<![CDATA[Forums - Cruz]]> http://rightwingers.org/forums/ Thu, 16 Apr 2026 13:49:12 +0000 MyBB <![CDATA[Ted Cruz and the Orlando shootings..]]> http://rightwingers.org/forums/thread-198.html Mon, 13 Jun 2016 00:18:15 +0000 http://rightwingers.org/forums/thread-198.html Ted Cruz's solution (see article below):

  1. Stop 'political correctness' and start calling this radical Islamic terrorism
  2. Stop the nonsense about gun control

Let's see, how does ending 'political correctness' going to do anything to stop these kind of attacks?

Nothing I can think of, in fact, it's probably more the contrary, by feeding the impression the West is at war with a religion, this might estrange more, not less Muslims from the West, radicalize more instead of less people and induce less others to cooperate and warn law enforcement agencies of potential dangers.

And people who are on a no flight list can simply buy semi-automatic rifles? This is idiotic. Whatever the motives, an order of magnitude of Americans are killed by these compared to almost every other Western country.

It's also hilarious Cruz accusing others of rigid ideology, but anyway.

Ted Cruz delivers strong message to 'Democrats who are loud champions of the gay and lesbian community' Ted Cruz forcefully blasted Democrats in a strong Sunday statement on the deadly terror attack at an LGBTQ nightclub in Orlando earlier Sunday morning.

"The next few days will be sadly predictable," the Texas senator said in the statement. "Democrats will try to use this attack to change the subject. As a matter of rigid ideology, far too many Democrats - from Barack Obama to Hillary Clinton - will refuse to utter the words 'radical Islamic terrorism.'"

"They will claim this attack, like they claimed every previous attack, was isolated and had nothing to do with the vicious Islamist theology that is daily waging war on us across the globe," the Republican, who made an unsuccessful bid at his party's presidential nomination, continued. "And they will try to exploit this terror attack to undermine the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms of law-abiding Americans." Cruz said "enough is enough" and called for Democrats and Republicans to join forces, "abandon political correctness," and defeat jihadists.]]> Ted Cruz's solution (see article below):

  1. Stop 'political correctness' and start calling this radical Islamic terrorism
  2. Stop the nonsense about gun control

Let's see, how does ending 'political correctness' going to do anything to stop these kind of attacks?

Nothing I can think of, in fact, it's probably more the contrary, by feeding the impression the West is at war with a religion, this might estrange more, not less Muslims from the West, radicalize more instead of less people and induce less others to cooperate and warn law enforcement agencies of potential dangers.

And people who are on a no flight list can simply buy semi-automatic rifles? This is idiotic. Whatever the motives, an order of magnitude of Americans are killed by these compared to almost every other Western country.

It's also hilarious Cruz accusing others of rigid ideology, but anyway.

Ted Cruz delivers strong message to 'Democrats who are loud champions of the gay and lesbian community' Ted Cruz forcefully blasted Democrats in a strong Sunday statement on the deadly terror attack at an LGBTQ nightclub in Orlando earlier Sunday morning.

"The next few days will be sadly predictable," the Texas senator said in the statement. "Democrats will try to use this attack to change the subject. As a matter of rigid ideology, far too many Democrats - from Barack Obama to Hillary Clinton - will refuse to utter the words 'radical Islamic terrorism.'"

"They will claim this attack, like they claimed every previous attack, was isolated and had nothing to do with the vicious Islamist theology that is daily waging war on us across the globe," the Republican, who made an unsuccessful bid at his party's presidential nomination, continued. "And they will try to exploit this terror attack to undermine the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms of law-abiding Americans." Cruz said "enough is enough" and called for Democrats and Republicans to join forces, "abandon political correctness," and defeat jihadists.]]> <![CDATA[And some weird political advisers to boot..]]> http://rightwingers.org/forums/thread-103.html Thu, 24 Mar 2016 03:24:54 +0000 http://rightwingers.org/forums/thread-103.html Quote:Then there's the fact that Cruz takes advice from notorious anti-Muslim bigot Frank Gaffney, who has said that President Obama "not only identifies with Muslims, but actually may still be one himself" and has accused everyone from Hillary Clinton aide Huma Abedin to Grover Norquist of being part of Muslim Brotherhood schemes to infiltrate the US government. Gaffney is currently spearheading an effort to push Norquist off the National Rifle Association's board of directors because of his role "as an agent of influence for assorted Islamic supremacists."

