Tuesday, October 29, 2013

The Vindication of Ted Cruz

Flopping Aces ^ | 10-29-13 | Vince


Pundits and journalists across the country have suggested that Ted Cruz and friends accomplished nothing with the government shutdown. I’d beg to differ. Indeed, I’d suggest just the opposite. The best parallel I can draw is with Ronald Reagan in 1976 when he angered the GOP establishment by challenging Gerald Ford for the party’s nomination before he went down to defeat at the hands of a peanut farmer from Georgia. Reagan however had made his mark. He was for smaller government and everyone knew it. As a consequence, four years later he won a resounding victory on the strength of the army of supporters he inspired in 1976.
In the same way, Ted Cruz hates Obamacare. He recognizes that Obamacare is an anvil around the neck of American freedom and prosperity. What is most important about his “filibuster” and the shutdown is that he has left no doubt in the minds of Americans exactly where he stands. Not only about where he stands, but also about his willingness to suffer the slings and arrows from both the opposition and those within his own party in order to make a clear statement. And that statement is that big government in general and Obamacare in particular are bad for America.
Many GOP establishment types pilloried Cruz for the shutdown, saying that had it not been for the shutdown he championed, the news from October 1st would have been the failure of Obamacare itself. They are simply wrong. Had the shutdown gone on longer two things would have occurred.
The first is the most telling: Given enough time it would have become clear to more and more Americans that the “shutdown” of the federal government would not bring about the end of the world, despite the warnings from the big government types in both parties. This was the real reason that the media and the Washington establishment focused on the shutdown. By the shutdown demonstrating the irrelevancy of Washington to the lives of so many Americans, they feared that the voting public might just decide that they didn’t really need to be taxed to the hilt and mortgaged beyond their lifetimes to pay for things that didn’t really matter. As such, the war on Ted Cruz and the Tea Party via the shutdown had to be job number one, which it was. The reality of this fact can be seen in the results of a Washington Post / ABC poll. Despite weeks of shrill coverage and apocalyptic predictions, once the shutdown was over a full 78% of Americans reported that they weren’t inconvenienced by the shutdown at all and another 11% felt only minor inconveniences. When 89% of the population barely notices that you’re not showing up for work it’s time to be concerned about your job. The establishment was… and it should be.
The second thing that would have occurred had the shutdown continued is the thing that is happening right now. Americans would have become well aware of the train wreck that is Obamacare because it’s so catastrophic a failure that it would have been impossible to miss. The failures of the website are legion, as are the basic elements of Obamacare itself. As more and more people were feeling the punch – i.e. losing their current health insurance, seeing premiums skyrocket and watching their choices disappear – the reality of the actual damage caused by Obamacare would have become more than the sycophant media cold hide. It’s one thing to read about our Spoiled Child in Chief keeping veterans from visiting monuments to their fallen brethren, but it’s another thing altogether to get a notice from your insurance company telling you you’ve lost your coverage or that your premiums have doubled and your deductible has tripled. Those are the kinds of things people notice regardless of what is going on in Washington.
(Excerpt) Read more at floppingaces.net...

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