Two thoughtful endorsements of Ted Cruz
While cable television and the general media goes nuts of the childish feud between Donald Trump and Fox News, Ted Cruz today got two different endorsements that not only supported his nomination for president, but also outlined in detail two completely different reasons for supporting him.
The first, at the website Legal Insurrection, outlined Ted Cruz’s consistent and long term history as a trustworthy constitutional conservative. Not only does the article review Cruz’s history in the Senate, where he did whatever he could to fulfill his campaign promises (often prevented from doing so by his own Republican caucus), the article also looks at his background before becoming a senator. Its conclusion?
In short, Cruz has a long (dating back to his early teens) record of being a conservative in both principle and action. He didn’t bound out of bed one day, put his finger to the wind, and decide to become a conservative (as was charged against Mitt Romney, among others); he’s always been a conservative. [emphasis in original]
Conservatives have been complaining for decades that they can’t get a reliable conservative nominated to run for president. With Cruz, we actually have that chance, and he will be running against the weakest Democratic candidate since George McGovern.
The second article outlines Cruz’s particular advantages for cleaning out the bureaucratic corruption in the Justice Department and elsewhere in the federal government.
Of the remaining Republican presidential candidates, Senator Ted Cruz is the best choice to repair the mess that Eric Holder and Barack Obama have left at the United States Department of Justice. Cruz alone has an understanding of both the corrosive and lawless policies of the last seven years as well as the complex task of restoring the rule of law. Cruz has an outsider’s zeal to reverse Obama’s lawlessness with the insider’s ability to overcome bureaucratic inertia.
The article notes correctly, that simply replacing the political appointees at the top of any agency won’t work. You’ve got to fight the entrenched bureaucrats as well.
The federal government is run mostly by swarms of career bureaucrats who are immune from termination absent grotesque misconduct. Even bureaucrats who lie, steal and cheat are still employed at the Justice Department. Career employees are skilled at delaying and diverting the wishes of their political overseers. Remember, only a handful of political appointees will manage a Justice Department division with hundreds of career staff and lawyers.
To reverse the culture of lawlessness that has overtaken the Obama Justice Department, the political appointees will need the skills of an insider with the ideology of an outsider, just like Ted Cruz has.
Political overseers, and presidents, who merely issue commands to the ministerial state will invariably have those commands diluted, ignored, opposed and reversed. Assuming that Trump could issue edicts and reverse the rot at Justice is naïve. It takes an outsider with the skill of an insider to make anything happen at the Justice Department, something Cruz displayed when at the Federal Trade Commission. Trump’s proclivity to rely on Wall Street or Manhattan lawyers to accomplish anything would only weaken his effectiveness in curing the government rot.
Fixing our corrupt and damaging federal government requires someone who knows how it operates, has a conservative belief that government is not the way to do things in the first place, and a staunch and strigent willingness to follow through with those beliefs. Unlike ever other candidate running for president, Cruz has all these attributes, not on what he has said but what he has done.
Based on what I have read, Cruz appears likely to win big in Iowa. Trump, realizing this fact as well, has probably backed out of the debate tomorrow to create a distraction and an excuse for that defeat. If Cruz can take the momentum from that win to do well in New Hampshire and win in South Carolina, he will be poised to become the nominee.
I might be dreaming, but it seems to me that this is exactly what every tea party conservative should be striving for, aggressively. Trump might sound good at times, but it is very doubtful he will deliver, even if he wants to. Everything I have learned about Ted Cruz however tells me that he can.
Posted from a coffee shop just outside the airport in Kalamazoo, Michigan, as I wait for my flight back home.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
“It’s easy to assume Trump’s bombast and authoritarian nature would enable him to reverse quickly the policies of the last seven years at Justice. But such a belief in Trump is mistaken, and understandable, when you have never served as a federal employee inside the leviathan.”
Either way, if Cruz becomes president he appoints, oversees and deals directly with the justice department, if he does not become president and Trump does then Trump makes him either the Attorney General or consults him or someone much like him heavily in its oversight.
This one subject does not a president make, whom ever becomes the next president. Its important that it gets cleaned out but it not thee one over riding issue.
No, cleaning up the DOJ is not THE issue, there are also the IRS, EPA, DOE, and many other government agencies that need to be cleaned up.
Robert wrote: “You’ve got to fight the entrenched bureaucrats as well.”
This is why corrupt bureaucrats such as Lois Lerner have no paper trail from the White House to do their misdeeds. They see the wink and the nod from the president and go into misbehavior mode. That she (and others) has not been punished for her misdeeds is a signal to all the other entrenched liberal bureaucrats that misbehavior is safe, at least for now, with the implication that they should continue or initiate misdeeds that seem to comply with the president’s hoped-for change.
