Ted Cruz Cut Deal With Religious Right Founder That Made George W. Bush President

[Unknown Beatle]

Source: Alternet

Over the last several years, mainstream media, liberals and progressives alike have succumbed to a misleading narrative that depicts the Tea Party as secular and libertarian. But leading Tea Party Republicans in the U.S. Senate Ted Cruz and Rand Paul were raised within the bosom of the politicized Christian right and have access to its leadership, one of whom is former Texas U.S. Representative Ron Paul (consider this 2003 op-ed from Rand Paul's father, Ron.)

But Ted Cruz brings to the table his own formidable, even astonishing, elite connections that, in 1999, helped enable candidate George W. Bush's lock on the 2000 election Republican presidential nomination.

In 1999 Cruz, then a George W. Bush campaign aide, helped cement support from the religious right for Bush by arranging a meeting between one of the key architects of the movement, Paul Weyrich - who played a pivotal role in drawing evangelicals into electoral politics - and one of the Bush for president campaign top campaign leaders Timothy Goeglein, who went on to serve as Special Assistant to U.S. President George W. Bush and Deputy Director of the White House Office of Public Liaison from 2001 to 2008, and now works with Focus on The Family.

-Snip-

But, reveals Goeglein, then-Bush campaign aide Ted Cruz helped play the inside track, by arranging a meeting between Cruz, Goeglein, and Paul Weyrich. Starting on page 34, Goeglein begins,

"In addition to the strong support Governor Bush was garnering in those early primaries, he was also gaining the support of key social conservatives in a systematic but off-the-record outreach effort where I was spending lots of my time. One of the most important such meetings occurred a month after I arrived in Austin. My friend and fellow campaign aide Ted Cruz, a former Supreme Court Clerk for Chief Justice William Rehnquist and later a candidate for the U.S. Senate from Texas, phoned me one day and told me Paul Weyrich, one of the leading traditional conservatives in the country, was in Austin and wanted to have breakfast to discuss Governor Bush's record and the campaign. Ted asked me to join him. Paul, who later became a close friend and ally, had a reputation for blunt talk and core, unswerving convictions, and so I knew the meeting would be foundational to our coalition efforts in the Bush campaign.
We met for a breakfast all of us thought would last an hour or so. It ended up going nearly three hours. Paul queried me and ted on nearly every issue possible in a spirited, lively session. I came to see the repartee among the three of us was rooted in common principles and values; and by the end of the breakfast, Paul told us, in all his years of following presidential politics, he had never felt more comfortable with the core convictions of a candidate on the issue he most believed in, the sanctity of every human life, the foundation of the traditional family, and American sovereignty. Te breakfast ended in unity and common purpose. This kind of one-on-one outreach was a cornerstone of the first Bush campaign, and conservative support was one of the keys to victory."

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[factsarenotfair]

1. I had no idea.

Maybe I wish I still didn't.

[Warpy]

2. I think Tim La Haye was even more instrumental in giving

the White House to Stupid. He's the fraud who came up with those appallingly juvenile "Left Behind" books that are so popular with undereducated Christians in the heartland. He and his wife Beverly have managed to carve quite an empire out among the faithful.

Weyrich was there, but more as a bit player.

Still, I don't wonder Cruz is collecting these frauds as he goes along. It's one thing that makes him thoroughly unpleasant to everyone else he comes into contact with.

He'll be lucky if the other Senators in his own party don't take a collection to fund putting a contract out on him.

[City Lights]

3. I wish we could send the Carnival Cruz back to Canada. nt

[riverbendviewgal]

5. oh no, please don't

we don't want him.

[City Lights]

7. Ok, but only if you take me then!

[riverbendviewgal]

8. that is sweet

Of course a DUr like you will blend very good up here.

[malaise]

4. More importantly he was in Florida stealing the election for Bush

during the recount. Never forget that.

[kelliekat44]

6. ++1,000 nt