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Ted Cruz Tag

Posted by William A. Jacobson on December 12, 2015 44 Comments
I noticed this Facebook comment on the page of a local Ithaca liberal Democrat, on a post criticizing Donald Trump:
Donald Trump looks like the warm-up act. Whoever follows him from the Republican party looks reasonable (and sane) by comparison.
The commenter didn't use the term, but she was describing how Trump has moved The Overton Window. The Overton Window has been described as follows:
The Overton window is a political theory that refers to the range (or window) of policies that the public will accept. The idea is that any policy falling outside the Overton window is out of step with public opinion and the current political climate, and formulated to try and shift the Overton window in a different direction, or to expand it to be wider.
Has Trump moved the Overton Window? That's a theory advanced the other day by David French at National Review (h/t Instapundit):

Posted by Fuzzy Slippers on December 05, 2015 103 Comments
Last week,  Quinnipiac reported poll results for Iowa that showed Ted Cruz surging to 23%, only 2 points behind Donald Trump. The Wall Street Journal reported:
A new Quinnipiac University poll of likely Republican caucus goers showed Mr. Cruz with 23%, behind only New York real estate developer Donald Trump, with 25%. That is more than double Mr. Cruz’s showing of 10% in the university’s October poll. Mr. Trump gained five points from October.
Today, Rich Lowry, editor of the National Review, tweeted the following: https://twitter.com/RichLowry/status/673236631231533056 More Twitter responses:

Posted by Mike LaChance on December 02, 2015 22 Comments
You may have noticed that the narrative around violent crimes changes depending on who committed the act. When someone with a Muslim sounding name is the suspect, we're repeatedly told by the media and public officials not to rush to judgement. If however, there's even the slightest chance that the perpetrator is in any way conservative, people start talking about violent Republican rhetoric and everyone right of center is suddenly urged to reexamine their views. It's a scenario we've documented on this blog multiple times: Ted Cruz is sick of this narrative and talked about the issue with Hugh Hewitt.

Posted by Fuzzy Slippers on December 02, 2015 15 Comments
Whether he's engaging in effective dialog with Canadian actresses or American radicals, defending religious liberty, calling out climate change hysterics, taking on the progressive media, challenging GOP leadership, or playfully pushing back against Obama's gun control agenda, Ted Cruz has a way of tackling, head on and without fear, issues that either trip up other Republicans or that they avoid like the plague. This week, Cruz countered the Democrat accusation that the GOP is engaged in a "war on women" by asserting that the GOP is not "the condom police." CNN reports:
Iowans at a town hall waded into awkward territory on Monday evening as Ted Cruz tackled a question on contraceptives.

Posted by Amy Miller on November 30, 2015 45 Comments
Will the battle between Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz come down to the support of their colleagues in Congress? Those colleagues hope so. An article out today in Politico details how the rise of Ted Cruz in the polls (especially in Iowa) has prompted some prominent members of Congress to start leaning toward Marco Rubio as the preferred candidate of cross-spectrum Republicans. This lean in itself could be construed as a momentary win for Cruz, whose supporters couldn't care less what Mitch McConnell has to say about much of anything these days, but it could spell trouble in the long run for the firebrand candidate. The hesitance (and in some cases, outright refusal) to support Ted Cruz springs from a long history of various floor fights and back hall disputes over policies. Now, congressional Republicans are coming out in force against the possibility of a Cruz nomination, not because they agree with him on principle, but because they see Marco Rubio as the candidate who can win over new supporters in numbers that will place the GOP back in the White House. From Politico:
Mainstream elected Republicans now see Cruz as a bigger threat than Donald Trump or Ben Carson to clinch the nomination — but equally damaging to their party’s chances of winning the White House and keeping the Senate next fall. Rubio would be a much stronger general election standard bearer, they believe.

Posted by Fuzzy Slippers on November 28, 2015 12 Comments
Florida representative Alan Grayson has a reputation for being a little "out there." When he's not making bizarre claims about GOP health care plans, calling female lobbyists "K Street whores," or running blatantly false and manipulated ads, Grayson apparently likes to muse about against whom he can take legal action. Watch: The latest target of Grayson's special brand of crazy is Ted Cruz.  According to Mediaite, Grayson is promising to file suit against Cruz should he (Cruz) be elected president.
Florida Congressman Alan Grayson told radio host Alan Colmes Wednesday that if Ted Cruz is elected president, he “will file that beautiful lawsuit saying that he’s unqualified for the job” according to the Constitution. Cruz was born in Canada to a native-born American mother, making the presidential candidate a dual Canadian-American citizen. It was not until a 2013 Dallas Morning News article that Cruz acknowledged his Canadian citizenry publicly. In 2014, the senator renounced his Canadian citizenship altogether.
Apparently Grayson believes that anyone who is born to an American parent while in a foreign country is not an American by birth.  Or something.

