New York Times: Weird is the Essence of Ted Cruz

As promised, today Ted Cruz launched his presidential campaign today at the always toxic Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia.  Given Cruz's insanity- and that of much of the GOP base - and detachment from reality, the venue was most fitting.  Blogger friend, Bob Felton, aptly described Liberty University:

Liberty University, home to something called the Center for Creation Studies, where uneducated yahoos “research, promote, and communicate a robust young-Earth creationist view of Earth history.” Where, in short, educated people who have done the hard work of actually understanding the science are … unwelcome.

That Cruz selected a place like Liberty which would have been shunned in the GOP in which I grew up says much about both Cruz and today's GOP.  The New York Times went on to describe  Cruz as both "weird" and "out of touch with reality" among other things.   Not surprisingly, Cruz made his announcement to a full house since Liberty University students faced fines if they failed to attend.  Here are highlights from the Times editorial:

“Think just how different the world would be,” said Senator Ted Cruz on Monday, in a speech so packed with vision-spinning and the word “imagine” that it seemed as if John Lennon had returned, as a Hispanic Texan running a hard-right, anti-establishment, Christian-themed campaign for the White House. Weird. But weird is the essence of Mr. Cruz . . . .

Of course, if you know Mr. Cruz, or are familiar with how government is supposed to work, or with reality in general, you’ll find some of his imaginaries problematic, like abolishing the Internal Revenue Service, sealing the border, or “repealing every word of Obamacare.”

“Imagine a federal government that works to defend the sanctity of human life and to uphold the sacrament of marriage,” he said. But Mr. Cruz says he is a champion of personal liberty, too, and gay people who love each other are demanding their liberty to marry, just not in a way he finds acceptable. No data support Mr. Cruz’s claim that insurance premiums are “skyrocketing” under Obamacare. Immigrants, legal and otherwise, are building this country, and efforts to vacuum-seal the border would continue to fail, and the country would suffer from its hostility to its immigrants no matter what Mr. Cruz says. The rest of the world, of course, is indifferent to one Republican’s oratorical dog whistles. The global climate will keep changing, and causing calamities, with or without the acknowledgment of Mr. Cruz and his fellow climate know-nothings.

His federalist views are incoherent: he wants states to be free to experiment with marijuana legalization, but attacked Mr. Obama for not cracking down on states that do so.

Cruz is a dangerous demagogue who, if he really believes the batshitery that comes out of his mouth, belongs in a mental ward.