Ted Cruz Isn't Crazy

[struggle4progress]

Cruz knows exactly what he's doing
BY JEB LUND
December 4, 2015

In no particular order, Texas senator and Republican presidential aspirant Ted Cruz has: said acts of Christian terrorism stopped centuries ago, forgetting the Ku Klux Klan and the shooting in Colorado last week; claimed he has never met an anti-abortion activist who advocates violence, despite being endorsed by one just days before; dismissed the need for Planned Parenthood because there isn't a shortage of "rubbers" in America; and made an offhand comment that Colorado mass shooter Robert Dear could be a "transgendered leftist activist." All this in just the last week ...

Ted Cruz is far from crazy, which is the essential Ted Cruz problem. Crazy you can deal with, even forgive a little, often ignore. Ben Carson is a bowl of Froot Loops floating in a sad lethal pond of gasoline. Donald Trump went warp speed into the Trumpiverse decades ago. Both men have conducted their campaigns and recent years on perpetual tangents. But Ted Cruz knows exactly what he's doing. He doesn't even hide it particularly well. Not only is his intelligence one of his favorite selling points, his book undermines any notion that he misspeaks. He is gaffe proof because the gaffes are not arrived at by error. Ted Cruz does awful things by intelligent design ...

You don't need to nitpick books like Donald Trump's or Ben Carson's, because on their faces they're two of the most full-of-shit works ever published. One reads like it was dictated to a flunky from a limousine phone call, and one reads like a preteen frantically rewriting the text of their Encarta CD-ROM six hours before the assignment's due ...

Ted Cruz is too smart not to know that replacing all of Planned Parenthood's services with "rubbers" is objectively stupid. He knows claiming that Christian terrorism has been dormant for centuries is a contemptuous violation of an even Jeopardy!-level understanding of history. He knows a bearded mass shooter who mentioned "baby parts" was probably not firing from the left side of the aisle in defense of his feminine identity, but he knows speculating about it commits him to nothing. These assertions form a web of cold malignancy too tactically useful to lack intent. It's a work, and it works. It's his ticket to the main event.

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/ted-cruz-isnt-crazy-hes-much-worse-20151204?page=5

[EdwardBernays]

1. No shit

This is why he's so hated by his colleagues. He'll cynically do anything for power.

He's like a more dangerous version of Frank Underwood.

[Kalidurga]

2. I am not convinced.

The article does a good job at presenting the case for him not being crazy. But, something about the need for power for the sake of having power and no other reason seems a bit wacko bird to me.

[smirkymonkey]

3. That's why he frightens me more than the all the other whack jobs

put together. This guy must never get anywhere near the oval office.

[Adrahil]

4. He's not crazy. He's evil. nt

[randome]

5. You'd think he'd work on being better liked, then.

Everyone who has met him comes away with a horrible taste in their mouths. If he could muster an ounce of charisma, he might have a shot. That doesn't sound too calculating to me.
[hr][font color="blue"][center]You should never stop having childhood dreams.[/center][/font][hr]