a lack of knowledge. All the autopsy really said was that the GOP needs to implement a better technological approach to voter outreach. That has nothing to do with controlling the Senate.

This whole article strikes me as biased sour grapes. This author has a leftist view of the GOP as hopelessly fringey and he just assumes the GOP will act like Huffpo’s worst nightmare says they will. But the GOP is much better controlled and far less fringey than it was in 2012. Moreover, political parties have ways to hold their worst instincts in check when they assume power. Look at the Democrats, who squandered a supermajority in 2008-2010 because they were afraid to pull the trigger on anything. Look at Newt in the 1990s, who could have taken Reagan’s ideas to an extreme as all the think tanks on the right wanted, but who mainly tinkered with House procedures and then passed only a handful of truly significant bills.

I’m not saying things will go well or that talk radio will stop its fratricidal war against the GOP, but I am saying that the GOP is highly unlikely to implode through extremism because (1) it killed its extremists, and (2) the natural instinct of parties in power is to pander to the public to get more power, not go on an ideological revolution... and Mitch McConnell is too old school and savvy not to know that.

Thoughts?

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The Fringe Is Routed

This comes from many months of careful observation, hence it's long. But it's worth reading. While talk radio hosts continue to talk up their heroic Ted Cruz and his secret army of reel ‘merikans who are only minutes away from sweeping away the hateful GOP, the truth is that the fringe has lost and is in full collapse. Here is what you won’t hear from talk radio.

● Embracing The Enemy. In 2010, the Tea Party caught people off guard by unseating a handful of Republican moderates who had been in their seats for a very long time. At first, this was a good thing. But then the Tea Party morphed into crazytown and their primary goal (only goal actually) became making war against the GOP. (Michelle Malkin has actually admitted that "[t]his to me is much more fascinating than the usual left-right battles.")

The GOP, most of whom sit in safe seats, suddenly realized that the new danger didn’t come from the Democrats to their left, it came from a challenge to their right. Thus, the GOP embraced the Tea Party to protect themselves from challengers. And for the next three years, the GOP kowtowed to these people.

Unfortunately, trying to appease the insane never works and the GOP discovered that nothing they did was ever enough. No matter what the GOP did, the fringe continued to hate them and to try to destroy them. Moreover, the more entangled they become with the fringe, the further away they drove the public. As a result, the GOP has been flirting with permanent minority status.

● The First Victory. After November 2012, things changed. The GOP decided that they needed to move away from the fringe and they began the process. They developed a strategy for dealing with fringe candidates, tested it, and are now applying it. At the same time, they started introducing an agenda to turn them back into a responsible party again. The results have been dramatic, even if they are largely behind the scenes.

The strategy they employed started with this. When Liz Cheney decided to attack Republican incumbent Sen. Mike Enzi, the fringe jumped onboard as usual. This was one of about a dozen attempts to "primary" sitting Republicans. At the time, groups like Tea Party Express and Freedom Works declared that Cheney would sweep to victory, as would a dozen others, and they would finally unseat the RINO leadership.

But this time, the GOP fought back. First, they gave a massive number of endorsements to Enzi and they made it clear that they would not simply stand on the sidelines. They also ridiculed the Senate Conservatives Fund (Cruz’s group) as being in the business of replacing Republicans with Democrats, which is essentially all Cruz has accomplished. The results were strong and immediate. Cheney’s candidacy collapsed and she withdrew for “family health” reasons.

Within days of her withdrawal, the fringe did what they always do: they disowned her. Indeed, a number of people who had been praising her as a reel ‘merikan only days before suddenly dismissed her as an establishment carpetbagger. Cult-like groups always work this way because they cannot afford failure. More was coming...

● The Turning Point. As Wyoming played out, Ted Cruz decided to make a power play in Washington. He saw an opportunity to embarrass the GOP leadership by demanding a shutdown. He figured that the GOP leadership would never act so irresponsibly, so he was safe making the demand because he knew they would never give him what he wanted. Essentially, he had a free pass to thump his chest and claim to be the only courageous Republican. He also used the opportunity to spread the idea that the public was secretly with him and that they would rally to a shutdown, which would expose the GOP leadership as out of touch. Again, he could make this claim because he knew it would never be tested. He even got the House GOP backbench to support him in an effort to make Boehner look like a fool.