Eric Holder signaled lawlessness when, early in the Obama administration, he dropped charges against a couple of New Black Panthers who intimidated voters outside a polling place. It became clear that it was OK to reward Obama’s friends and to punish his enemies, as Obama once said, and at least some of the corrupt bureaucrats took him up on it.
This is a *very* important issue, as we cannot have liberty when the government is corrupt. We cannot have presidents who operate through cults of personality or win popularity contests. Those lead to us becoming a nation of men (friends are rewarded and enemies are punished) instead of a nation of laws (the lawless are punished, the law abiding enjoy liberty to follow their aspirations).
A major problem with large governments or governments with great control is that they demand that their citizenry do what they (the government) wish, not what their citizens wish to do.
“With great power comes great responsibility.” — Spider-Man comic, circa 1962
Perhaps our only president who fully understood this concept was George Washington; at least he set examples that followed this aphorism. It is clear that too many of our modern “public servants” do not, as they serve us ill, using their power to harm us, hinder us, or to enrich themselves at our expense — they have become absolutely corrupt.
“A major problem with large governments or governments with great control is that they demand that their citizenry do what they (the government) wish, not what their citizens wish to do.”
The place where failure has taken place in our system is in the leadership in our Congress. Congressmen and women and Senators who acquire the majority and are unwilling or for some reason (blackmail / fear of financial destruction ?) unable to exercise that power and push back against the abuses of power of the other branches of the government when they have the majority have failed their constituents and the country as a whole.
Whether the opposition has calculated that to stop out this particular president from the abuses of power that he and his followers has had to revert to is either a bad political move OR their agenda IS to support those un American and un Constitutional agendas. Choose one, either way it is failure and maybe even treason for some, and people wonder where conspiracy theory’s are born?
I think it is fair to say that in just about every major decision and move that has been made regarding the running of the country’s finances, immigration, the Justice Department, foreign affairs, military, trade and sovereignty has been overtly for the last 8 to 12 years 180 degrees from the long term and short term interests of our country IMO.
And what leadership has brought us this gift of confusion and recklessness? The both Bush’s, the Clinton’s and the Obama’s and a Congress that has been apparently willingly manipulated by them all. And who is running to continue this fantastic agenda? A Bush and a Clinton and the political machines that have put them in power.
This just in:
http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/gossip/confidential/chelsea-clinton-gearing-white-house-bid-article-1.2510390
Its the gift that just keeps on giving, there is no such thing as hubris in politics, just raw and determined ambition.
Correction: ” there is no such thing as a lack of hubris in politics”.
I wish I could vote in the USA. However, all I can do is give perspective.
We fight the same battle, the Canadian conservative as well as the American. In fact, any conservative.
We conservatives have a deep and imbibing believe in Judo-Christian law which is based upon Mosaic law,
Consider the choice of the Apollo 8 astronauts in their choice of Genesis for their “report” from space. As a scientist (retired) I can fully accept the genesis account when the proper linguistic interpretation is given. These astronauts spoke an uncensored deep believe when political correctness was in its infantsy. The more power to them.
The big discussion of conservative values and liberal values really come down to which system reflects the morals of the Judo-Christian system. Right from wrong. I believe it is wrong for politicians to accept bribes from drug cartels. Yet, when one read books like “The Reapers Line” ones evaluates all politicians as corrupt sociopaths! Shootout in Miracle valley only gives an preliminary account of how the Obama admin will treat civil disobedience.
If one were to consider the various Republican candidates upon their past performance ( a management foundation) one can only come to one conclusion: Ted Cruz is the bonafied conservative while Trump seems to be the Brian Mulroney for the USA. We in Canada, have lived to regret voting for this liberal in disguise! Believe me!!!!!
Dr. Ben Carson is also a solid conservative. Behind Cruz in the polls, but it’s early.
THE issue in this election is the supreme court. The next president is almost certain to appoint 1 or 2 new justices, and if the serve 2 term 2 or 3. And a conservative court is THE most critical firewall against governmental distinction IMHO.
I also happen to really like Cruz because he is running in Iowa on a platform to end ethonal subsidies, and that is important because to fix DC we need a leader elected with a mandate to gore ALL oxen, not just those of the other party.
Some of his foreign policy positions, or at least rhetoric, strike me as immature as I don’t know how you carpet bomb a decidedly minority enemy immersed within an innocent civilians population, but I chalk this up to playing to the emotion of the nominating electorate as most all the candidates have.
Yo, Mr. Z– lived in Kazoo for 20 years!
College crowd are big leftists, but if you get into the outskirts– mostly solid Conservatives.
Yes, Legal Insurrection is a great resource.
Har!– The “Therapy-Turkey,” crazy stuff. Have a lawyer-friend in PDX who does Advocacy work & although he’s extremely liberal, even he draws the line at “emotional support turkey’s.”