Another Cruz adviser (who's also involved in the anti-Norquist effort) is retired Lt. Gen. William "Jerry" Boykin, who first came to fame in 2003 when he said of a Muslim warlord in Somalia, "I knew that my God was a real God, and his was an idol." He also said that Islamists hate America "because we're a Christian nation, because our foundation and roots are Judeo-Christian and the enemy is a guy named Satan." Boykin has not exactly moderated with age Jeb Bush confirms that Republican opposition to Trump isn't about his racism at all - Vox

Norquist an agent of 'assorted' Islamic supremacists, you can't make this stuff up..]]> Quote:Then there's the fact that Cruz takes advice from notorious anti-Muslim bigot Frank Gaffney, who has said that President Obama "not only identifies with Muslims, but actually may still be one himself" and has accused everyone from Hillary Clinton aide Huma Abedin to Grover Norquist of being part of Muslim Brotherhood schemes to infiltrate the US government. Gaffney is currently spearheading an effort to push Norquist off the National Rifle Association's board of directors because of his role "as an agent of influence for assorted Islamic supremacists."

Another Cruz adviser (who's also involved in the anti-Norquist effort) is retired Lt. Gen. William "Jerry" Boykin, who first came to fame in 2003 when he said of a Muslim warlord in Somalia, "I knew that my God was a real God, and his was an idol." He also said that Islamists hate America "because we're a Christian nation, because our foundation and roots are Judeo-Christian and the enemy is a guy named Satan." Boykin has not exactly moderated with age Jeb Bush confirms that Republican opposition to Trump isn't about his racism at all - Vox

Norquist an agent of 'assorted' Islamic supremacists, you can't make this stuff up..]]> <![CDATA[Cruz's revealing choice of economic advisor]]> http://rightwingers.org/forums/thread-101.html Wed, 23 Mar 2016 22:30:17 +0000 http://rightwingers.org/forums/thread-101.html Cruz Seeks Economic Wisdom in the Wrong Place
[Image: 120x120.jpg]
MARCH 23, 2016 1:27 PM EST

By Barry Ritholtz
Quote:Some people look at subprime lending and see evil. I look at subprime lending and I see the American dream in action.
-- former U.S. Senator Phil Gramm, Nov. 16, 2008

The reason I bring up the former senator from Texas is that Gramm has been brought on as a senior economic adviser to Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz.

This isn't a promising development for Cruz, or the prospect that should he become president he will come up with sensible policies to address the U.S.'s economic challenges. Why do I say that? Because of what happened in the 1990s and early 2000s when the U.S. listened to Gramm.

But first, a more recent trip down memory lane. Gramm, remember, was brought on as an adviser to the presidential campaign of John McCain in 2008. As the economy was stumbling that summer, Gramm said:

Quote:You’ve heard of mental depression; this is a mental recession. We may have a recession; we haven’t had one yet. We have sort of become a nation of whiners. You just hear this constant whining, complaining about a loss of competitiveness, America in decline.

At that point, the financial crisis was gathering headway: foreclosures had doubled in the span of a year, 1.6 million more people were unemployed than a year earlier, the stock market had plunged 25 percent and the nation was already eight months into the worst recession since the Great Depression. McCain, in a vain effort to rescue his campaign, had to immediately disavow the remarks. Gramm, meanwhile, refused to retract his comments. He was gone from the McCain campaign a few days later.  

Not to put too fine a point on it, but I believe -- as do many others -- that Gramm was one of the major figures who helped set the stage for the crisis. My book "Bailout Nation" included a list of “Who is to Blame for the Crisis” that put Gramm at No. 3 after former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan and the Fed itself. I'm not alone: Time magazine placed him at No. 2, while CNN ranked him No. 7.

Just to be clear, Gramm was but one player in the debacle and blame for the financial crisis is spread far and wide, extending to major figures in both political parties. But Gramm is the topic today, so let's start with a list of particulars.

Gramm was a key sponsor of the Financial Services Modernization Act of 1999, also known as Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, which effectively repealed the piece of the Glass-Steagall Act that had forced commercial banks to shed their investment banking operations during the Great Depression. 

The end of this separation didn't so much lead to the financial crisis as remove a key firebreak, allowing the conflagration to rapidly spread throughout the banking system. Recall earlier events before the repeal: the shock caused by the 1987 stock-market crash was confined to Wall Street, while the savings and loan crisis of the late 1980s did little harm to the broader economy.

The damage caused by rolling back Glass-Steagall pales compared with what resulted from the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000. Gramm was a co-sponsor of the legislation, which exempted many derivatives and swaps from regulation.  Not only was the law problematic, but it veered into potential conflict-of-interest territory.

