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General Category => Editorial/Opinion/Blogs => Topic started by: mystery-ak on September 25, 2013, 12:32:52 pm

Title: Ted Cruz, the GOP’s Barack Obama By Jonah Goldberg
Post by: mystery-ak on September 25, 2013, 12:32:52 pm: http://www.nationalreview.com/node/359428/print (http://www.nationalreview.com/node/359428/print)

NATIONAL REVIEW ONLINE

September 25, 2013 12:00 AM
Ted Cruz, the GOP’s Barack Obama
The two men have more in common than you’d think.
By Jonah Goldberg

Ted Cruz is no Joe McCarthy, as so many liberals bizarrely claim. But he might be the conservative Barack Obama. The charge that he’s the new McCarthy is something of a compliment from liberals. It means they don’t like him, can’t really explain why, and need to demonize him instead. In other words, he must be doing something right.

For conservatives, the comparison to Obama probably stings more than the McCarthyite smear.

But think about it. Both men have impeccable educational credentials. Obama went to Occidental College, transferred to Columbia University, and got his law degree from Harvard. Cruz went to Princeton University, where he was a national champion debater, and got a law degree from Harvard. Cruz’s legal career was objectively more impressive than Obama’s. He clerked on the appellate court and for Chief Justice William Rehnquist on the Supreme Court. He held numerous prestigious jobs in and out of government. Like Obama, he taught law, but Cruz was also the solicitor general of Texas and argued before the Supreme Court nine times.

National Review editor Rich Lowry identified one plausible source of elite liberal hatred for Cruz: betrayal: “Cruz is from the intellectual elite, but not of it, a tea-party conservative whose politics are considered gauche at best at the storied universities where he studied. He is, to borrow the words of the 2008 H. W. Brands biography of FDR, a traitor to his class.” (I hate to correct my boss, but Brands didn’t coin that phrase.)

What liberals hate in Cruz, they love in Obama: a product of an elite education who confirms all their feelings of superiority. Obama took the desiccated ideas of campus liberalism and made them seem vibrant, stylish, and even populist.

There are other similarities. But the most relevant one comes in their similar approach to politics (not political philosophy, where they are light years apart).

Both landed in the U.S. Senate, running with larger ambitions in mind and promising to be unstinting champions of their party’s principles. Moreover, both grasp that historically the Senate whittles away presidential timber. Like John F. Kennedy, Obama was there just long enough to run for president. And while Obama was there, his chief goal was burnishing his presidential image, not racking up legislative accomplishments. Cruz has been a senator for eight months, and he already looks like a presidential contender.

In 2012, Obama said the “most important lesson” of his first term was that “you can’t change Washington from the inside.” You need populist pressure from the outside. This was an odd claim on two counts. First, it’s not true. His signature achievement, the Affordable Care Act, was an entirely inside affair, an ugly partisan one involving mercenary horse-trading and countless backroom deals with industry and unions. Second, Obama, the community organizer, always believed salvation lay in organizing a movement. It was the premise at the heart of his 2008 campaign in which he told adoring throngs, “We are the ones we’ve been waiting for.” It says something about Obama’s arrogance that his biggest lesson from his first term was that he was right all along.

Still, this conviction led Obama to turn his presidential campaign into a private political army intended to rally his base for his legislative agenda. That effort has failed utterly. Organizing for Action couldn’t even organize a congressional vote on gun control, never mind a win.

Cruz’s fight to defund Obamacare rests on a similar outsider approach using the Tea Party and allied groups. As he recently told radio host Hugh Hewitt, “The strategy on this all along has been directed not towards Washington but towards the American people. It has been directed towards building a grassroots tsunami.”

If Cruz’s effort fails — and I fear it will — it will be for the same reasons that Obama’s second term has been such a legislative dud. The way you bring change to Washington is through elections. After the elections, change comes from the unsightly process of consensus-building (a.k.a. sausage-making). Both Cruz and Obama have shown little interest in that approach.

Of course, there are huge differences between Obama and Cruz — the most important is that they have completely divergent philosophies. That matters most, but it isn’t everything. The inside game matters too. Cruz likes pointing out Obama’s failures; he should also learn from them.
Title: Re: Ted Cruz, the GOP’s Barack Obama By Jonah Goldberg
Post by: Oceander on September 26, 2013, 03:37:29 am: One big difference tho': Cruz speaks truth to power, Obama merely curries favor with power.
Title: Re: Ted Cruz, the GOP’s Barack Obama By Jonah Goldberg
Post by: happyg on September 26, 2013, 03:43:26 am: Jonah is way off on this one. We don't know how much education Obama has, and by his actions, I doubt if he got good grades at all, or even went to Harvard. Cruz has an actual working background, while Obama was an adjunct teacher, without the title even of professor. I don't see the comparison because one has integrity, and the other is a narcissist who has a ghetto attitude when it comes to governing.
Title: Re: Ted Cruz, the GOP’s Barack Obama By Jonah Goldberg
Post by: sinkspur on September 26, 2013, 03:48:14 am: They are both shameless self-promoters. Neither really cares about working within his party and each thinks he has the charisma to simply draw people by force of personality.
Title: Re: Ted Cruz, the GOP’s Barack Obama By Jonah Goldberg
Post by: truth_seeker on September 26, 2013, 03:58:19 am: Quote from: sinkspur on September 26, 2013, 03:48:14 am
They are both shameless self-promoters. Neither really cares about working within his party and each thinks he has the charisma to simply draw people by force of personality.
And both know it works, too.
Title: Re: Ted Cruz, the GOP’s Barack Obama By Jonah Goldberg
Post by: Oceander on September 26, 2013, 04:32:34 am: Quote from: sinkspur on September 26, 2013, 03:48:14 am
They are both shameless self-promoters. Neither really cares about working within his party and each thinks he has the charisma to simply draw people by force of personality.

