David Brooks, columnist for The New York Times, was interviewed recently on PBS and referred to Ted Cruz as “the Senator from Canada through Texas.” (h/t Instapundit)
I guess Brooks meant that as a shot, but it’s an odd shot for Brooks to make. Brooks also was born in Canada to parents at least one of whom was an American citizen. They are both natural born Citizens. Brooks grew up in New York, Cruz in Texas.
Substantively, what Brooks considers a bug I consider a feature (transciption via Daily Caller):
What’s going on in the House, and a bit in the Senate, too, is what you might call the rise of Ted Cruz-ism,” Brooks said. “And Ted Cruz, the senator from Canada through Texas, is basically not a legislator in the normal sense, doesn’t have an idea that he’s going to Congress to create coalitions, make alliances, and he is going to pass a lot of legislation. He’s going in more as a media-protest person. And a lot of the House Republicans are in the same mode. They’re not normal members of Congress. They’re not legislators. They want to stop things. And so they’re just being — they just want to obstruct.” …
“Two things that are interesting that are happening, especially being talked about this week,” Brooks said. “One, leadership in both bodies, the leadership’s inability to force any discipline. That’s partly because a lot of these people just are not interested in the committee assignments, the normal leverage the leadership has, in part because the earmarks are gone, some of the spending favors.” …
“[S]o the leadership can’t impose any discipline on a Ted Cruz,” Brooks said. “There’s nothing they can punish him with.”
The patient is bleeding to death. Stop the bleeding. Sounds like a plan.
DONATE
Donations tax deductible
to the full extent allowed by law.
Comments
Clearly Brooks can’t comprehend the idea that the solution to every problem is not more government.
David Brooks, “Birther”
Who’d a thunk it ?
Not that he’ll take my advise, but, hey, Mr. Brooks, why don’t you criticize the the Left instead of the Right? Want a President that uses leadership in the correct ways? Then stop tearing down Ted Cruz. Or Sarah Palin.
That is precisely the problem with Ted Cruz. He doesn’t respond to coercion and he can’t be bribed. Just how do you get him “to go along to get along.” And if that’s not bad enough, the man bases his votes on principles. How quaint a thing in Washington. ( We need a movie remake with one small name change; “Mr. Smith (change to Cruz) goes to Washington.
Keep talking, Brooksie. The more you do, the more you reveal yourself as the liberal suckup you are.
The hysteria is mounting.
Cruzin’!
I admire Cruz a lot. But he’s not going to stop new laws from being created.
We have 2.5 million permanent, unelected bureaucrats administering the bureaucracies that Congress has created over the years. So even if Cruz is successful and manages to “obstruct” any new laws from being enacted, those bureaucrats write an average of about 3000-3500 new regulations per year. A regulation is essentially a law in my book. That’s why I say he can’t stop the lawmaking no matter how much he obstructs.
However, the real problem is that Congress DOES enact new laws. And every law they label as “comprehensive” is an excuse for Congress to create even more bureaucracies whose job is to write even more regulations. There are now over 180,000 regulations restricting our liberty and controlling how we live. And there’s no end in sight. The way the federal government budgeting process works there is no incentive to ever cut the bureaucracy.
Almost everybody in Congress knows the system they’ve created is one gigantic, unsustainable, horrendous mess. With the exception of Cruz, Paul, Lee, and a couple of more in the Senate, the rest are cowards and refuse to even try to correct the problems they’ve created.
Thank God:
That is precisely the problem with Ted Cruz. He doesn’t respond to coercion and he can’t be bribed. Just how do you get him “to go along to get along.”
And this is why we contributed and voted for him. We are sick of the “go along get along crowd. Voted them out in the primary and LOVE Ted Cruz! The remaining cowardly RINO in the senate from TX, you know the Scarvassoossi supporter in NY…: you have been warned.
Maybe Cruz just needs a new dry cleaner.
Put a nice, crisp crease in his pants and David would be needing a Kleenex or a moist towlette.
Brooks knows his place. He does what he is told. Cruz doesn’t. It outrages him that someone who is more intelligent, accomplished, and from somewhere other than the east coast doesn’t know HIS place.
“They’re not normal members of Congress. They’re not legislators. They want to stop things. And so they’re just being — they just want to obstruct.” …”
What Brooks fails to comprehend or reconcile to, “these” legislators were elected (not under false pretenses) to be in Washington to do exactly what they’re doing. Brooks voices what he deems wrong with Washington’s newly elected, yet it his fears of what we commend as attributes, will be the double down in 2014 which would marginalize his ilk.
As Will Rogers wisely observed:
“This country has come to feel the same when Congress is in session as when the baby gets hold of a hammer.”
“Papers say: ‘Congress is deadlocked and can’t act.’ I think that is the greatest blessing that could befall this country.”
Will Rogers would have appreciated Ted Cruz.