At the time the legislation was under consideration, Gramm's wife, Wendy, was on the board of Enron, which as we now know was one of the greatest accounting fiascos in history. Wendy Gramm served on the audit committee, overseeing the finances of the energy-trading giant. Enron, of course, in late 2001 filed the biggest corporate bankruptcy in U.S. history up until then. Before joining Enron, she had served as chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, from 1988 to 1993, where her tenure was the subject of some controversy.

Enron, a once-sleepy utility, was an early adopter of derivatives and swaps. Brooksley Born, chairman of the CFTC in the late 1990s, had recognized early on the potential danger these things posed. She rightly pressed for her agency to have regulatory oversight of derivatives.

It wasn't to be so because of Gramm's legislation. But there was more. At Wendy Gramm’s urging, then-Senator Gramm inserted what became known as the Enron loophole into the Commodity Futures Modernization Act. This allowed Enron to avoid most regulation in its energy-trading business. Enron, coincidentally, was a major campaign contributor to the senator. We don’t know what impact the loophole would have had on the company; it collapsed in 2001 due to accounting fraud before it had a chance to collapse due to bad energy derivatives. However, the legislation Gramm pushed had other unintended consequences.

We got a chance to see those consequences a few years later when American International Group failed, thanks in part to swaps -- a form of insurance really -- on $441 billion of securities that turned out to be junk. AIG wasn't required to put up much in the way of collateral, set aside capital or hedge its risk on the swaps. Why would it, when the law said it didn’t have to? The taxpayers were then called upon to bailout AIG to the tune of more than $180 billion.

Maybe it isn't too surprising that Cruz would seek advice from Gramm. Cruz, after all, seems to want to hobble modern economic policy by returning to the gold standard. The Cruz-Gramm school of economics doesn’t seem very promising. We have seen these movies before, and they end in tragedy and tears. ]]> Cruz Seeks Economic Wisdom in the Wrong Place
[Image: 120x120.jpg]
MARCH 23, 2016 1:27 PM EST

By Barry Ritholtz
Quote:Some people look at subprime lending and see evil. I look at subprime lending and I see the American dream in action.
-- former U.S. Senator Phil Gramm, Nov. 16, 2008

The reason I bring up the former senator from Texas is that Gramm has been brought on as a senior economic adviser to Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz.

This isn't a promising development for Cruz, or the prospect that should he become president he will come up with sensible policies to address the U.S.'s economic challenges. Why do I say that? Because of what happened in the 1990s and early 2000s when the U.S. listened to Gramm.

But first, a more recent trip down memory lane. Gramm, remember, was brought on as an adviser to the presidential campaign of John McCain in 2008. As the economy was stumbling that summer, Gramm said:

Quote:You’ve heard of mental depression; this is a mental recession. We may have a recession; we haven’t had one yet. We have sort of become a nation of whiners. You just hear this constant whining, complaining about a loss of competitiveness, America in decline.

At that point, the financial crisis was gathering headway: foreclosures had doubled in the span of a year, 1.6 million more people were unemployed than a year earlier, the stock market had plunged 25 percent and the nation was already eight months into the worst recession since the Great Depression. McCain, in a vain effort to rescue his campaign, had to immediately disavow the remarks. Gramm, meanwhile, refused to retract his comments. He was gone from the McCain campaign a few days later.  

Not to put too fine a point on it, but I believe -- as do many others -- that Gramm was one of the major figures who helped set the stage for the crisis. My book "Bailout Nation" included a list of “Who is to Blame for the Crisis” that put Gramm at No. 3 after former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan and the Fed itself. I'm not alone: Time magazine placed him at No. 2, while CNN ranked him No. 7.

Just to be clear, Gramm was but one player in the debacle and blame for the financial crisis is spread far and wide, extending to major figures in both political parties. But Gramm is the topic today, so let's start with a list of particulars.

Gramm was a key sponsor of the Financial Services Modernization Act of 1999, also known as Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, which effectively repealed the piece of the Glass-Steagall Act that had forced commercial banks to shed their investment banking operations during the Great Depression. 

The end of this separation didn't so much lead to the financial crisis as remove a key firebreak, allowing the conflagration to rapidly spread throughout the banking system. Recall earlier events before the repeal: the shock caused by the 1987 stock-market crash was confined to Wall Street, while the savings and loan crisis of the late 1980s did little harm to the broader economy.

