That will take him forever. How will he do all that chiseling and run for president?
the word "odious" was invented just for this man.
This is the same guy who right-wingers say has gone all soft and leftist? Yikes.
Oh, it's Cruz. Twitter is so complex. Return to your regularly scheduled programming.
The chisels will animate of their own accord and fly through the air at the tombstones? Do they do a dance number as well?
And dusk is all, "Stop flying at me, chisels!"
Rylo Ken loves dusk but won't admit it to his friends, 'cause they think dusk is too soft. Rylo digs the minimal beats and haunting vocals.
This is embarrassing to admit, but I really don't pay enough attention to Republicans. Cruz is consistently referred to as particularly psychotic -- is there any kind of greatest hits of his policy positions someone could point me to?
I mean, they're all horrendous, I just don't know what makes him stand out.
LB -- imagine the person you liked least in Law School, or maybe college. Now imagine him (definitely a him) as an ultra-conservative. Now imagine him 3x as assholish, interpersonally, even than your most hated person. Now imagine him as having a decent chance of actually running the country. Worst person ever! It's not just the terrible policy positions. If he actually becomes President there really is a nonzero chance that I will leave the country, go to a monastery, and do nothing but pray for the righteous vengeance of a just God.
I don't think his policy positions are that far from the rest of the field's. I think the revulsion is that Cruz comes across as strategically adopting the same policies despite being smart enough and well educated enough to know better.
Also, he commits own-goals on the Republicans, so even they loathe him.
Don't pray RT! Be the change you want to see in the world!
14: They're all smart enough to know better. They just choose not too. It's true that there isn't a lot of policy difference between him and most of the rest of the R field, but what makes him worse isn't that he should know better, it's that he's an asshole on a level that stands out in a field that also includes Donald Trump.
Okay, I have seen the articles on how astonishingly personally loathsome he is. The best line I remember is that hating him on sight isn't wrongfully jumping to conclusions, just sensibly saving time.
I know two people who knew him reasonably well before he became Texas SJ or a Senator. One is a liberal woman. The other a very very conservative man, who will undoubtedly vote for the Republican candidate (unless it's Cruz). Both lawyers. Both independently described him as "the worst person I have ever met" and they thought so long before he amounted to anthing. Their stories are pretty crazy but I guess not mine to tell, at least here.
It's really amazing that someone as personally loathed as Cruz has been so successful. The country is just too big.
All the "Cruz is amazingly loathed" talk is not resonating with me as much as it might, possibly because I am seeing very few actual examples of it. Are those out there? It almost reminds me of how elites like to insist certain individuals are "incredibly smart" as a bare but ubiquitous assertion.
If I ever see you in person, Minivet, I can change your mind! Also, look up his old college roomate, who has some good stories and is willing to share them publicly.
22: Being two degrees of separation from two non-famous people who individually loathe him doesn't satisfy you? I mean, that assumes that Halford's a real person, but that seems like a fairly reasonable thing to do.
We know whom Mazin would pick last. But he hasn't picked between Trump and Carson for President. I played that game with family members over the holidays. Thanks, Ogged.
In the Flippanter clan we do not play "You Have One Bullet" over Christmas dinner, thank you.
Like the thread here, lots of protestations and different answers.
Maybe Trump as the least dangerous.
I just don't know what makes him stand out.
This was all I needed.
http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2013/09/ted-cruz-we-need-100-more-jesse-helms
This was a pretty good "what an asshole" profile.
Wasn't Cruz also almost single-handedly leading the campaign to default on the national debt rather than raise the debt limit? Maybe I'm getting my right-wing demagogues mixed up, but I think that's right. And he's awful on immigration. And just look at his face.
I absolutely love this from 31:
As a law student at Harvard, he refused to study with anyone who hadn't been an undergrad at Harvard, Princeton, or Yale. Says Damon Watson, one of Cruz's law-school roommates: "He said he didn't want anybody from 'minor Ivies' like Penn or Brown."