It was a fantastic bluff. Not only did it allow him to define himself as better than everyone else in the GOP, i.e. as the only genuine conservative in a nest of RINOs, but it let him offer the Kool-Aid of the “secret majority” to his fringe audience all without any fear that his claim would ever be exposed. The fringe, naturally, jumped on this like retards humping a doorknob and they all parroted how cowardly the leadership was and how Cruz must be made the new leader.

Then it went wrong. Boehner shrewdly gave Cruz what he wanted and the government shut down. This became the real turning point. See, it turns out the public did not support Cruz and the fringe. To the contrary, around 90% blamed the GOP for shutting down the government and felt they had acted irresponsibly. Moreover, the deal that was needed to end the shutdown wiped out sequestration. Cruz had, as usual, set the cause of conservatism back.

More importantly, however, while this was going on, Cruz’s behavior exposed him. When the shutdown first happened, Cruz actually refused to say whether or not he supported what had been his own idea. He was waiting to see how it played. And when it went sour fast, he denied that this had been his idea at all. Even four months later, he continued to deny this. Said Cruz on Face the Nation:

“I didn't threaten to shut down the government the last time. I don't think we should ever shut down the government. I repeatedly voted to fund the federal government.”

Of course, evidence to the contrary abounds all over the net.

What this did was expose Cruz. Intelligent conservatives would now see that he was a liar who used them for personal gain, and they talked about how shocked they were when he admitted that he had no exit strategy for the shutdown, i.e. no purpose in doing it. Conservatives like Kelly Ayotte apparently met him with quite a fury. And when Cruz tired again recently to cause a shutdown and then forced the GOP to vote for the budget to overcome his filibuster, he found no supporters. The Wall Street Journal’s conservative editorial page even called Cruz, “the Minority Maker” and chastised him for making the GOP “walk the plank on a meaningless debt ceiling vote.” Outside of the deep fringe, the love and blind faith is gone.

● Open Season. Immediately after the collapse of the shutdown, Boehner verbally attacked the fringe by calling groups like The Heritage Foundation and FreedomWorks “ridiculous” and claiming they had “lost all credibility.” Blogs like Hot Air quickly mocked this as a tantrum and called him whiny, but they missed the point. Boehner’s message wasn’t intended to win the fringe, it was intended to tell the rest of the GOP that it was open season on the fringe. And open season it became.

Since Boehner’s comments, there have been a steady stream of attacks on the fringe from people like Tom Coburn, Charles Krauthammer and Jennifer Rubin. The GOP changed its election rules to make it harder for small candidates to win primaries and to force everything to wrap up quicker, i.e. to make another Santorum unlikely. The GOP also fired companies who had worked with Cruz’s anti-Republican PAC. Iowa’s governor is doing his best to make the Iowa GOP mainstream by driving out the fringe. Mike Huckabee essentially likened the fringe to the Nazis, which brought howls of anger from various blogs. John McCain, who had planned to retire, now will likely run for a new term because fringers in Arizona censured him for “associating with liberal Democrats” and he plans to spite them. Everywhere, the establishment is fighting back and more and more conservatives are switching sides to join the establishment against the fringe.

● Routed: The Battle of Kentucky. With things going poorly for the fringe as recognized conservatives started deserting the cult and speaking against them, the fringe needed a big victory. They chose to attack a man they saw as a soft target: Mitch McConnell. McConnell is a fairly reliable conservative, though a practical one, and he and Boehner have become the fringe’s boogeymen, an odd package of spineless dupes and evil RINO geniuses who are simultaneously incompetent yet manage to dominate and frustrate 60 million conservatives. They saw McConnell as the perfect target because unseating him would be a huge show of their power and they believed he was vulnerable to a primary challenge. So they decided to support his Tea Party sponsored opponent: Matt Bevins.

