Posted by Tina
Ted Cruz has not only tied the old guard Republicans in knots, he’s got the old guard columnists flummoxed as well. David Brooks appeared on PBS’s “News Hour” sounding like a man trapped in a panic room. The problem? Ted Cruz types won’t play Washington DC style footsie:
“What’s going on in the house, and a bit in the Senate, too, is what you might call the rise of Ted Cruz-ism,” Brooks said. “And Ted Cruz, the senator from Canada through Texas, is basically not a legislator in the normal sense, doesn’t have an idea that he’s going to Congress to create coalitions, make alliances, and he is going to pass a lot of legislation. He’s going in more as a media-protest person. And a lot of the House Republicans are in the same mode. They’re not normal members of Congress. They’re not legislators. They want to stop things. And so they’re just being — they just want to obstruct.”
“And the second thing they’re doing, which is alarming a lot of Republicans, is they’re running against their own party,” he continued. “Ted Cruz is running against Republicans in the Senate. The House Republican Tea Party types are running against the Republican establishment. That’s how they’re raising money. That’s where they’re spending their money on ads. And so they’re having a very obstructive role which is going on this week, and I think it’s going to make John Boehner’s life even more difficult.” (Bold emphasis mine)
Gosh…do you think they make his job even more difficult than obstructionist Democrats in the House?
Come, come Mr. Brooks. Democrats are not working with Speaker Boehner. Democrats NEVER work with Republicans to “create coalitions” or “make alliances”. With Democrats its always “my way or the highway. The people know it and you know it. Remember how the ACA was written and passed? Remember when Nancy Pelosi had to use bribes and coercion behind the closed doors of her office to force Democrat votes. She passed big legislation that has turned to crap for the American people. Normal Washington DC is crap, Mr. Brooks, and Ted Cruz knows it.
Ted Cruz and those like him are doing what the people who elected them want them to do. They were not elected to go to Washington to become members of the good old boys club, to behave like “normal” legislators, or to do the legislative bidding of progressive legislators propped up by journalistic sellouts like you. They were not sent to DC to become “go along” Republicans.
Ted Cruz, and the growing numbers of people who stand firmly behind him, expect him to break up that good old boy elitist Washington DC club.
Tina: “Remember how the ACA was written and passed?”
Brooks, unlike you, probably remembers the many, many concessions made to Republicans in the ACA, from dropping the public option in favor of the individual mandate (Republican idea that Republicans now claim in unconstitutional) to forcing Congress members and aides into the health insurance exchanges (Republican idea that Republicans later lied about, claiming there was an “exemption” to Obamacare that never existed) to the entire concept of state-based exchanges and high risk insurance pools to begin with. Negotiations went on for months and Democrats made a very clear effort to accommodate Republican ideas.
This wasn’t good enough for Republicans.
Even a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute remembers this:
“The real problem with the health care plan — for Mr. Romney and the Republicans in general — is that political credit for it goes to Mr. Obama. Now, Mr. Romney is in a terrible fix trying to spin his way out of this paradox and tear down something he knows is right — something for which he ought to be taking great political credit of his own.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/30/opinion/sunday/why-obamacare-is-a-conservatives-dream.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
Now Republicans like Ted Cruz have voted 40 times to repeal a law they helped write, even though they KNOW these votes aren’t going to pass! They are purely symbolic, feel-good votes that are done for publicity, to get the Tea Party crowd thinking they’re doing something. It is a gigantic waste of time and taxpayer money. To claim that voting 40 different times on a measure you know won’t pass is fiscally conservative is to make a complete mockery of the term.
From Chris NYT article:
Oh really? If it was based on conservative ideas those ideas were distorted and mangled.
The ACA was cleverly written to appear benign and include market forces, people get to choose between plans at the government sponsored exchanges for instance. This idea is a complete farce that will lead to exactly what the radical progressives wanted all along…single payer government run healthcare. Pelosi/Reid knew this when they wrote it.
The ACA represents the crowning achievement in the progressive movement that began seventy years ago.
