Don G. Dinsdale Loc: El Cajon, CA (San Diego County)

David Brooks Loses It on Ted Cruz

Brent Bozell - Jan 13, 2016 - Twonhall.com


New York Times columnist David Brooks poses as a moderate who never stoops to being crabbily doctrinaire. He is the very model of a PBS/NPR "conservative" -- defining conservatism in a very 1950s way, as wearing dreary gray suits and liking Ike and Dick Nixon. Go along, and get along with the liberal elites.

But as conservatives know all too well, people who pose as "moderates" -- politically and rhetorically -- have a way of losing their sweetly temperate nature when conservatives seriously challenge the liberal order of things. David Brooks is clearly not a moderate or temperate man when it comes to Ted Cruz. Just the thought of this man triggers a spontaneous combustion.

On Jan. 8, Brooks started his new year at PBS with a bang, suggesting Cruz's rhetoric carried "dark and satanic tones...we're going to stomp on this person, we're going to crush that person, we're going to destroy that person. It is an ugly world in Ted Cruz's world." Even PBS anchor Judy Woodruff found that S-word a bit impolite -- although she was laughing all the way. It's what one does in the face of rhetorical excesses against conservatives. Brooks then pretended to walk it back, declaring Cruz was merely "Mephistophelian."

On Jan. 12, he doubled down in a Times column titled "The Brutalism of Ted Cruz." He repeated his attack: "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." On behalf of Obama, Brooks proclaimed, "The fact is this apocalyptic diagnosis is ridiculous."

I guess we should be relieved Brooks no longer finds satanic influences in Cruz. That said, how bizarre this accusation of paganism! Usually Cruz is painted as a Christian fanatic.

On the other hand, his lack of "compassion, gentleness, and mercy" -- all qualities possessed by Brooks and Obama -- clearly suggests Cruz isn't very Christian. "The best conservatism balances support for free markets with a Judeo-Christian spirit of charity, compassion and solidarity," he declared. "Cruz replaces this spirit with Spartan belligerence. He sows bitterness, influences his followers to lose all sense of proportion and teaches them to answer h**e with h**e. This Trump-Cruz conservatism looks more like tribal, blood and soil European conservatism than the pluralistic American kind."

Here we go again. The next step is to dismiss his followers as the "poor, uneducated and easy-to-command" types.

This man is not the one to lecture about "answering h**e with h**e" and "losing all sense of proportion." He comes unglued when he talks about Cruz. When the new Senator from Texas arrived in 2013, Brooks sneered, "I think he's made a lot of enemies. It doesn't help that he has a face that looks a little like Joe McCarthy." Ah, but this is the rhetoric of the left -- so it's acceptable.

Compare all this with "conservative" Brooks' adoration of Barack Obama, famously endorsing his ambitions in an Oct. 19, 2006 column tiled "Run, Barack, Run." No real conservative would assent to that headline unless it was dripping with sarcasm (rhetorically excessive, to be sure). It wasn't. Brooks concluded Obama was the "rarest of creatures: a mega hyped phenomenon that lives up to the hype."

Even at the late date of May 27, 2015 -- after the scandals of Fast and Furious, Solyndra, the VA, the IRS, HealthCare.Gov, B******i, ad infinitum -- Brooks still let all of his mental faculties cease in a moment of ecstasy on PBS: "President Obama has run an amazingly scandal-free administration, not only he himself, but the people around him. He's chosen people who have been pretty scandal-free. And so there are people in Washington who do set a standard of integrity, who do seem to attract people of quality."

There is nothing moderate -- or accurate -- about that David Brooks.


Cruz: You Realize Democrats Are 'Very Eager' to Run Against Trump, Right?

Guy Benson - Jan 13, 2016 - Townhall.com


Of course they are. I've spoken to some of them. They're mostly keeping their powder dry for the moment, but they're so ecstatic over the Trump phenomenon that they're practically prepared to don "Make America Great Again!" hats throughout primary season. For what it's worth, they also say they see Cruz as another easy demonization mark ("extreme" conservative, "Senator Shutdown," etc.), but they seem less smug about that assessment as Hillary stumbles and polls like this become the norm. Why the Trump "enthusiasm" among professional Democrats? Because they know that a match-up against Trump would virtually guarantee that their team retains the White House, even with a wheezing corrupt liar as their standard-bearer. Trump's fundamentals are atrocious among the broader e*****rate; his loose canon schtick obviously doesn't wear well with most v**ers -- who'd be...highly susceptible to the tsunami of negativity Democrats' billion-dollar attack machine would unleash against him if he's nominated. Trump is an opposition researcher's dream come true. The teflon effect goes down the tubes in a general e******n setting. The good news for the celebrity billionaire is that he enjoys universal name recognition. The bad news is that his political brand is horrifically bad, especially among moderate, female, young, and Hispanic v**ers, among whom Republicans must improve in order to win. Plus, one can't help but wonder if some Democrats may privately be pondering whether Trump will resort back to embracing the liberalism he's espoused for most of his adult life just as soon as leading certain v**ers around by the nose is no longer in his immediate interests. All of this is obvious to conservatives who've consistently opposed Trump's candidacy. What's newsworthy is that Ted Cruz is now advancing this line of argument.

