It will stand the test of time.
Those who were willing to stand against Obamacare despite all the name calling, and who are proven to have been correct.
Obama and Democrats now are scrambling to delay various portions of the Obamacare rollout, even though such delays when proposed by Republicans were called suicide bombing, legislative arson and hostage taking.
Via The Last Refuge:
This Thanksgiving Day powerful TV ads air across the state of Texas “thanking” Senator Ted Cruz for leading the fight against Barack Obama’s failed ObamaCare healthcare scheme. The ads are running during the highly-rated NFL Thanksgiving Day football games and during the Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade on one-dozen (12) TV stations across Texas.
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Comments
That reminds me – I need to send the Senate Conservatives Fund some money.
Nice, but they should’ve given kudos to Mike Lee, too. Rubio and Paul don’t deserve such an ad, but Lee does.
I agree, but Utah should do the same for Lee. Those two are very brave indeed. They got it from both sides, and maybe, even worse from our side.
We received a nice Thanksgiving greeting email from Ted Cruz yesterday. He certainly is uplifting. We will continue to send California dollars to him and to his Senate Conservatives Fund.
“There is never a wrong time to do that right thing!”
Coach Lou Holtz
Look, liberals are not the only ones with fantasy narratives. At a moment when Obama was being thwarted by his own part in the senate on Fed appointments and was sinking in malaise, Cruz picked a fight that emboldened conservatives to participate in a government shutdown. With Cruz’s help, the dominant media solidified its branding of the right as spiteful, heartless dismantlers of government. The shutdown was a huge embarrassment for the right and led to record fundraising for Obama.
The smarter move would have been to advocate for weekly “clean” CRs and keep focus on a president that disregards the law and endangers lives by incompetent tampering with health insurance. Instead, Cruz gave false hope to low information voters on the right that a) defunding was possible and that b) defunding would help those of us watching our old plans get cancelled because they didn’t cover drug addiction, maternity, contraception, or pre-existing conditions.
Cruz’s stunt was for Cruz and it rendered aid to the opposition. Thanking him compounds the blunder.
Ah, another ‘only fight if you know you’ll win’ GOP-er. Go sit over in the corner risking nothing and we’ll let you know when the fight has been won.
You don’t have that exactly right. It should say “only fight if it benefits your cause in the long run even if you lose in the short term”, and that’s a smart strategy. The jury is out on Cruz’s strategy of shutting down the government (it hasn’t been long enough yet), but at this point it doesn’t look successful.
It is not necessary to win battles to win a war. Study Viet Nam.
We’ve a couple GOP rinosaurs around here who keep pitching this idea that the GOP should only engage in fights they can win – despite a long string of losses pursuing this idea. The problem is the GOP is proving incapable of judging, in advance, which fights they will win, so they won’t fight, and refusing to fight, they don’t win. Cowards protecting their little patch of turf and to hell with every one else (voters/citizen).
“Cruz’s stunt was for Cruz”
Cruz would never had done it if he was just doing it for himself. Instead, he’d be doing what most of the RINOS do: talk out of both sides of their mouth and follow the crowd. The trouble with our side is that we have very few who are really on it.
I don’t agree. He saw an opportunity to enhance his standing among TEA party enthusiasts, and he was very successful in that regard. Whether he will be successful in other ways is still undetermined. At this point, he is not interested in middle-of-the-road types. That will come later.
Cruz gave aid to the opposition and substantially raised his own name recognition in the process — and he’s gotten the hard right to prefer losing to not losing. Maybe we need to do an AT&T classroom commercial: “What’s better, losing or not losing?” I don’t think commenters like Henry Hawkins appreciate that “not losing” means waiting to pick battles that can be won; it also means avoiding losses that make a weakening opposition look strong with restored appeal to independent voters.
Mark: Please provide a scenario for GOP strategy where the media would have said the GOP “won”.
That’s not the appropriate standard, or even an important one. The best standard is how a majority of voters believe. A majority needs more than just conservatives. By that standard, we don’t know the answer yet.
I’m sick to death of hearing about those precious Indies. Do you know what they are? Closet Democrats who like to put themselves on a higher level than anyone else. And as far as winning, where are we winning in anything with the RINOS? If they give us someone like Christie after McCain and Romney, I’m done voting.
