Cruz Control
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When Ted Cruz left the stage following his speech at the Republican convention to thunderous booing by a hostile audience it wasn’t the first time. In 2014 his keynote address at a conference for Middle Eastern Christians in Washington D.C. decried the Islamic campaign of genocide against the Middle East’s religious minorities. But when he observed that “today Christians have no greater ally than Israel ” the booing started.
As the boos and catcalls got louder the senator continued: “Those who hate Israel hate America. Those who hate Jews hate Christians. If those in this room will not recognize that then my heart weeps. If you hate the Jewish People you are not reflecting the teachings of [our religion].”
When the crowd refused to quiet down Cruz left but not before telling the audience: “I am saddened to see that some here not all but some here are so consumed with hate…. If you will not stand with Israel and the Jews then I will not stand with you. Good night and G-d bless.”
That’s Ted Cruz.
As for last Wednesday evening’s speech did Ted Cruz do something inappropriate? Let’s see.
Despite the feigned outrage from the nominee’s campaign which also orchestrated the booing Cruz had made clear he would not endorse when first offered the slot weeks ago and upon sharing the speech text days before he gave it. In the speech Cruz said nothing negative about the nominee (as he hasn’t since dropping out of the race) and congratulated him by name.
Then he did something brilliant. He told the delegates to “vote your conscience” and to “support candidates up and down the ticket whom you trust to defend freedom and be faithful to the Constitution.” And when the nominee’s delegates howled at those words egged on by the nominee’s people Cruz had elicited a rare admission: That to vote for that man is to violate one’s conscience and to support someone who virtually never speaks of freedom or Constitutional principles. As Cruz himself put it the next morning:
What does it say when you stand up and say “Vote your conscience” and rabid supporters of our nominee begin screaming “What a horrible thing to say!?” If we can’t make the case to the American people that voting for our party’s nominee is consistent with voting your conscience is consistent with defending freedom and being faithful to the Constitution then we are not going to win and we don’t deserve to win.
The very next night the nominee reinforced Cruz’s point with a speech about which David French wrote: “I can’t recall a Republican speech in my lifetime that put such an overwhelming emphasis on the ability of a national leader to transform American lives… [and] that put less emphasis on life liberty or the Constitution. His concerns are elsewhere. When asked last week by the New York Times what he hoped people would take away from the convention he replied ‘The fact that I’m very well liked.’”
But didn’t the non-endorsement undermine party unity which is essential for beating Hillary Clinton? Consider: We’re dealing with a nominee who won the smallest share of votes of any nominee in the modern era despite $3 billion in free media. More Americans than any other candidate in the history of political polling have negative views about him. In almost every one of scores of polls this year he has trailed his Democratic opponent the weakest one in living memory while actual Republicans have substantial leads over her in theoretical matchups.
He refuses to release his tax returns which any appointee to a significant governmental position must do. Those returns may contain evidence of impropriety (although far more upsetting to him would be the evidence he is a not quite the billionaire he presents himself to be) that can be leaked in an October Surprise. An estimate by the nominee’s own campaign found that only about 900 delegates out of the total of 2472 were personally loyal to him. And a federal judge ruled just two weeks ago that states could not prevent them from voting their conscience for the best candidate.
So if victory in November is paramount one would think the Republican Party apparatus would have welcomed grassroots efforts to turn the convention from an empty pageant of coronation for an electorally disastrous nominee into an opportunity to choose a winner. Instead it used strong-arm tactics to squelch all efforts to unbind delegates leading Utah senator Mike Lee to say that “I have never in all my life certainly going on six years in the United States Senate prior to that as a lifelong Republican never seen anything like this.”
Apparently for the GOP winning is not everything. It’s secondary to uniting around the nominee’s personality cult. As the party marches in lockstep toward the November cliff he threatens electoral defeat against US senators who dare to question him and attacks Ohio governor John Kasich for boycotting the convention instead of ignoring or courting him. So enough talk about fracturing unity.