In fact, “support” is an understatement. Like Hitler at Stalingrad, they are pouring everything they have into this fight. Everyone from groups like the Club for Growth to Sarah Palin have sent money and endorsements to Bevins. Every single fringe group you can think of is involved in this effort. Talk radio has repeatedly and unanimously pimped for Bevins and torn down McConnell. The idea was this: if the fringe can win this one huge victory, then it can wash away all the defeats it has suffered in primaries, special elections and with all their candidates going down in flames to the Democrats in 2012. More importantly, they can regain their ability to rule the GOP by fear. That was the plan.

But the new GOP tactics have proved extremely effective. Bevins was close until the GOP started attacking the fringe as crazy, as having no end game to their strategies, and as aiding the Democrats. And after the Cruz shutdown debacle, things started to go wrong. The latest poll has McConnell beating Bevins by 42 points.

This is an epic disaster for them. Indeed, the fringe has completely lost its influence, and they know it. What is most telling has been the change in rhetoric. After promising, a month or so ago, to unseat two dozen Republicans in the primaries, the same groups now are saying that they didn’t expect to win any of those contests, but it was enough to raise awareness of the issues. That’s loser speak. At the same time, the fringe starting whining about how unfair the GOP has been treating them. Even Cruz whined about this, stating that the GOP was “carpet-bombing” Tea Party candidates and that they should focus on the big bad Democrats. This is how people talk when they know it’s all over... and note the hypocrisy.

At this point, Matt Kibbe of FreedomWorks is still promising to unseat 28 GOP incumbents blah blah blah, including Eric Cantor and John Boehner, but no one is taking that seriously. In fact, the GOP is so confident that they’ve gone from the defensive to the offensive. First, the Chamber of Commerce came out and supported any GOP candidates who would oppose Tea Party candidates. Now former Rep. Steven LaTourette has founded a new PAC whose goal is to “beat the snot out of Tea Party Congressional candidates.”

All of this smells of a route.

● Where Things Stand. So where do things stand? The fringe is still speaking of their glorious victories to come, but from the sound of things, there will be no more Tea Party victories in primaries. A good number of Tea Party congressmen may also lose their seats. The GOP is slowly working on an agenda that will align it with the public and the actual GOP base again – not the fringe. For example, with polls consistently showing that even 60% of the GOP base wants immigration reform, its interesting to note that every single GOP candidate for President has endorsed the idea even as the fringe views this as heresy.

Meanwhile, a number of prominent conservatives started talking about an agenda – an agenda that goes against everything the fringe stands for. The article about Ramesh Ponnuru and Yuval Levin the other day is just the latest example. Even people like Rand Paul, who the fringe assumes are with them, have distanced themselves. In fact, in a very telling comment the other day, Rand Paul said this:

“I think Republicans will not win again in my lifetime for the presidency unless they become a new GOP, a new Republican Party. . . and it has to be a transformation, not a little tweaking at the edges.

So we need to become hard core “conservative,” right? Well, no. Here’s what he said next:

“Republicans haven’t gone to African-Americans or to Hispanics and said, ‘You know what? The war on drugs, Big Government, has had a racial outcome. It’s disproportionately affected the poor and the black and brown among us. There is a struggle going on within the Republican Party. It’s not new, and I’m not ashamed of it. I’m proud of the fact that there is a struggle. And I will struggle to make the Republican Party a different party, a bigger party, a more diverse party, and a party that can win national elections again.”

That is the complete opposite of what talk radio preaches about needing to become a smaller, nastier, more pure party.

The fringe is bleeding support too. Indeed, there was an interesting poll the other day, whose import was missed. The poll asked Republicans who they would support for 2016. Despite the fact that Ted Cruz was the only reel ‘merikan on the list, he scored a pathetic 12%. The other 88% were spread around various people who have all been accused of RINOcy. This means that the fringe is down from a high of around 20% of the Republican party to 12% tops. That’s a loss of 40% in six months and makes them about the size of Ron Paul’s support in the past.

