[I]f you listened to Ted Cruz’s speech Friday morning at the Values Voters Summit, you would think that he was a conquering general rallying his troops after a great victory — at least, that is, when he wasn’t being heckled for his opposition to comprehensive immigration reform. When the fight to shut down the government over Obamacare began, Cruz told the mostly adoring crowd, “it was abundantly clear this was not a strategy that Washington was going to embrace.” But Cruz and his ally Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) “went over their heads to the American people,” and now those same Washington eminences “fear” those ordinary Americans. It’s as if President Obama was routed the minute Cruz’s shutdown began, and none of what the American people are actually saying about Cruz’s strategy matters.
One of the truly sad aspects of the Teapublican takeover of the GOP is that facts no longer matter to those on the Rabid Right. Truth is useful only insofar as it can be manipulated to support the prevailing narrative. Science is the province of losers and Godless Liberals. Compromise means that “We’ll meet you halfway…once you meet 100% of our demands.” What matters is not what’s provably and demonstrably true. What matters is belief and ideology and “the way things ought to be.” You can’t negotiate with those who define compromise as capitulation. You can’t reason with ideological jihadists impervious to logic and reason. How can one hope to have a rational discussion with the rabidly irrational ideologues whose response to arguments they can’t refute is screaming and rage-filled invective?
Ted Cruz is merely the new and most objectionable face of this new anti-intellectual, anti-reality, fact-free environment. His ability to lie early and often is truly impressive in its venality and dishonesty. In his speech to the Value Voters Summit (a rich vein of comic potential in its own right), Cruz was in rare form, telling lies left and right, insulting Democrats, Liberals, and Vice President Joe Biden. You and I might look at his speech and be appalled at Cruz’ epic lack of honesty and integrity. When you care about neither, the truth is whatever you need it to be and it can be changed to fit the narrative of the moment.
It’s not even accurate to call Teapublicans like Cruz Conservative. More moral reprobates than legitimate political actors, Teapublicans are as much Conservatives as Jeffrey Dahmer was a vegetarian. What these integrity-free zealots care about more than anything is creating a world in which they- White hyper-Conservative Christians- set the rules in a compassion-free environment in which the social contract is a profanity and only the strong survive. It’s a world in which they and only they have the Divine Right to set policy and control the levers of power. It’s a world well on its way to becoming an anti-Democratic, authoritarian dominionist theocracy.
This is why President Obama must stand firm and refuse to negotiate with those willing to burn America to the ground if 100% of their demands aren’t met. How can you possibly hope to negotiate with those willing to hold our economy hostage, even if it means destroying it in pursuit of their agenda? This sort of zealotry cannot and must not be rewarded by treating their demands as legitimate bargaining points. The Affordable Care Act is settled law, passed by Congress and upheld by the Supreme Court. The time to debate defunding Obamacare was when it was still a bill on Capitol Hill. Don’t like it? Too bad; that’s how democracy works. Win the next election and then take another crack at it; you don’t get to undermine democracy. In some quarters, that’s known as “treason.”
Ultimately, what Teapublicans want is to effectively nullify the 2012 election, and with it the reelection of a President they despise. Discussions of racism aside (and there’s plenty of that at work here), Teapublicans view themselves as the rightful and only heirs to political power. A Democrat-controlled Senate and a(n) (African-American) Democrat in the White House is to them an abomination, a reality they refuse to recognize because in their eyes it violates the natural order of things.
This is why the American Sheeple’s opinion of the Republican Party is abysmally low…and shrinking. When your approval ratings are literally lower than dog poop, you’re in trouble. Not that Teapublicans care about public opinion…unless there’s an election at stake.
Ronald Reagan was right: America doesn’t negotiate with terrorists. This should be even more true when those terrorists are voting members of Congress.
