this is legit terrifying from Ted Cruz, holy hell pic.twitter.com/KRV484F9pB
— Tim Dickinson (@7im) January 5, 2016
Ladies and gentlemen, your “non-extreme” GOP alternative to Trump. https://t.co/w6Aw8emX7m
— James Fallows (@JamesFallows) January 5, 2016
The guy who wrote this for the NRO, back in 2008….
Palin too projects through the screen like crazy. I’m sure I’m not the only male in America who, when Palin dropped her first wink, sat up a little straighter on the couch and said, “Hey, I think she just winked at me.” And her smile. By the end, when she clearly knew she was doing well, it was so sparkling it was almost mesmerizing. It sent little starbursts through the screen and ricocheting around the living rooms of America.
… has a new heartthrob to burble about today, for Politico:
The lazy conventional wisdom is that Ted Cruz is the new Barry Goldwater doomed to suffer an electoral landslide defeat should he win the Republican nomination.
Not only is this wrong about Cruz’s general-election chances, it may compare Cruz to the wrong 20th-century Republican forebear. The better analogue for Cruz might be Richard Nixon, not in the crudely pejorative sense, but as another surpassingly shrewd and ambitious politician who lacked a personal touch but found a way to win nonetheless…
… He wears his ambition on his sleeve and is not highly charismatic or relatable. In high school, he could have been voted most likely to be seen walking on the beach in his dress shoes. If Cruz wins the nomination, it will be on the strength of intelligence and willpower. He will have outworked, outsmarted and outmaneuvered everyone else.
Certainly, Cruz is not ascending on the basis of warm feelings from his colleagues. Cruz portrays his unpopularity within the Senate as establishment distaste for him as a lonely man of principle. But it is a genuine personal dislike. Not that Cruz cares. In fact, a key to what he has been able to achieve is his apparent immunity to the reflexive desire to be liked by people around you, a weakness to which almost all of us fall prey. Cruz is free of the peer pressure that typically makes all senators, at some level, team players.
Cruz is a Reagan Republican, although with considerable flexibility within those parameters. When Rand Paul seemed to be on the ascendancy a couple of years ago, Cruz was a Reagan Republican with Paulite accents. When Donald Trump began to dominate, Cruz became a Reagan Republican with Trumpian tendencies. If Jim Gilmore were to catch fire, Cruz would presumably find a way to incorporate a Gilmoresque element into his platform…
At the moment, if Trump loses the nomination, Cruz is most likely to be the instrument of his defeat by flattering and co-opting him and his supporters.
This speaks to deft political sense that runs counter to his caricature as a mindless hard-liner. Indeed, Cruz is an amazingly supple adamantine politician. He benefits from the old Mark Twain adage that once you get a reputation as an early riser, you can sleep ’til noon every day. Cruz’s unbending image makes it possible for him to bend as it suits him…
Marco Rubio and Chris Christie are both, in their own ways, more winsome and it’s easier to see how each of them could pick off Obama states. But Cruz has always understood that you have to win the primary to win the general. He has set about to do it in truly impressive fashion. Whoever is going to beat him, better know what he’s doing—because Cruz certainly does.
Hands outa yer pants, Lowry, this ain’t one of your low RWNJ dives.
Open Thread: Rich ‘Starbursts’ Lowry Has A New CrushPost + Comments (176)