“Ted Cruz: Flip-Flopper”: Supports Trade Agreements As Long As They Don’t Contain Anything Related To Immigration
It might surprise you to hear someone say that Ted Cruz is a flip-flopper. He’s built an entire reputation on being nothing if not consistently conservative. But when it comes to an issue that reporters like Scott Bland suggest are animating Trump supporters – trade – he did a huge flip-flop.
Back in April of last year, as Congress was preparing to vote on Trade Promotion Authority (so-called “Fast Track”), Senator Cruz wrote an op-ed in support of it with none other than Rep. Paul Ryan. As we all know, Ryan is now the Republican House Speaker – a position that places him at the center of what Cruz calls “the Washington cabal.” So he not only supported giving President Obama “fast track” authority on trade deals, he joined forces with the cabal to speak out it favor of it passing in Congress.
A short two months later, Sen. Cruz voted against TPA, citing “concerns over unrelated legislation and a separate trade deal, the Trade in Services Agreement, which he asserted could impact U.S. immigration law.”
As it stands right now, it would seem that Ted Cruz supports trade agreements as long as they don’t contain anything related to immigration. That might be an interesting question for a reporter to pose to the candidate on the campaign trail or at an upcoming debate.
On the one hand, Cruz might face criticism from the “job creators” if he changes his tune and comes out against trade deals. On the other, he could hurt his chances with Trump supporters if he embraced them.
Attempting to obscure and pander on the issue of trade agreements is not the first time Cruz has changed his tune on an issue. He did the same thing with his position about H-1B visas – he was for them before he was against them. What a flip-flopper!
By: Nancy LeTourneau, Political Animal Blog, The Washington Monthly, January 11, 2016
“This Moment Was Arresting”: President Obama’s Tear A Starkly Human Thing
He didn’t bawl.
His voice only roughened for a moment and he dabbed at a couple tears that straggled down his cheek. As displays of emotion go, it wasn’t all that much. But it was, of course, more than enough.
Inevitably, President Obama’s tears became the takeaway from last week’s White House speech on gun violence. They came as he recalled the 2012 massacre of six educators and 20 young children at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn.
“Every time I think about those kids,” said the president, tears shining on his cheek, “it gets me mad.”
One grows used to thinking of politics as a craft practiced mostly by people who are only technically human. One grows used to their cynical manipulations and insincere triangulations, to their poll-tested smiles, and focus-grouped quips. Which is why this moment was arresting. The president wept and it was a starkly human thing.
Or at least, that’s surely how most of us saw it. It is a sign of how angry and hateful our politics have become that some conservatives refused to accept the moment at face value.
“I would check that podium for a raw onion,” sneered Andrea Tantaros of Fox “News.”
“He’s putting something in his eyes to create the fascist tears,” wrote John Nolte of Breitbart.
“(hashtag)Crocodile Tears” tweeted actor James Woods.
One hardly knows how to respond. There isn’t even anger. There is only embarrassment for them, only amazement that some people are so bad at being, well … people.
But the sense of disconnectedness, of the action being wholly at odds with some people’s interpretation thereof, went far beyond the president’s tears. To compare what Obama actually said as he seeks to rein in the nation’s runaway gun violence with the way it was afterward construed by his political opposites is to feel as if one has fallen down the rabbit hole into an alternate reality where people drink trees and smell music and the idea that words have fixed meaning is about as real as the Tooth Fairy.
“I believe in the Second Amendment … that guarantees the right to bear arms,” said the president.
Which House Speaker Paul Ryan interpreted as: “From day one, the president has never respected the right to safe and legal gun ownership that our nation has valued since its founding.”
Obama took a handful of modest actions, including: an executive order clarifying that anyone who makes a living selling guns is required to conduct background checks on buyers; hiring more personnel to process background checks; pushing for improved gun safety technology and tracking of stolen firearms.
Which Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump processed as: “Pretty soon, you won’t be able to get guns.”
One nation, two realities, one of them populated by the NRA and its GOP henchmen, by extremists who don’t just own guns or like guns, but who sanctify and worship guns and so regard even the most humble effort to check their destructive power as blasphemy against their god.
In the other reality live the rest of us, heartsick and frustrated that our country has come to this: Mass shootings are commonplace and we cannot muster the political will to do anything about it. So nothing happens; nothing changes. Bullets fly, the gun lobby prattles on, and in an endless loop, we mourn mothers, fathers, sisters and sons in San Bernardino, Aurora, Ft. Hood, Tucson, Charleston and, yes, Newtown, where 20 first-graders — little children — were gunned down, slaughtered.
And people are disbelieving that the president cried? It is not amazing that someone might ponder this carnage and want to weep. No, what’s amazing is that some of us ponder it and do not.
By: Leonard Pitts, Jr., Columnist for The Miami Herald; The National Memo, January 10, 2016
“Why McCain’s Shot Across Cruz’s Bow Matters”: In The Senate, ‘Assisting Mr. Cruz Would Amount To A Foreign Concept’
There was a fleeting moment around this point eight years ago in which some questioned John McCain’s eligibility for the presidency. The Republican senator, well on his way to becoming his party’s nominee, was born in the Panama Canal Zone in 1936, prompting some pointless questions about whether he was literally a “natural-born citizen.”
