Part II: Questions about Ted Cruz
I can’t explain why Donald Trump became my Republican standard bearer without first explaining why Ted Cruz lost my support.
As Trump continued to increase his lead in the delegate count, the Cruz campaign was spiraling downward and there was an air of desperation in the Cruz camp.
In a bizarre turn of events, Jeb Bush, the ultimate GOP insider, who bragged that he would win the presidential nomination with massive amounts of donor dollars and without support from the conservative base, announced his endorsement of Ted Cruz. Jeb’s major donors and all his PAC money flowed into the Cruz campaign.
Then the Cruz campaign announced that Neil Bush, who had a past riddled with financial scandal, had been hired as the campaign financial advisor thus tightening ties with the Bush cabal. Both George H. and George W. Bush endorsed Cruz
Cruz continued to load his campaign machine with the old guard political insiders he claimed to oppose. Economist Phil Gramm, blamed for the 2008 financial meltdown, was appointed to the Cruz financial team. Some rate Phil Gramm just below Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan and the Federal Reserve (in its role of setting monetary policy) for his importance in unleashing the monetary crisis.
Curious!
The GOP establishment was supposed to hate Cruz. Why, I wondered, were these party elites so willing to shift their endorsement and support to the candidate who claimed to want to remove them from power in Washington? And why was Cruz welcoming their support?
I needed to do some research into the background of Ted Cruz.
Part II: Questions about Ted Cruz…continued
I started research into the background of Ted Cruz and I learned that Ted Cruz has long, established, strong ties to Washington political insiders.
The first thing I learned is that both Ted Cruz and his wife Heidi had worked for George W. Bush. Between 1999 and 2003 Ted served in the Bush administration in political appointee positions:
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as the Director of the Office of Policy Planning at the Federal Trade Commission,
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as an Associate Deputy Attorney General at the United States Department of Justice,
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as domestic policy advisor to George W. Bush on the 2000 presidential campaign.
Ted Cruz worked for the Bush Trade Commission! The Bush administration was all about sending jobs overseas. Remember? “W” wanted the USA to become a “service economy”; manufacture was cheaper for the crony capitalists in the third world. When in the Senate Ted waffled on trade agreements finally swinging to the conservative side because it was a big issue for his base. His filibuster agenda had not included the TPA treaty as he instead chose to strategize in back rooms on how to pass the treaty. I wondered which side he really favored.
Cruz halfheartedly supports curbing illegal immigration and building a southern wall; he has to, his conservative base demands it. But in light of his deep connections with the open border Bush family, what does he really think?
Cruz returned to Texas where he was appointed as Solicitor General of Texas, a position which he held from 2003 to 2008. Cruz ran for the Senate seat in the November 2012 general election, winning 56%–41%. In November 2012, he was appointed vice-chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee obviously still in the good graces of his collogues.
Ted Cruz gained national attention when he tilted at windmills in the Senate. He used harsh rhetoric against fellow Republican politicians referring to Republicans who he thought were insufficiently resistant to the proposals of President Obama as a “surrender caucus” and calling out fellow Republicans as “squishes” on gun-control issues.
Cruz was less than three years into his Senate term when in 2015 he began campaigning for the Republican presidential nomination. Shades of the Obama march to the White House; Cruz obviously had his eye on the presidency from the beginning and was using his Senate seat to gain national attention. Now I wondered if his highly publicized battles in the Senate for popular conservative causes he knew he could not win were merely political theater staged to gain national attention for a freshman senator with lofty ambitions. It worked. His base of support had mainly been among social conservatives, though he had crossover appeal to other factions within his party, including libertarian conservatives. Now he became the most hated man among the Washington political elite and the darling of the Republican hard core conservative base.
A recent comment on a Texas Ag blog says it all: The “Cruz is an anti establishment outsider” narrative seems to be collapsing more every day.
Recommended book: The Bush Crime Family by Roger Stone
*** Barbara Landers *** is a Conservative activist, author and business woman