Mark you need to go look up the facts. The Senate put up token resistance, which Cruz was part of, then folded like a cheap suit. The House attempted to compromise and come to a middle ground and was blamed for not compromising because silly the Democrats should get everything they want no matter how bad it is for the nation. I mean how could Obama get credit for saving America if he allowed the Republicans to push off Obamacare for a year. With the media the way it is I can’t fault the Democrats strategy, I mean if you can get what you want and blame the Republicans for every bump in the road, what is their to lose? The answer is absolutely nothing in the short term, and the long term is questionable if conservatives remain as fractured as we are. As long as we continue allowing Republican and Tea Party candidates split the votes we won’t have enough of a unified voice to make changes. So how about we quit dumping on our own and strive to get a unified voice to oppose the left.
Gasper asks a good question, Rosalie hates reality so much she seems to prefer delusion, and Gmac wonders when conservatives will just learn to get along.
Gmac, if Cruz gets nominated, I’ll support him — but I’m not happy that he picked a fight he knew he wasn’t going to win and he made a sinking, incompetent Obama look strong and dominating with fight that never needed to occur. I think weekly or bi-weekly CRs to fund government while the healthcare.gov site was rolling out would have been the smart move. Why not fund government on a weekly or bi-weekly basis and with each funding, draw attention to Obama’s failures — but don’t let the government actually shut down.
Gasper, the weekly seminar approach means no shutdown, no branding of conservatives as heartless, petty and spitefull. Avoiding this HUGE loss should have been the objective — along with giving the media nothing but Obamacare failures to report on. Watching the media report healthcare.gov failures is the best media publicity we could ever get. Plus the media has to report a win when conservatives win legislative votes, win elections and win battles to balance budgets and promote economic growth.
Rosalie, Ronald Reagan knew his conservative minority was going nowhere unless he reached out to independents and democrats. If he indulged the frustration you speak of, he would have been another Goldwater candidacy.
I think you need to be calling out Boehner not Cruz. Cruz actually pointed out the failings of the bill, put up a token fight to show that they didn’t support Reid, and than folded. Boehner was the lone player left sitting at the table and Obama called his bluff. If anything Boehner misread the good will that Cruz created and how deep the MSM is into Obama’s pockets. It boils down to the fact that the national leadership for the republican party is very weak and ineffective.
Mark30339
You said ” the weekly seminar approach means no shutdown, no branding of conservatives as heartless, petty and spitefull. Avoiding this HUGE loss should have been the objective — along with giving the media nothing but Obamacare failures to report on. Watching the media report healthcare.gov failures is the best media publicity we could ever get. Plus the media has to report a win when conservatives win legislative votes, win elections and win battles to balance budgets and promote economic growth.”
You seem to be of the Karl Rove/Grover Norquist Club of Bedwetters. And you are dead wrong.
The Dems counted on the shut down to create an adverse reaction by the American voter to the Republicans. But as the less than 25% of the government shut down, Americans noticed a few things; school was still in session for their kids, the gas stations, grocery stores, State offices, highways and roads, the cleaners, all still open and functioning. To be very blunt, 99.9999% of Americans never noticed the shut down nor did it affect their daily lives, nor did they care. The Dems rolled the dice on the shut down, and lost.
The Dems also rolled the dice on Obamacare. And even you can see how that is working out. Not so well. And what did Ted Cruz, and Mike Lee, show? That they were right to oppose the horrors they knew Obamacare was going to be.
So while the left wing press hyperventilated over Ted Cruz’ stand against Obamacare, calling him every name but human, he has been proven right, and that is now what is resonating with American voters. Two men, ridiculed by the press, the Democrats and the go-along-to-git along RINOs, stood tall when those like you cowered in the corners, and have been proven right.
You hang in there with Rove/Norquist, but you are not going to have the backing of the average American voter, and the bottom line is that they, the average American voter, is the one that counts on election day.
I criticize Cruz on tactics that gave aid to the opposition when it was deeply stuck in its own malaise. The aid given was picking an unwinnable fight that made an incompetent POTUS look dominant and victorious. Cruz had to know this, he clerked for Chief Justice Rehnquist — he’s no dunce. So his quest was about raising his stature among conservatives who just want to declare their truth and take their beating like good Goldwater supporters.
You argue that the shutdown didn’t really hurt the country; the truth is it hurt the appeal of conservatism far more than it hurt the country. Branding is everything in politics, because we can’t get to a majority — and America can’t correct course — until we appeal to independents. A tall task since we can’t even disagree respectfully amongst ourselves.
Calling me Rino or Rove-esque or like Norquist is a weakling’s debate tactic, and is both misinformed and irrelevant. I suggest you use your retiree free time to read up on the effects of branding, to revisit Dale Carnegie’s HOW TO WIN FRIENDS AND INFLUENCE PEOPLE, to reflect on Haidt’s new book THE RIGHTEOUS MIND and to look up the “ad hominem” fallacy in a good dictionary. And we all need to work on our math, for conservatives there is nothing simple about a “simple majority.”
