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De Omnibus Dubitandum - Lux Veritas

Thursday, July 21, 2016

My Take on Cruz's Speech

By Rich Kozlovich

There's nothing more interesting than people. In Benjamin Franklin's autobiography he talks about a sea voyage he was taking from one port city to another (travel overland was extremely difficult in those days) and the sailors caught a large fish for the passenger's meal. Franklin says he'd been a vegetarian for many years, partly philosophical and partly financial.....which meant mostly financial.

As the sailors cut the fish opened a lot of smaller fish poured out. Franklin said he'd been fond of fish in the past so he reasoned - since you ate those fish, I'm going to eat you. He goes on to say in the book: “So convenient a thing to be a reasonable creature, since it enables one to find or make a reason for every thing one has a mind to do.”

I think this is applicable in this issue over Cruz and his speech.

Jeremy Carl in his article, Lion Ted, explains:
In this case, the simplest explanation for Senator Cruz’s behavior is also the best one: He didn’t endorse Trump because he didn’t think Trump was worthy of endorsement...  Donald Trump insulted Cruz’s wife, (presumably) planted false tabloid stories about him in the National Enquirer, and suggested, completely baselessly, that his father might have been involved in the assassination of President Kennedy. Beyond these outrageous personal insults, it is clear that Trump’s conservatism, such as it is, has little in common with the limited-government, pro-federalism conservatism of Senator Cruz......Ultimately, Cruz’s performance in the hall outlined his strongest political quality: his courage.....
Then we have Mona Charen with her article, Why I Am Not a Cruzite, saying:
"There is so much to admire about Cruz — and I don’t doubt that if his plan had worked and he’d been elected, he would have made a good president — but he also must bear some measure of responsibility for what has happened to the Republican party, and thus, to the country. Together with talk radio and Fox News celebrities, Cruz wove the tale of Republican-party betrayal that so alienated and embittered Republican voters against his own party. From the moment he arrived in Washington, Cruz lacerated Republicans as part of the “Washington cartel.” His specialty was the attention-grabbing gesture, such as the filibuster against Obamacare. It had no chance of success but positioned Ted Cruz very well with the “base.”
All that's true, and it's probably not how to win friends and influence the people he's forced to work with......but personally I like that!

Then there's Tim Alberta's article, Ted Cruz Isn’t Changing a Thing, which is so close to the other two I wonder if they all collaborate on this issue. He says:
"There is no question Cruz will run for president again. He’s up for reelection in 2018, but his 2020 plans are likely to move forward no matter who wins the White House this fall: Challenging a Republican incumbent would suit Cruz’s style and message, and he would probably be assured of a significantly smaller primary field that could facilitate the one-on-one matchup with Trump that John Kasich denied him this time around. What that next campaign will look like, however, remains unclear even to close observers of Cruz and those in his inner circle."
Let's change a little direction here to develop some foundation.

Huey Long, known as "The Kingfisher", (a former governor of Louisiana, who controlled a political machine in his state that was so powerful you couldn't get a job as a janitor in a school without their consent) won a seat to the Senate on March 4, 1931, but remained Governor for the remainder of his term, leaving that Senate seat for Louisiana open. He claimed having a vacant seat was better than having his opponent there. The man had brass.

In January 1932 he took his seat in the Senate and violated the first rule of the Senate in those days - in your first term you sit down and shut your mouth until you learn how things are done. That wasn't Long's style. He walked around the Senate shaking hands telling everyone "the Kingfisher's in town and things are going to change." And they did.

He proceeded to make fiery speeches denouncing everyone - especially the rich and the leadership in both parties because they just refused to redistribute the nation's wealth according to his liking. Sound familiar? He was another Bernie Sanders, only with style and panache. "The New York Times called him "a man with a front of brass and lungs of leather".

Huey Long was a remarkably flamboyant populist which made him one of the best known Senators in the nation. His colleagues in the Senate hated him, including his fellow Democrats.  One Senator said "I do not believe you could get the Lord's Prayer endorsed in this body."

He later announced he was going to run as against Franklin Roosevelt in the 1936 election - and there were many who feared he could take the nomination away from the sitting President of his own party, and if he hadn't been assasinated he just might have done so.

Now, there's a serious difference between Long and Cruz. Long was absolutely a socialist promoting what he called the Share Our Wealth clubs, of which he "had 7.5 million members nationwide," and furthermore, "he regularly garnered 25 million radio listeners, and he was receiving 60,000 letters a week from supporters (more than the president)".  In a population of 128 million in 1936 - that's impressive.  And considering there were probably only about 75 million people of voting age in 1936 - it's even more impressive. 

To diffuse charges of being a socialist he claimed is views weren't based on Marx, but were derived from the Declaration of Independence and the Bible.

Having said all of that - I come to this question about Cruz. If he didn't want them to support the ticket who did he want them to support?  Him? This leads to the next question. Is it about the mission or is it about Ted Cruz? The answer is yes, it's about the mission and Ted Cruz, because it's Ted Cruz's mission.  Which is to run for the presidency in 2020, which is the one thing all writers seem to agree on, and that's what his speech was all about. 

Hello world!  Meet the conservative Huey Long - Ted Cruz!

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