They’re not normal members of Congress.
He says that like it’s a bad thing.
Why is there such a need to pick a favorite, when they all stink. And, they ALL take the “gravy train.”
You think ObamaCare passed without any republican votes? Or given the outcry you can hear from the public, it hasn’t been repealed, yet. What’s with that?
As Ace pointed out, neither Brooks nor Frum are conservatives, they are far more products of the Elite and their loyalty is to Being Elite and sneering at everyone else, not to any specific ideology.
But Cruz and Lee aren’t stupid, they know there is zero chance of stopping ObamaCare via the CR. All we can do is shut down the government. While that won’t affect entitlements like Social Security, Medicare, welfare, SNAP (food stamps), OR most of ObamaCare (many parts of the law were written as entitlements), Obama will happily stop paying the military and their family allotments, cut off the contractors’ payments for federal services, and generally cause as much widespread pain as possible until the Republicans cave.
And they will cave in any such effort because despite strong public support for the concept, once the specific programs people like and/or depend upon are shut down, they change their minds. This isn’t rocket science.
Cruz and Lee are building databases for their future fundraising efforts.
Sometimes an issue is too important to just back down. You muster all the resources you can and do battle.
Shutting down the government is a bipartisan effort. Republicans must be able to effectively make that point if they choose to engage. Obama and Reid don’t believe they have to negotiate. The Republican leadership has not shown any sign of posing a credible threat.
A Nation cannot endure if people are unwilling to sacrifice for the greater good.
There was a great comment on another blog about one of the other Texas Congressman and/or his staffers having his panties in a wad over Cruz’s recent Texas tour.
The interesting thing is that I live in a Texas district so blue that the Republicans don’t even bother to support the few good candidates that they accidentally field. Most races are unopposed.
Now, here’s the interesting thing…. Cruz made several stops while visiting my district…. and everyone one of them were standing room only and all reports (even the media) were on how well received he was and how engaged his audiences had been in his ideas and discussions.
I can only imagine the reception was even better as he headed north into the seriously conservative parts of the State.
Who cares what that corrupt schmuck has to say.
Cruz control!
I don’t get the enthusiasm for Cruz.. he’s about as inspiring as Romney. Well, not even that really. If it’s him against Hillary in 2016 then expect defeat… I really hope the republicans can come up with something better than …… Ted Cruz.
The Republicans in the House have written bill to improve things for the country. They voted to kill ObamaCare lots of times and it is the Democrats who are obstructionists and preventing the government from accomplishing that.
There are lots of other positive things that the Republicans have done. They have investigated corruption in the Obama administration. Obama is still obstruction their investigation in Fast and Furious. He is obstructing their investigation of the betrayal of the CIA and State department employees in Benghazi. They are also investigating Obama’s illegal use of the IRS against his enemies in the 2012 election.
I want them to investigate Obama’s violations of US law and the Constitution. A president is not suppose to make recess appointments when the Senate is not in recess as Obama did. A president doesn’t have the power to modify US law which is what Obama did when he created his “Dream Act” and gave himself the power to grant states exceptions to the work requirements of US law. These violations strike at the heart of our country. There can be no laws passed if the president can just change them by presidential decree. There will be no democracy if the president can ignore our laws and constitution. Obama is a tyrant.
Nobody ever ran for office promising to be a toady for the party bosses. They all promise to stand up for your values and fight for your issues.
Ted Cruz is doing something unusual for Washington DC – he’s keeping his promises.
[…] The Daily Caller (h/t Legal Insurrection): […]
so lets see if I understand it …. doing things the way we have done things got us 16 trillion + in debt …. fewer people employed than in the 70’s …. more people put on welfare than in jobs over the last few years …mis trust in government at all time highs ….. middle class income down by thousands over the last 5 years and these idiots think the solution is more of the same …. the definition of insanity is what again
Waa! Waa Waa! Brooks, go eat a cruller and stop whining.
I’ll take Cruz-ism any day over Reidlosi-ism anyday.
Brooks is the consummate elitist patrician northeastern Republican. His politics are the epitome of what is killing the GOP.
Brooks inhabits the political class as a member of the MSM. As such he’s a globalist, and a leftest. If he were anything else, he wouldn’t be on talk shows. He wouldn’t get invited to various parties and functions. He knows that if he makes one slip he can become a non-person in the political world. His function is to make the media look balanced. The members of the political class hold pretty much all hold the same fundamental views. They believe in multiculturalism: all ethnic groups and races are exactly the same in all ways. The all believe in and promote an expanding administrative state.
Notice how Brooks parrots the Obama-Democrat assertion: The GOP is the obstructionist party, and Ted Cruz is not to be tolerated because he shows some signs of independence. Anything that’s a threat to the administrative state must be condemned. I never read anything Brooks writes because it’s completely predictable. Maximum entropy prose. A waste of time.