Texas Senator Ted (Rafael Edward) Cruz has often been depicted on this site and other venues where progressive pundits ply their craft, as a blithering buffoon emerging from a political clown car leaning so far to the right that it’s bumpers scrape the roadway. Well, he is that, but he’s also a man of parts who, if he was a progressive Democrat, would be in the very Shelby, Palin, Gingrich, Huckabee and Trump crosshairs as the president. In other words Cruz would be targeted by the same birther crowd that’s convinced that Barack Obama is a Kenyan interloper without portfolio of a legitimate birth certificate and a MUSLIM to boot and hangs with COMMIES.
Work with me here. Cruz was born elsewhere and not elsewhere in America, but elsewhere in the cold confines of neighboring Canada. If I may borrow liberally from Wiki and its sources, Rafael came to be in Calgary, Alberta some 42 years ago. Pop was Cuban and not a citizen at the time; mom was an Irish/Italian from Wilmington and was an American citizen. So there’s a similarity with Obama insofar as one parent was an American citizen, another parent was a citizen of another country. It is a fact that even if both parents of the president were non-citizens, as long as Barack was born in the U.S. he’s one of us by golly.
Another interesting intersection in their backgrounds is a connection with COMMIES. Obama’s alleged connection was more direct as he was accused (falsely) of being best buds (he wasn’t) with left-wing radical and self-described Commie bomb-thrower, Bill Ayres who was behind the Weatherman anti-Vietnam radicals. Padre Cruz was a freedom fighter with the COMMIE revolutionary, Fidel Castro.
Whether it’s revisionist history to now claim that Rafael was a mere 14-year-old lad charging up the hill with the rebel leader and thereafter renouncing Castro and becoming disenchanted (Fidel suppressed dissent don’t you know) with the cigar puffing bearded one, I don’t know. But historical accuracy notwithstanding, the elder Cruz fought along side communists. Can you imagine what the right would do with that indisputable fact had Ted Cruz taken the more reasonable path to the Democratic Party?
In any event, Papa Cruz emigrated to Texas and earned a degree in math. He later started an oil-related business and took up residence in Canada. He and the Mrs. were living and working there when Cruz was born in December of 1970. The father didn’t become a U.S. citizen until 2005.
The last coincidental tie between Cruz and Obama takes us to the editorial offices of the Harvard Law Review. Yes, Cruz was the so-called “primary” editor of the same publication that Obama edited, presumably as THE editor.
Now that it’s been established that the two political foes are, in many respects, comrades in arms so to speak, let’s see what makes Cruz tick. Dumb he’s not. Misguided from his early teens, yes; but anything but dumb. He was valedictorian of his high school graduating class. While still in high school he joined a group called the “Free Market Education Foundation” where his brain was filled with the ‘mush’ (as Rush would say) of Friedman and Hayek economics. He never recovered. From there he matriculated to Princeton, graduating cum laude and winning the “American Debating Championship” whatever that is. He packed his bags for Harvard Law and upped his cum laude one rung to magna cum laude.
I’m not going to track all the stops Cruz made on his way to filibuster infamy; suffice to say they were the right ones in every sense of the word. A clerkship for Chief Justice William Rehnquist, a quicky stop at a hot shot law firm where he served as attorney for John Boehner’s lawsuit against fellow Representative, Democrat, Jim McDermott over releasing a tape of a Boehner phone conversation. Then after working with the Bush-Cheney campaign team for a couple of years, it was a full swan dive into the Texas political pool.
Cruz was the nation’s youngest Solicitor General, a position he occupied from 2003-2008. He returned to private law practice with an eye toward the U.S. Senate. He won that seat when the sketchy incumbent, Kay Bailey Hutchison, decided to hang ’em up. No telling what was behind that move. Cruz cruised to victory over a hapless Democrat by 16 percentage points.
For some reason he made an immediate impact on the Senate, the House and the country in general. With the extreme right-wing Tea Party line as his political balancing pole, he navigated the critical issues of the budget and ACA like a veteran wirewalker navigates a wire he’s conquered for a decade. Only Cruz had just arrived and was saying all the right things to get his face and voice on both the right and left Media outlets; incessantly, repeatedly and relentlessly. He’s not particularly telegenic or, dare I say, sexy; the kind of guy who stops your wife in her tracks in front of the TV, suddenly interested in debt ceilings for the first time in her life. No, that’s not Cruz. What he does have going for him is the residue from his national debating championship. He’s glib and clever and he can talk forever, or at least 22 hours as we painfully discovered.
Speaking of pain, Cruz might just be easing into the political version of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA). You probably know it by its more common reference of a staph infection. Maybe all his ugly babble has started crawling across the skin of not only his detractors, but possibly his supporters as well. 22-hour theatrics will pretty much tell you that Cruz is one infection that is immune to the antibiotic of reasonable limitations. That’s why Cruz will never be president. He’s human MRSA capable of spreading his radical infection throughout the land.
Even the National Chamber of Commerce is telling him in a nice way to shut his pie-hole. The U.S. News and World Report quoted Chamber President Tom Donahue as telling Cruz, through the media, to “sit down and shut up” after Cruz was “credited” with being a driving force behind the 16-day federal government shutdown and credit default flirtation.
More disturbing to Cruz’ Tea Party minions were subsequent statements about ACA. While still critical of certain aspects of health care reform, the Chamber president still made nice about the necessity of lowering health care cost and getting results rather than “political grandstanding.” Ouch! It gets worse. Apparently the chamber has taken to reading tea leaves and not Tea Party leaves in revealing that some of their campaign millions are going to Democrats in the next election.
Talk about a safe falling from the 14th floor. Will the bright young solicitor get the drift or will his extremism throw him under the bus?
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