The special hell of a Ted Cruz rally: What it’s like to spend an evening with the GOP’s oiliest oper

[applegrove]

The special hell of a Ted Cruz rally: What it’s like to spend an evening with the GOP’s oiliest operator

by Gary LeGum at Salon

http://www.salon.com/2016/02/05/the_special_hell_of_a_ted_cruz_rally_what_its_like_to_spend_an_evening_with_the_gops_oiliest_operator/

SNIP...........


Cruz is often described as “oily,” but that word doesn’t really do him justice. In fact, he’s so oleaginous he reminds one of the puddles covering the stained cement floor of a Jiffy Lube. It’s not just a physical characteristic – though there is that; the man has a sheen about him – but also one of affect. When he strides out to a rapturous greeting from the crowd and walks along the edge of the stage slapping hands with people in the front row, it feels so studied that I can picture college-age Ted Cruz practicing this move in his Princeton dorm room.

The speech is filled with the usual bullshit that no one will call him on, even in a GOP debate, because all the candidates are trying to appeal to a base that has gone beyond reason and Earth’s orbit. But it’s worth rebutting a few of the lies here, if only for the benefit of future archaeologists picking through the ruins of our civilization if Ted Cruz winds up leading it.

For economic policy, Cruz has a plan to turbocharge the American economy. It seems to go something like this:
•Repeal Obamacare
•Institute a flat tax on all personal and business income
•Economic growth!!!!!

Never mind that this plan would yank health insurance from millions of people and blow a hole in the deficit, adding mountains to the nation’s $19 trillion debt that he decried elsewhere in his sermon. “Repeal Obamacare” and “flat tax” are words that appeal to the deepest, most primitive part of the conservative lizard brain. Any downsides can just be blamed on liberals later on.


...........SNIP

[Blue Owl]

1. The not-so-fresh hell that is Ted Cruz

n/t

[hifiguy]

2. That deranged homunculus is one of the most genuinely dangerous

people I have ever seen in American politics, and I grew up with Nixon. The only surprising thing about him is that he doesn't leave an actual slime trail behind himself, like a snail.

[Zambero]

4. Nixon was a deranged moderate-conservative

Cruz is a deranged end-times theocrat. I would have taken 4 terms of Tricky Dick to one of Creepy Cruz.

[hifiguy]

5. Probably a good bet.

Nixon would never have even considered torching the planet just to bring back Baby Jebus. He'd have considered it beyond absurdity. Cruz would do it in a second.

[DirkGently]

6. Nixon strikes me as parallel too. But Cruz is fall more deranged.

Smart, but in a mechanical, megalomaniacal way. They say Nixon would get blind drunk listening to military music.

But Nixon's policies weren't actually insane like Cruz'. He started the EPA.

This guy's dangerous, but he's something else. A religious extremist for starters -- last I heard he was still screaming that PP was "selling baby parts."

But other than that he's kind of a cypher. Glib and clever and calculated, but whoever he really is is buried far, far away from anything he's showing to people.

He puts me in mind of Martin Sheen's character Greg Stillson in the Dead Zone.



"Mr. Vice President, Mr. Secretary, the missiles are flying. Hallelujah, Hallelujah."

[hifiguy]

7. Agreed. Nixon's demons were internal.

He was a man at war with himself and psychologically unstable - paranoid and fueled by an intense jealousy and hatred of the Kennedy family.

Cruz on the other hand is a fanatic believer in things that are completely insane by any standard of normality and has a messiah complex on top of that. He's the kind of guy who would torch the planet because Dog told him to do so.

Ted Cruz is a walking encyclopedia of psychoses and mental pathologies.

[DirkGently]

8. And he's being taken seriously as a candidate

... for President of the United States.

What do people think, when they look at this country from the outside, I wonder?

[hifiguy]

10. They see what is in large part

an open-air lunatic asylum peopled in large part by individuals so gullible, superstitious and ignorant they must seem like they just escaped from the Dark Ages.

[dhill926]

3. K & R...

wow....one hell of a well written piece, about a lizard of a man....

[Initech]

9. He's a sleazy snake oil salesman.

[bullwinkle428]

11. South Park's "Underpants Gnome Theory" has more basis in reality than

Cruz's "economic plan"!