The damage caused by rolling back Glass-Steagall pales compared with what resulted from the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000. Gramm was a co-sponsor of the legislation, which exempted many derivatives and swaps from regulation.  Not only was the law problematic, but it veered into potential conflict-of-interest territory.

At the time the legislation was under consideration, Gramm's wife, Wendy, was on the board of Enron, which as we now know was one of the greatest accounting fiascos in history. Wendy Gramm served on the audit committee, overseeing the finances of the energy-trading giant. Enron, of course, in late 2001 filed the biggest corporate bankruptcy in U.S. history up until then. Before joining Enron, she had served as chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, from 1988 to 1993, where her tenure was the subject of some controversy.

Enron, a once-sleepy utility, was an early adopter of derivatives and swaps. Brooksley Born, chairman of the CFTC in the late 1990s, had recognized early on the potential danger these things posed. She rightly pressed for her agency to have regulatory oversight of derivatives.

It wasn't to be so because of Gramm's legislation. But there was more. At Wendy Gramm’s urging, then-Senator Gramm inserted what became known as the Enron loophole into the Commodity Futures Modernization Act. This allowed Enron to avoid most regulation in its energy-trading business. Enron, coincidentally, was a major campaign contributor to the senator. We don’t know what impact the loophole would have had on the company; it collapsed in 2001 due to accounting fraud before it had a chance to collapse due to bad energy derivatives. However, the legislation Gramm pushed had other unintended consequences.

We got a chance to see those consequences a few years later when American International Group failed, thanks in part to swaps -- a form of insurance really -- on $441 billion of securities that turned out to be junk. AIG wasn't required to put up much in the way of collateral, set aside capital or hedge its risk on the swaps. Why would it, when the law said it didn’t have to? The taxpayers were then called upon to bailout AIG to the tune of more than $180 billion.

Maybe it isn't too surprising that Cruz would seek advice from Gramm. Cruz, after all, seems to want to hobble modern economic policy by returning to the gold standard. The Cruz-Gramm school of economics doesn’t seem very promising. We have seen these movies before, and they end in tragedy and tears. ]]> <![CDATA[Why Cruz isn't sweeping the evangelical vote]]> http://rightwingers.org/forums/thread-45.html Sun, 06 Mar 2016 17:36:47 +0000 http://rightwingers.org/forums/thread-45.html
Quote:Sen. Ted Cruz’ Iowa/South Carolina strategy would have been very successful in winning evangelicals this year had it not been for Trump. Cruz, another strong, messianic figure, one who even speaks with the cadence of a Southern preacher, would have been the recipient of the evangelical votes this year, and after he won in Iowa the Texas senator might have been on the path to securing the GOP nomination had it not been for an even stronger messianic figure, Donald Trump.
Why Evangelicals Support Trump | RealClearPolitics]]>
Quote:Sen. Ted Cruz’ Iowa/South Carolina strategy would have been very successful in winning evangelicals this year had it not been for Trump. Cruz, another strong, messianic figure, one who even speaks with the cadence of a Southern preacher, would have been the recipient of the evangelical votes this year, and after he won in Iowa the Texas senator might have been on the path to securing the GOP nomination had it not been for an even stronger messianic figure, Donald Trump.
Why Evangelicals Support Trump | RealClearPolitics]]> <![CDATA[Is Ted Cruz toast?]]> http://rightwingers.org/forums/thread-8.html Wed, 24 Feb 2016 19:34:12 +0000 http://rightwingers.org/forums/thread-8.html

Quote:In South Carolina’s evangelical-dominated Republican primary on Saturday, Donald Trump won 33 percent of the evangelical vote. In Tuesday’s Nevada primary, Trump upped the ante, claiming 40 percent of evangelical votes. And while it was jarring in both cases to see a Biblically illiterate, divorced billionaire win over such a sizable portion of America’s conservative faithful, an equally curious phenomenon has unfolded in the shadows of Trump’s victories: evangelical voters’ relative ambivalence toward Ted Cruz.
How Ted Cruz Lost the Evangelical Vote | New Republic]]>

Quote:In South Carolina’s evangelical-dominated Republican primary on Saturday, Donald Trump won 33 percent of the evangelical vote. In Tuesday’s Nevada primary, Trump upped the ante, claiming 40 percent of evangelical votes. And while it was jarring in both cases to see a Biblically illiterate, divorced billionaire win over such a sizable portion of America’s conservative faithful, an equally curious phenomenon has unfolded in the shadows of Trump’s victories: evangelical voters’ relative ambivalence toward Ted Cruz.
How Ted Cruz Lost the Evangelical Vote | New Republic]]> <![CDATA[Summing Cruz up, a remarkable story..]]> http://rightwingers.org/forums/thread-7.html Wed, 24 Feb 2016 15:18:07 +0000 http://rightwingers.org/forums/thread-7.html
The Brutalism of Ted Cruz

David Brooks JAN. 12, 2016

In 1997, Michael Wayne Haley was arrested after stealing a calculator from Walmart. This was a crime that merited a maximum two-year prison term. But prosecutors incorrectly applied a habitual offender law. Neither the judge nor the defense lawyer caught the error and Haley was sentenced to 16 years.

