Another installment on the battle between Ted Cruz and Donald Trump. Many of these links come from http://conservatives4tedcruz.blogspot.com/ (no #CruzCrew email briefing today).
“Ted Cruz’s presidential campaign announced Friday it ended 2015 with $19 million in the bank.” That’s all hard money, and it brings Cruz campaign totals to $50 million.
“Don’t choose your candidate based on who you’d prefer to have a beer with, but whom you trust most to remain aligned with your principles. For me, that’s Ted Cruz.”
Cruz doesn’t want or need approval from the political elite. He isn’t seeking to be well-liked among the electorate, probably because he knows he just isn’t likable. Cruz will never be Joe Biden or Marco Rubio. He doesn’t have a beaming smile or endearing anecdotes or a twinkle in his eye. But his shrewdness, calculation, and disregard for elite approval can make him a winning candidate—and, what’s more, a pretty good conservative president.
Here’s the thing: I’ve met Ted Cruz, and I find him quite likable in person. Yes, Cruz does a very polished oratorical style and a laser-like focus on message that can make him seem overly scripted at the podium (though he’s gotten a lot better in this regard). But get past that he’s a smart, likable guy. What he doesn’t have is the almost pathological neediness to be liked that drove (for example) Bill Clinton to become so adept at emotional projection.
“Conservatives have been hoping that “another Reagan” will come along for decades and we finally have one: Ted Cruz….Cruz’s consistent conservatism mixed with his willingness to fight is why he’s the ONLY CANDIDATE RUNNING who can absolutely be counted on to get rid of Obama’s executive orders, kill Obamacare, defund Planned Parenthood and build a fence on the border.”
“The very same group who has gotten everything else wrong about the 2016 election and the mood of the voters went on television tonight with well rehearsed, clearly orchestrated talking points and got the debate wrong too. Yes, I do think Marco Rubio had a really good debate and came across as more pleasant than Cruz in the debate. But that is not going to hurt Ted Cruz. After all, all the right people hate him and the voters love him. The voters, not the talking heads, matter.”
CNN admits that journalists are scared to criticize Donald Trump. That admission highlights two problems with modern journalism: When did it become a “journalist’s job” to criticize candidates rather than just report the news, and when did our reporting class become such cringing little cowards that they’re afraid to do their job because strangers on Twitter will be mean to them? (Hat tip: Ed Driscoll on Instapundit.)
Media sees Trump as identical to Rush Limbaugh. They have, what, 1/8th of a loaf there? Both love taking the piss out of the deeply unpopular national liberal establishment, and their followers love them for it. But admitting that would mean the mainstream media admitting just how deeply unpopular they actually are… (Hat tip: Ditto.)
But just because Trump gives the MSM the vapors doesn’t mean we should stoop to his level of crass vulgarity.
Another installment on the battle between Ted Cruz and Donald Trump. Many of these links come from the #CruzCrew daily briefings I get via email, and from http://conservatives4tedcruz.blogspot.com/.
Unlike so many previously promising GOP leaders who have wilted in the face of media attacks, Ted Cruz has remained unbending while facing a flood of media hostility, as well as hostility from the establishment Republicans and inside-the-Beltway conservative elites. He is firm in his conservative convictions and willingness to speak out against corrupt compromises that defraud the public like the latest Omnibus Spending bill passed by career-minded Republicans in Congress. His positions aren’t swayed by the audience — as noted by his willingness in Iowa to be unwaveringly opposed to unwarranted ethanol subsidies.
Cruz alone – in a full GOP field of talented candidates — has the brain power and experience to excel as a national and world leader in an increasingly violent, troubled world.
National Review scores the Republican debate a draw.
“A majority of young voters convened by Fusion told host Alicia Menendez that after Thursday night’s Republican presidential debate, they will vote for Texas Senator Ted Cruz in next week’s Iowa caucus.”
Indeed, there’s precious little evidence that Trump is driving new voter registration in Iowa, or even that his supporters will show up at the polls there. “Trump is winning 40 percent of the vote among those who have less than a 20 percent chance of actually going to the polls.”
How did Republicans and the political class respond to Trump initially? They made fun of how he talked. Everyone was then surprised when people whose speech patterns are among the only patterns that are still socially appropriate to mock responded by liking Trump more (I actually think Trump’s accent is one of his biggest advantages). Making fun of his hair? Think about this the next time you make fun of someone with a mullet. Expressing outrage at his politically incorrect statements? I think Kevin Drum is part of the way there in this typically thoughtful essay in which he discusses the impact that political correctness has on people who feel silenced because they don’t know how to talk. But even this reflects Drum’s own internalized belief that the politically correct way to speak is the correct way to speak, while non-cosmopolitan Americans’ response is more visceral: “Why the hell can’t we call them illegal immigrants? Says who?” And Trump is the only candidate who unambiguously calls this out.
