6 Ways Ted Cruz Is A Threat To America And The American Way Of Life

While as a writer I appreciate Ted Cruz and his near-endless stream of insane bullshit, as a political reality – Ted Cruz is quite frightening in a Joe McCarthy, Rush Limbaugh, Pat Robertson kind of way.

Quickly scanning our own recent coverage of Ted Cruz, it quickly becomes appallingly clear that Cruz poses a real and present danger to Americans. Here are but 6 examples:

Ted Cruz Only Cares About Ted Cruz. Well, that and Texas.

As Richard pointed out in an article last week, “back in 2013 when New York and New Jersey were under water and completely devastated from Hurricane Sandy, Teabagger, wingnut and presidential hopeful Ted Cruz voted against a $51 million package to help victims of the storm.” The reason: “he saw it as wasteful. Just another example of big government over spending to help people who should help themselves. The whole boot strap thing.” As one might expect, Politifact refuted most of his spoken rationale for denying relief.

Fast-forward to last week when Texas and Oklahoma were hit by massive flash floods. Care to venture a guess as to how the freshman Senator from Texas sees government aid when his state and constituents need it?

One of the things that is inspiring in this time of challenge is how Texans come together. We’re seeing cooperation with state government, local government, and the federal government—all standing together at a time of great challenge. The federal government’s role, once the governor declares a disaster area, and makes a request, I am confident that the Texas congressional delegation, Senator Cornyn and I, and the members of Congress, both Republicans and Democrats, will stand united as the Texans, in support of the federal government fulfilling its statutory obligations and stepping in to respond to this natural disaster.

So, “Cruz is the Senator of a state that single-handedly receives more disaster relief money than nearly any state in the Union, with the possible exception of Oklahoma,” yet he aggressively denies relief fund for states other than Texas.

Ted Cruz Would Deny The LGBT Community The Right To Marriage BASED UPON LIES And Fear-mongering

A couple of weeks ago, Rowen covered Cruz’ latest strategy for denying gays the right to marry – the continued use of the word “mandatory” when referring to legalization of gay marriage. You might recall, several weeks ago he blasted Democrats for their, “devotion to mandatory gay marriage in all 50 states.” Then, three weeks ago during a radio interview he used it again, calling the legislative battles over same-sex marriage in Indiana and Arkansas ‘heartbreaking’ infringements of ‘religious freedom,’ that has “gotten so extreme and so radical in its devotion to mandatory gay marriage that they’ve decided there’s no room for the religious liberty protected under the First Amendment.”

As Rowen points out, what Cruz is doing here is “attempting to refer to his belief that businesses should be able to legally discriminate against gay couples and refuse to serve them, but the devil is in the (mandatory) details. Senator Cruz doesn’t stop there, having referred to the gay community as waging a ‘jihad’ against religious freedom – going so far as claiming that pastors may soon be ‘hauled off to jail for a hate crime.’””

If you look at other nations that have gone down the road towards gay marriage, that’s the next step of where it gets enforced. It gets enforced against Christian pastors who decline to perform gay marriages, who speak out and preach biblical truths on marriage, that has been defined elsewhere as hate speech, as inconsistent with the enlightened view of government. I think there is no doubt that the advocates who are driving this effort in the United States want to see us end up in that same place. – Senator Ted Cruz

Cruz has even taken to sparring with reporters over his presumed hatred of gay Americans, as Kimberley reported last month. In a press conference in mid-May, when questioned whether he harbored any “personal animosity against gay Americans?” Cruz shot back with, “Do you have a personal animosity against Christians, sir?” adding: “with respect, I would suggest not drawing your questions from MSNBC. They have very few viewers and they are a radical and extreme partisan outlet,” and then he cited the expansion of “mandatory same-sex marriage” as an assault on religious liberty in the United States.

Ted Cruz Fuels Fringe Conspiracy Theorists

It is bad enough that we have whack-a-doodle militia members armed to the hilt with their camouflage rags and assault rifles without the likes of Ted Cruz feeding their fear of conspiracies around every corner.

Did you hear the rumor from the first week of May where President Obama is planning to use Special Forces to impose martial law in Texas and then hold prisoners in abandoned Walmart buildings? Sound crazy? Yes, it DOES sound crazy because it IS crazy. It’s a ridiculous rumor created by fringe groups who are promoting this lunacy on the Internet.

