Ted Cruz Flushes His Campaign Down the Toilet For the Religious Right

Last updated on July 17th, 2023 at 06:42 pm

Forget about claims like that made recently by Heather Digby Parton of Salon, that Ted Cruz could actually become our next president. He is, as she says, “a smart and lucky extremist is a very dangerous one,” but there is no calculus that leads to that answer.

Ted Cruz has bigger problems than his place of birth, the Canadian citizenship of his parents, and Donald Trump. Ted Cruz has positioned himself as the champion of theocracy in the United States, and as its other would-be champions fall to the wayside, he has been left standing alone as the dominionist messiah.

Which is not necessarily a good thing.

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Sure, he’s competing with people like Rick Santorum, who says marriage equality is like changing “the chemical equation for water.” It’s not easy to out-stupid Santorum, because, of course, the two are nothing alike, nor is it easy to be more dim-witted than Ben Carson, who wouldn’t understand the Constitution if he did bother to read it. But Cruz is succeeding in making Carson appear normal.

Carson said in November that equal rights – making everybody equal before the law like the Constitution says – actually somehow destroys the concept of “live and let live” – Which is stupid, because, you know, he’s not willing to do that himself. He wants to reserve marriage for “heterosexual” (for those of you who prefer 19th century pseudo-science to actual science) Christians to define.

Yet Cruz has outdone them all by announcing that Bob Vander Plaats as National Co-Chair for his campaign. Vander Plaats is CEO of The FAMiLY LEADER, a group you might remember thanks to their bizarre Marriage Vow Pledge, which asserted that “African Americans were better off as slaves.”

Yes, he wants that guy as his national co-chair:

“With Bob’s leadership we will succeed in uniting conservatives around this country. Bob is an inspiring leader in the conservative movement with the values and tested ability to help us fight to restore the principles that made this country exceptional. I’m grateful to have such a tireless advocate for liberty on our team. If we as conservatives come together, we will win.”

What Cruz doesn’t seem to get is that the only thing worse than a theocrat is a racist theocrat.

This will no doubt delight theocrats near and far. You need look no farther than Steve Deace to see that. Deace, writing at BarbWire, says that if you don’t vote for Cruz you are “stupid,” “slappy” and “child-like,” and he explains, “rest assured I mean paste-eating, booger-picking child-like.”

That’s convincing.

Because if you don’t agree with Steve Deace, you must be all those things. He’d have more of an argument if he didn’t try to make the argument that theocracy is in line with the United States Constitution.

Of course, Deace is the braniac who thought Michael Sam’s big to be treated like a person and play professional football in the homophobic NFL, was a ploy to distract us all from Benghazi. So yeah…we can file that one appropriately.

but it’s not going to get Ted Cruz elected president. It’s basically an announcement that he really doesn’t want to be president after all. It is a concession to Donald Trump, because Donald Trump has an appeal that goes beyond simple theocracy. Trump appeals to all kinds of bigots. He’s thinking BIG.

Ted Cruz just boxed himself in with the minority of Christians who think the Constitution doesn’t mean what it says and that the Founding Fathers intended all along that we should be a theocracy.

It is difficult to believe Cruz thinks all this is going to work for him. If the most bizarre thing he had done so far was cook bacon with a gun, that would have been enough. But he’s gone far beyond that into the realm of the truly zany.

Alone, you could call Vander Plaats a sop to Iowa extremists. But it’s not just Vander Plaats.

Like when he recently called on clergy “to awaken and energize Christ’s body into the White House” just like the Founding Fathers never intended.

There are no doubt those who agree with Carly Fiorina that Cruz “says whatever he needs to say to get elected.” Disregard for a moment her own record of pandering to the lowest common denominator. Cruz’s stances are incomprehensible to the average American. It’s easy to question his convictions.

Only the specter of his wacky “Ted is the messiah” and “I’m the self-appointed educator for the American Negro” dad, offers irrefutable evidence that Cruz is serious.

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.