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Ruth: Cruz's presidential ego trip

 
Published March 25, 2015

Well, it's official. The Elmer Gantry of the Republican Party has announced he is willing to walk away from his 20-minute legislative career in the U.S. Senate to pursue the presidency.

What would we call the nascent presidential campaign of Ted Cruz, R-The Yellow Poseur of Texas, who barely figured out where the Senate men's room was located before coveting the White House? The hustings equivalent of speed dating?

Even if Cruz were to be the only candidate in the Republican presidential primary, it would still be a crowded field to accommodate the politician's unchained ego, hubris and narcissism. Talk about greenhorns and spam.

Cruz made his presidential announcement on the campus of Liberty University in Lynchburg, Va., a school founded by the late televangelist Jerry Falwell, who once argued that Tinky Winky of the Teletubbies was a closeted gay cartoon character. How fitting that Cruz, a real-life manifestation of Johnny Carson's unctuous used car huckster Art Fern, would use the school to launch his delusional bid to become commander-in-cheep-cheep-cheep.

Of course, Cruz began his remarks to the students, who were required by the university to attend Ted's Big Misadventure, by promising he was going to "reclaim the Constitution of the United States" as if it were an overdue library book.

The U.S. Constitution hasn't been misplaced or loaned out to Burkina Faso. It is right where it always has been: enshrined in the laws of the land. For a guy who is supposed to be such a smarty-pants — just ask him — you would think the Ivy League-educated Cruz would know that.

But apparently the senator was too busy preening in a mirror during history class.

That seemed painfully obvious when Cruz attempted to equate some of the nation's most dramatic historical moments with the presidency of Ronald Reagan, who of course is the all-time beefcake boy of conservatism.

First, Cruz asked the captive students to imagine the power of Patrick Henry's 1775 words of rebellion when he said: "Give me liberty or give me death." Then he asked them to imagine the courage of the Founding Fathers as they put their lives at risk by signing the Declaration of Independence. Then he asked them to imagine the bravery of George Washington to persevere at Valley Forge. Then he asked the kiddos to imagine the bold valor of Franklin Roosevelt who resolutely confronted the nightmare of the Great Depression and the rising specter of Nazism.

And then against that backdrop of grit and steadfastness and vision, Cruz asked the students to imagine the lonely heroism of Reagan reducing the top marginal tax rate for the wealthiest Americans from 70 percent to 28 percent. And Jerry Falwell was well pleased. Glory, glory hallelujah!

It would seem Cruz's "Give me a reduced estate tax rate, or give me an earned income tax credit!" manifesto overlooked one itty-bitty historical footnote. The Gipper only got his reduced income tax rate because of the cooperation of a dreaded Democrat, House Speaker Tip O'Neill, in a long-forgotten gesture of bipartisan political support.

Cruz has made it clear he views his pathway to the Republican presidential nomination and the presidency is based in rallying overwhelming numbers of Christian conservatives to his candidacy. Or think of Cruz as William Jennings Bryan ultra-light, traversing the nation delivering his Cross of Dross speech.

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But where the Bible-thumping Bryan reached out to blacks and women with a broad populist message, Cruz's version of creating a modern-day theocracy will hardly appeal to moderate Republicans, or independents, or Hispanics, or people of other faiths, or just about anyone who hasn't been baptized in the tea party waters of crankiness.

In his brief time in the U.S. Senate, Cruz has sponsored or co-sponsored 112 pieces of legislation, only one of which became law. He is best known for his filibuster in opposition to the Affordable Care Act, in which he spoke for 21 hours and said absolutely nothing on his way to shutting down the government. That shutdown, according to Standard & Poor's, cost the American economy $24 billion. And that record of verbosity qualifies Cruz to be trusted with the nuclear codes?

Every presidential election geek show cycle attracts a long chorus line of Radio City Music Hall Pol-ettes kick-dancing their way across the primaries. Enter Cruz. With apologies to Dr. Seuss, think of this as "Horton Hears a Hoot."