What seems to have finally -- finally! -- forced the Cruz to abandon the "we're besties!" routine is Trump's relentless, intentional amplification of the birtherism narrative, the premise of which is that the Texas Senator is ineligible for the presidency because he was born in Canada. For reasons that we have outlined over and over and over again, this is incorrect. Based on a commonsense reading of the constitution (US citizens who've never been naturalized are by definition natural born) and explicit federal law, Cruz can be president. This should be a non-issue, tortured re-definitions of what "naturalization" means notwithstanding. Trump pretends he's merely asking questions for Cruz's own good, and says that he'd "h**e" to see this become a problem for Cruz. Hey, people are talking about it, Trump shrugs with a twinkle in his eye, before warning that the controversy could lead to lawsuits and uncertainty. And by "people" he means "Donald Trump" -- in tweets, on television, and in speeches. Behold, a charming vignette from a recent Trump rally in Nevada:

Ted Cruz has a real cloud h*****g over his head," Trump said. "So the question is: Is Ted Cruz, is he a natural-born citizen?" The crowd again shouted, "No!" "I just heard this: He was a citizen of Canada for a long time," Trump said, referring to Cruz having citizenship in the United States and Canada until recently. "He was a citizen of the United States, I believe, and Canada simultaneously. How do you, how -- what's going on here? So, he's got to straighten these things out." Trump questioned why Cruz didn't revoke his Canadian citizenship years ago, especially when he became a U.S. senator. "Does he get a pass from that?" Trump asked. The crowd again answered, "No!"

But he'd surely h**e for any of this to damage his dear, dear friend, you must understand. Cruz is punching back harder than usual because there's some evidence that this story is hurting him, among his own v**ers, and among the Trump base he hopes to inherit if and when the real estate mogul fades. Today's new Des Moines Register poll indicates this is less of a potent issue than PPP does, but Cruz's standing has eroded by seven points since the last survey. Yesterday afternoon, Cruz lobbed initial salvos at Trump on this, including floating the idea that Democrats would love to face Trump in the general (message: he'll lose to Hillary), and hitting Trump for citing a liberal law professor to advance this storyline (message: Trump's a say-anything non-conservative). Then there were the additional indications that a high-octane Trump/Cruz "cage match" the latter candidate has long attempted to avoid might be coming soon, viaRealClearPolitics:

Although Ted Cruz has insisted he will not personally attack Donald Trump as the race for the Republican nomination heats up, supporters of the Texas senator appear to be weighing how best to target Trump in Iowa, where Cruz holds a narrow lead. A message-testing phone call in Iowa on Monday floated seven distinct lines of attack against the national frontrunner, asking whether each one would make the listener more or less likely to support him.

Among the criticisms tested were messages about Trump's past support for a******n and single-payer healthcare (which he still defends), as well as a line "[depicting] Trump as 'a New York liberal pretending to have conservative values.'" RCP couldn't confirm for sure that these calls were sponsored by Team Cruz, despite several context clues. Well, how's this for confirmation?

Oh, it's on. And Thursday's Fox Business Network debate in South Carolina could be rather memorable indeed. I'll leave you with this Iowa anecdote that may warm the hearts of anti-Trump Republicans everywhere -- presented with the requisite caveat that rival campaigns underestimate The Donald at their peril!!


Ted Cruz Had a Short and Sweet Summary of the State of the Union Address

Christine Rousselle / Jan 13, 2016 / Townhall.com


Republican p**********l candidate Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) had some issues with last night's State of the Union address. Namely, he thought that President Obama was completely in denial about the actual state of the country.

In an interview with NBC's Lester Holt, Cruz elaborated that he was not thrilled with Obama's omission of any mention of the Navy sailors briefly held hostage by Iran, and that he believes he can beat Hillary Clinton.