Ted Cruz knows this which is why the left has to try to destroy him and others like him.
Progressives wouldn’t know or recognize an authentic free market idea or how to be personally responsible if they tripped on them.
The idea that conservatives “wrote” the law is simply absurd…the so-called concessions given are meaningless since not a single Republican voted for the final bill that nobody had read much less understood.
You progressives are going to have to make up your minds. Do you prefer a “do nothing” House or a House that does something?
The snits can’t have it both ways.
The Democrat Party and every one of the legislators that passed this piece of trash legislation have made a complete mockery of the United States of America and the entire legislative process.
Tina: “Progressives wouldn’t know or recognize an authentic free market idea or how to be personally responsible if they tripped on them.”
Again, the writer of the NYT piece is not a progressive. He is a senior fellow at the conservative American Enterprise Institute.
“The idea that conservatives “wrote” the law is simply absurd…the so-called concessions given are meaningless since not a single Republican voted for the final bill”
Right, because they’re assholes. They didn’t vote on a bill they used to agree with because it had Obama cooties.
Chris whether you will admit it or not radical liberal progressives took ideas that could have lowered healthcare and insurance costs for the American people and used them to create an expensive, government controlled, bureaucratic nightmare that will ruin the healthcare industry, cost Americans more, create even more debt, cause rationing of care and a shortage of doctors. As former Democrat Presidential candidate Dr. Dr. Howard Dean said, quote, “The IPAB is essentially a health care rationing body. By setting doctor reimbursement rates for Medicare, and determining which procedures and drugs will be covered and at what price, the IPAB will be able to stop certain treatments its members do not favor by simply setting rates to levels where no doctor or hospital will perform them.” As an added bonus it is estimated that young people will choose to pay the fine, rather than the high premiums, leaving the numbers of uninsured, one of the reasons for passing this legislation, without insurance adding pressure to coverage costs.
It matters not one iota that conservative ideas were borrowed by unimaginative progressives when what they finally created is a train wreck that not a single conservative would vote to enact because they knew it would not do what progressives promised it would do and it will do great damage to our healthcare, our economy, and to every family in America.
The a**holes of the radical progressive Democrat Party own this piece of excrement, all attempts to now pawn it off as someone else’s idea is absurd, but typical. As I wrote…progressives wouldn’t “know or recognize” responsibility if they tripped over it.
“Democrats are not working with Speaker Boehner. Democrats NEVER work with Republicans to “create coalitions” or “make alliances”.
Tina, what’s this got to do with anything? The Repugs have numerical superiority in the House and can do anything they like … if they like.
But all they seem to want to do is pass bills that have not a rat’s chance in hell of being signed into law. This is not legislating; it is not governing. What it is, is show-boating. Ted should get himself a radio show, which would suit his abilities much better.
Sequestration is starting to actually effect federal departments. I heard the head of the FBI is making all kinds of outraged noises, but Ted says: “The Obama Administration has the ability to implement the sequester so as to avoid damaging national security and compromising the best interests of Americans.”
Strange. I thought it was the Congress’s job to decide who gets how much money. In fact, sequestration was authored by the OA as a “do you job, or else” provision to the last federal fiscal debacle.
The members of the House have no understanding of democratic government, i.e., the art of compromise … and so we got “or else.”
Furthermore, I don’t think anyone on this side of the eisle is really terribly worried about Ted. The general consensus seems to be that Ted will implode well before the primaries.
Libby some of what you say is accurate although without complete understanding. When I say Democrats never compromise with Republicans I mean just that…the general direction of government has gone the way of bigger government.
Democrats have been steadily winning in the name of growing government for seventy years and it was Republicans doing all of the compromising all along the way. I will concede only that the word “never” was a slight exaggeration…Clinton compromised in 1984 with the House Republicans and it saved his economic record! (For which he is, like the scoundrel he is, takes all credit)
In all meaningful areas of legislation Democrats are also notorious for taking a hard stand, refusing to compromise, and they get away with it. They play obstructionism without the slightest concern that they will be accused of not being “good legislators”. This targeting of Cruz is total BS.
