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“What’s The Deal With Cruz And Kids?”: Twas The Night Before The Shutdown And All Through The House

Is there any limit to Senator Ted Cruz’s willingness to exploit small children – his own and now others – in embarrassing and peculiar ways to further his bid for the Republican presidential nomination? Based on his latest TV ad, “Playing Trump,” which features three kids playing with a Donald Trump doll and robotically mouthing Cruz campaign talking points, the answer is clearly “No.”

“Look, I got the Trump action figure,” says one adorable child, holding the doll. “What does he do?” asks another. “He pretends to be a Republican,” says the first.

The child goes on to pretend that the Trump doll is saying that he gave money to Nancy Pelosi and Anthony Weiner. Then, when one of the others calls attention to a dollhouse, the first child says in his Trump voice: “That’s a lousy house. I’m going to take your house through eminent domain.”

The three children demolish the dollhouse with the “aid” of the Trump doll, and at the end, two adults, presumably playing parents, peek in the door, shocked. Shocked! “We wouldn’t tolerate these values in our children,” the narrator says. “Why would we want them in a president.”

Well, the obvious answer is, none of those children actually have those values. They are just pretending to. And no one under the age of 10 is running for president, even though the campaign is enough to make you think so.

The kids in this ad are, I fervently hope, professional actors. But Mr. Cruz is not above using his own children in equally chilling ways to advance his candidacy.

Last year, the Cruz campaign posted a lot of “b roll” footage of the candidate and his family, intended for use by super PACs. The point was to help the groups make ads on behalf of Mr. Cruz but act as if they were not coordinating with the campaign, to avoid running afoul of the very few campaign finance laws still in effect.

In that footage, we are all privileged to watch Mr. Cruz try, with increasing impatience, to get his older daughter to say grace at a dinner table, with minimal success, until he finally does it himself.

Then, the brains of American voters were violated with an ad in which Mr. Cruz cuddled up with his wife and daughters on a couch and read them a twisted version of a Christmas favorite.

“Twas the night before the shutdown and all through the House,” Mr. Cruz says in a very creepy tone of awe. “Not a bill was stirring, not even to fund a mouse.”

There ought to be a rule against taking beloved children’s stories and ruining them for your own children and the rest of America. What did he do when the camera was turned off? Tell his daughters there was no such thing as Santa Claus?

By: Andrew Rosenthal, Taking Note, The Editorial Page Editor’s Blog, The New York Times, February 10, 2016

February 12, 2016 - Posted by raemd95 | Campaign Advertising, Donald Trump, Ted Cruz | Anthony Weiner, Campaign Finance Laws, Children, Eminent Domain, Government Shutdown, Nancy Pelosi, Super PAC's