Cruz Control

Ladies and gentlemen, some of you are going to be downright annoyed with me after reading this post; but, so be it.  As a political addict, you can imagine how intriguing the presidential candidates’ announcements are.  Certainly Marco Rubio’s doctrine rang with the clarion sound of rattling sabers.  Inane, inaccurate, and trite as it was it didn’t feel half as dangerous as Texas Senator Ted Cruz’s presidential announcement.

Cruz is not a stupid man.  He attended private schools as a child and began studying economics when he was just 13 years old.  Cruz earned his undergraduate degree from Princeton and went on to study law at Harvard.  Is he a genius?  Possibly.  I can respect a person with a strong mind.  I am an agnostic, but I also can accept people with strong religious beliefs.  But when the smart person with the strong beliefs is a first-term Senator who decides to make his Christian religion the central message of his political campaign – and ostensibly his political platform – well, now I have a problem.

Senator Cruz decided to make his announcement at the late Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia.  Some of you may not remember Mr. Falwell.  He was rabidly opposed to homosexuals, and was famous for supporting segregation in schools in the 1970’s.  Racism was the only reason he founded the Moral Majority in 1975.  Following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, Falwell appeared on his pal Pat Robertson’s The 700 Club program and controversially stated: "I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People For the American Way, all of them who have tried to secularize America. I point the finger in their face and say 'you helped this happen.'"  He later was forced to apologize for that hateful sewage.  Thank goodness his vitriolic voice was silenced in 2007.  Rest in pieces.

Now, let’s fast forward to Ted Cruz on March 23, 2015.  Liberty University provided Cruz with a ready-made audience on the Monday morning when he appeared with his charming. pink-clad wife and daughters.  The students of Liberty University are required to attend “church” in this forum on Monday mornings.  All applauded and obediently appreciated their guest speaker.  No one should have been surprised that Cruz invoked the name of God nine times and the name of Jesus Christ three times in a speech that called upon “courageous conservatives” to help him “stand for (religious) liberty.”  He did his level best to throw meat to the hungry Tea Party tigers.

However, Liberty University also is symbolic to Cruz for another reason.  The university filed a lawsuit within hours after the passage of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) in 2010, a law that Cruz has stridently (and futilely) opposed since he took office in 2012.  Most presidential candidates declare their intentions in their home states.  Cruz is fairly popular in his home state of Texas.  Why, then did he choose Virginia?  I suspect he needed to create a bit of political theater.  Feeding the children of the Moral Majority also fed the Tea Party; and, Cruz served up God and family, sobriety, and Patrick Henry.

The games have begun.  I can’t wait to hear what Jeb Bush has to say when he finally stops sucking from the nipple of his Super PAC and makes his candidacy official.