Political Animal
Blog
You, liberal reader, probably think of Ted Cruz as this vicious neo-McCarthyite crank who is raging around Washington threatening not so much Democrats as the imaginary RINOs who control his political party.
But the image he’s projecting to his fellow-conservatives, and that he’d like the GOP to project nationally, is very different: he’s a sweet huggy-bear who thinks Republicans lose elections because—I know this is hard to believe, but it’s true—people perceive that they don’t care about less-fortunate people. That’s gotta change, Cruz recently explained in Miami at the Cuban-Democracy PAC luncheon, via the Florida conservative blog The Shark Tank:
I think why Republicans did so poorly in the Hispanic community this last election was not primarily immigration, I think it was two words- 47 percent. And by that I don’t mean that unfortunate comment… What I mean is the narrative of the last election. The 47% percent who are dependent on government- we don’t have to worry about them. I can’t think of an idea that is more antithetical to what we believe as conservatives and Americans than that idea.
“Republicans did a poor job last time around…is making the case to the single mom, making the case to the young African American, the young Hispanic coming out of school looking for his first job that the party of opportunity is a party that allows and encourages small businesses to thrive and encourages economic growth.”
You hear this a lot from conservatives. The I’m-with-the-rich-because-I-love-the-poor rap is a hardy perennial that was bequeathed to the Right by the late Jack Kemp, who probably actually believed it. One of Kemp’s proteges, a guy named Paul Ryan, spoke at the Jack Kemp Foundation dinner in December, and justified his screw-the-poor budget policies as a deeper form of agape love for those who had been failed by the welfare state. Here’s a taste from the deep well of his compassion:
Not every problem disappears through the workings of the free market alone. Americans are a compassionate people. And there’s a consensus in this country about our obligations to the most vulnerable. Those obligations are beyond dispute. The real debate is how best we can meet them. It’s whether they are better met by private groups or by government - by voluntary action or by government action.
I like that. Not every economic or social problem can be ignored because the Market Knows Best. Some people may need help in the form of “voluntary action!” Let’s hear it for charity!
What’s never been clear to me is whether this Empowerment Conservative rhetoric is ultimately designed to appeal to poor and minority folk (if so, it’s failed dismally over the decades), to the news media, or to the tender consciences of conservatives themselves. Some media folk seem to find it a revelation whenever Republicans don’t look and sound like Daddy Warbucks, which is why Kemp always got such good press, and probably why the people surrounding George W. Bush thought “compassionate conservatism” was such a great marketing slogan.
What’s interesting about the version of this pseudo-ideology being embraced by Ryan and Cruz is that there is not one ounce of the old moderate-Republican noblesse oblige in it, with its compromises with the welfare state on behalf of the little people. No, for these new Empowerers love for the poor isn’t genuine unless it involves the full, ruthless destruction of the public support that has enslaved everyone dependent on it. They kind of remind me of the medieval priests who viewed the killing of heretics as the supreme act of charity, saving souls through the destruction of the body.
So it’s probably more a salve to their own (and their supporters’) consciences than a marketing tactic for people like Ryan and Cruz to promote their policy views as pretty much what Jesus would support if he were a Member of Congress. If it becomes necessary to love the poor to death, they’re up to the task.
Facebook
Twitter
c u n d gulag on March 12, 2013 12:30 PM:
It's kind of ironic to me, that people who have no hearts, can talk in such heart-felt terms about "The Poors."
And it's also ironic, that these people who have no brains, find that they need to brainwash themselves, and hope it washes the brains of others - particularly in the MSM.
Peter C on March 12, 2013 12:52 PM:
Romney’s weakness was that he couldn’t pull off a very credible ‘compassion’ act. He was obviously, transparently, and unavoidably wealthy, but he couldn’t convince people that he really cared. People could believe he’d be competent, but he came off as robotic and aloof and he couldn’t connect with people.
