NY Times Tears Into Trump, Cruz, Rest of Field as Racist, Extremist, 'Monster in the Mirror'
By Clay Waters | March 5, 2016 | 3:54 PM EST
The New York Times on Friday and Saturday let its readers know that the Republicans were getting what they deserved for pandering to right-wing extremism and xenophobia, while Hillary Clinton had successfully gained the sensible center. Friday’s lead editorial, “The G.O.P.’s Monster in the Mirror,” began with a little implied Trumpian vulgarity, then smeared the two Republican senators in the presidential race as extremist. Paul Krugman doubled down, calling the field racist, while Ted Cruz was heckled and Hillary Clinton hailed on Saturday's front page.
Holy Mitt, what a meltdown.
Add this one to Donald Trump’s lengthening list of firsts: He’s forced a Republican Party reckoning overdue for years, all in a few days. It took the Trump-dominated Super Tuesday contests to awaken Republican leaders to the fact that the darkest elements of the party’s base, which many of them have embraced or exploited, are now threatening their party.
Last week, Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz, elected to the Senate partly on their appeal to extremists, seemed to realize that they weren’t attractive enough to win Mr. Trump’s crowd.
That same day, columnist Paul Krugman’s "Clash of Republican Con Artists” also carried the idea that all the Republicans are as scary and racist as Trump. The text box: “Trump Isn’t the Only Fraud Running.”
So Republicans are going to nominate a candidate who talks complete nonsense on domestic policy; who believes that foreign policy can be conducted via bullying and belligerence; who cynically exploits racial and ethnic hatred for political gain.
But that was always going to happen, however the primary season turned out. The only news is that the candidate in question is probably going to be Donald Trump. Establishment Republicans denounce Mr. Trump as a fraud, which he is. But is he more fraudulent than the establishment trying to stop him? Not really.
Actually, when you look at the people making those denunciations, you have to wonder: Can they really be that lacking in self-awareness?
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Mr. Ryan also declares that the “party of Lincoln” must “reject any group or cause that is built on bigotry.” Has he ever heard of Nixon’s “Southern strategy”; of Ronald Reagan’s invocations of welfare queens and “strapping young bucks” using food stamps; of Willie Horton?
Put it this way: There’s a reason whites in the Deep South vote something like 90 percent Republican, and it’s not their philosophical attachment to libertarian principles.
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....the Trump phenomenon threatens the con the G.O.P. establishment has been playing on its own base. I’m talking about the bait and switch in which white voters are induced to hate big government by dog whistles about Those People, but actual policies are all about rewarding the donor class.
What Donald Trump has done is tell the base that it doesn’t have to accept the whole package. He promises to make America white again -- surely everyone knows that’s the real slogan, right? -- while simultaneously promising to protect Social Security and Medicare, and hinting at (though not actually proposing) higher taxes on the rich. Outraged establishment Republicans splutter that he’s not a real conservative, but neither, it turns out, are many of their own voters.
Just to be clear, I find the prospect of a Trump administration terrifying, and so should you. But you should also be terrified by the prospect of a President Rubio, sitting in the White House with his circle of warmongers, or a President Cruz, whom one suspects would love to bring back the Spanish Inquisition.
Another entry in the media’s “even Republicans hate Ted Cruz” file, Jonathan Mahler filed from Austin for Saturday’s front page, “Cruz Adopted Activist Vision As State Lawyer.”
From its start in 1999, the office of the solicitor general of Texas was run by a plain-spoken Mormon, a by-the-books lawyer known for mentoring young attorneys and defending the state, whatever the political consequences.
The young lawyers loved him. The state’s legal community hailed him as a man of dignity and integrity. And the office seldom showed up in the headlines.
But everything changed in January 2003, when Ted Cruz took over.
(Cue shudder-inducing music)
Within months of his appointment to the job, Mr. Cruz, then 31, set about transforming this under-the-radar, apolitical office into an aggressively ideological, attention-grabbing one. From a nondescript government building in the shadow of the Capitol, he inserted himself into scores of politically charged cases around the country, bombarding the United States Supreme Court with amicus briefs on hot-button issues like abortion and gun control.
His focus on gaining attention clashed with the sensibilities of many of the lawyers who worked for him and were accustomed to a more scrupulous and less publicity-minded approach. Before the end of his first year, half of the eight attorneys working in the office had left, raising concern inside the attorney general’s office about whether Mr. Cruz was the right choice for the job.
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The focus on Supreme Court cases that did not directly involve Texas dismayed some of the lawyers on the staff, who felt the office was losing its legal and ethical rigor in favor of politics and seeking headlines.
One incident that a couple of Mr. Cruz’s lawyers found especially troubling arose during Medellín v. Texas, which he has described as the biggest case of his tenure. In a sense, it was a relatively minor issue -- one including a cartoon character -- but it was memorable to those who worked in the office.
The case involved two teenage girls in Houston who were raped and murdered. One of the victims was wearing a watch featuring Goofy, the Disney character. According to two lawyers who worked in the office at the time, Mr. Cruz wanted to describe it as a Mickey Mouse watch in his brief to the Supreme Court because he thought it would make for a more powerful image for the justices. The two lawyers requested anonymity because they remain active in the Texas legal community, where Mr. Cruz has great influence.
“People were really shocked,” said one of the lawyers. “He wanted to misrepresent the record -- to lie -- for rhetorical or dramatic effect.”
The office’s first brief before the Supreme Court, filed in 2005, describes the grisly scene of José Medellín and his fellow gang members dividing up the money and jewelry taken from the two dead girls: “Medellín’s brother kept one of the girls’ Mickey Mouse watch.”
When the case returned to the court two years later, Mr. Cruz apparently had a change of heart. The reference in his brief was now to a “Disney-brand Goofy watch.”
Mr. Cruz said through his spokeswoman that he had no recollection of the episode.
If the worse thing Cruz’s enemies can come up with is being overzealous in prosecuting the killers of two teenage girls...
Not even the Arts pages escaped anti-conservative politics, as Louis Bayard on Friday described Mr. Carson, the butler on Downton Abbey, as “further to the right than Ted Cruz.”
Hillary Clinton, by contrast, was blessed with a story on Saturday’s front page by Amy Chozick, “Clinton Offers Economic Plan Focused on Jobs,” which perfectly positioned Hillary as the happy medium between the angry populists on her right (Trump) and left (Sanders).
In an election year defined by angry populism, Hillary Clinton made an optimistic economic pitch on Friday, presenting a wide-ranging plan for job growth that would provide incentives for corporations that invest in employees and strip tax benefits from companies that move jobs overseas....But unlike Mr. Sanders, her Democratic rival, or Mr. Trump, Mrs. Clinton did not espouse a red-hot indictment of the private sector or offer a dire assessment of the state’s future. She provided a stark contrast with their messaging, which came on a day in which the government said job growth accelerated in February while wages had stagnated.”
Source URL:
http://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/clay-waters/2016/03/05/ny-times-tears-trump-cruz-rest-field-racist-extremist-monster-mirror 
