Ted Cruzin’ For a Political Bruisin’

Senator Ted Cruz announced today that he is running for the highest office in the land, President Jesus. He made his announcement at Liberty University, the Christian university  founded by 1980’s Moral Majority leader, Jerry Falwell, who transferred to Hades University after “graduating” from existence.

Cruz has as much of a chance at winning the Presidency as Falwell does in having a snowball fight where he currently is but anyone who knows anything about Republicans knows that to them, reality is just a liberal/socialist/anti-colonial plot. In fact, in an impossible future where a President Cruz is inaugurated, his first action would likely be an Executive Order requiring that the definitions of delusion and reality be swapped.

Does Ted Cruz truly believe he could become elected President or is his Presidential run just a tactic to try to self-aggrandize and build his following to leverage more power for himself in Congress? It’s just a guess but I’d suggest mostly the latter with a liberal amount…er…conservative amount of the former mixed in.

Living in that Right Wing Conservative bubble, he probably does believe that there is a chance for him to win the Presidency but not because he is worthy of it, he probably knows deep down that he isn’t, but because to the politicians like him, our democracy is just a game that anyone could win if they’re good enough at cheating.

They’re not completely wrong about that, politics is a game and has become even more of one since the Citizens United ruling (is it now Monopoly, Risk, Trouble or Hungry, Hungry Hippos?). It is the wealthy plutocrats like the Kochs who have made it this bad with such willing help from the slimy types like Cruz who jump up and down with hands waving to get their attention, “Pick me! Pick me! I’ll be your boy!”

Cruz isn’t just a toadie though, like a number of other RW Repubs, he resides in a delusion about his exaggerated importance and becoming a political version of the Second Coming. It’s helpful to keep in mind that whether or not they truly believe in all the Fundamentalist garbage on the Right, they would love to be anointed as their Savior, worshipped and revered as the one who converted the U.S. into a Christian theocracy and made decisions as President that helped pave the way for Armageddon and The Rapture to (finally!) occur.

That’s why it was no coincidence that Cruz announced at Liberty University. For the cartoonishly self-centered, blatant adversaries of freedoms and best interests for all Americans, there is one main demographic to court…White Right Wing Christians. Like that old commercial for Life cereal, when you serve up a bowl of religious domination, prejudice and hatred to these types, what you hear is, “He likes it! Hey Mikey!”

Or in this case, “Hey Teddy!”.

Like a perverse science project, over the next year we’ll get to watch Ted Cruz power his political engine with the worst of human emotions and motivations. And like a poor science project, it will fail miserably but along the way, it will help to degrade the level of discourse for all Republican candidates for the presidency.

Is that a bad thing? Ultimately, maybe it’s not the worst for the American people. They’ll watch Republicans get their hands very filthy then prepare a meal they want Americans to swallow and a majority will be too disgusted to do so. Republicans will once again defeat themselves by pandering to the worst in the people that they first need to give them their party’s nomination.

The Republican Primary Stank ain’t one that easily washes off or can be covered up by an excess of “I Didn’t Really Mean What I Said!” cologne from Netanyahu Fragrances.

We know what we’re in for with Cruz and the Republicans in the primary. Lots of Christian supremacy rabble-rousing, coded and not so coded language to stir up racism, hatred aimed at the poor, hostility and chauvinism aimed at women, you know, all those things that Jesus would be so proud to see in those who claim to follow him.

The most dangerous thing for any society is when those who are dangerous camouflage themselves to the public as good. At least the extremism of the Ted Cruz types and the requirement on them to pander to the hateful that makes up their party’s core, prevents them from any pretense of being reasonable candidates the majority can see as acceptable.

In the General Election, they will have the Kochs and other billionaires like Sheldon Adelson spending a fortune in media buys on propaganda aimed at constructing a facade of normalcy around their candidate who had been pandering to to the worst extremists just weeks or months ago.

However, whoever that candidate turns out to be, it won’t be Ted Cruz. His popularity is so narrow and his message to that small group requires being so offensive to the majority that one would have to be wildly delusional to even imagine such a candidacy had any chance at all.

Which is why, when we talk about wild delusions, unquestionable losers and Republican Presidential candidates, Cruz should borrow a campaign slogan from a previous Republican President, “CRUZ’S THE ONE!”.