Eventually, the mistake came to light and Haley tried to fix it. Ted Cruz was solicitor general of Texas at the time. Instead of just letting Haley go for time served, Cruz took the case to the Supreme Court to keep Haley in prison for the full 16 years.

Some justices were skeptical. “Is there some rule that you can’t confess error in your state?” Justice Anthony Kennedy asked. The court system did finally let Haley out of prison, after six years.

The case reveals something interesting about Cruz’s character. Ted Cruz is now running strongly among evangelical voters, especially in Iowa. But in his career and public presentation Cruz is a stranger to most of what would generally be considered the Christian virtues: humility, mercy, compassion and grace. Cruz’s behavior in the Haley case is almost the dictionary definition of pharisaism: an overzealous application of the letter of the law in a way that violates the spirit of the law, as well as fairness and mercy.

Traditionally, candidates who have attracted strong evangelical support have in part emphasized the need to lend a helping hand to the economically stressed and the least fortunate among us. Such candidates include George W. Bush, Mike Huckabee and Rick Santorum.

But Cruz’s speeches are marked by what you might call pagan brutalism. There is not a hint of compassion, gentleness and mercy. Instead, his speeches are marked by a long list of enemies, and vows to crush, shred, destroy, bomb them. When he is speaking in a church the contrast between the setting and the emotional tone he sets is jarring.

Cruz lays down an atmosphere of apocalyptic fear. America is heading off “the cliff to oblivion.” After one Democratic debate he said, “We’re seeing our freedoms taken away every day, and last night was an audition for who would wear the jackboot most vigorously.”

As the Republican strategist Curt Anderson observed in Politico, there’s no variation in Cruz’s rhetorical tone. As is the wont of inauthentic speakers, everything is described as a maximum existential threat.

The fact is this apocalyptic diagnosis is ridiculous. The Obama administration has done things people like me strongly disagree with. But America is in better economic shape than any other major nation on earth. Crime is down. Abortion rates are down. Fourteen million new jobs have been created in five years.

Obama has championed a liberal agenda, but he hasn’t made the country unrecognizable. In 2008, federal spending accounted for about 20.3 percent of gross domestic product. In 2015, it accounted for about 20.9 percent.

But Cruz manufactures an atmosphere of menace in which there is no room for compassion, for moderation, for anything but dismantling and counterattack. And that is what he offers. Cruz’s programmatic agenda, to the extent that it exists in his speeches, is to destroy things: destroy the I.R.S., crush the “jackals” of the E.P.A., end funding for Planned Parenthood, reverse Obama’s executive orders, make the desert glow in Syria, destroy the Iran nuclear accord.

Some of these positions I agree with, but the lack of any positive emphasis, any hint of reform conservatism, any aid for the working class, or even any humane gesture toward cooperation is striking.

Ted Cruz didn’t come up with this hard, combative and gladiatorial campaign approach in isolation. He’s always demonstrated a tendency to bend his position — whether immigration or trade — to what suits him politically. This approach works because in the wake of the Obergefell v. Hodges court decision on same-sex marriage, many evangelicals feel they are being turned into pariahs in their own nation.

Cruz exploits and exaggerates that fear. But he reacts to Obergefell in exactly the alienating and combative manner that is destined to further marginalize evangelicals, that is guaranteed to bring out fear-driven reactions and not the movement’s highest ideals.

The best conservatism balances support for free markets with a Judeo-Christian spirit of charity, compassion and solidarity. Cruz replaces this spirit with Spartan belligerence. He sows bitterness, influences his followers to lose all sense of proportion and teaches them to answer hate with hate. This Trump-Cruz conservatism looks more like tribal, blood and soil European conservatism than the pluralistic American kind.

