There’s no big surprise here. Even mildly astute observers have known this for years. But it was noteworthy to hear the “Great One” Rush Limbaugh lay it all out, especially in this day and age of Soviet-style propaganda where you have the STrumpets trying to claim that Ted Cruz is some sort of “establishment” candidate.
Have you ever wondered why, not so much the Democrats (who always hate conservatives), but the Republican establishment hates Ted Cruz so much? Why would Republican leadership hate a fresh new Republican who works so hard to uphold Republican values and respect for the U.S. Constitution?
It isn’t because he’s a fake. If Cruz was a liberal fraud like most of them, they’d love him. If he talked conservative and behaved liberal, he’d fit right in with the RINO club and be one of the most popular guys around.
No, it’s because he’s different. Ted Cruz means it, and that exposes the RINOs for the empty suit frauds they really are.
From Rush Limbaugh today:
RUSH: You know, it’s interesting to, again, be reminded, it’s great to see just how insane Republican establishment people are driven just talking about, just remembering a government shutdown. Now, the grievance that Peter King has with Cruz, it’s very simple: They don’t believe that Cruz was serious about stopping Obamacare, because they’re not.
Here’s the rub, folks. The Republican establishment has never been about stopping Obama. It’s never been about stopping Obamacare. In 2010 when it was passed, they didn’t have the votes anyway, so you can’t hold it against them. There’s nothing they could have done. They couldn’t have stopped it in the original vote. They didn’t have enough votes in the House. And the Senate was a lost cause anyway.
But after the midterms in 2010 it was an entirely different — I mean the House was taken back, got a majority, got control back precisely because of the Tea Party, precisely because of Obama’s spending, precisely because of Obamacare, and the Republican establishment, they just didn’t want to work. It’s hard being the opposition. It’s hard trying to stop the first African-American president that they think is universally loved and adored. They wanted no part of it.
The Republican establishment is not ideological. So they don’t view Obama as a radical leftist doing great damage. He’s just the latest Democrat to be in office. And it’s something that, hey, they still got jobs, Boehner was still Speaker and they’ve got the committee chairmanships and they’ve got the perks and all that, don’t rock the boat, just don’t rock the boat.
Reliving this I get so damn mad because it’s not a question of rocking the boat; they took no advantage of that massive landslide midterm election victory that you all gave them. Winning back the House of Representatives, specifically to do whatever they could do to delay or stop or defund partially Obamacare, and not a finger, other than lip service, a bunch of phony votes that had no weight behind ’em whatsoever.
And
So here came Cruz, who was dead serious. He had been elected by people after promising them that he would do what he could to stop Obamacare. And he does what he can do, and imagine a single guy was able to shut down the government. Wow. Pretty impressive. I’d be bragging about it if I were Cruz…
…So Cruz came along and actually did it, and they think that he is a phony baloney, plastic banana, good-time rock ‘n’ roller because in their minds there was no way anybody could ever do it, and Cruz knew that. So he was selfish, he went in there and he shut down the government only to prepare everybody for this, his presidential run. And he used them and he used the House and he used the Senate and he made all these Republicans look bad, engaging in something that everybody knew was no way possible.
And so they hate him. They hate him ’cause they don’t think he’s genuine. They hate him ’cause they think he’s disingenuous. They hate him ’cause they think he’s phony. They hate him ’cause they think he betrayed ’em. They hate him because they think he made them look bad. They hate him because they think he knew from top to bottom there was no way anything was gonna be done to stop Obamacare. So he goes in there and shuts the government down selfishly, knowing full well, in their minds, how damaging it is to the Republican Party.
See, that’s the rub. It’s not! It’s only in their minds that government shutdowns hurt them, and in the media. It’s the only power Congress has to stop anything. The power of the purse is the only thing. They telegraphed to Obama they weren’t gonna impeach him, they were not gonna do anything to stop him.
You know, let me remind you, a year after the 2013 government shutdown, do you even remember that one? These things are supposedly so tragic, they are so upsetting, so damaging, the government shut down, oh, my God, the absolute worst that could ever happen to Republicans.
Do you remember the 2013 government shutdown? Do you remember it? Do you remember what it was about? Do you remember when it took place? I’ll bet you don’t. Well, let me tell you what happened after it happened. What came after 2013? There was a government shutdown in 2013. The Republicans didn’t want it, but it happened.
What happened in 2014, after the government shutdown in 2013, what happened? Don’t bother looking it up. You know what it is. You just can’t remember. I’ll tell you: Another landslide midterm election victory. Now, how the hell is that possible? You have a government shutdown, Republican sponsored, 2013, they hate Cruz for it, phony baloney, never gonna stop Obamacare, Cruz knew it. Shut down the government for what, almost two weeks, 10, 12, 15 days, whatever. A year later the Republicans win the Senate back. A year later the Republicans with another landslide in the midterms.