Cruz was 99% right. He gave in too easily.
Also the GOP is terminally submissive. The term “clean CR” should have been aborted and mutilated the first time it was uttered. The continuing resolution is a trash dumpster filed with 900 lb. of paper.
No budgeting process worth the name takes EVERY spending item and throws them all together into a dumpster dive.
GOP marketers should have been brainstorming clever names to rename that puss-infested ooze.
Mark: thanks of responding. I accept nothing you wrote and neither do I accept that the shutdown was or would be devastating. That was hype and it worked. Everything those bast**ds did was mean and spiteful and the media ate it up. You accepted that. The media has portrayed the GOP as heartless and mean-spirited for years and that is our brand, like it or not. Follow Rove if you must, because your story is his story, but that is not our future. We really need to get rid of these ball-less wonders who call themselves our leaders and refuse to stand on principle. Let me know when you hear one of the alphabet media say something genuinely favorable about the GOP as a party. I’ll be waiting.
The problem is that, in spite of constant labeling on both sides within the GOP, one can be against the political tactics of both Rove AND Cruz, but still see a lot of common ground among conservative principles throughout quite a few GOPers in office and as candidates. I know I am.
I’ve watched both sides of this circular firing squad tear apart the GOP and I’m sick of it and them, especially Heritage Action and SCF.
I’ve been a faithful and giving GOPer since my first vote, which was for Ronald Reagan and he’s likely spinning in his grave over this ongoing war.
There is a faction within the GOP that is attempting to take over the leadership, not just of the Tea Party contingent, but the entire party and we out here in the hinterland are constantly being bombarded with how bad the “Establishment GOP” is. Of course that leaves us who’ve voted for and supported the ones being attacked as not pure enough for DECADES left wondering if we, also, are ‘RINOs’ for accepting the reality of the current US political climate. If so, should we take our votes and the money we use(d)to build the party to be large enough to covet elsewhere? If so, where? Suggestions welcome, but not necessarily followed.
A little recent history: There was a coup attempt in the House, trying to unseat Boehner and replace him with a ‘pure’ conservative. Who has since been branded a RINO for not being pure enough….. O_o
Then there was the sequestration battle in which Boehner’s Plan B was rejected as not being pure enough. So we ended up with a much larger government as a result. Yay… :-/
Of course, it didn’t shore up Boehner’s ability to negotiate from a position of strength and unity to have Jim DeMint, during the middle of the sequestration battle, be quoted multiple times saying that Harry Reid was his ‘friend’ and ‘someone I can work with’ while dissing Boehner completely (so, who’s the RINO, again?). As in the battle over Obamacare, the few loud voices drowned out the rest of us wanting to ask DeMint what the **ll he thought he was doing by saying that. Of course, we knew: He was trying to take over the GOP and replace leadership with his own selected ‘purists’, in spite of not having the numbers to do so.
He has also been quoted as saying that he’d rather have 30 ‘true conservatives’ in the Senate than 60 who he doesn’t think conservative enough. Yeah, that’d work for getting anything done… That’s politically DENSE, I hate to tell ya.
Then, you have the ‘DeFund It’ bus tour that targeted GOPers instead of Democrats. The push was against the option of a delay of the individual mandate which the rest of the GOP was pushing for and advocates of delay were called RINOs, along with worse. So, Boehner let Cruz have at it, even throwing his support behind the effort. Then Needham (head of Heritage Action) said he knew it wasn’t going to work in the first place. So, what was the purpose of either threatening or actually primarying GOPers who opposed the tactic of DeFund It in spite of the the problems even Needham agreed were so problematic as to be insurmountable in the current political environment? To get more support for THEM, not to actually DO something to stop ObamaCare. So, unless Cruz was a useful idiot, he, Needham, and DeMint staged the whole filibuster theater in order to make political hay out of a fight they knew they could not win, in spite of what they were saying to their supporters and anyone else who would listen. (And getting their supporters to fund it all, to boot.)
So, yeah, I’m a ‘little’ upset at Cruz, et al. And, I’m going to stay that way until he can show me he has more than his own political future in mind.
Forgot to add that with all of the attacks by SCF and Heritage Action, of course the office holders being attacked constantly for the last year or so are going to fight back.
