Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) has taken a page from Donald Trump’s presidential campaign playbook, hardening his rhetoric against undocumented immigrants. Cruz told Fox News host Bill O’Reilly on Monday that yes, should he be elected president, his administration would deport all 12 million undocumented people estimated to be in the U.S. and wouldn’t allow them to return…. “We should enforce the law … federal law requires that anyone here illegally that’s apprehended should be deported,” Cruz said. “Of course” he’d look for undocumented immigrants, he said. Cruz said America would build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, triple the border force and establish biometric entry systems “so we will know the day someone overstays their visa.”
It’s been said that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. In the case of Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Mordor), it’s without a doubt the sincerest form of desperation. His hyper-Christian hypocrisy and intolerance, while certainly appealing to a small minority of those whose God is an angry, vindictive, mean-spirited son of a bitch, is proving to lack the wide appeal of the GOP front-runner’s demagoguery. So, if you can’t beat ‘em with what you bring to the plate, your only option may well be to out-demagogue the demagogue. And what better way to prove your ability to sow hatred and division than to proclaim your willingess to deport all 12 million illegal aliens currently present within our borders. Logistics and the expense of such inhumanity need not be considered importtant when you appealing to the fear and prejudice of the American Sheeple.
Hyprocrisy be damned…there’s an election to win!
Even better, making such a declaration after denouncing Trump for saying the same thing you said last month demonstrates that you’re a candidate with an open and flexible mind…when it comes to sowing hatred and fear-mongering. When it comes to protecting the interests of low-information straight White Conservative Christians, a candidate can never go wrong demonizing those who look, act, think, believe live, and/or love differently…amiright??
The senator’s comments represent an escalation in rhetoric from a candidate who rejected the notion of a “deportation force” of “jackboots” just last month, and lambasted the idea after it was proposed by GOP front-runner Trump. Cruz in January said such a policy would reflect “a police state,” adding, “That’s not how we enforce the law for any crime.”
Cruz was pressed on the issue Monday by O’Reilly, who asked if he would seek out fictitious Irishman Tommy O’Malley and deport him for overstaying his visa.
“You better believe it,” Cruz said. “Both Donald Trump and Marco Rubio would allow those 12 million people to become U.S. citizens. I will not.”
It’s often been said that the truth is the first casualty of war, and the same hypothesis also holds true for Republican politics, where no one cares, much less remembers, what a candidate said yesterday, last week, or even last month. Most Republican primary voters can be aptly described as “low information” (full credit to Newt Gingrich) and with no fixed principles. This makes them intellectually malleable and manipulable in the extreme, prone to attaching themselves to the candidate with the ability to speak most directly to their fears and prejudices.
For his part, Cruz has long pledged to run a campaign long on integrity and short of personal attacks, a pledge he manages to violates on a daily basis (If his lips are moving, it’s a safe bet he’s prevaricating). Whether such dishonestly is indicative of an epic lack of self-awareness or a deeply cynical, win-at-any-and-all-costs mentality is difficult to know…though the end result is the same.
If you can’t beat ‘em, co-opt their message, and then lie about them until you get called out for it…and then lie some more.
It’s what Jesus would do.