Interestingly, I’m seeing evidence too that many of the fringe are giving up on the GOP and going back to whence they came in third parties.

Does this mean Cruz is finished? Hardly. The fringe only listens to talk radio and talk radio won’t tell them any of the things above because that would harm their ratings. To the contrary, if you listen to Rush or Levin or the rest, or you read HotAir or Breitbart, you will hear a steady stream of how Cruz and his army of reel ‘merikans are about to win victory after victory over Boehner and McConnell, who will soon be replaced. And then they will explain away the divergence from reality with tales or RINO traitors and magic. Because of this, Cruz, the phony-outsider, will get to continue to milk the fringe for money and he can continue his war against the GOP... but his influence is over. Things are changing a lot.

Thoughts?

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Ted Cruz's Demise Part Deux

So he is a RINO traitor after all! LOL! Grab some popcorn and enjoy this interesting twisty little story of the slow-motion demise of Ted Cruz.

On Sunday, Chris Wallace of FOX mentioned that the Republicans are upset at Ted Cruz. Specifically, he told Karl Rove that as soon as he announced that Ted Cruz would be a guest on his show this week, he received unsolicited “opposition research” against Cruz from certain un-named Republicans.

Naturally, the immediate assumption was that it had to be the evil RINO Republican Leadership who can’t stand a gen-you-ine conservative finally fighting back after the Republicans caved in to Obama on everything he ever wanted!!!! Indeed, the Daily Caller guessed that this must be the result of anger at Cruz “because Cruz and fellow Utah Republican Sen. Mike Lee decided to devise a strategy to defund Obamacare without consulting Republican leadership.” And clearly, those RINO leaders don’t like the gen-you-ine Ted Cruz exposing their cozy relationship with Obama, right? Sarah Boo Boo Palin even demanded that Wallace disclose his sources so we can rid ourselves of their evil.

As an aside, Glenn Beck is calling for the “impeachment” of Boehner, McConnell, McCain and Lindsay Graham... oh, and Obama. Maybe we can add this to the list of charges?

Well, not so fast.

See, it turns out that the anger at Cruz isn’t coming from the Republican Leadership, aka the fringe right’s greatest boogeyman. No, it’s coming from, well, the fringe right.

Wisconsin Rep. Sean Duffy said Friday that the conservative House Republicans are angry and frustrated with Ted Cruz who has “abused” House conservatives. Apparently, he dun whipped them into a fightin' mood... made them go full retard... and then he refused “to get in the ring” when the time came.

Duffy notes that House conservatives were furious at Cruz all summer “as we were the punching bag and bullied by some of these Senate conservatives” with ads and fundraisers accusing the House of failing to defund Obamacare. This hurt them with their own followers who began to doubt their qualifications as fringers conservatives. Then, when they returned from the summer break and voted to defund Obamacare...

“[Cruz] sent out a press release while we were on the floor voting saying that, ‘Ah, we can’t really hold the Senate, we’re not going to filibuster, we’re not going to fight, and the House has to hold.’”

Hm. And how did that sit with House conservatives? Said Duffy:

“I have to tell you what, you should have been on the floor or back in the cloak room. There was so much anger and frustration because, again, we’ve been abused by these guys for so long.”

Tisk tisk, Sen. RINOCruz! Duffy thinks it’s time to “call them out” on their “hypocrisy” as “these big tough conservatives who know how to fight but will never get in the ring.”

I’m not surprised. From what I’ve seen, Cruz is an insider trying to trick the fringe into supporting him. He talks tough and attacks all the fringe’s enemies: the Apostate Rubio, Boehner, McCain, Graham, McConnell, the generic “establishment,” Mexicans, and sometimes Obama, and he panders to the fringe verbally (though he always throws in caveats the fringe overlooks). What he doesn’t do, however, is ever follow up his words with deeds.

