The Crazies Rally Around their Own, Ted Cruz

You have to wonder at Republican reactions to Ted Cruz’s pseudo-filibuster prank this past week. We saw Bryan Fischer calling him a modern-day prophet Elijah, Karl Rove told Greta Van Susteren that it was “an extraordinary performance,” and Matt Barber of Liberty Counsel wrote a piece on World Net Daily that “Liberty Counsel’s got your flank” and revealed his belief that “Mr. Cruz emasculated, delightfully, Obama’s political yes-bots on both sides of the aisle.”

Rove thought Cruz “was cogent, he was thoughtful, he was funny, he was engaging, he was personal, he was personable.”

I think Cruz is barely cogent at the best of times but during his phony filibuster he displayed just how clueless he is by failing to understand a children’s book.

And we want this guy to have the nuclear football?

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Yes, some Republicans are more than fed up with Cruz and his antics. But it is almost as if the worse Cruz gets the more other Republicans portray him as the second coming. But I guess even crazy folks need a hero. Matt Barber calls that first group RINOs. They can’t really be Republicans, after all, if they don’t share Cruz’s delusions.

In his search for an argument, Barber cited an article from Politico:

The Obamacare that consumers will finally be able to sign up for next week is a long way from the health plan President Barack Obama first pitched to the nation.

Millions of low-income Americans won’t receive coverage. Many workers at small businesses won’t get a choice of insurance plans right away. Large employers won’t need to provide insurance for another year. Far more states than expected won’t run their own insurance marketplaces. And a growing number of workers won’t get to keep their employer-provided coverage.

But Barber fails to mention that the reasons given for this in that same article are that the AFA was “the casualty of a divisive legislative fight, a surprise Supreme Court ruling, a complex implementation and an unrelenting political opposition.”

And gosh. Guess where most of that opposition came from?

Barber’s cry amounts to, “Look, we’ve gutted Obamacare! It sucks! Let’s get rid of it!” which is identical to the tea party cry of “Look, we’ve obstructed Obama’s presidency! He can’t run the country! Let’s impeach him!”

Barber also fails to mention something else the Politico article said:

More than 3.1 million young adults gained coverage because they could stay on their parents’ insurance; 17 million children with pre-existing conditions can no longer be denied coverage; and insurers have been forced to issue more than $500 million in rebate checks to consumers because they failed to spend at least 80 percent of premiums on medical care.

Barber and others continue to claim that Obamacare violates religious freedoms. Apparently their religion says people who don’t share their religion should fail to get adequate healthcare because of somebody else’s religious beliefs.

But Barber himself is one of our country’s biggest foes of religious freedom, expecting all non-Christians and even Christians who don’t share his beliefs, to follow his particular form of Christianity. He calls THAT religious freedom for the simple reason that it gives his type of so-called Christian the right to legislate their beliefs in violation of the First Amendment.

Obamacare has nothing to do with religion. It has everything to do with healthcare. Unlike Republicans, President Obama did not try to sneak in some anti-religious law into an agriculture bill. He Affordable Care Act is what it says it is: a health care act designed to provide affordable healthcare to millions of Americans.

And it is doing just that.

Matt Barber and his fellow religious bigots are welcome to their own beliefs, but they are not welcome to ours.

They are blind to ours; they have no right to expect everyone else to do the same. He doesn’t like his taxes going to things he doesn’t approve of (even when they actually don’t). I got news for him: I don’t like my taxes going to his religion (which they do).

How about our religious freedoms, Matt Barber. You seem t have forgotten them in your quest to aggrandize your own at the expense of ours.

Hrafnkell Haraldsson

Hrafnkell Haraldsson, a social liberal with leanings toward centrist politics has degrees in history and philosophy. His interests include, besides history and philosophy, human rights issues, freedom of choice, religion, and the precarious dichotomy of freedom of speech and intolerance. He brings a slightly different perspective to his writing, being that he is neither a follower of an Abrahamic faith nor an atheist but a polytheist, a modern-day Heathen who follows the customs and traditions of his Norse ancestors. He maintains his own blog, A Heathen’s Day, which deals with Heathen and Pagan matters, and Mos Maiorum Foundation www.mosmaiorum.org, dedicated to ethnic religion. He has also contributed to NewsJunkiePost, GodsOwnParty and Pagan+Politics.