/snicker
Title: Re: Ted Cruz, the GOP’s Barack Obama By Jonah Goldberg
Post by: Cincinnatus on September 26, 2013, 04:47:50 am: None of this matters:

Quote
Cruz went to Princeton University, where he was a national champion debater, and got a law degree from Harvard. Cruz’s legal career was objectively more impressive than Obama’s. He clerked on the appellate court and for Chief Justice William Rehnquist on the Supreme Court. He held numerous prestigious jobs in and out of government. Like Obama, he taught law, but Cruz was also the solicitor general of Texas and argued before the Supreme Court nine times.

We have been assured by an authority on such matters that Senator Cruz has nowhere near the background needed to be President as did Obama.

I really dislike it when people inject facts into a perfectly good personal attack on Senator Cruz.
Title: Re: Ted Cruz, the GOP’s Barack Obama By Jonah Goldberg
Post by: mrclose on September 26, 2013, 04:54:53 am: I Am So P!$$ed!

[RANT]
Fact is .. These POS .. ALL of them (GOP) ran on their word that they would repeal or defund ObozoCare!

We no longer hold the Bas-Turds that are excoriating Cruz as liars?

Now, are we to join trash like John MacShame and Harry Reid in mocking Cruz?

Which brings me to a conclusion that I arrived at years ago during my stint in nam .. MacShame collaborated with the enemy, to save his skin, in his 'supposedly' "Heroic" stand under torture!

What more proof do we need than the fact that he joins the enemy of our country in something that involves no such torture?

No, MacShame seems almost 'gleeful' in his attempts to ridicule a man who is standing on principle and promise!

The very same promise that MacShame himself made!

POS![/RANT]
Title: Re: Ted Cruz, the GOP’s Barack Obama By Jonah Goldberg
Post by: Rapunzel on September 26, 2013, 05:24:06 am: Karl Rove, no Ted Cruz cheerleader told Greta Cruz was very impressive, smart, funny, engaging and a lot of other adjectives I cannot remember..... he was impressed was the gist of the interview tonight.
Title: Re: Ted Cruz, the GOP’s Barack Obama By Jonah Goldberg
Post by: mrclose on September 26, 2013, 05:28:52 am: (http://i41.tinypic.com/2vc6nua.jpg)
Daddy Reads "Green Eggs and Ham" to Daughters
Title: Re: Ted Cruz, the GOP’s Barack Obama By Jonah Goldberg
Post by: Rapunzel on September 26, 2013, 05:42:16 am: MRClose... aren't they cute little girls. Late, late last night Cruz was talking about when he started dating his wife she and her family are vegan's. He said he went to CA for Thanksgiving with the family and "it's exactly like every Thanksgiving Dinner in America - except the main course never arrives" I cracked up.. had the exact same thing happen with my first husband, his family were all Vegan's - something he conveniently failed to tell me... We went up to Yosemite for Thanksgiving at his grandparents and I walked into the house and said "I don't smell a turkey cooking"..... to which he tells me -- oh my family doesn't eat meat... the vegies were good, the tofu stuff not so good.. and no pumpkin pie, chocolate pie... so I think what can you do to screw up a chocolate meringue pie? Um you can if the chocolate is carb instead of chocolate ~LOL~

So Cruz said her family asks him "how do Cuban's celebrate Thanksgiving." He told them we roast a live piglett....... said the looks on their faces were priceless.

I really like this man a lot, like his sense of humor and his ability to tell stories is equal to what we had with RR....
Title: Re: Ted Cruz, the GOP’s Barack Obama By Jonah Goldberg
Post by: mrclose on September 26, 2013, 06:11:36 am: Cute as two 'buttons'!
Title: Re: Ted Cruz, the GOP’s Barack Obama By Jonah Goldberg
Post by: rustynail on September 26, 2013, 10:18:00 am: Jonah Goldberg has been inside the beltway too long.
Title: Re: Ted Cruz, the GOP’s Barack Obama By Jonah Goldberg
Post by: aligncare on September 26, 2013, 12:09:02 pm: Quote from: Oceander on September 26, 2013, 03:37:29 am
One big difference tho': Cruz speaks truth to power, Obama merely curries favor with power.

Amen!

Another difference? Cruz's academic record is an open book. Obama's is shrouded in mystery. And what is known about Obama points to a mediocre record at best. We also know Obama was a stoner and snorted the white powder from high school through college. Oh, and one more difference. Cruz respects the Constitution, Obama uses it as toilet paper.

The two couldn't be any more different.
Title: Re: Ted Cruz, the GOP’s Barack Obama By Jonah Goldberg
Post by: Lipstick on a Hillary on September 26, 2013, 12:15:03 pm: Obama wasn't routinely trashed by his own party's power structure either.