With the Iowa Caucuses happening next week, I thought I’d finally concentrate on the big contest shaping up between Ted Cruz and Donald Trump. I’m backing Cruz, but this election year has been so odd I couldn’t possibly predict the outcome.
Cruz was elected, as were so many other TEA Party candidates, to go to Washington and to stand for conservative principles in the face of opposition from both sides of the aisle, and unlike so many others, he did what he said he would do. He didn’t sell out, he didn’t jump on the DC gravy train, and he didn’t turn his back on his grassroots supporters or on his stated ideals and principles.
Trump says he’ll be raising money for veterans groups during the debate. Veterans groups: leave us out of your stunt.
Rush Limbaugh: “I don’t think you can make Ted Cruz wilt. I don’t think there’s any kind of heat that’s going to cause him to shrink. He rises to the occasion. The thing about Ted Cruz is that you never have to doubt his conservatism.”
Why the Iowa caucus rules will help Cruz…and Hillary Clinton.
Finally, if you haven’t seen National Review‘s “Against Trump” symposium (and my own issue hasn’t shown up in the mail yet), here it is.
Going to try to do one of these a day between now and Iowa. Keep in mind that I’ve been reporting on Ted Cruz here since he announced his senate run, for which I endorsed Cruz. If you’re just tuning into the election now, there’s a lot of information there on just how hard Cruz has been fighting for conservative causes…
Ted Cruz has picked up the endorsement of former Texas governor Rick Perry for President, and will help campaign as a surrogate for Cruz in Iowa. It’s not a huge endorsement, given how Perry’s own presidential campaign flamed out, but it’s a nice pickup for Cruz, and solidifies his odds for winning Texas on March 1. Also, it’s not as automatic a choice as some out-of-state commentators may believe, given that Perry endorsed (however tepidly) Cruz’s opponent David Dewhurst in his 2012 senate race. It may also indicate conservatives are coalescing around Cruz as the alternative to Donald Trump.
In any case, it’s a worth a hell of a lot more than Lindsey Graham’s endorsement of Jeb Bush…
Been a trying week. Have a Friday LinkSwarm, on me…
Mark Steyn reiterates his central thesis. Namely secular welfare state = low birth rates = import of Muslim immigrants = extinction of the west. “It’s Still the Demography, Stupid.”
National Review takes a short break from their Trump-bashing to look at how the mainstream media has made him such a big deal through saturation coverage. “The media that so thoroughly built up Trump as a contrast to his boring, predictable, consistently conservative GOP rivals might not find him so easy to tear down.”
“Are the Global Warmistas Simply Juicing Up the Latest Years’ Temperatures With ‘Adjustments’ While Reducing the Temperatures of Previous Years, To Always Make the Current Year ‘The Hottest’? Sure seems that way.”
“Western Europe’s elites have pretended that importing millions of Muslims from countries ranging from Morocco to Afghanistan raises no issues and creates no problems. That this is untrue has been obvious for a long time.”
Law enforcement on Open Carry in Texas: “We have no concerns and we have had no problems.” (Hat tip: Push Junction.)
Slashdot: California Assemblyman Jim Cooper wants to add crypto-backdoors to your phone. Wanna guess which political party Cooper is a member of? Go ahead. Guess.
Remembering Sergei Korolev, the legendary “chief designer” of the Soviet space program. (Hat tip: Gregory Benford’s Facebook page.)
Science Fiction editor David Hartwell has died. He was a hugely important figure in the field…
Steyn also went to a Trump rally, and discovered how Trump is wowing crowds as an un-politician. “He moved the meter on the ‘war on women’, too. Mrs Clinton pulled out the card, and Trump flung it right back in her face with her sleazy sociopath of a husband’s four decades of abuse against vulnerable women.”
The puzzling thing about the democrats’ push on gun control: Why gun control, and why now? “Unpopular as it is, gun control may be as good as they’ve got.”
Really, Jeb Bush’s path to victory requires Lindsay Graham’s endorsement? I’m sure in much the same way the Houston Texan’s plans involved Brian Hoyer leading them to the Superbowl…
The annual State of the Union pageant is a hideous, dispiriting, ugly, monotonous, un-American, un-republican, anti-democratic, dreary, backward, monarchical, retch-inducing, depressing, shameful, crypto-imperial display of official self-aggrandizement and piteous toadying, a black Mass during which every unholy order of teacup totalitarian and cringing courtier gathers under the towering dome of a faux-Roman temple to listen to a speech with no content given by a man with no content, to rise and to be seated as is called for by the order of worship — it is a wonder they have not started genuflecting — with one wretched representative of their number squirreled away in some well-upholstered Washington hidey-hole in order to preserve the illusion that those gathered constitute a special class of humanity without whom we could not live.
