Establishment Tribes Beat Drums Against Ted Cruz

By Published on January 7, 2016

Simultaneously, as if signals from a council of sachems had summoned them to the warpath, the Republican establishment’s warriors took after Ted Cruz. Pat Buchanan encapsulated this establishment: “… officeholders past and present, donors, lobbyists, think-tankers angling for jobs, party hacks and talking heads [who] discuss how to frustrate the rising rebellion against what they have done to America.”

The establishmentarian drumbeat against Cruz has involved but a whiff of argument on policy, and a few twisted or out of context attributions. But it has consisted mostly of attacks on the man’s character. Fox News led the way with characterizations ranging from flip-flopper to “servile.”

Britt Hume, heretofore its resident adult, said that Cruz had “difficulty shaking hands with the truth.” The point in print, in the blogosphere, as well as on TV is: he’s not one of us, not of our kind, and hence unsuited for responsible office. This very vehemence ensures the attacks’ success. For sure, Cruz ain’t no part of the establishment. Whether that convinces voters to vote against Cruz or for him is another matter.  What follows here is an overview of the written attacks, which reveal more about the attackers than they do about the target thereof.

The Wall Street Journal is the Republican establishment’s intellectual apex. This is what flows down from that hill.

A  recent Journal lead editorial hit Cruz for supporting restrictions on the government’s practice of collecting data on all telephone traffic, supposedly just to look good to libertarians. No one could guess that there are dispositive substantive reasons for believing that unfocused bulk data collection is worse than useless. The debate on this, which has been going on within the intelligence community for thirty years, has been decided internally by bureaucratic and interest group force majeure. But even folks who know none of this are painfully aware that our intelligence analysts, far from having algorithms that can find the equivalent of just the right dust particles inside mountains, let boulder-size facts about such as the murderers of Fort Hood, Boston and San Bernardino roll over them. Cruz’s argument is that there is a lot more safety to be gained by focusing surveillance on mosques than on your mom. Crazy argument, isn’t it?

 

Read the article “Establishment Tribes Beat Drums Against Ted Cruz” on atimes.com.

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