Ryan is dangerous because he can. He can look sincere. He can sound sincere. HE ISN’T, but he can look like he is. Because he can fake ‘sincerity’, it is important that we ceaselessly highlight how cruel and mean-spirited his budgets really are. We’ve got to make the public skeptical and suspicious of sincere-sounding Republicans.
Ted Cruz is not really a problem. He makes such an ass of himself that he’s never going to have widespread appeal. He’ll lose his seat in six years to one of the Castro brother (if I have anything to say about it, at least). Our task with Cruz make him the Republican poster-child and have him be the face of the Republican party – the ugly, combative, snide, mean and nasty face.
Pollysi on March 12, 2013 1:13 PM:
Just don't depend on his charity. In 2011, on an income of $323,416, he gave $12,991 or 4%. That's a huge increase from the $2600 he gave the year before (1.2% on an income of $215,417).
Josef K on March 12, 2013 1:14 PM:
I wonder how difficult its going to be to attach simple, inherently negative connotations to Ryan and Cruz. "McCarthyism" for example is part of our public discourse, as is "Welfare Queen", and both are potent attacks. More recently we have "death panels", although I'm unconvinced it has quite as much staying power.
Given how toxic the ideas and creeds these two clods really are, what might be the best avenue of rhetorical attack?
Dredd on March 12, 2013 1:33 PM:
"Love You To Death"
The Sierra Club is thinking that about government tar sands procurement, which was made illegal by 42 USC 17142, after their lawsuit was dismissed for lack of standing.
The court said even if it made the DoD stop violating the law there were others that would keep violating, so go away.
David Carlton on March 12, 2013 1:48 PM:
I think that, like so much contemporary right-wing rhetoric [like the constant struggle to find a new Evil Empire], this line dates from the 1970s. It was, after all, among the major arguments of the early neoconservatives (and neoliberals as well) that often well-intentioned government policies have unintended consequences that are actually deleterious to the poor. The problem here, of course, is that liberals over time (and some conservatives as well; Milton Friedman, after all, could be called the Father of the EITC) learned these lessons and sought to craft, er, better policies. In response, conservatives just keep recycling the dogmas that worked for them in the 1970s. And it works well for that generation whose stock of political ideas hasn't evolved since the 1970s, and who vote disproportionately compared to younger and minority voters. Problem is, it won't work forever; fewer and fewer of us are around that even remember the seventies, much less let that decade dominate our thinking.
Sgt. Gym Bunny on March 12, 2013 2:14 PM:
They kind of remind me of the medieval priests who viewed the killing of heretics as the supreme act of charity, saving souls through the destruction of the body.
Reminds me more of those slave owners who just knowed in their good christian hearts that slavery was the best way to look out for their little darkies...
kindness on March 12, 2013 2:19 PM:
I prefer 'Ballad of Dwight Fry' off that record.
angler on March 12, 2013 2:48 PM:
I think the "I’m-with-the-rich-because-I-love-the-poor rap" dates back even farther. The pharoahs were rumored to have used that line in their budget rationale for the pyramids.
jhm on March 12, 2013 3:18 PM:
As far as my imperfect grasp of conservative intellectual history goes, they abandoned Herbert Spencer, not because he didn't espouse the necessary level of laissez-faire, but because the base couldn't stomach the evolution part of his making religious arguments in favor of social Darwinism. Now they've latched onto a militant Atheist making basically the same arguments.
Tells you all you really need to know that in two hundred plus years they haven't been able to find someone to lead Conservatism philosophically without either hiding part of their thesis, or rejecting their thesis for some ideological heresy.
CJColucci on March 12, 2013 3:45 PM:
The I’m-with-the-rich-because-I-love-the-poor rap is a hardy perennial that was bequeathed to the Right by the late Jack Kemp, who probably actually believed it.
As someone, I wish i remembered who, said: "Jack Kemp has showered with more black people than most other Republicans know."