Ted Cruz’s demented strategy: He doesn’t need to win the White House to push America rightward

[DonViejo]

Blocking legislation, defunding the government and thwarting compromise is the real mission — and he's winning

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

Ted Cruz’s candidacy highlights a fundamental rift in the Republican Party, a rift that observers often misunderstand as simply a tug-of-war between different gradations of conservatism. It is a gulf far more profound than this. Most Republicans recognize that the government must regulate some aspects of American capitalism, providing Social Security, veterans benefits, workplace safety, and basic infrastructure at the very least. But Cruz belongs to a reactionary wing of the party that rejects the idea that the government has any role at all to play in the American economy. Since the 1950s, the leaders of Cruz’s wing have been fighting to take the American government back to the days before FDR’s New Deal.

After unregulated capitalism sparked the stock market crash of 1929 and the ensuing 10-year Depression, Democrats and most Republicans came to accept the idea that the federal government must protect workers, provide jobs and establish a social safety net to keep people from starving. But big business leaders in the Republican Party loathed these programs. New Deal labor laws required businessmen to obey basic rules about safety, wages and hours, cutting into profits. New laws gave workers the right to unionize, and the right to join in a political faction strong enough to counter organizations of businessmen. At the same time, the New Deal raised taxes to pay for the new social safety net. Republican businessmen howled that these laws prevented them from making and keeping as much money as possible. They were “soak the rich” programs that would “crack the timbers of the Constitution.” The New Deal was socialism, pure and simple, they insisted.

But most Americans saw an active government as the proper response to the conditions of modern industrialism, and reactionary businessmen cried in the wilderness.

In 1951, fresh out of Yale, the son of a wealthy oil man launched a radical movement to break the popular New Deal consensus and take the party back to the pro-business government policies of Herbert Hoover. Speaking for the nation’s wealthy businessmen, William F. Buckley Jr. insisted that government must never interfere with either Christianity or “freedom,” a word he turned inside out. In Buckley’s worldview, American freedom no longer meant personal liberty; it meant the right of the wealthy to accumulate as much money as possible. He excoriated regulation and taxes as “collectivism” that redistributed wealth, and warned that welfare legislation destroyed individualism. Bemoaning the extraordinary popularity of America’s new government activism, he maintained that it was leading the nation to full-blown communism. He called for right-minded Americans to reverse the tide and restore the economic freedom he insisted was America’s fundamental principle. But Buckley and his ilk made little headway at first, for a mere 11 years after the Depression, very few Americans still believed in wholly unfettered capitalism.

more
http://www.salon.com/2015/04/05/ted_cruzs_demented_strategy_he_doesnt_need_to_win_the_white_house_to_push_america_rightward/

[pinto]

1. Good piece. Thanks for the post.

Some of it seems speculative, but the broad point is on target I think. Cruz, I assume, knows he'll never win the Presidency nor be a VP candidate. What he can do though is to fuel anti-government actions every step of the way.

[redruddyred]

2. we democrats need to work harder at creating our own narrative

has the republican controlled congress done anything substantial yet? we need to keep calling them incompetent.

[salib]

4. Unfortunately, even that plays into the meme that "Government IS the problem"

Of course they are incompetent. That is for reasonable people whom we might reach and convince not to vote Repug.

[redruddyred]

5. I never have the filibuster stats abt when I am canvassing.

should probably get my hands on those.
need to keep painting these guys as the obstructionist arseholes they really are.

[salib]

6. Yep. They are.

And THAT shows the positive power of Government being undermined by these reactionaries.

[redruddyred]

7. obamacare is getting some good press

at least in the daily kos anyhow.
one dude was so psyched/grateful that he started working for us. and this was back in 2014.

I want a "ted cruz and rand paul hate america and americans" narrative in the vein of the "liberals who are against the iraq war hate our troops" meme of the bush years.
we just have to be like bill o'reilly and shout it louder and again and again and again because everyone knows it's not what you say but how many times you say it.

[Jim Lane]

14. I'd go with "tools of big business" rather than "hate America"

An attack always does much better if it's based on and reinforces a pre-existing opinion. (That's why the 47% video hurt Romney -- he already had an image as an elitist.)

IIRC, polling reveals that a large majority of Americans believe that big business has too much influence over government. There's also definitely an image of the GOP as the more pro-business party. (Look, I know the Democratic Party doesn't exactly have clean hands in that regard, but I'm talking about the widespread public perception. I think many voters would criticize the Dems on this basis, too, but even more would criticize the Republicans.)

To make the case that Cruz and Paul hate America, you pretty much have to start from scratch. To paint them as being at the beck and call of their corporate paymasters is a much easier task.

[redruddyred]

18. hold up brah, that's too many words.

& I wanna get mad at those BUMS ON WELFARE.

I don't think it's hard to argue "love corporations -> hate america". look what walmart et al is doing to us. it's just the next logical step.

hyperbole is always more convincing. this is why I abuse it so well.

[hifiguy]

16. The problem is not with creating a narrative. That's simple.

The problem is that the M$M will never acknowledge that narrative even exists. And if it doesn't exist in the media, it doesn't exist at all. The M$M serves the tenth-percenters and them alone.

[redruddyred]

19. is this the same MSM sarah palin's been bitching abt all these years?

I wonder how the tea party princess would feel to know her words are being parroted by KARL MARX' BIGGEST FAN.

[RKP5637]

3. Spoken like a true terrorist! n/t

[Triana]

8. "Collectivism" -- John Bircher language. n/t

[Enthusiast]

9. Ted Cruz is a fucking dunce.

[BillZBubb]

10. So were reagan and little bush.

They both won two terms as president.

[Enthusiast]

11. Frightening.

You don't suppose?

[annabanana]

13. I WISH he was a dunce!

He'd be easier to counter.. He knows exactly what he's doing.

[Enthusiast]

17. But he seems so dunce-like.

[annabanana]

12. kicking for visibility.. very basic history here..

If you want to know how we got into this predicament, you have to understand where it came from.

[hifiguy]

15. Rick Perlstein's excellent "Before The Storm"

sets out a great overview of the rise of the batshit right from the time of FDR up through the 1964 election. Essential reading.