That strategy worked for Obama – pander to the morons but don’t do anything that can be traced back to you specifically, and then run as a moderate in the general election. But it won’t work here. The fringe right is much more cannibalistic than the fringe left ever was and if you don’t lead every suicide charge, they will denounce you as a traitor. And that is what is happening now.

In fact, it looks to me like Cruz is in trouble. First, he gets accused of starting the “defund Obamacare” pointlessness to distract people so the RINO leadership can sneak through AMNESTY Ahhhhhh!! They’re under my bed! Now he’s being attacked openly for never going full retard with the rest. And more ominously, someone (probably a gen-you-ine conservative) is passing out “opposition research” against him.

Unfortunately for Cruz, I don’t think there’s a way to turn this around. The conservative fringe and the public are polar opposites and you can’t win a general election by being seen as pandering to the conservatives fringe. But Cruz has embraced them too closely to escape the association as all the other Republican presidential candidates have. So Cruz may soon find himself a man without support.

It will be interesting to see what his next couple moves will be.

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Ted Cruz... Evil RINO Genius!!

The Great Conservative Leap Forward continues... RINO ALERT: Ted Cruz is a RINO apostate. So sayeth Mickey Kauss at the Daily Caller, who has written a scathing “two-count indictment” of Ted Cruz and why we should blame Sen. Cruz if “amnesty” passes. The arguments Kauss makes are self-serving and deeply conspiratorial, but they are worth examining because they highlight the illogic and bad faith with which the Republicans must deal.

For those who don’t know, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) is a pretend outsider loved by “genuine conservatives” for being an anti-establishment outsider. Forget that he’s a lawyer, went to Harvard Law School, clerked for the Supreme Court, made partner in a huge international law firm, worked for the Bush administration, and is married to a partner at Goldman Sachs. Yeah, forget all of that because he’s an outsider... the real deal. What exactly he stands for is a mystery as he hasn’t actually stood for anything yet (or firmly against anything except Obamacare), but we’re sure it ain’t no stinkin’ RINOism.

Cruz plans to run for President to the right of whoever else is running. His first step in that regard was to let himself be anointed the anti-Rubio. But that is now unraveling if Mickey Kauss is any indication. According to Kauss, Cruz will be to blame when “amnesty” passes, and he’s provided a handy “two-count indictment” of Cruz to explain why.

Kauss starts by telling us that Cruz not only “failed to rise to the occasion” of stopping the Rubio bill, but he actually “increased its chance of becoming law.” Sacre bleu! See, while “charismatic Latino apostate, Sen. Marco Rubio” quickly became the leader of the “pro-amnesty faction in the Senate,” the anti-amnesty faction “needed a leader too, especially a Latino leader.” But Cruz didn’t step up. According to Kauss, all Cruz did was “the minimum necessary to maintain his credibility.” He “promoted an online petition, gave a nice floor presentation and a couple of cogent outdoor addresses to African American marchers and Tea-Partiers. . . but the job of actually leading the opposition fell to Sen. Jeff Sessions.”

Yep. Cruz is a traitor because he didn’t try hard enough. In other words, the difference between being a “genuine conservative” and being an apostate is not the policies you support, it’s that you live up the level of effort Kauss expects. And what did Kauss expect? According to Kauss, Sessions did an excellent job but simply couldn’t “bring the heft to the fight that Cruz could.” So Cruz’s duty was to replace him. And what gives Cruz this heft? He’s Latino. Essentially, Kauss is arguing that because Cruz is a Latino, he owed it to the anti-amnesty cause to take over the leadership and stop this thing, or else he must be denounced as the traitor who caused the evil amnesty bill to pass. Yikes. As an aside, I dare anyone to explain Kauss’s position to a group of minorities and see how comfortable you feel about that... “See, you’re Latino, you owe it to us to fight other Latinos if you want to be one of us.” Gangs call this “blood in.”

Having found Cruz guilty of lack of effort, Kauss then assigns an evil motive to Cruz. He implies that the reason Cruz refused his Latino-duty was that such a stance would “risk costing him some MSM and donor support.” In other words, he sold us out for personal gain... the same gain other RINOs sell out for. Tisk, tisk, Latino Sen. Cruz.