Ted Cruz represents those Americans that see the growth in government, the unsustainable growth of government programs, as something that must be reversed if America is ever going to have a strong middle class again. As a representative of those Americans he deserves the same respect as any other legislator…probably more! Big government types, those were serve in government and their elitist and corporate supporters and counterparts, have put out a verbal hit on Cruz, mafia style, hoping that by ruining him they can ruin the movement to restore our republic.
And please…where is the criticism of Harry Reid? What has his Democrat controlled Senate done to compromise or work legislatively to get things done? Republicans have passed many work bills and old Harry has refused to let the Senators consider them! Harry didn’t even pass a budget for years, as he is compelled by law to do, and nobody complained that he was not “governing” or suggested that perhaps he should return to doing shady real estate deals in Nevada which are more his style!
This pretense that you or your party give a rip is amusing but I will hand you this, Libby, to my recollection you have never been a phony. You love this big government stuff and proudly say so.
Big government politicians don’t serve the people; they serve themselves; they serve the government control machine that sucks all of the vitality and opportunity out of our economy. it is killing the country…OF COURSE they will do whatever it takes to keep the money and power in their hands.
On the other hand … pulled from CNN reporting of the Navy yard shooting:
“The headquarters — the workplace for about 3,000 people — is the largest of the Navy’s five system commands. It has a fiscal year budget of nearly $30 billion.”
$30 billion to employ 3,000? That wants explaining.
And Tina, the point I was trying to make, and that you failed, again, to take is that your highly partisan fixation on the doings of dems enables you to evade the “cleaning of your own house.”
Libby I haven’t noticed that anyone, including you, is interested in the “cleaning” of the Democrat House! Why is that? Your party does not deliver what it promises and government just gets more and more costly.
Before you preach to me about my partisanship you would do well to do a little cleaning yourself…and ask your fellow travelers to do the same…I mean really, this IS AMERICA!
And the Tea Party, announced here for the first time by me, IS about cleaning both houses…always has been.
Ted Cruz is about cleaning out Washington DC and returning power back to the people. Hello!
I remain a Republican and lend support to worthy Republicans because they are the only source of power with any designs whatsoever for cleaning up in DC right now…and I have never pretended to be something other than a conservative, and a patriotic, American.
Could it be that your admonition is just an attempt to distract me from criticizing the radical Democrat big government solution…hmmmm?
“Your party does not deliver what it promises and government just gets more and more costly.”
Does so. Social Security, Medicare … Yeah! Admittedly we’re still having trouble making the idjuts comprehend that this must be paid for, but we know it, we own it, and we’re working on it.
Ted Cruz = Michelle Bachmann = Herman Cain = Sarah Palin = Rick Santorum. In other words, he’s exactly the problem with your party: your obsession with ideological purity, your promotion of radical know-nothings, your preference for throwing red meat to the base over appealing to mainstream voters, your combination of arrogance and ignorance…people like Ted are the reason the last Republican primary was regarded as a circus. If this is the kind of politician you want to promote, you haven’t learned your lesson, and you will lose again.
I’m not a huge fan of Ted Cruz but I have to laugh at the people that are mad at him for sticking to his guns and refusing to negotiate. Um, the reason he was elected is people are sick of voting Republican just to have them go off to Washington and vote for themselves (ahem, Doug LaMalfa farm subsidy welfare queen). Conservative voters have said for many years that they want people to go to Washington and stand up to the establishment. All of the paid pundit idiots like David Brooks can’t understand why the people finally doing that are so popular.
And even though Ted Cruz doesn’t thrill me sometimes, I would take him any day over Diane Feinstein who is supposedly some big gun control advocate for the people but at the same time a big NSA defender who believes the people are safer when the government spies on us. No thanks.
I want to also say to Chris that Ted Cruz is not a “know-nothing.” He is an ivy league-educated genius. People might not agree with what he does with his intelligence but he is an incredibly intelligent man.