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Justice

Five Conspiracy Theories 2016 Hopeful Ted Cruz Actually Believes

By Ian Millhiser on May 1, 2013 at 10:33 am

(Credit: AP)

On Wednesday morning, the National Review broke the news that tea party Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) is considering a presidential run, a scoop that should surprise no one who’s paid attention to his short Senate career. As Jonathan Bernstein explains, Cruz has spent his few months in the Senate alienating his colleagues by constantly trying to distinguish himself as the more-conservative-than-thou alternative to “establishment” Republicans. Such behavior makes no sense if Cruz is interested in building the coalitions necessary to legislate, but it makes perfect sense if he has his eyes set on winning a tea-soaked GOP primary in 2016.

If Cruz runs, he would give voice to the conspiracy-minded, John Birch Society wing of the Republican Party that the National Review’s founder fought so hard to purge several decades ago. Cruz is the Glenn Beck of the United States Senate, promoting new conspiracy theories just as easily as Mr. Beck adds new names to his chalkboard. Here are five examples of such theories that Cruz actually believes in:

  • George Soros leads a global conspiracy to abolish the game of golf. In a January 2012 article published on Cruz’s senate campaign website, the future senator argues that a twenty year-old non-binding United Nations resolution signed by 178 nations including the United States under President George H.W. Bush, is actually a nefarious plot to “abolish ‘unsustainable’ environments, including golf courses, grazing pastures, and paved roads.” Cruz attributes this plot to a common tea party boogieman — “[t]he originator of this grand scheme is George Soros, who candidly supports socialism and believes that global development must progress through eliminating national sovereignty and private property.”
  • Communists infiltrated Harvard Law School. Almost three years ago, Cruz gave a speech to the tea party group Americans for Prosperity in which he claimed that revolutionary communists were a major presence on Harvard’s law faculty. According to Cruz, “There were fewer declared Republicans in the faculty when we were there than Communists! There was one Republican. But there were twelve who would say they were Marxists who believed in the Communists overthrowing the United States government.” Cruz’s claims came as a big surprise to Harvard Law Professor Charles Fried, a Republican who served as President Reagan’s solicitor general, who says that “I would be surprised if there were any members of the faculty who ‘believed in the Communists overthrowing the U.S. government.’”
  • Islamic law threatens the United States. Echoing a common fear among very conservative politicians that Sharia law is somehow creeping into American life, Cruz told a senate candidate’s forum last year that “Sharia law is an enormous problem” in the United States. In reality, there are barely any examples of Islamic or Sharia law even being mentioned in American legal proceedings, and when it is mentioned it is typically because a contract, will or other document drafted by a private citizen invokes Sharia law, not because the court wishes to replace American law with something else.
  • Obama wants the immigration bill to fail so he can campaign on it in 2016. Cruz claims that “the reason that the White House is insisting on a path to citizenship” in the immigration bill making its way through Congress “is because the White House knows that insisting on that is very likely to scuttle the bill” giving Obama an issue to campaign on in 2014 and 2016. In reality, a path to citizenship was a key prong of the immigration bill President Bush supported in 2007. It’s also a major prong of the Gang of Eight bill — a gang which includes Republican Sens. John McCain (R-AZ), Marco Rubio (R-FL), Lindsay Graham (R-SC) and Jeff Flake (R-AZ). So if the path to citizenship is actually an Obama plot to give himself a campaign issue, Obama has some unexpected co-conspirators in this scheme.
  • George W. Bush led an assault on Texas’ “sovereignty.” Cruz’s first campaign ad touted his victory in a Supreme Court case permitting the state of Texas to execute a Mexican national, despite the fact that Texas violated America’s treaty obligations by not permitting this Mexican citizen “to request assistance from the consul of his own state.” President Bush objected to Texas’s effort to flout a treaty that even North Korea had honored when it detained two American journalists for five months in 2009. Cruz dismissed Bush’s objections as an intrusion on “the sovereignty of the States.”

    • If elected to the White House, Cruz is unlikely to step back from his penchant for Glenn Beck-style conspiracies. In an interview with Fox News Sunday just a few days after he became a senator, Cruz claimed that “I don’t think what Washington needs is more compromise, I think what Washington needs is more common sense and more principle.”

Election

Obama’s Grand Bargain Could Destroy His Political Coalition

By Ruy Teixeira, Guest Blogger on Apr 9, 2013 at 11:49 am

There are two keys to achieving real political dominance for the Obama coalition.  First, the Obama coalition must be mobilized beyond Presidential elections.  That means between elections in the struggle to achieve legislative victories and in Congressional elections, where turnout patterns must align more closely with Presidential elections.  Second, the Obama coalition must be widened to take in a larger share of the white working class.  Otherwise, the hostility of these voters will undercut public support for the President’s agenda, as well as remaining a lurking threat in every election, particularly Congressional ones.