Evangelicals and other conservatives have had their best influence on American politics when they have proceeded in a spirit of personalism — when they have answered hostility with service and emphasized the infinite dignity of each person. They have won elections as happy and hopeful warriors. Ted Cruz’s brutal, fear-driven, apocalypse-based approach is the antithesis of that.]]>
The Brutalism of Ted Cruz

David Brooks JAN. 12, 2016

In 1997, Michael Wayne Haley was arrested after stealing a calculator from Walmart. This was a crime that merited a maximum two-year prison term. But prosecutors incorrectly applied a habitual offender law. Neither the judge nor the defense lawyer caught the error and Haley was sentenced to 16 years.

Eventually, the mistake came to light and Haley tried to fix it. Ted Cruz was solicitor general of Texas at the time. Instead of just letting Haley go for time served, Cruz took the case to the Supreme Court to keep Haley in prison for the full 16 years.

Some justices were skeptical. “Is there some rule that you can’t confess error in your state?” Justice Anthony Kennedy asked. The court system did finally let Haley out of prison, after six years.

The case reveals something interesting about Cruz’s character. Ted Cruz is now running strongly among evangelical voters, especially in Iowa. But in his career and public presentation Cruz is a stranger to most of what would generally be considered the Christian virtues: humility, mercy, compassion and grace. Cruz’s behavior in the Haley case is almost the dictionary definition of pharisaism: an overzealous application of the letter of the law in a way that violates the spirit of the law, as well as fairness and mercy.

Traditionally, candidates who have attracted strong evangelical support have in part emphasized the need to lend a helping hand to the economically stressed and the least fortunate among us. Such candidates include George W. Bush, Mike Huckabee and Rick Santorum.

But Cruz’s speeches are marked by what you might call pagan brutalism. There is not a hint of compassion, gentleness and mercy. Instead, his speeches are marked by a long list of enemies, and vows to crush, shred, destroy, bomb them. When he is speaking in a church the contrast between the setting and the emotional tone he sets is jarring.

Cruz lays down an atmosphere of apocalyptic fear. America is heading off “the cliff to oblivion.” After one Democratic debate he said, “We’re seeing our freedoms taken away every day, and last night was an audition for who would wear the jackboot most vigorously.”

As the Republican strategist Curt Anderson observed in Politico, there’s no variation in Cruz’s rhetorical tone. As is the wont of inauthentic speakers, everything is described as a maximum existential threat.

The fact is this apocalyptic diagnosis is ridiculous. The Obama administration has done things people like me strongly disagree with. But America is in better economic shape than any other major nation on earth. Crime is down. Abortion rates are down. Fourteen million new jobs have been created in five years.

Obama has championed a liberal agenda, but he hasn’t made the country unrecognizable. In 2008, federal spending accounted for about 20.3 percent of gross domestic product. In 2015, it accounted for about 20.9 percent.

But Cruz manufactures an atmosphere of menace in which there is no room for compassion, for moderation, for anything but dismantling and counterattack. And that is what he offers. Cruz’s programmatic agenda, to the extent that it exists in his speeches, is to destroy things: destroy the I.R.S., crush the “jackals” of the E.P.A., end funding for Planned Parenthood, reverse Obama’s executive orders, make the desert glow in Syria, destroy the Iran nuclear accord.

Some of these positions I agree with, but the lack of any positive emphasis, any hint of reform conservatism, any aid for the working class, or even any humane gesture toward cooperation is striking.

Ted Cruz didn’t come up with this hard, combative and gladiatorial campaign approach in isolation. He’s always demonstrated a tendency to bend his position — whether immigration or trade — to what suits him politically. This approach works because in the wake of the Obergefell v. Hodges court decision on same-sex marriage, many evangelicals feel they are being turned into pariahs in their own nation.

Cruz exploits and exaggerates that fear. But he reacts to Obergefell in exactly the alienating and combative manner that is destined to further marginalize evangelicals, that is guaranteed to bring out fear-driven reactions and not the movement’s highest ideals.

The best conservatism balances support for free markets with a Judeo-Christian spirit of charity, compassion and solidarity. Cruz replaces this spirit with Spartan belligerence. He sows bitterness, influences his followers to lose all sense of proportion and teaches them to answer hate with hate. This Trump-Cruz conservatism looks more like tribal, blood and soil European conservatism than the pluralistic American kind.

Evangelicals and other conservatives have had their best influence on American politics when they have proceeded in a spirit of personalism — when they have answered hostility with service and emphasized the infinite dignity of each person. They have won elections as happy and hopeful warriors. Ted Cruz’s brutal, fear-driven, apocalypse-based approach is the antithesis of that.]]>