This isn’t to say Ted Cruz is beyond reproach. Charles Krauthammer wrote that “Cruz’s rebellion would have a stronger claim to conscience had he not obsequiously accommodated himself to [the nominee] during the first six months of the campaign.” And in lauding Cruz’s courage we need not deny an element of political calculation to set himself up for 2020. Ted Cruz is a calculating politician and brilliant and highly ambitious too — precisely what one should want in a candidate who stands for what’s right.
Ultimately as National Review’s Jim Geraghty noted it would have been much easier for Cruz to follow the lead of Rubio and Walker by saying that he’s putting aside his serious differences with the nominee in order to defeat Clinton. But he didn’t and now the only way his gamble pays off is if the nominee loses badly in which case the senator looks prescient and courageous.
If however the nominee wins Cruz will be out in the cold and if he loses narrowly Cruz becomes the primary scapegoat the man who threw the election to Clinton. That’s quite a gamble which is why as Geraghty writes “There shouldn’t be that much wild speculation about Cruz’s motive. Occam’s razor: Ted Cruz doesn’t think Trump has earned his endorsement feels endorsing him would be a lie and he’s not willing to go in front of the country and tell them to vote for a man he thinks is unworthy of the presidency…”
But really now was it so brave and principled of Ted Cruz to do what he did? The nominee had ripped him daily as “Lyin’ Ted” sought to disqualify him entirely from the race for his Canadian birth humiliated Mrs. Cruz before the nation due to her physical appearance and floated an outrageous conspiracy theory of Cruz’s father’s complicity in the murder of JFK.
He stands entirely or partially opposed to the Republican party and certainly conservatism on nearly every position from entitlements to free trade from guns to abortion to same-genderism from NATO to Russia to North Korea from religious freedom to free speech and yes an independent judiciary. Many of his views are to the left of Clinton and some — like morally equating America with Russia and Turkey and supporting George W. Bush’s impeachment — are those of a fringe progressive. And that’s putting aside issues of ignorance character and temperament.
All this said what was so strikingly courageous about Cruz’s speech? In a normal world nothing. But lately this hasn’t been a normal world. Moral courage has been rarer than ever recently with so very many people of ostensible principle cravenly genuflecting before a man they know to be morally temperamentally experientially and philosophically unfit to be president.
Pundits who’d spent years decrying Congressional Republicans as crony capitalists and capitulators to the liberal agenda suddenly saw the light and heartily celebrated a man who’d spent decades as a crony capitalist supporter of liberal Democrats. Erstwhile spokesmen for traditional values turned overnight into mealy-mouthed whitewashers of morally repellent behavior. Bill Bennett author of numerous books on virtue and faith in American life could say without a trace of irony: “I’m used to being the moral scold but… we’ve been trying to get white working-class people into the party for a long time... and we’re going to alienate them? I don’t get it. Too many people are on their high horse.”
Staunchly conservative presidential candidates who for months had called this nominee “a cancer on conservatism” and “an unserious and unstable narcissist [unfit to have] his fingers on the nuclear codes” meekly embraced him after Indiana. Others debased themselves even further with one becoming a fawning coat-holder for the man who had mocked his religion and likened him to a child molester. Even the nominee seemed incredulous saying that “people that have said the worst things about me… they’re calling now… and they’re saying ‘We’d love to get on the train.’ ”
For over a year this candidate has trampled so much that is precious with virtually no one standing up to him. But Ted Cruz did so. And thus what in saner times would seem obvious — a refusal to endorse one’s own attacker and a poseur who has made a hostile takeover of one’s party and movement — became an act of courage.
So much of the new nominee’s image is invested in presenting the cowardice of attack and insult the refusal to learn and to concede as courage. I believe that much of the booing and the post-speech sniping at Ted Cruz stems from his exhortation to “vote your conscience” having forced lots of people to ponder what real courage looks like and to look in the mirror to see if they can find signs of their own.
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