Both of these objectives will be seriously compromised if strong growth does not return to the American economy and soon.  Take white working class voters.  These voters are primarily looking for material improvements in their lives, improvements that are not possible without strong economic growth and the jobs, tight labor markets and rising incomes such growth would bring.  In a low growth environment, these voters will remain exceptionally pessimistic and inclined to blame Democrats and government for their lack of upward mobility.

Even more serious, core groups of the Obama coalition will be weakened by continued slow growth.  Obama was well-supported by these groups in 2012, but a sluggish economic environment, where unemployment continues pushing 8 percent will try these voters’ patience.  How much enthusiasm will Hispanics, blacks, youth, single women, etc., whose unemployment rates are considerably above the national average, continue to have for a party that cannot do more to improve economic conditions?  Attrition in support will be inevitable in such a scenario and the opportunity to consolidate a dominant coalition will be lost.

So the stakes in the battle for more and faster growth are high.  But you would not guess that from the issues preoccupying Washington.  Instead, in the very same week when we received a dreadful jobs report—just 88,000 jobs were added to the economy—President Obama has made yet another attempt to revive a Grand Bargain with Republicans by outlining a budget plan that replaces the automatic sequestered spending cuts with other spending cuts while also raising $580 billion in revenue and making cuts to Social Security and Medicare.

Whatever the other merits of this proposal may be, it will do nothing for economic growth and, in fact, will continue the ongoing pattern of spending cuts that are undermining our recovery and thereby the future prospects of the Obama coalition.  Grand Bargains are no substitute for growth and both consumers and voters know the difference.

LGBT

Bobby Jindal: Republicans Can Continue Discriminating Against Gays And Still Win Elections

By Igor Volsky on Feb 24, 2013 at 9:49 am

Gov. Bobby Jindal (R-LA) — a possible Republican candidate for president in 2016 — rejected former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman’s argument that conservatives must embrace marriage equality for gays and lesbians if they want to survive as a party and reiterated his support for “traditional marriage.”

“Look, I believe in the traditional definition of marriage,” Jindal said during an appearance on Meet The Press on Sunday, and went on to claim that Republicans don’t have to make the case on social issues to attract young voters and win future elections and instead should continue focusing on economic issues. “We lost [the 2012 election] because we didn’t present a vision showing how we believe the entire economy can grow, how people can join the middle class. We’re in aspirational party and we need policies that are consistant with that aspirational private sector growth.”

In an essay for The American Conservative entitled “Marriage Equality Is a Conservative Cause,” Huntsman — a Mormon whose previous support for civil unions set him apart from Republican presidential candidates in 2012 — argued that if the Republican Party wants to survive, it must enhance its appeal to gay Americans and the growing majority that supports marriage equality.

“[I]t’s difficult to get people even to consider your reform ideas if they think, with good reason, you don’t like or respect them,” Huntsman wrote. “Building a winning coalition to tackle the looming fiscal and trust deficits will be impossible if we continue to alienate broad segments of the population….Consistent with the Republican Party’s origins, we must demand equality under the law for all Americans.”

Polls show that most Americans support marriage equality, with many telling pollsters that their minds have evolved on the issue.

Election

Santorum To Write Column For Right-Wing Conspiracy Website

By Scott Keyes on Dec 3, 2012 at 10:19 am

Rick Santorum has joined WorldNetDaily, a conspiracy theory blog best known for its indefatigable work advancing the birther movement, as an exclusive columnist.

The former Pennsylvania senator, who was voted out of office in 2006, will use the perch to remain in the conservative consciousness as he eyes another presidential bid in 2016. His column will be featured on the site every Monday.

Santorum’s extreme views will fit in well at WorldNetDaily. In the past, he has compared homosexuality to bestiality, told rape victims they shouldn’t be permitted to get an abortion but rather should “make the best out of a bad situation,” and said food stamps are unnecessary because obesity rates are so high.