Few took those questions seriously; even McCain’s harshest critics dismissed the concerns out of hand; and the Senate quickly approved a resolution – written and sponsored by Democrat Claire McCaskill – declaring, “John Sidney McCain, III, is a ‘natural born citizen’ under Article II, Section 1 of the Constitution of the United States.” It passed without opposition.
The recent history adds a degree of irony to McCain’s comments about Ted Cruz yesterday.
Arizona Sen. John McCain said he doesn’t know if the Canadian-born Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas is eligible to be president, saying the Supreme Court might have to decide if Cruz is eligible to be president.
“I don’t know the answer to that,” said McCain on the Chris Merrill Show on KFYI550 on Wednesday of Cruz’s eligibility.
As the BuzzFeed report added, McCain went on to say, in reference to Cruz, “I think it’s worth looking into.” McCain added he thinks Cruz should try to get ahead of these eligibility issues, though without access to a time machine, how he’d go about doing this is a bit of a mystery.
It’s a genuine shame that Donald Trump has pushed this issue into the spotlight, because as best as I can tell, this entire line of attack is misguided. For all intents and purposes, natural-born citizens are those who were citizens at the time of their birth. This applies to Cruz. End of story.
I can think of about a thousand reasons to be concerned about a Cruz presidency, but his eligibility isn’t one of them.
What I find more interesting, however, is Cruz’s sudden need for friends in high places.
With the developments surrounding McCain in 2008 still in mind, the New York Times asked this morning, “Now the question is, will the Senate again weigh in to clarify the constitutional status of another one of its members and declare Mr. Cruz eligible to be president?”
The answer is, almost certainly not. Among senators from both parties, Ted Cruz is extremely unpopular. He’s gone out of his way to alienate his colleagues, pick fights with his own party leadership, and generally make as few friends in the chamber as possible during his tenure.
On the campaign trail, this serves as a point of pride. Cruz can, in complete honesty, boast to the Republican base that the GOP establishment inside the Beltway has nothing but disdain for him – and the feeling is mutual. John McCain himself once referred to Cruz as a “wacko bird,” which is why it’s not too surprising that the Arizona Republican was needlessly adding fuel to a foolish fire yesterday. He just doesn’t seem to like his colleague very much.
Right about now, Cruz would probably love to see the same level of Senate support McCain received eight years ago, but he shouldn’t hold his breath. As the Times added, for most senators in both parties, “assisting Mr. Cruz would amount to a foreign concept.”
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, January 7, 2016
“Down The GOP Rabbit Hole”: The Republican Race Is Becoming ‘Curiouser And Curiouser’ In All The Worst Ways
I too often feel as if I have fallen down the rabbit hole in “Alice in Wonderland” when I view the dysfunction that is the Republican primary contest. Maybe you remember the quote from Lewis Carroll’s wonderful book:
“But I don’t want to go among mad people,” Alice remarked.
“Oh, you can’t help that,” said the Cat: “we’re all mad here, I’m mad. You’re mad.”
“How do you know I’m mad?” said Alice.
“You must be,” said the Cat, “or you wouldn’t have come here.”
Well, those of us political junkies, and even those who can’t avoid the daily news bursts, are fast wondering if we are embroiled in the Alice in Wonderland of politics.
Ted Cruz reads “Green Eggs and Ham” on the Senate floor – anything to shut down the government. Donald Trump says very little that is actually true and doubles down when questioned. (He’s been awarded PolitiFact’s “Lie of the Year”; 60 of his 79 statements were labeled mostly false, false or pants on fire.)
The other candidates are trying desperately to keep up with the self-proclaimed outsiders Trump and Cruz, bashing immigrants, eviscerating President Barack Obama for “taking away our guns,” each trying to out-macho the other: Ben Carson says a Muslim shouldn’t be president, contrary to our Constitution; Marco Rubio helps write immigration reform legislation and then rejects it; Chris Christie called opponents of an assault weapons ban “dangerous”, “crazy” and “radical” in 1995, yet he now totally agrees with them; Carly Fiorina won’t even meet with President Vladimir Putin.
The madder you are, the louder your voice, the more outrageous your statements, the greater the likelihood that your poll numbers will rise in the Republican primaries.
Trump does take the cake: attacking John McCain for being a war hero, calling to ban Muslims from entering the U.S., suggesting building a fence and making Mexico pay for it, wanting to carpet bomb our enemies and target their families. Even hard-core conservatives wonder whether he has become the candidate most likely to tear up our Constitution, violate international law and shred the rules of the Geneva Conventions.
Maybe Trump deserves the title Mad Hatter in this race, but most of the others aren’t far behind. The Republican Party has truly become the Mad Tea Party – maybe a more appropriate description than any reference to the Boston Tea Party.
And throughout it all, this race is becoming, as in Alice in Wonderland, “Curiouser and curiouser!” Like Alice, maybe we could all wake up from this dream?
By: Peter Fenn, U. S. News and World Report, January 7, 2016
Share This Blog
Unknown Feed- An error has occurred; the feed is probably down. Try again later.
mykeystrokes.com 