Tuesday, May 3, 2016

Cruz critique

As you’ve probably figured out by now I saved my Cruz critique for last because I have tended to favor him for my GOP nominee for president in 2016. You have also observed in my previous blogs that Cruz has consistently been the most conservative candidate of the group. I’m glad that I put off assessing Cruz because in the last several weeks he has disappointed me on many occasions but maybe I have set my standards too high in evaluating our candidates. Each of them has a couple of reasonably good conservative ideologies but all are lacking, in my humble opinion, in many other social, economic, foreign-policy, and even what I would consider to be a reasonable standard for the treatment of fellow candidates. One of the things that I used in setting my standards was I simply wanted the candidates to at least act “presidential”. Each and every one of them in turn has failed that primary standard. Each in turn has lowered himself to a pathetic show of gutter politics. Each in turn has shown himself to be a candidate of smears, dishonesty, innuendo, self-aggrandizing grandstanding. This primary season has proven itself to be the nastiest of all the campaign seasons I have witnessed in nearly 50 years of paying attention to the political process. In short, as I have said many times in the past, I will vote for our nominee in November but I will hold my nose when I pull the lever. I can only hope that the GOP nominee will spend at least a fraction of the energy on Hillary's destruction as he has spent destroying his GOP opponents.

I must now finally stop stalling and present my Ted Cruz assessment of conservatism. In all my previous blogs I have noted that Cruz has consistently been shown to be the most conservative of all the GOP candidates. Even though I am not endorsing Ted Cruz, or any other candidate for that matter, I have tended to favor him throughout this primary process. But in the last several weeks Cruz has lowered himself into the political gutter of name-calling, innuendo, and just plain nastiness. Cruz professes to be an evangelical Christian but some of his actions and utterances have given an opposing impression. I believe Cruz to be a Christian but he weakened when it came time to “turn the other cheek”. When Trump would slap Cruz, Cruz would slap back. Slapping back is the manly thing to do but not necessarily the Christian thing to do. I hoped Cruz would stay above the fray but he couldn’t pull it off. I will confess that I would’ve fallen into the gutter alongside Cruz had I been in his place of having to defend my wife and family. It would take a stronger will than mine to remain cool under that specific type of personal attack. Getting back to his conservative ideologies, he is without a doubt the most conservative of all the candidates. The sad fact is he cannot and will not take Trump out of the nominee position unless the GOP establishment allows it to happen. Just keep in mind that even though the GOP establishment and their primary/caucus nominating system completely negates the will of the people, they have no control over the voters in the November election with the exception of having picked our candidate. But regardless of who our candidate will be please go vote. It is not possible that Trump or Cruz or even Kasich for that matter will be a worse president than Hillary Clinton. Please do not vote for Hillary or stay at home because staying at home is equivalent to voting for Hillary.

I understand because of my personal experience how difficult it is to hear bad things about your favorite candidate. Because I spend so much time submerged in the “cesspool of politics” I hear and read much more about the candidates than the average voter. That does not make me smarter than anyone else just more informed. While most GOP voters are at work and/or raising children they don’t have time to get as involved as I am. I spend many days questioning why I follow this political circus like some kind of roadie or groupie. There are many adjectives describing how I feel while I scuba dive in the cesspool of national politics. I feel betrayed, overwhelmed, disgusted, amazed, fearful, but the one thing that I seldom am is surprised. I’ve become so jaded and cynical of national politics that I honestly have developed my opinion based on the popular adage: “the easiest way to tell when a politician is lying is when he/she opens his/her mouth”.

I’m done with the GOP for now but I’ll be back with more in a later blog. My next blog, unless something shiny is dangled in front of me and diverts my attention, will be some personal opinions about Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders. The GOP has a wide variety of candidates and ideologies to sift through to pick a candidate but each and every one of them at least start with a base ideology of loving America. The liberals two candidates are both dangerous to the American way of life. I find it extremely difficult to wrap my head around the fact that these two are the best people the liberals could come up with!


God Bless America!!!

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