Ike in Texas challenged Mr. Brooks’s description of the candidate as “a stranger to most of what would generally be considered the Christian virtues: humility, mercy, compassion and grace.”
“Tell that to the unborn children he is fighting for every day. I didn’t see Obama leave an empty seat for them” during the State of the Union speech, Ike wrote. “Tell that to the nation of Israel, whose trust and relationship the current administration has thrown away.”
.. Other readers said evangelical Christianity today emphasizes fundamentalist interpretation, not mercy.
“Evangelical Christianity in the U.S. is about politics, not religion,”Gillian Scobie wrote. “Its literal and highly selective reading of the Bible feeds political interests and pays little or no attention to the so-called Christian virtues.”
For others, the rise of Mr. Cruz recalled dark moments in the history of Christianity.
“There’s a wide range of beliefs among evangelicals. Yes, there are those that believe in following Christ, in compassion, generosity, paying more attention to one’s own faults than other people’s,” Jeff in Evanston, Ill., wrote. “But there is also the fire and brimstone crowd, the true believers, the kind that hunted down witches in puritanical New England. Ted Cruz is one of them.”
The Brutalism of Ted Cruz
But in his career and public presentation Cruz is a stranger to most of what would generally be considered the Christian virtues: humility, mercy, compassion and grace. Cruz’s behavior in the Haley case is almost the dictionary definition of pharisaism: an overzealous application of the letter of the law in a way that violates the spirit of the law, as well as fairness and mercy.
.. But Cruz’s speeches are marked by what you might call pagan brutalism. There is not a hint of compassion, gentleness and mercy. Instead, his speeches are marked by a long list of enemies, and vows to crush, shred, destroy, bomb them.
.. The best conservatism balances support for free markets with a Judeo-Christian spirit of charity, compassion and solidarity. Cruz replaces this spirit with Spartan belligerence. He sows bitterness, influences his followers to lose all sense of proportion and teaches them to answer hate with hate. This Trump-Cruz conservatism looks more like tribal, blood and soil European conservatism than the pluralistic American kind.
.. It became clear then, why right-wing conservative Republicans felt the need to explicitly add the adjective to their name – it certainly is not inherent in it. In fact, the phrase is oxymoronic. Imagine having to say “compassionate liberalism” – redundant.
.. Republicans are going to be faced with a choice—do they want their party’s message carried by a member of the Vengeance-is-Mine wing? It could win, in an election where angry sells and people may be looking for change, and therefore might be willing to throw the dice. But, I don’t think even most of the party, much less the rest of the country, would be especially happy with the results. You can only rule with that type of an approach, you can’t govern. The American people will not like rulers.
.. I keep thinking of Wiesel’s concentration camp character’s statement in Night that Hitler is the only one he trusts, because he is the only one who didn’t lie to the Jews.
.. And that platform is built exclusively on appeals to the very basest of human instincts: greed, selfishness, fear, prejudice, resentment, bigotry, ignorance, and aggression. Cruz and Trump merely express in plainer language what all the GOP candidates for president espouse as policy positions.
.. In advertising, the basic wisdom used to be: “sex sells.” Among conservatives, the basic wisdom is: “fear sells.”
Fearful people do not practice compassion and mercy.
.. As an evangelical, I am appalled by how most evangelicals act politically. Our faith never calls for us to use the force of government to impose our faith on others. We are to do it by example and win people over. We are to be the salt of the earth, not the gunpowder. We are to be a light unto the world, not a nuclear blast.
Ted Cruz Is Nixon, Not Goldwater
But Cruz has major vulnerabilities. He’s more ideologically defined than George W. Bush in 2000 or Barack Obama in 2008, and his current theory of the general election — that he need turn out only conservatives — is a comforting fable.
What’s the Point of the New Ted Cruz Birtherism?
Given all that, it would be hard for him to not at least go through some motions on questioning Cruz’s eligibility—even if Obama had been born abroad, his mother was an American citizen, which would give him the same claim to citizenship that Cruz does. (Not that Trump has allowed a foolish consistency to be the hobgoblin of his “really smart” mind.)
.. Moreover, the birther attack gives Trump a good method to attack Cruz, who has recently emerged as his major rival in polling both nationally and in Iowa. But what kind of weapon is birtherism? It is, at its root, an effective way of telling voters that Cruz isn’t like them. That he’s not one of us. That he’s different. In other words, it capitalizes on all of the anti-immigrant, anti-foreigner sentiments that have driven his campaign all along.
.. Yet Trump repeated the idea on Face the Nation: “Cuba, generally speaking, is a Catholic country. And you don’t equate evangelicals with Cuba. I don’t.” But if these jabs are interpreted mostly as a method of reminding people that Cruz is Cuban, they make a great deal more sense. (Of course, Catholicism has also been used to other people in American politics for centuries.)