And yet the Republican establishment’s running around fretting and wringing their hands over a government shutdown being responsible for their demise…
…And all Cruz did was fulfill some campaign promises to people that voted for him in Texas and other promises he made to other Republicans nationwide ’cause he was serious about stopping Obamacare.
I was in Washington D.C. in the week leading up to the “government shutdown” in 2013. I remember listening from the Senate gallery to Mitch McConnell and Rand Paul discussing ObamaCare (and the shadow of a threatened shutdown) on the floor of the Senate. Given Rand Paul’s reputation as a libertarian and Tea Party favorite, I expected to hear a hearty debate with RINO McConnell. Yet I heard a disturbing amount of agreement between the two. At the time, I thought surely I was mishearing something. Surely Rand Paul couldn’t be this sanguine about ObamaCare. I found out a few days later that I had certainly heard right.
I was still there in D.C. the day the “shutdown” kicked off. I saw it first hand, and saw President Obama going out of his way to irritate (a minority of) the American people with the “shutdown” while in actuality only shutting down about 17% of the federal government (enough to tick off the American people and create a vehicle for him and his “mainstream” media stooges to club Republicans with). My daughter had been looking forward to a scheduled tour of the Pentagon–nixed. My son had been looking forward to visiting the Navy museum–nixed. My wife’s tired feet were looking forward to a bus tour of Arlington National Cemetery–buses were nixed, and we had to walk around the large area. At least it was still open (we must have got there before Obama had a chance to shut it down.)
I tried to take the family to the Jefferson Memorial, coming across the Potomac River in our rental car from Alexandria. The exit was blocked with cones. Thinking it was just construction, I decided to go down to the next exit, turn around and come back using the exit going the other way. Gee, that one was coned off, too. So I took a third way, from inside D.C. proper. That entrance not only had cones but concrete barriers and armed cops blocking it. By this time, I got the message: Barack Obama wasn’t going to allow my family to see the open-air Jefferson Memorial. And I found out later that Obama had fenced off the open-air World War II Memorial and tried to block World War II veterans from seeing their memorial. I remember thinking at the time how “ironic” it was that, during a government shutdown when we supposedly just couldn’t find the money to pay government employees (to oversee open-air monuments that usually don’t have more than the occasional park ranger floating through), we could somehow find the money to pay people to load concrete barriers onto a flatbed truck, drive them out to monuments, unload those concrete barriers and place them across roads along with traffic cones, and post armed policemen to block access to these open-air monuments. Yes, very “ironic.”
If anybody has grounds to be mad about a government shutdown, it’s me and my family–and people like the WWII veterans. I can’t speak for the WWI veterans, but I’m glad as hell Ted Cruz pushed for the fight to stop ObamaCare. My only regret is that his “Republican” colleagues lacked the testicles to join the fight and see it through.
While Obama tried (and succeeded, with the help of the Leftist mainstream media) to use the “shutdown” as a club with which to beat Republicans, Republicans could have so easily turned the narrative back around on him and beat the daylights out of him, especially with the transparently despotic crap like at the World War II Memorial, Jefferson Memorial, and even the privately-owned Mount Vernon. But no. They (like usual) peed their pants and did nothing–nothing to stop ObamaCare, as they’d promised, and nothing to fight back against Obama’s shutdown campaign of contempt against the American people, and nothing to fight back against the fake shutdown narrative blaming Republicans (when Republicans were willing to fund the ENTIRE government except for ObamaCare).
Ted Cruz was one of the few who was willing to go to the mat for the American people. Ted Cruz was one of the few willing to stand up for the U.S. Constitution which was being dragged through the mud by ObamaCare, and for the American people who were being tyrannically forced to pay new taxes and participate in unconstitutional government health care schemes.
Ted Cruz was one of the few who tried to fight back against the liberals who were doing it to us (the liberals Donald Trump spent hundreds of thousands of dollars funding), and the RINOs who collaborated with Democrats in continuing to fund ObamaCare.
For the American patriot who is concerned about liberty, about respect for the U.S. Constitution, and about fighting back against the corrupt liberal establishment of both parties, the choice for president should be crystal clear. It isn’t anyone in the Democrat Party. It isn’t big-government socialist John Kasich, and it isn’t Democrat-funding been-a-Democrat-for-decades Donald Trump. It’s the only candidate with a record of fighting liberals in Washington on behalf of the American people: Ted Cruz.
*** Bob Ellis *** Is a conservative author and Life and Liberty News contributor
Read more from Bob Ellis and other conservative authors at American Clarion
