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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsHard Slam: NYT Editorial: Imagine President Ted Cruz
Think just how different the world would be, said Senator Ted Cruz on Monday, in a speech so packed with vision-spinning and the word imagine that it seemed as if John Lennon had returned, as a Hispanic Texan running a hard-right, anti-establishment, Christian-themed campaign for the White House. Weird. But weird is the essence of Mr. Cruz, who is now the first major Republican in the 2016 race. Let the fund-raising begin. Commence the swelling of the Cruz coffers, and of Mr. Cruzs public profile beyond the gated confines of C-Span and Fox News.
The imagines that Mr. Cruz doled out were chosen for his audience, students at Liberty University in Lynchburg, Va. Robust cheers greeted one of the first: Imagine young people coming out of school with four, five, six job offers. He summoned many images that would be hard to argue with. Imagine instead of economic stagnation, booming economic growth. Imagine innovation thriving on the Internet. Imagine America finally becoming energy self-sufficient. Imagine a federal government that protected the privacy rights of every American.
Of course, if you know Mr. Cruz, or are familiar with how government is supposed to work, or with reality in general, youll find some of his imaginaries problematic, like abolishing the Internal Revenue Service, sealing the border, or repealing every word of Obamacare.
Imagine a federal government that works to defend the sanctity of human life and to uphold the sacrament of marriage, he said. But Mr. Cruz says he is a champion of personal liberty, too, and gay people who love each other are demanding their liberty to marry, just not in a way he finds acceptable. No data support Mr. Cruzs claim that insurance premiums are skyrocketing under Obamacare. Immigrants, legal and otherwise, are building this country, and efforts to vacuum-seal the border would continue to fail, and the country would suffer from its hostility to its immigrants no matter what Mr. Cruz says. The rest of the world, of course, is indifferent to one Republicans oratorical dog whistles. The global climate will keep changing, and causing calamities, with or without the acknowledgment of Mr. Cruz and his fellow climate know-nothings.
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A heated, crowded presidential primary can be wearying, but useful for sorting out differences and contradictions and determining where a party stands on things. Mr. Cruz, whose oratory captures so many Republican paradoxes and idiocies, especially on immigration and health care, has set a solid baseline for the messy job ahead.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/24/opinion/imagine-president-ted-cruz.html?_r=1
underpants
(183,006 posts)Great editorial
mnhtnbb
(31,414 posts)malaise
(269,269 posts)These ReTHUG scumbags love appropriating progressive artistes' work.