Let’s see how immigration pans out. My beef is with the media and the way they portray us vs the Democrats. My beef is with a GOP who does not speak our force-ably when Obama decides to create and change laws on a whim. There is nothing wrong with differing opinions and I guarantee you I will vote for whoever the GOP candidate is simply because the alternative is so terrible. In my opinion there is no Democrat Party – it is Socialist, and the GOP leadership wants to compromise with that? They have very little principle unlike those you denigrate. Immigration was almost dead and Boehner resurrected that ugly policy to the Dems delight. Cruz was vilified by the media and the GOP. You call it opportunism for his career. I disagree. I think he knew this would damage his career. I think he did it because he has principles and he stood on those principles. Contrast his filibuster with the one in Texas where Wendy Davis and Leticia Van De Putte shut down a vote on late term pregnancy with the aid of a screaming audience. This was, and is portrayed as courageous and the media built these two up so much on this morally corrupt stand that they are teaming up to run for Governor and Lt. Governor. THAT is the issue. Do you doubt for one second had a Democrat filibustered in the manner Ted Cruz did that he or she would not have been raised on a pedestal and received kudos for the next several years? I am sick and tired of our side eating their own. The RNC is supporting Mia Love, who is not much different than Ted Cruz in her philosophy. Why? That is not difficult to figure out is it? I will state again: the media will not portray the GOP in a positive manner unless they cave in to the demands of the opposition. And there are many on our side who think that is just fine because they want the media to say nice things about them.
When the vote to not fund Obamacare, 25 Republican Senators voted FOR funding. 2 were No votes. Those 25 Voted with Reid, Obama and the Democrats against the American People.
Thank you Senator Ted Cruz and Mike Lee for your courage to stand with the American People and by your stand, revealed to the whole world where those Republican Senators stood.
May God Bless Senator Ted Cruz & Senator Mike Lee.
Cruz is my senator and I’m damned thankful that he is…
Now we all know why McCain’s daughter is the nitwit she is: Her father, the senator, is downright stupid and a true ‘wacko bird!’
That’s the problem with Arizona voters: re-electing a downed second rate fighter pilot war hero who crashed his first plane in training and who was wacked in the head once too often in the Hanoi Hilton. Instead of knocking sense into his head the commies knocked what little sense he did have.
I down voted that for your dissing of McCain’s service. I agree it’s time for him to retire, but there’s no need to trash the man’s sacrifice and service to the nation.
Firstly, I am a Conservative and Ted Cruz is my Senator and I support him 100%.
Secondly, for those above who want to blame Ted Cruz and think that he should have just gone along with the standard GOP play I think you missed something important. Ted Cruz energized Conservatives who had all but given up. They were sick of Boehner and McConnell giving Obama blank check after blank check. They were tired of their support being taken for granted by the mainstream GOP. Conservatives were told to support candidates who were fiscally or socially unacceptable to them and they did so, time after time. Conservatives voted Conservative in the primary, but always, always backed whoever the GOP candidate turned out to be in the general election. The GOP however did not necessarily back a Conservative if a Conservative won the primary. Many Conservatives got truly disheartened and decided that they were being taken for granted by the GOP and decided to stay home.
Ted Cruz showed them that someone was on their side and was willing to fight for them. The shut-down was all on Harry Reid, so stop trying to parrot the media that it was the evil GOP or the evil Ted Cruz that shut down the government. Put the blame where it belongs: Harry Reid. Also, during the shutdown Obamas favorability took a big hit when he shut the WWII Memorial to Veterans.
It is not about drinking the Ted Cruz Kool-Aid. Ronald Reagan had to run against the party leaders several times before he got elected and his message got through. He was not loved by the party mainstream, he was despised by them as an upstart. I’m not saying or implying that Cruz is the next coming of Reagan, I am saying that Cruz gave Conservatives a reason to believe and re-engage with the political process.
Finally, Cruz focused the country on Obamacare in a way that no-one else had and now everything he said is proven to be true. This has helped the anti-Obamacare position. For those of you who think you can win elections without the Conservative wing of the party, think again. Ted Cruz gave the GOP another chance with Conservatives, and if Karl Rove and Grover Norquist think they can continue to make grand bargains that plunge us into even greater debt, then they are mistaken. Ted Cruz and Mike Lee have shown us that there are people in DC that believe in doing the job they were sent there to do, not getting rich from K-street lobbyists.
Ted Cruz is my Senator, I voted for him against David Dewhurst and his money. Senator Cruz is doing what the people of Texas sent him to do. That’s the great thing about those of you who live in states that want to elect Susan Collins or Olympia Snowe, you are welcome to.Just don’t expect Conservatives to fall in line when your Senators vote like Democrats.
Thanks Ted Cruz, SCF and Heritage Action for supporting Conservative ideals.