Hopefully this is the last time I'll have to put on my flak jacket to talk about Ted Cruz. While his speech at the Republican National Convention opened wounds from the primary campaign and seems to have strengthened the resolve of the Never Trump crowd, I wanted to take a look at the speech, which, overall, with its theme of freedom was very good.
As the primary campaign narrowed down to two viable candidates in May, the Republican Party was divided into four major segments. The Republican establishment had Mitt Romney as their leader, saying don’t vote for Trump, but they offered no alternative candidate. Then there was the diminishing number of Ted Cruz supporters who held on onto their hope going into the Convention that he could somehow become the nominee.
Trump supporters were, and still are, in two distinct camps. One group is decidedly pro-Trump, and sees Donald Trump as the man who can restore greatness to America. Others, who are generally long-time Republicans, have varying degrees of doubt about Trump’s strict allegiance to Republican doctrine, but saw that as the presumptive nominee and see now that he is the nominee, that he has to be fully supported in order to keep the unprosecuted criminal Hillary Clinton from becoming President.
As we approached day three of the Republican National Convention, most Republicans expected Ted Cruz, who had been scheduled to speak at the Convention before it started, to give, in one form or another, his endorsement to Presidential candidate Donald Cruz.
Cruz, though, who came to be seen in the primaries as the candidate who was the standard bearer of American traditional conservative movement, had another idea. Still stinging from the vicious Alinskyite attacks by Trump against him during the primary campaign, he felt he had to come away from the Convention with his convictions, and more importantly, his base of supporters, intact.
But I don’t think he expected the organized opposition to his speech or the degree to which his former supporters would see his non-endorsement as, at best, in poor taste.
I think he expected to get some of the usual dump on Cruz attacks from the Trump faithful, but he didn’t realize that most of them are permanently convinced he is everything Trump accused him of during the campaign, and more!
And, as we found out the day after the convention, Donald Trump himself seems to be permanently convinced as well. On Friday morning he took things to the point of describing the National Enquirer, which falsely accused Cruz of having five affairs and a Dad who was buddies with Lee Harvey Oswald, as a consistently reliable source of news.
While I think it remains to be seen how much leadership Cruz can still be in helping to keep the conservative movement intact in the days ahead, his speech remains as a reminder of some of those conservative values to which we need to adhere:
"Our nation is exceptional because it was built on the five most powerful words in the English language: I want to be free. We stand here tonight a nation divided. Partisan rancor, anger, even hatred are tearing America apart.
"And citizens are furious—rightly furious—at a political establishment that cynically breaks its promises and ignores the will of the people....There is a better vision for our future: A return to freedom.”
"Freedom means free speech, not politically correct safe spaces. Freedom means religious freedom, whether you are Christian or Jew, Muslim or atheist. Gay or straight, the Bill of Rights protects the rights of all of us to live according to our conscience.
"Freedom means the right to keep and bear arms, and protect your family. Freedom means Supreme Court Justices who don't dictate policy, but instead follow the Constitution.
"And freedom means recognizing that our Constitution allows states to choose policies that reflect local values. Colorado may decide something different than Texas. New York different than Iowa. Diversity. That's the way it's supposed to be. If not, what's the point of having states to begin with?”
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Cruz continued: "Our party was founded to defeat slavery. Abraham Lincoln, the first Republican president, signed the Emancipation Proclamation. We passed the Civil Rights Act, and fought to eliminate Jim Crow laws. Those were fights for freedom, and so is this.”
The Convention crowd was with him up to that point, but then the anti-Cruz boos began when he said:
"We deserve leaders who stand for principle. Unite us all behind shared values. Cast aside anger for love. That is the standard we should expect, from everybody.
It turned into an uproar, then, as he directed his speech toward the Never Trump supporters of Cruz and said: "And to those listening, please, don't stay home in November. Stand, and speak, and vote your conscience, vote for candidates up and down the ticket who you trust to defend our freedom and to be faithful to the Constitution.”
Returning to the theme of freedom, he concluded: "It's love of freedom that has allowed millions to achieve their dreams....We must make the most of our moment – to fight for freedom, to protect our God-given rights, even of those with whom we don't agree, so that when we are old and gray . . . and our work is done . . . and we give those we love one final kiss goodbye . . . we will be able to say, 'Freedom matters, and I was part of something beautiful.' " (speech quotes from Conservative Review)
But lest we forget, it’s really all about stopping America from continuing down the path the Obama-Clinton regime has set us on. Even speaking at a memorial for the Dallas officers who were slain, President Obama had to make it about his main theme of fundamental transformation.
After using the collective “we” to refer to responsible legal gun owners, he said the blame was that “we flood communities with so many guns.”
You mean the illegal guns that are so rampant in Chicago and other cities, whose lives don't seem to be the ones that matter?
He went on to talk about how our nation is under-investing in education. Yet, how can we be underinvesting when we're adding a trillion dollars a year to the national debt. If the money isn't there, how can we invest it?
Blaming the murder of five officers on the way Congress apportions a bloated budget? That is not the cause of police hatred or of racial hatred. Mr. Obama chose to inject his pet political projects into a memorial for five dead public servants.
Whatever the problem, Obama throws his ideological agenda into the mix. Determined to keep pushing that our heritage is what is wrong with America, he and his party's supposed replacement for him in the White House, Hillary Clinton, blame white people, blame the most productive economy in history, blame too little deficit spending, blame lack of acceptance of his fascist policies for public restrooms.
Obama blames whatever he targets as an obstacle to his effort to fundamentally transform this country into a government planned economy that removes individual initiative and sucks the absolute maximum amount of wealth out of the hands of hard-working people so our lives can be micromanaged by a few people in Washington, D.C.
We had better get it together so this ideological madness ends and we can restore what’s left of our republic.
Rolf Yungclas is a recently retired newspaper editor from southwest Kansas who has been speaking out on the issues of the day in newspapers and online for over 15 years