You know, if you’re a sitting Texas Supreme Court Justice running for reelection, it’s probably not going to help you win Texas Republican voters if you do robocalling demonizing Michael Quinn Sullivan. Especially when the call goes to Michael Quinn Sullivan. (Hat tip: Push Junction.)
At Hillary Clinton’s confirmation hearing for secretary of state, she promised she would take “extraordinary steps…to avoid even the appearance of a conflict of interest.”
Later, more than two dozen companies and groups and one foreign government paid former President Bill Clinton a total of more than $8 million to give speeches around the time they also had matters before Mrs. Clinton’s State Department, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis.
Fifteen of them also donated a total of between $5 million and $15 million to the Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation, the family’s charity, according to foundation disclosures.
Six things a Washington Post reporter found out following Ted Cruz around. “The majority of the undecided voters I have spoken with have said they were very impressed after hearing Cruz speak. Many of them said they were undecided coming into a rally and supported him when it was over.”
“Unfortunately, 2016, the little of it that we have so far seen, is already beginning to look like another year of Grim Slide, of a world stumbling down a slippery slope to become less secure, less stable, and less free.”
Iran and Saudi Arabia have severed diplomatic relations over Saudi execution of a Shiite cleric, and Kuwait has recalled their ambassador from Tehran; don’t be surprised if the other Sunni nations follow suit. Good thing we have a Nobel Peace Prize winner in the White House…
Turkey’s Prime Minister: Hey, you know who was a model of effective leadership? Adolf Hitler.
It looks like Karachi, Basra, and Mogadishu all rolled into one. People sell drugs openly just next to the Gronland subway station.
It’s not Norway or Europe anymore, except when there is welfare money to be collected. The police have largely given up. Early in 2010 Aftenposten stated that there are sharia patrols in this area, and gay couples are assaulted and chased away.
Mass sexual assaults involving up to 1,000 Arab men on New Year’s Eve in Cologne.
Rahm Emanuel’s failure in Chicago is emblematic of the blue model failure in America’s cities. “The city’s bloated pension obligations have already forced Emanuel to make severe education cuts. It will continue to force cuts in city services in various cities, making it harder and harder for mayors to govern, and increasing the antagonism among various constituencies.”
Confessions of a social justice warrior white knight. “Their communities thrive on self loathing disguised as elitism…SJWs insist their goal is to make everyone equal, and for a long time I believed it, but their communities actually enforce factionalism and division.” (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
It’s been an odd week, for a number of reasons, so I’m a bit late on the “Washington Post cartoonist draws Ted Cruz’s 5 and 7 year old daughters as monkeys” story. Because nothing says “reasonable” and “rational” like attacking children because you dislike the politics of their father. On the off-chance you missed it, it featured Cruz as an organ-grinder and his daughters as monkeys on leashes. The ostensible rationale for the doodle was Cruz featuring his daughters in that parody Christmas ad that ran during Saturday Night Live, making them “fair game.”
Right.
Though the Washington Post editor took the doodle down (calling it a cartoon would suggest there was an actual attempt at humor), we all know that if someone attempted the same drawing featuring Obama and his daughters, it would have been denounced as racist and the cartoonist fired so fast they wouldn’t have been allowed to pack their desk. Of course, the MSM have always been hypocrites when it comes to different standards for Democrats and Republicans. Anything that hurts Republicans is fair game, while anything that hurts Democrats is a source of high moral outrage.
The question is: Will cartoonist Ann Telnaes pay any price for such a gross transgression of basic decency?
This time next month, @AnnTelnaes will be drawing blackboard doodles for the daily specials before her shift at Starbucks. @BoundaryStones
The irony is that the episode provided a palpable boost to the Cruz campaign, which had an outraged fundraising mailer (“They attacked my children!”) out within hours. I bet they raised at least $1 million off of it.
Given that the French political establishment continues to ignore widespread French desire to stem Islamic immigration, is it any wonder Marine Le Pen’s National Front did so well in early voting?
Remember that ACLU board member that called for murdering Trump supporters? Turns out that calling for the assassination of political opponents is just a tad too extreme for the ACLU.
Nothing says “rational” and “reasonable” quite like calling Ted Cruz Satan incarnate. Thanks for proving that Hollywood celebrities aren’t overwrought drama queens, Cher…