True to form, Ted Cruz – who also happens to be running for president of the United States – decided to pander to the GOP minority of paranoid concerned citizens by telling them he’ll ask the Pentagon for answers. Fueling the paranoid fantasies of a few, Cruz blathered on about how the federal government has been “disrespecting the liberty of the citizens,” producing fear and distrust.

Ted Cruz Is A Threat To The Planet Through His Climate Change Denial

While most Republicans are shifting from climate-change atheism to climate-change agnosticism¹, Ted Cruz clings with white knuckles to his denial of the existence of climate change. Want an example? Sure, and bear in mind – this is but one of dozens of examples of his position on global-warming:

I just came back from New Hampshire where there’s snow and ice everywhere. And my view actually is simple: Debates on this should follow science, and should follow data. And many of the alarmists on global warming, they got a problem cuz the science just doesn’t back them up. And in particular, satellite data demonstrates that the last 17 years there’s been zero warming. None whatsoever. It’s why—you remember how it used to be called global warming and then magically the theory changed to climate change? The reason is it wasn’t warming, but the computer models still say it is, except the satellites show it’s not.

Ted Cruz Is Fundamentally Dishonest

And then there’s the matter of his seemingly pathological tendency towards telling lies. As The Daily Beast reports, Cruz’s record for telling lies is second only to Dr. Ben Carson who has a 100% “pants on fire rating.” However, Liberals Unite rates Cruz as number one liar as Politifact has only rated one statement of Carson’s so far, that people choose to be gay. [You can go here for our full report on his record of telling lies.]

And how does Cruz respond? Back in April when asked about his record of telling lies by CNBC’s John Harwood during a 10-question one-on-one interview about his political history Cruz decided to lash out at the fact-checkers themselves, accusing them of lying.

And it’s getting to the point that other Republicans, such as Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) are fighting back against Ted Cruz and his lies. Here’s a great piece about John McCain who “wants to know more about his imaginary conversation with Ted Cruz.” Then there is Rep. Pete King (R-NY) who referred to Cruz as a “sideshow entertainer,” adding “he is just a guy with a big mouth and no results.”

Ted Cruz Disrespects The Founding Fathers, American Tradition And Non-Christian Americans

As we reported in March, the noted conservative website Forbes.com published a scathing smack down of Ted Cruz’s decision to announce his candidacy for the presidency at Liberty University, a religious institution founded by Rev. Jerry Falwell.

Forbes contributor Rick Ungar noted that Cruz “spent the first part of his speech extolling the virtues of Jesus Christ and the importance the Christian faith played in keeping his family together.”

Ungar went on to note that while he could understand Cruz’s motives for choosing the school for his announcement, “to appeal to the evangelicals who form the base of his political support,” he “could not help but feel that, in willfully ignoring our traditions, Senator Cruz was also willfully ignoring me along with the many Americans who practice a different faith or no faith at all.”

Getting to the crux of his indictment against Cruz, Ungar writes that Cruz’s announcement “disrespects the Founding Fathers,” writing:

Knowing what the Founders had in mind for our nation, one has to wonder how they would have reacted to Senator Cruz’s choices in making his announcement yesterday. One must wonder how they would have felt about a candidate who launched his announcement to lead the American people with a long dissertation about Jesus rather than a dissertation on the greatness of the nation or the needs of its people. One must wonder how they would have felt about a candidate who announces his candidacy from the halls of a religious institution that is dedicated to the needs and beliefs of some of the people, but certainly not all of the people.

Personally, I think most of our Founders were turning over in their graves.

Ungar finished up, writing:

Ted Cruz revealed that he was only interested in making the statement to the religious right that he is their man while making it clear that he could care less about the traditions of our nation which call for our leaders to represent and care for the concerns of all the people—not just those who share the candidate’s religious beliefs. […]

And while the Senator’s choice will likely be forgotten in the big picture—just as I suspect Ted Cruz will ultimately be forgotten in the big picture of American history—his choice served to, in a small but profound way, tarnish the proud traditions of this country.

If Senator Cruz really wants to ‘imagine’ a better America, he might begin by imagining a campaign that begins with a statement of inclusion and belief in all of America’s people, not just those who meet his own religious litmus test.

FOOTNOTES:

1. For the longest time, Republicans were climate change atheists – so to speak – in constant denial that such a thing exists, or at the very least in denial that human activity played a role. Nowadays, more oft than not what you find is something akin to climate change agnosticism – “I don’t know for sure.” “The verdict is still out.” “Don’t ask me, I am not a scientist.”

IMAGE by Gage Skidmore, published on flickr, published here pursuant to Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic license.