{"id":1471,"date":"2016-03-25T13:01:34","date_gmt":"2016-03-25T17:01:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/?p=1471"},"modified":"2016-03-25T13:01:34","modified_gmt":"2016-03-25T17:01:34","slug":"an-anti-establishment-candidate-the-real-ted-cruz","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/2016\/03\/an-anti-establishment-candidate-the-real-ted-cruz.html","title":{"rendered":"An “anti-Establishment” Candidate? The Real Ted Cruz"},"content":{"rendered":"

Contrary to what he and his boosters in some quarters of talk radio would have us think, Ted Cruz is most definitely not <\/em>a Washington \u201coutsider\u201d or \u201canti-Establishment\u201d candidate.<\/p>\n

For years, <\/em>until as recently as 2013<\/a>, Cruz, alongside such insiders as George W. Bush, advocated on behalf of legalizing <\/em>the country\u2019s millions of illegal immigrants.<\/p>\n

And though he and his defenders would have us believe otherwise, most Americans know that legalization, being the first step, as it were, to citizenship, is indeed<\/em> amnesty<\/a>. <\/em><\/p>\n

It is doubtless because Cruz wanted as badly as anyone to bring illegals \u201cout of the shadows\u201d that accounts for why, in spite of his self-styling to the contrary, he left it to Jeff Sessions<\/a> (who, not incidentally, has endorsed Trump) to lead the fight against the Gang of Eight.<\/p>\n

In the early 2000\u2019s, Cruz joined the board of HAPI, an organization comprised of \u201cconservative\u201d Hispanics interested in advancing a \u201cpro-immigration\u201d agenda. HAPI worked closely with the Bush administration. Every<\/em> proposal included legalization<\/em>. In fact, among the policies that Cruz and his colleagues at HAPI supported <\/em>was John McCain\u2019s<\/em> and Ted Kennedy\u2019s<\/em> \u201cimmigration reform\u201d act of 2006!<\/p>\n

Robert De Posada, a former Director of Hispanic Affairs for the RNC and a founder of the \u201cLatino Coalition,\u201d meets Cruz\u2019s current protestations that he never supported legalization in principle, <\/em>but only as a strategy to derail the Gang of Eight\u2019s plans, with incredulity. \u201cIt\u2019s just a flat out lie. Period. There\u2019s just no truth behind it.\u201d<\/p>\n

The truth of the matter is that Trump entered the race and revealed to all with ears to hear that Americans generally and GOP voters in particular are outraged over the American Last immigration policy that Democrats and<\/em> Republicans have been pushing for decades. Amnesty\u2014i.e. any arrangement that, in one way or the other, allows illegals to reap the privileges allotted to those with legal status and citizenship\u2014is woefully unpopular.<\/p>\n

Cruz witnessed Trump\u2019s meteoric rise over his stance on this issue and recalibrated accordingly.<\/p>\n

The Texas senator had never been the hard-liner against amnesty that he would now have us believe that he is.<\/p>\n

Yet support for amnesty is hardly the only position that Cruz has shared in common with his comrades in the neocon-GOP\/Democrat-progressive Washington axis. Cruz has been supportive as well of the foreign policy vision of the regime.<\/p>\n

For example, Cruz purports to reject \u201cnation-building\u201d\u2014but so too does every other politician, for \u201cnation-building\u201d is to foreign policy what \u201cwelfare\u201d is to domestic policy. Remember, even the man who set out to democratize the Middle East called for \u201ca more humble foreign policy\u201d when he campaigned for the presidency in 2000. In reality, Cruz is every bit as much a fan of the idealism of \u201cAmerican Exceptionalism\u201d as is anyone.<\/p>\n

As The <\/em>National Interest <\/em>notes<\/a>, Cruz\u2019s speeches on foreign policy are replete with the exactly the kind of abstract idealistic generalities<\/a>\u2014\u201chuman rights,\u201d \u201cfundamental values,\u201d \u201cthe hope that every person may have to live in freedom,\u201d etc.\u2014that \u201cconservatives have been fighting for centuries.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nor is this just rhetoric, for Cruz would refuse to communicate at all with Iran until it unequivocally affirms \u201cIsrael\u2019s right to exist as a Jewish state\u201d\u2014a standard of which even our Arab allies<\/em> \u201cexpressed rejection<\/a>.<\/u>\u201d And he argued for drawing Ukraine into an equal alliance with the Western powers of NATO\u2014even though a country as poor and corrupt as Ukraine couldn\u2019t possible carry its share of the burdens and responsibilities that member states are expected to assume.<\/p>\n

Cruz decries \u201cNew York values,\u201d<\/a> which he identifies with support for abortion, \u201cgay marriage,\u201d and \u201cfocus on money and the media.\u201d All the while, some of his biggest backers are Wall Street financiers. The chairman and CEO of Goldman Sachs, which spotted Cruz and his wife a considerable loan, had won an award from the \u201cHuman Rights Campaign\u201d<\/a> for his tireless work in advancing \u201cmarriage equality.\u201d<\/p>\n

Goldman Sachs, in the words of one left-leaning publication, had been a \u201cdriving force on influential Wall Street for LGBT equality.\u201d<\/p>\n

Evidently, Cruz\u2019s conscience was no more conflicted over accepting resources from this embodiment of New York values than it was conflicted over accepting resources from two billionaire gay hoteliers<\/a>\u2014and proponents of marijuana legalization<\/a>\u2014who held a reception for him last spring. During the event, Cruz not once expressed his opposition to \u201cgay marriage.\u201d Moreover, he borrowed a move from the old tried and true GOP playbook and bucked the issue altogether by invoking \u201cstates\u2019 rights:\u201d marriage, he said, is a thing best left to the states to resolve on their own terms.<\/p>\n

When word got out about the event, a Cruz aide expressed regret<\/a> to CBS about the campaign\u2019s choice of venue.<\/p>\n

As for abortion, even as Cruz blasts Donald Trump for the latter\u2019s assertion that Planned Parenthood does some <\/em>good, we shouldn\u2019t lose sight of the fact that Cruz, who has been in the US senate for six years, only began calling for the defunding of Planned Parenthood<\/a> after <\/em>it came to light that the country\u2019s largest abortion provider traded in baby parts.<\/p>\n

In other words, Cruz said nothing all of this time as the taxpayer was forced to subsidize PP\u2019s abortion services. Yet what\u2019s worse, the trading of the bodily members of deceased human beings or the killing<\/em> of those humans?<\/p>\n

To hear such Cruz boosters as Mark Levin tell it, Cruz is even more despised by the media and \u201cthe Establishment\u201d as is Trump. There\u2019s no end to the spin. Perhaps this explains why such neoconservative Republican establishment organs as National Review, <\/em>which dedicated an entire issue to the end of stopping Trump, not only has done no such thing regarding Cruz; it has actually endorsed <\/em>Cruz<\/a>.<\/p>\n

So too have such paradigmatic Establishment figures as Jeb Bush<\/a> and Lindsey Graham<\/a> endorsed Cruz.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s also worth noting that NR, <\/em>Bush, and Graham all gave one and the same reason for their support of Cruz: He\u2019s the best hope of stopping Trump.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Contrary to what he and his boosters in some quarters of talk radio would have us think, Ted Cruz is most definitely not a Washington \u201coutsider\u201d or \u201canti-Establishment\u201d candidate. For years, until as recently as 2013, Cruz, alongside such insiders as George W. Bush, advocated on behalf of legalizing the country\u2019s millions of illegal immigrants.…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":399,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1471","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nAn "anti-Establishment" Candidate? 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