Culling WorldNetDaily’s conspiracy theories to a manageable list is a herculean task, but here are a few choice headlines:

Alyssa

What Joe Biden’s Upcoming Appearance ‘Parks and Recreation’ Means For 2016

By Alyssa Rosenberg on Nov 8, 2012 at 12:10 pm

Joe Biden’s 2016 campaign for President is getting a bump, at least among television-watching good-government nerds, next week. As the New York Times reports, he’s making a surprise appearance on Parks and Recreation:

With the race won, a guest appearance by Mr. Biden on the NBC comedy “Parks and Recreation,” filmed way back in July, can finally be revealed. Everything about the scene, which the executive producer of the show, Michael Schur, labeled a “scenelet,” had been under strict secrecy. The show was warned that if any word leaked out before the election, some provision might have to be made to give the Republican vice-presidential nominee, Representative Paul Ryan, a similar cameo.

“It was all very byzantine and complicated,” Mr. Schur said. “There seem to be all kinds of specific rules, which I never fully understood. But we decided to err on the side of caution.”

Parks and Recreation got something of an early jump on the Biden-mania sweeping the memo-o-sphere. “What is your ideal man?” Leslie Knope’s best friend Ann asked her back in the show’s second season. “He has the brains of George Clooney in the body of Joe Biden,” Leslie responded promptly. But the show is hardly alone in its love for Biden. One of the things that will be delightfully odd to watch about a Biden run for president is that he’ll be one of the first candidates who is heavily defined by pop culture jokes before he officially throws his hat in the ring.

That process may have begun in 1991, when Kevin Nealon played him on Saturday Night Live during a cold open about Clarence Thomas’s Supreme Court confirmation hearings:

The riff on Biden as somewhat oversexed and socially inappropriate became the foundation of The Onion’s portrayal of the Vice President as a Trans-Am-washing, Summer-of-’87-remembering, Dave and Busters evictee. The image of Biden as a bro is all over Gifs of him with animated sunglasses descending on his face or fistbumping actor Kal Penn. It’s a raunchier ideal than the man himself, of course–Biden is famously devoted to his family–but it’s appealingly winking, and it’s schtick that makes his gaffes look minor. What’s sticking your foot in your mouth in comparison to asking Clarence Thomas for sex advice or hightailing it to Mexico for a while?

Biden’s done more family-friendly fare, too–he made a cameo on the third season of kids’ geography game show Where In The World Is Carmen Sandiego to tell host Greg Lee that: “I just wanted to let you know that I proposed a Congressional resolution naming you ‘The Best Detective of the Year’…But some people were more comfortable with ‘Best Detective of the Month’…And a few preferred ‘Best Detective of the Work Week.’ Then someone suggested ‘best’ is an awfully strong word, so we decided to name you ‘The Somewhat-Notable Detective of the Next 12 Minutes.’ Congratulations, Greg.”

Biden may have a reputation for being something of a goof. But his laid-back response to his media portrayals–there’s some suggestion that he’s aware of and enjoys The Onion articles–and his willingness to do television is smart. The combination of a hunger for indication of candidates’ true selves, the ease with which memes, a la the Tumblr Texts From Hillary, can be blown up quickly, and the rise of political humor as a form of commentary as significant as serious news, future candidates for president are going to have to be comfortable skipping deftly from policy talk to self-satire. Biden may find himself challenged by a younger generation in 2016, but when it comes to handling political comedy, he’s an old hand.

Yglesias

Jeb Bush Should Run

By Matthew Yglesias on Feb 8, 2011 at 11:29 am

Steve Benen thinks that maybe it makes sense for Jeb Bush to wait and try to run in 2016 rather than 2012. My advice to Jeb is the same as my advice to John Thune—unless the issue is that you don’t want to be president, there’s no time to run quite like the present. It’s true that a “Bush fatigue” issue will be a possible problem in 2012, but it’s not really a problem that will go away in 2016. What’s more, something I should have said explicitly in the Thune post is that obviously Barack Obama might lose in 2012, in which case there is no 2016 GOP nomination to run for.

Something everyone should consider, more broadly, is that the 2010 midterms brought a bumper crop of Republican governors into office. Right now the field of prominent statewide GOP officeholders looks pretty thin, so your former Massachusetts governors and undistinguished South Dakota Senators look like okay candidates. But unless 2014 is a banner year for Democrats, the likelihood is that by 2016 there will be a lot of experienced Republican governors, one or two of whom might make formidable contenders.

Yglesias

Hillary Says No 2016 Bid

By Matthew Yglesias on Nov 5, 2010 at 11:27 am

Just when I was hoping that Barack Obama’s midterm setback would lead to a surge of dumb speculation about a Hillary Clinton 2012 primary challenge, she goes and ruins everything by telling a television station in New Zealand that she won’t run even in 2016.