It gets worse... down the conspiracy rabbit hole we go.

Count Two: Once the evil bill passed the Senate, the only hope of blocking the bill (because the “amnesty-friendly GOP House leadership” wants to “sneak amnesty through”) was to delay the bill until August when “Republican grass roots could attend town halls” and blast Republicans. But evil Latino Sen. Cruz deceived us!

“Into this void stepped Cruz, who made a bold attempt to rouse a ‘grassroots army’ for the cause of... defunding Obamacare. So instead of haranguing their members about unchecked immigration, hard core red-staters would harangue them about the Democrats’ health care plan.”

Yep, it was all a RINO plot. Cruz distracted everyone so he didn’t have to talk about immigration. According to Kauss, the Democrats were “secretly delighted” by this because “with the Tea partiers distracted, fence-sitting Reps might have enough breathing room in the fall to sneak some kind of mass legalization through.” Of course, Kauss notes as an aside, it won’t actually appear to be legalization at the time, but the sneaky Republicans will pass something the Democrats can then turn into a path to citizenship when no one is looking, i.e. anything that gets passed is a trick.

This attack is truly rich in irony. Right now, the nut-job wing is talking about primarying RINO Paul Ryan because he suggested defunding won’t work. In fact, anyone who isn’t fully on board with defunding gets tagged with the RINO label. Yet, Kauss tells us that defunding was actually a fiendish plan to distract people from immigration. Moreover, Kauss actually attacks Cruz’s defunding plan as having “no hope” and having “a much greater chance of reviving Democratic fortunes.” Huh. So the brilliant plan that only RINOs oppose is in fact an idiotic, unworkable and self-destructive plan created by a secret RINO to distract genuine conservatives from fighting immigration. Do you get the sense the nut-job wing has gone full retard: you’re all RINOs if you do and you’re RINOs if you don’t and you’re RINOs if you aren’t passionate enough about both stances! Great oogley moogley!!

Kauss finishes his indictment with an unnumbered bonus third count by condemning Cruz because he “helped rehabilitate” the apostate Rubio by letting him participate in the defunding effort. Silly Cruz, apostates should be forever shunned, praise Allah.

Wow.

Anyways, the big news this summer is the utter lack of news from the town halls. Despite promises by Tea Party groups that they would storm these forums and scare the Republicans straight, that doesn’t appear to be happening. There have been several theories advanced for this. Kauss obviously thinks maniacal evil RINO Cruz distracted Tea Party people, who are apparently incapable of holding two thoughts at once. Others are arguing that talk radio has itself misdirected the Tea Party people by talking about impeachment, the revival of the birther issue, the Common Core paranoia, the continued obsession with Muslims and Benghazi, and canonizing the Missouri rodeo clown. Others blame GOP money being on the pro-amnesty side... because money stops Tea Party people from attending Town Halls... trust me, it does... somehow. Those pesky Republicans also aren’t bringing it up unless someone from the crowd does, which of course doesn’t explain why no one is bringing it up. And those sneaky Republicans aren’t all holding town halls, which doesn’t explain the lack of screamers at the ones that are held or why an anti-amnesty rally in DC last week attracted only 60 people.

The truth is more likely what keeps showing up in the polls, which is that around 65% of Republicans support a path to citizenship, and most of the rest support something being done about the problem. So the Kauss/talk radio line of “deport them all or burn it all to the ground” isn’t really catching on.

Whatever the answer though, Kauss’s article should stand as a warning to any Republican who thinks he can lead the nut-job wing. They are bat sh*t crazy and they will turn on you the moment paradise doesn’t come. In fact, the incredibly high number of “genuine conservative” messiahs who have been denounced as RINOs is staggering. It’s a bit like the old Soviet Union. The moment you didn’t deliver, you were declared an enemy of the people and sent packing to Siberia. Welcome to Siberia, Sen. Cruz.

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