Imagine if Ted Cruz used his Ivy League education to write one new speech
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Version 0 of 1. Senator Ted Cruz’s announcement at Liberty University of his campaign for President of the United States on Monday was breathlessly overwrought and preposterously vague, in the classic Ted Cruz style of seeming on the verge of weeping at its own vacuity. His only new tic was beginning a series of statements with, “Imagine...” before running down John Lennon’s song in ideological reverse, a rhetorical effort to conjure political change akin to rubbing a magic lamp. Cruz is one of the most exhausting candidates of the 2016 elections because he is such a confirmed ideologue and so enamored of his oratory that he doesn’t bother to change it much, which is odd, because one of his selling points is that he’s smart enough to write a new speech at the drop of a hat. That he refuses to tailor his words to a specific audience does lead to amusing moments – like his canned speech to a firefighters’ union that was greeted with absolute silence and after which one member said that he needed to take a shower – but mostly it just confirms Cruz’s message that you don’t change perfection. (Whether he’s talking about himself or America is a distinction without a difference.) The speech at Liberty University appears more flawed if you’re not part of his target audience – which didn’t include all of the 10,000 people obligated to attend as part of the terms of their enrollment, some of whom took to the internet to anonymously mock his speech. Liberty is, to be sure, a conservative diploma mill founded to vacuum money out of the pockets of people who think that the AP American History test hates America. But it’s also an institution hostile toward any part of government unable to bomb people, and it’s the birthplace of the Clinton Body Count, of one of the most deranged right-wing conspiracies about Bill and Hillary Clinton. The university’s name alone fits with Cruz’s tendency to invoke problems and then rhetorically combat them with “liberty” and “freedom”, which rain federalism and deregulation pixie dust upon them until they disappear. But more importantly, 47% of Iowa Republicans consider themselves “very conservative” and 57% describe themselves as born-again or evangelical – the kind of people for whom a Liberty audience’s applause might really resonate. And, right now, only 5% of Iowa Caucus participants name Cruz their first choice, and only 7% pick him as their second choice. So while his announcement told people with money that his presidential ambitions weren’t merely the idling state of his ego but rather something that now may be funded, those gauzy stories about his father’s immigration and conversion – as well as Ted’s abiding faith – were designed to deliver a message to Iowa voters: I am the American dream, and the dream comes from God. But if Cruz’s appeals to the Christian nation at Liberty seemed vague, he got into specifics with Sean Hannity later on Monday. Cruz is nothing if not consistent in his urgency, so his dive into specifics was as vaguely rapturous and imperiled as his red-meat speeches. Cruz talking about energy policy is a lot like asking a little boy to describe the working of a steam locomotive: Coal goes in, and everything moves forward really fast. For example, Cruz touted his “American Energy Renaissance Act” on Hannity, a bill he will probably cite a great deal on the campaign trail because he’s passed zero meaningful legislation. The AERA will, he said, “unchain the private sector” and “create millions of high-paying jobs.” The former is just code for “completely deregulate fracking, coal mining and oil drilling, while crippling the EPA”, and he doesn’t have an explanation for how that creates millions of good jobs. Oil companies in particular are already shedding workers due to low energy prices, and Cruz’s plan relies on the Keystone XL, whose long-term job numbers – 35 – Republicans have consistently overestimated by about 42,000. But screw the domestic policy: Cruz believes we need to free the private sector so we can export liquid natural gas to Europe to cut off Vladimir Putin’s energy profits that hold Europe hostage by keeping Russia’s lights on and its missiles in Ukraine .... as long as Putin doesn’t try to do something before 2017, the earliest we could start significant exports. The rest of the interview was even more vague. We apparently have to repeal Obamacare and replace it with insurance “competition” that keeps government from “standing between you and your doctor”. Cruz has been saying this since 2012; the specifics of his plan are still pending. We need to abolish the IRS, a frequent Cruz assertion that at least this time didn’t come with bogus statistics, and replace it with an insanely regressive flat tax that Americans can fill out “on the back of a postcard.” We need a balanced-budget amendment, which every economist who doesn’t work at a think tank with a name like Well Armed Traditional Family Freedom Flag Yurt will tell you is dumb as hell. Despite earlier Chicken Littling about Putin and about China’s increasingly assertive stance in the South China Sea, Cruz declared without specifics that “Iran in the single greatest national security threat facing the country.” Also, “This administration has been the most antagonistic to Israel in the history of this country.” Uh, no. It’s easy to write off this interview as a softball, which it was: Hannity recently emceed at CPAC, where his primary task was administering a tongue bath to anything candidate-shaped that moved within his field of vision. But Cruz is a softball candidate. He’s had three years to take his obvious Ivy League intelligence and fluency in political texts to deliver a comprehensive policy speech, and yet he always returns to the same melodramatic material: Abolish the IRS, repeal Obamacare, Obama is an outlaw, deregulate all energy production, kill whatever it is overseas that needs killing most this week, break the government, religious quotes, look like he’s about to break down from so many emotions. Repeat. Liberty University handed Ted Cruz a captive audience in front of whom he could roll out his campaign platform; Hannity turned over to him an entire hour of his show. His message at both, as it has been for three years was, “Details pending.” Why not? So far it’s worked. Maybe what he says is enough for his audience. Ted Cruz tells people that they’re smart and that his truth is self-explanatory and, for the most part, audiences love it. It was only a passing exchange, but one thing he said to Hannity said everything you need to know. Cruz: (to hannity) You’re a numbers guy. Hannity: Yeah. Words used to mean things in America. Cruz’s real schtick is moving to the extreme right of his own party, condemning party leaders as feckless RINOs and then holding the entire US political process hostage until his own party leaders have to compromise with Democrats to accomplish anything and ultimately prove Cruz’s point. This internecine fighting routinely culminating in failure is something he describes as having “the courage to lead,” and all the fallout merely confirms his necessity on the national stage. For instance, early in the Hannity interview, the man who led the government shutdown over Obamacare explained his candidacy by saying, “Washington is broken.” By God, If he does well in Iowa, he can prove the Republican primary process is, too. |