Leading Republicans support Mr. Cruz, not despite his policy positions, but because of them. They may not like his style, but they agree with his substance.
.. When members of a large bipartisan panel on economic policy, run by the University of Chicago business school, were asked whether a gold standard would be an improvement on current arrangements, not one said yes.
.. And Mr. Cruz’s obsession with gold is one reason to believe that he would do even more economic damage in the White House than Mr. Trump would.
.. As I have pointed out on a number of occasions, Mr. Ryan is fundamentally a con man on his signature issue, fiscal policy. Incidentally, for what it’s worth, Mr. Cruz has been relatively honest by his party’s standards on this issue, openly declaring his intention toraise taxes that hit the poor and the middle class even as he slashes them on the rich.
.. Both men are devotees of Ayn Rand, even if Mr. Ryan now tries to downplay his well-documented Rand fandom.
.. But while his policy ideas are extreme, they reflect the same extremism that pervades the party’s elite.
What Trump and Cruz Should Learn From Belgium
The day of the attacks, he called for police to “patrol and secure Muslim neighborhoods.” Asked what that meant, Cruz cited a program in New York that, according to The New York Times, allowed to the NYPD to designate “entire mosques as suspected ‘terrorism enterprises,’” and thus “collect the license plate numbers of every car in mosque parking lots, videotape worshipers coming and going, and record sermons using informants wearing hidden microphones.” What Cruz didn’t mention is that an NYPD official himself admitted the program didn’t yield a single terrorism investigation. What it did was alienate law-abiding Muslims. As a Newark-based FBI special agent noted, the program led “people [to] pull back cooperation” and thus impaired “our ability to have our finger on the pulse of what’s going on around the state.”
Compared to countries like Belgium, the degree of acceptance that American Muslims enjoy represents a form of American exceptionalism. Republican presidential candidates like to say Barack Obama doesn’t believe in American exceptionalism and instead wants to make America more like Europe. Yet it’s they who, by demonizing Muslims, would do just that.
Obama to Ted Cruz: You Know Who Else Liked Surveilling Suspect Neighborhoods? Castro.
As far as the notion of having surveillance of neighborhoods where Muslims are present, I just left a country that engages in that kind of neighborhood surveillance. Which, by the way, the father of Senator Cruz escaped for America, the land of the free.
Kristol Attacks Me?
I could have stomached Chris Christie, but didn’t think Ben Carson or Carly Fiorina or Mr. Trump were qualified to be President.
I am unalterably opposed to Ted Cruz who I consistently believe is an existential threat to our Senate Majority.
Our party is in the shape it is today because of people like Bill Kristol. Kristol is a leader of the neo-conservative movement. He was a leading proponent of the Iraq War. He is also a leading proponent of America attacking Iran. Neo-conservatives are one-time liberals who migrated to the party because they were drawn by the Reagan doctrine of a muscled foreign policy. I don’t have anything against neo-conservatives although I don’t think that every foreign policy crisis requires the United States invading somebody. I believe that Iraq was a huge mistake and I believe that most Americans share my view of that war. Kristol still defends it and believes we should do something similar in Iran. Donald Trump articulated the view that the Iraq war was a mistake more forcefully and more crudely than I would have and he did it in South Carolina, a place that was thought to be the most pro-military in the country. If Kristol’s view of the use of our military would have any resonance, it would be in South Carolina. Trump won the Palmetto State easily.
.. Kristol believed that Sarah Palin would be the savior of the party and he promoted her heavily when she got on the ticket with John McCain.
That was the real start of the dumbing down of the GOP.
Kristol stood by Palin through thick and thin, even briefly making the case that she would make a great Presidential candidate.
.. You don’t get to Donald Trump without Sarah Palin.
.. Palin was also the first one to really attack the Republican Party just as much as she attacked the Democrats. And through her attacks on the party, she gained even more energy.
Ted Cruz learned that lesson very well. And he has built an impressive fundraising operation based mostly on the Palin principle.
.. Trump is not my first choice. Is he an existential threat to our Republic? I don’t think so.