VIEWPOINT: How A Very Smart Senator Showed Us Everything Wrong With The Modern GOP In One Week

[Mass]

http://thinkprogress.org/security/2013/02/03/1532701/viewpoint-how-a-very-smart-senator-showed-us-everything-wrong-with-the-modern-gop-in-one-week/

It shouldn’t have been this way.
Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) is an undeniably smart man. Cruz is by all accounts a brilliant litigator, one talented enough in the courtroom to clerk for a Supreme Court justice and win a number of difficult cases as Texas’ Solicitor General. It wouldn’t have been crazy to expect that Cruz would bring a degree of argumentative rigor into the Senate after his victory in the 2012 election.
Well, Cruz had two golden opportunities to showcase his keen analytical mind, as he sits on both Senate committees that held high profile hearings last week, one on gun violence prevention, the other on Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-NE)’s nomination to be Secretary of Defense. And Cruz distinguished himself alright. Just not in the way one might have hoped.
...
Let’s begin with Cruz’ monologue at the gun hearing. The proposed assault weapons ban bore the brunt of his ire. He leaned heavily what he claimed were two Department of Justice papers — one from what he sneeringly characterized as the “Janet Reno Department of Justice under President Clinton” — that had proven the 1994 ban failed to reduce gun violence. In his words, the Senate was about “to reenact a law that, according to the Department of Justice, did absolutely nothing to reduce gun violence.”
Literally every claim in that sentence is false.
...
This adulation illustrates just how deeply rooted GOP dysfunction is. The Republican base elects someone like Cruz, who’s extreme enough to have suggested the United Nations was coming for America’s golf courses. Cruz, who’s not only a ideological member of the base but beholden to it, brings its unsupportable ideas and implacably hostile attitude to the center of the Republican party. And he’s rewarded not just by adulation from his supporters, but widespread praise from the ostensibly serious conservative commentariat. There’s just no incentive for any Republican to speak out against the party’s descent into paranoia, and every reason to believe you’ll be rewarded by giving into it.
So if you want to know why the Republican Party will remain broken for the foreseeable future, go watch the Ted Cruz game tape from this week. And try to think how it could have been otherwise.

[annabanana]

1. a truly despicable creature. . . . n/t

[ProSense]

2. This:

The Republican base elects someone like Cruz, who’s extreme enough to have suggested the United Nations was coming for America’s golf courses. Cruz, who’s not only a ideological member of the base but beholden to it, brings its unsupportable ideas and implacably hostile attitude to the center of the Republican party. And he’s rewarded not just by adulation from his supporters, but widespread praise from the ostensibly serious conservative commentariat.

Cruz and his ilk are demagogues. The appalling thing is that the very serious people (VSP as Krugman calls them) have decided that distortions/lies/propaganda belong in the mainstream. Facts no longer matter.

Senator Kerry addressed this in his Senate farewell speech.

<...>

Like the question of comity in the Senate, the influence of money in our politics also influences our credibility around the world. And so too does the difficulty, the unacceptable and extraordinary difficulty, we have in 2013 in operating the machinery of our own democracy here at home. How extraordinary and how diminishing that more than 40 years after the Voting Rights Act, so many of our fellow citizens still have great difficulty when they show up on election day to cast their vote and have their voice heard. That too is an issue that matters to all of us – because for a country that can and should extol the virtues of democracy around the world, our job is made more difficult when through long lines and overt voter suppression, and efforts to suppress people’s ability to exercise the right that we extol, so many struggle still to exercise that right here at home.

The last of these three obstacles that we have the ability, if not yet the will, to overcome is the unbelievable disregard for facts and science in the conduct of our affairs. It, like the first two, degrades our credibility abroad as well as at home.

My friends, the persistent shouting match of the perpetual campaign, one that takes place in parallel universes thanks to our polarized, self-selecting media, makes it harder and harder to build consensus among people. The people don’t know what to believe. So in many ways it encourages an oversimplification of problems that too often retreat to slogans, not ideas for real solutions.

<...>

http://www.foreign.senate.gov/press/chair/release/senator-john-kerry-delivers-senate-farewell-floor-address-

[freshwest]

9. Yes, I was actually hoping this thread was about that speech... Sigh...

But it needs to be said, that 'smart' does not equal 'wise.'

[hfojvt]

3. interesting, but I am not sure of his motivation

Why does Cruz do these things?


Just fot the ego stroke of having conservative writers praise him?
Does he plan to run for President? Or be selected for Vice President?

I am just not understanding his motivation. As a Republican Senator from a Republican state, he does not need to act this way to get re-elected. Or does he need to be on guard against a primary challenge?

It seems to me that the simplest answer is that for all his supposed intelligence, he really does believe the things he is saying.

[DhhD]

8. He was born in Canada. And he had campaign ads telling Texans that his father came to

Texas to get away from Cuba; what a liar. It is my understanding that the Hispanic population is well aware of this lie. And they report that his Spanish is not of a native accent. So most Texans know that he is a fake. In my opinion, Cruz will amount to the nothing that he just showed for himself these past few days.

Foreign born citizens cannot be President according to the Constitution. He wanted Texans to think that they were supporting a Texas born preemptive President of the United States.

Lying may be pathologic for him. He will be watched.

[Cha]

4. It does defy logic.. how someone so smart

in areas of learning and so completely idiotic in common sense. It renders them useless and turns them into sociopathic Liars of the mittLies variety.

[sheshe2]

5. The republican's lie and the party dies. nt

[DhhD]

6. Ted Cruz is the most extremist person in Texas; now add to it, continual liar.

[DirtyDawg]

7. Watching this guy...

...all I could think of is Joe McCarthy - the early years. He looked like him and he sounded like him. One day, hopefully sooner rather than later, somebody will ask him if he has no decency - or shame. Sadly, all my Texas friends have turned into something hateful...and I hate it.