Posted by Fuzzy Slippers on November 27, 2015 6 Comments
Art Laffer, famed member of President Reagan's Economic Policy Advisory Board, has co-authored, with Stephen Moore, an article for Investor's Business Daily in which they assert that Rand Paul and Ted Cruz have the "best" tax proposals. They begin with a bit of a warning to those serious about tax reform:
All the GOP tax plans look good to us — though some are admittedly better than others. The danger now is that too many conservatives have formed a circular firing squad and are shooting down nearly all proposals on purity grounds or attacking trivial differences. This is the surest way to derail tax reform altogether. If Ronald Reagan, Jack Kemp and Bill Bradley had held to such a "my way or the highway" approach, the epic 1986 tax reform that collapsed tax rates to 15% and 28% never would have happened.
That said, Laffer and Moore continue by narrowing their focus to Rand and Cruz:
Which brings us to Rand Paul and Ted Cruz. The two of us helped craft their low-rate flat tax plans. The plans are similar: Paul's rates are 14.5% on business net sales and wages and salaries. Cruz has a 16% business net sales tax and a 10% wage and salary tax.

Posted by Fuzzy Slippers on November 22, 2015 10 Comments
As Ted Cruz's campaign gains momentum and as Obama continues to be more aggressive in his critique of Republicans than of ISIS, Cruz challenged Obama this week over comments made overseas regarding the Paris attacks, ISIS, and the Syrian refugee crisis. Politico reports:
Texas Sen. Ted Cruz on Wednesday said that if President Barack Obama wants to be critical of his rhetoric, he should "come back and insult me to my face." Obama has been critical of Cruz's proposal for handling the Syrian refugee crisis, which includes allowing in Syrian Christians, but not Syrian Muslims. The president earlier this week called that approach "shameful," adding, "we don't have religious tests to our compassion." "Mr. President, if you want to insult me, you can do it overseas, you can do it in Turkey, you can do it in foreign countries, but I would encourage you, Mr. President, come back and insult me to my face," Cruz told reporters Wednesday morning, looking directly into the cameras. "Let's have a debate on Syrian refugees right now. We can do it anywhere you want. I'd prefer it in the United States and not overseas where you're making the insults. It's easy to toss a cheap insult when no one can respond, but let's have a debate."

Posted by Fuzzy Slippers on November 22, 2015 6 Comments
In light of the terror attack in Paris and (presumably) Obama's weak performance against ISIS and bizarrely petulant performance in Turkey, terrorism now rivals the economy as the single most important issue to American voters. ABCNews reports:
Terrorism suddenly rivals the economy as the single most important issue to Americans in the 2016 presidential election -- and a year out, a new ABC News/Washington Post poll finds more people paying close attention to the contest than at this point in any race back to 1988. After years of dominating the political landscape, the economy now has company. Given the Nov. 13 attacks in Paris, 28 percent of Americans now call terrorism the top issue in their choice for president, compared with 33 percent who cite the economy. Nothing else comes close. Attention, moreover, is focused as never before. Three-quarters of Americans say they are closely following the 2016 race, including three in 10 who are following it very closely. That’s the highest level of attention at this point in a presidential race in polls back nearly 30 years.
According to this report:  "Partisan divisions are 33-23-36 percent, Democrats-Republicans-independents."

Posted by Amy Miller on November 17, 2015 72 Comments
Way back in September, when we were still young and naive in our belief that conservatives would overcome the odds and rally around The One sooner rather than later, I attended an anti-Iran nuclear deal rally on Capitol Hill. The event was headlined by Donald Trump and Ted Cruz, and featured the kind of anti-establishment, anti-Obama, anti-ridiculously stupid foreign policy speeches that have bolstered the more non-traditional candidates on the current Republican slate. Walking around, I was amazed at how many people displayed swag from multiple campaigns---weren't we in the middle of a hotly-contested nomination cycle? Still, rally attendees seemed less worried about who was taking a stand than they were about the possibility that nobody would take a stand at all. Trump and Cruz worked well together in this regard; they connected with the crowd and produced a cohesive message that resonated both on the Hill, and outside Washington. Looks like the honeymoon is over, though. It was nice while it lasted, but let's face it---we all saw this one coming.

Posted by Fuzzy Slippers on November 15, 2015 18 Comments
As the Republican presidential primary heats up, illegal immigration is again taking center stage.  While this is nothing new (as we know President Reagan attempted to address it in the '80s, John McCain made it a priority in '08, and on), the discussion has taken an interesting turn this election cycle. At issue, of course, are Obama's executive amnesty, the recent influx of illegal immigrants (including huge numbers of children), the vast number of illegals currently living and working in the U.S., border security (such as it is), and a host of related issues including the burden of illegal immigration on tax payers in terms of jobs, health care, schooling, police and judicial involvement, and various entitlement costs. Marco Rubio's involvement with the Gang of Eight, particularly his decision to work closely with Chuck Schumer, has not gone unnoticed by either the conservative base nor by the other presidential hopefuls.

