While I find all of the Republican presidential candidate to be frightening (Kasich is just as extreme as Cruz and Trump, but knows when to shut his mouth), perhaps the scariest is Ted Cruz, a true extremist who seemingly is every bit as insane as his lunatic father, Rafael Cruz, an anti-gay extremist extraordinaire. With the GOP establishment literally many years too late in recognizing the whirlwind it created by welcoming Christofascists, white supremacists and know nothings into the party, Cruz is threatening a revolt of the swamp fever afflicted party base if either he or Donald Trump are not crowned as the party nominee. A piece in
Mother Jones looks at Cruz's threat. Meanwhile, a piece in
The Advocate looks at the insanity and extremism that has enveloped Cruz under the tutelage of his nutcase father. First, these highlights on Cruz's threats to the party establishment:
Ted Cruz, campaigning in Wisconsin ahead of Tuesday's
primary, says that if the Republican Party establishment were to anoint a
candidate other than the two leaders in primary and caucus voting—Cruz and
Donald Trump—at the party convention this summer, the GOP base would
"quite rightly revolt."
Talking with reporters in the
basement of a Masonic Center in Madison, Wisconsin, shortly before recording a
town hall with Fox News in the auditorium upstairs, Cruz dismissed the concept
of a new candidate like Ryan entering the fray. Currently, the Republican
National Convention's Rule 40 mandates that a candidate must win a majority of
the vote in at least eight states in order to get his or her name nominated at
the convention, effectively preventing anyone other than Trump or Cruz from
being placed in contention. Cruz rejected any suggestion that the convention
would scrap Rule 40, as has been widely speculated.
"Both Donald and I have been very clear," Cruz
said. "We shouldn't be changing the rules because Washington is unhappy
with how the people are voting."
He added, "The rules are the
rules."
Still, should party leaders attempt
to nominate a third candidate, Cruz painted a dark vision for how that would go
down. "This fevered pipe dream of Washington, that at the convention they
would parachute in some white knight who will save the Washington establishment,
it is nothing less than a pipe dream," Cruz said. "It ain't gonna
happen. If it did happen, the people would quite rightly revolt."
Cruz's concept of a revolt sounds
far more peaceable than the rioting Trump has envisioned if he wins the voting
but loses at the convention. Cruz said that if a convention selects a third
candidate, "the voters would naturally say, 'To heck with you, we're
staying home.'"
Personally, I can't summon a shred of sympathy for the so-called GOP establishment. They made this entire catastrophe happen. They are now reaping what they sowed. As for Ted Cruz's sinister extremism and dangerous mindset, here are excerpts from The Advocate:
If you follow politics at all, you probably know
Republican presidential hopeful Ted Cruz’s major issue stances — he’s anti-LGBT
equality, anti-abortion rights, a proponent of free-market economics and an
aggressive foreign policy.
But to really kow Cruz’s
worldview, it’s important to know his father, mentor, and top campaign
surrogate, 76-year-old Rev. Rafael Cruz.
“Rafael Cruz is an extremist,”
Chuck Smith, CEO of Equality Texas, tells The Advocate. “He is the senator’s role model. Rafael Cruz spoke at the
World Congress of Families event in Utah with a gay-bashing lineup of hateful
speakers, and he is Ted’s surrogate traveling across the country on the
campaign trail bashing gay people. Like father, like son.”
Ted Cruz, for instance, calls the Supreme Court’s marriage equality ruling
“lawless” and “fundamentally illegitimate,” but his father says it’s the work
of the devil. “The devil overplayed his hand with that decision on June 26,”
Rafael Cruz said in a speech last August, predicting
that godly Americans will rise up against it.
Among Rafael Cruz’s other antigay greatest hits: At the World
Congress of Families event last November, he said gay people want to legalize pedophilia, starting
with an effort to strike down age-of-consent laws. Indeed, he has frequently
described LGBT people as sexual predators. He has also said marriage equality
is part of a government plot to
“destroy the concept of God” and establish socialism in the United States.
Rafael
Cruz seems to have long believed his son was destined for great things.
“Essentially his father groomed him for this moment,” conservative Iowa radio
talk show host and Ted Cruz backer Steve Deace told The
Boston Globe in
January, as father and son were campaigning in the state.
“By the time Ted Cruz was 9, his father was providing heavy
doses of conservative Christian politics at the dinner table,” wrote Globe reporter Tracy Jan. “By 13, the
younger Cruz had memorized the Constitution and through high school toured the
state of Texas, delivering speeches on free market economics and the
Constitution.”
[H[e [Refael] now touts himself as an ordained
minister. His theology goes beyond traditional evangelical and fundamentalist
views. He “is an advocate of Christian dominionism, which essentially holds
that fundamentalist Christians should take over, well, just about everything,”
David Corn wrote in a February Mother
Jones article.
Corn described Rafael Cruz as a “freelancing
evangelical,” and that pretty much sums it up. He has claimed to be a pastor at
a church in Dallas, but there is no record of such an affiliation, according to
a Washington Spectator investigation.
That investigation also found that the Bible college he claims to have attended
doesn’t exist.
However, the conservative
Christian crowds he draws apparently haven’t questioned his credentials, and
religious right leaders see him as an asset to his son’s campaign. “He’s a
clarifying check that Ted’s the real deal,” antigay Iowa activist Bob Vander
Plaats told the Globe.
The lack of distance between father and son shows how
dangerous a Ted Cruz presidency would be, Smith tells The Advocate. He “lets his father say all the fiery
gay-bashing rhetoric, but Ted Cruz will implement that rhetoric in his policies
and appointments,” Smith says. “He is the worst candidate in the race, and I
have no doubt he will discriminate against gay and transgender people all over
the United States if he is elected president.”
“While Donald Trump is
disturbing, Ted Cruz is dangerous, . . .
One thing I have noted over the years as I have watched and kept an eye on the batshitery of the far right Christians: nowhere else other than in Christofascist circles can one get away with peddling outright lies about one's credentials and claim to have attended non-existent "bible colleges" and it simply doesn't matter. It speaks volumes about oth Cruz's and those who support them.