I wonder if she’ll reconsider this. Assuming she doesn’t, I think we ought to learn the lesson from 2008 that even though women face formidable barriers at earlier stages of the political process a credible woman candidate has a very good chance of winning a Democratic presidential nomination. Woman make up a clear majority of the electorate in Democratic primaries, but most Democratic politicians are men. Actual voting behavior indicated the existence of large gender gaps that basically left Hillary Clinton with the bigger half of the party. Barack Obama was able to overcome this because he appealed to African-American women and twentysomething women, but the list of people who could replicate that seems very short. What’s more, Obama had a great primary campaign issue in the form of the war.

The process through which a person comes to be deemed a viable presidential candidate is fairly mysterious, but my point is that if a few movers and shakers do find a woman governor, senator, or cabinet member to start coalescing around she’d have formidable advantages against a field of male opponents.

Yglesias

How Long? Not Long

By Matthew Yglesias on May 2, 2009 at 2:01 pm

Bruce Bartlett has a column lamenting the poor outlook for the Republican Party that concludes with this:

Eventually, Republicans will tire of being out of power just as Democrats did, and they will do what it takes to win. But I fear that Republicans will have to at least lose in 2010 and again in 2012 before they start to come to their senses. Perhaps by 2014, some leader with maturity, resources, vision and discipline will find a way of leading the GOP out of the wilderness. But I see no one even in a position to start that process today.

I think that’s probably right. Then again, I’m not sure that outlook is so bleak. After kinda sorta losing in 2000, some thought the lesson was that Democrats were way too liberal. Folks like Will Marshall and Mark Penn warned that they had to turn much more conservative in order to win elections. Their warnings went only semi-heeded and, consequently, Democrats lost ground in 2002 and lost more ground in 2004. But guess what? By 2008 they had strong congressional majorities and a popular new president ready to support universal health care, tough action to limit greenhouse gas pollution, a public more supportive than ever of equal rights for gays and lesbians, etc., etc.

Looking at the Republican side, the electoral map is just very bad for them in the 2010 Senate race no matter what they do. And the odds are that we’ll be in an economic recovery by 2012 that the voters will credit Obama for and he’ll get re-elected. But by 2014, the Senate electoral map will be bad for Democrats. Who wins in 2016? It has more to do with what’s happening in 2016 than with what the candidate says.

The problem with the conservative positions pushed by Bush and DeLay and Lott & McConnell and now McConnell & Lott and Boehner and Cantor and Pence isn’t that they’re “unelectable” positions it’s that they don’t work as a governing agenda. That’s bad for the country and also means that if they do get back into office, they’ll run things back into the ditch and probably get voted out again.

Yglesias

The Bush Family Stamping on a Human Face Forever

By Matthew Yglesias on Feb 22, 2009 at 5:15 pm

Faiz Shakir has George P. Bush laying the groundwork for his presidential primary big in 2032 or 2036:

Afterward, Bush said he doesn’t think Crist is a fiscal conservative and that he may have hurt himself with some Republicans for his appearance with Obama and his support of the stimulus plan.

“That will be on his track record and people are going to remember that,” Bush said, adding that Crist is running the risk of falling in the “D light” category of the party.

Just remember, the last time the Republican Party captured the White House without a member of the Bush family on the ticket was 1972. It’s true that right now people hate the Bushes. But people hated the Bushes in 1993, too. The country has a short memory, and for some reason the GOP just can’t quit these people. It’ll be Jeb in 2016 and George P. somewhere down the line.

Yglesias

America’s Next Bush

By Matthew Yglesias on Jan 4, 2009 at 3:22 pm

Make no mistake about it, Jeb Bush will be President of the United States someday. Ryan Powers has the video of Poppy mulling the concept:

Now it’s true that the extreme unpopularity of George W. Bush might be a problem here. But consider the 1992 election:

1992_1.png

Bush got 37.45 percent of the popular vote — slightly less than George McGovern. Among major party nominees, only William Howard Taft in 1912 turned in a worse performance. And not only was Bush hugely unpopular with the electorate at large, he was also hated by the GOP base. When the base doesn’t like you and swing voters don’t like you, you have a problem. What’s more, as of 2000 everybody already knew that W. Bush was dumber and less accomplished than his dad or than Jeb. But he got elected anyway. So don’t think the fact that people hate our current president will stand in Jeb’s way.

Besides, what choice does the GOP have? The last time they captured the White House without a Bush on the ticket was 1972 — eons ago. Without a Bush, they’ve got nothing. My guess is that it’ll take until 2016 for it to happen, but it could be 2012 or 2020 depending on how things develop in the world.

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