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on November 10, 2015 3 Comments
Apparently, the games began early. Yesterday, the New York Times reported that serious backers of former Florida Governor Jeb Bush are "seething" thanks to Senator Rubio's ascension in the polls. So incensed is the Jeb fan club, that they've threatened to dump mega bucks into a scorched earth anti-Rubio campaign.
That group, which has raised more than $100 million, has asked voters in New Hampshire how they feel about Mr. Rubio’s skipping important votes in the Senate. And the group’s chief strategist has boasted of his willingness to spend as much as $20 million to damage Mr. Rubio’s reputation and halt his sudden ascent in the polls, according to three people told of the claim. Seething with anger and alarmed over Mr. Rubio’s rise, aides to Mr. Bush, the former Florida governor, and his allies are privately threatening a wave of scathing attacks on his former protégé in the coming weeks, in a sign of just how anxious they have become about the state of Mr. Bush’s candidacy. Their looming problem: In trying to undercut Mr. Rubio as unaccomplished and unprepared, Mr. Bush is a flawed messenger. Over the years he has repeatedly, and sometimes lavishly, praised the younger lawmaker, often on camera.

Posted by Fuzzy Slippers on November 08, 2015 12 Comments
One of the primary obstacles to repealing the failure that is ObamaCare has been the extremely successful framing of the debate by progressives on both sides of the aisle.  The question they posit and that derails any and all attempts to rid the American people of the ObamaCare albatross that is disproportionately strangling the poor and the middle class in myriad ways is:  What will you replace it with? This is a false choice.  No one called for a replacement of the 18th Amendment that made Prohibition not just the law of the land but a part of the U. S. Constitution.  ObamaCare is bad law.  You don't "replace" bad law, you get rid of it. Framing the argument as "repeal and replace" implies "if not ObamaCare then what other behemoth federal monstrosity should take its place?" and as such is a clever maneuver by ObamaCare defenders because it effectively posits that there are only two options:  ObamaCare or something just like it, i.e. another federally-mandated and -controlled health insurance system that does everything that is popular about ObamaCare and nothing that is controversial or unpopular about it.

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on November 03, 2015 43 Comments
In this particular tale of media hit job turned embarrassment, we have what might be one of the best public displays of gun ignorance presented as fact I've ever seen. The only things missing are a barrel shroud and a couple rounds of rubber bullets. Gizmodo reporter Wes Siler thought he'd pegged Republican Presidential Candidate Senator Ted Cruz as a gun safety hypocrite. Last weekend, the Junior Senator from the Lone Star State went pheasant hunting. Note the unloaded, break-action shotgun resting on Cruz's shoulder.

Posted by Fuzzy Slippers on November 01, 2015 23 Comments
In the 48 hours immediately following the GOP debate, Ted Cruz's presidential campaign raised over a million dollars.  His performance during the debate included some significant comments directed at the moderators that resulted in the highest score pollster Frank Luntz has seen in his career conducting debate focus groups. The Business Insider reports:
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) had arguably the most memorable moment from Wednesday night's Republican primary debate on CNBC when he slammed the moderators. But for Frank Luntz, the veteran GOP pollster who ran a focus group during the debate, the results were clear. "I have been doing this since 1996 and tonight is a special moment. I've never tested — in any primary debate — a line that scored as well as this," Luntz said after the debate on Fox News' "The Kelly File."
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Posted by Mike LaChance on October 31, 2015 39 Comments
Ted Cruz recently spoke to Glenn Beck about climate change as a political issue and suggested it's not science but religion. He makes an interesting case. Cruz points to the language around the issue, specifically the use of the term "denier." CNS News has the transcript:
Ted Cruz: ‘Climate Change Is Not Science -- It’s Religion’ “Just a couple weeks ago in the Senate I chaired a hearing where the president of the Sierra Club testified,” said Senator Cruz in an Oct. 28 interview on The Blaze TV. “We had an exchange, where I simply asked him about the data.” “He [Mair] simply couldn’t answer the most basic question, starting with the fact -- he couldn’t answer the most basic fact that for the last 18 years the satellite data show no significant warming whatsoever,” said Cruz. “He had no idea about that,” said Cruz. “He turned to his aides every minute or two.” “You know, part of the reason he didn’t know the facts?” said Cruz. “Because climate change is not science -- it’s religion.”

Posted by Fuzzy Slippers on October 31, 2015 10 Comments
While it seems clear that the loser of this week's CNBC debate debacle was CNBC (and in many ways, the mainstream media as a whole), I was and am really curious to see post-debate polling.  Watching the debate, I couldn't help but think that those ill-prepared, condescending, and generally unpleasant moderators were doing the GOP—and conservatives more generally—a gigantic favor.  We've long said that the media is biased against, unfair toward, and disingenuous about Republicans, and we couldn't have written a script ourselves to better prove our point. The first post-debate poll released, an online NBC poll, shows Trump and Carson leading the race with 26% each and Ted Cruz in third with 10%.  Mike Flynn reports:
No other candidates earn double-digit support in the poll, from NBC News/Survey Monkey. Among those Republicans who watched the debate, Trump edges Carson, 25-24, while Cruz’s support jumps to 17 percent. Nearly a quarter of Republicans said Cruz did the best in the debate. He was followed closely by Florida Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), with one-in-five Republicans saying he did best. Trump and then Carson round out the top 4 performances in the debate, according to Republican voters.
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