That's pretty much the echt Cruz anecdote. He denies it, of course.
Pittsburgh has a HYP Club that I'm now going to call Cruz House.
If you can watch the video of Ted Cruz clips at the bottom of this link and not physically break out in hives, I don't even want to know you.
Isn't Cruz distinguished from nearly all the rest of them by being less eager to invade Syria to overthrow Assad?
Not that any of them would ever convince the military that this is a good idea.
Most of the military was never convinced invading Iraq was a good idea. They got their orders anyway.
Never convinced, but entertaining the cakewalk possibility nonetheless. They'll not fall for that one again in a generation.
39: surely you mean "for a generation"...
Chiming in to say I have a friend who knew him in college, a fair minded moderate person who has excellent judgment, who mentioned that she, too, found him loathsome. It's impressive: he runs the table in the BCS alienation contest.
Urp has the correct, substantive answer to LB's 13. The Republican Party is loaded with people who are egregious assholes on a personal level. For that matter, so is the Democratic Party. The problem with Cruz is that he fucks up the Republicans' con game.
Yes, Republicans unanimously voted to destroy the American economy by gratuitously provoking a default, but the vast majority were just pandering, and planned to find a graceful way to back down. They never would have voted to default if they thought their votes would actually result in a default. Cruz made it as difficult as possible for the Republicans to back down. He (quite accurately) called them liars and hypocrites.
Cruz calls the bluffs of his colleagues, and they resent him for it. Where they pretend to plan to drive the country over the brink, Cruz is prepared to actually do it.
The Trumpification of the Republican Party is, in large part, a result of the fact that the Republican base has finally wised up to the fact that they've been being lied to. And Cruz deserves a significant amount of the credit for that. Of course he's hated by the Republican Establishment.
By all accounts he's a smart fellow, smart enough to know that default would be really bad. He's just willing to talk about how he wouldn't have flinched after the car has already gotten out of the way of the oncoming train.
42 ...BCS alienation contest
British Cardiovascular Society?
Don't pray RT! Be the change you want to see in the world!
s/change/righteous\ vengeance/g
BCS alienation contest
British Cardiovascular Society?
The heart has its reasons, of which reason knows nothing.
39 - The invasion itself was a cakewalk, and overthrowing Assad would be too, albeit less so (and realistically precluded by Russian presence). It's the occupation that fucks you up.
45: Yeah, that's right. President Cruz wouldn't go through with a default. I'd amend your analogy slightly: Cruz is willing to make a show of grabbing at the steering wheel and criticizing the driver who is getting the car out of the path of the oncoming train, secure in the knowledge that he won't be run over. And then he bitches about it afterward.
Smug liberals like to think that the lesson of the Tragedy of the Commons is that collective action is necessary to solve certain problems, but Cruz knows better. The real lesson is that it's always best to pursue one's individual interest, and if other people are willing to bear the cost of being responsible, so much the better!
This has been Republican Party dogma for decades. Think about who runs up deficits, and who cuts them; who fucks up the country and who fixes it. Cruz is merely subjecting the Republican Establishment to the same ruthless logic that the Establishment applies to the 99 percent, and of course he's resented for it.
In the short term, that resentment doesn't mean a thing. Ultimately, karma may catch up to him, but people who fill up their swimming pools during a drought still get to swim; as long as they don't care about pissing off the neighbors, they don't lose a thing.
By all accounts he's a smart fellow, smart enough to know that default would be really bad.
I'm actually not 100% convinced on either part of this proposition. At least one account of his smartness was basically "he'd memorized a bunch of facts, wow." I mean, I'm not saying he's secretly dumb, but I have a sense that his smarts are strictly bounded--good at facts, good at debate-style logic that has little real world value, and good at convincing people who loathe him to give him power. But I'm not at all convinced that he's the kind of guy who actually understands the threat that e.g. default would pose, because he personally wants it to happen, and he's smarter than everyone else, so everyone else is probably wrong when they say it would be bad. IOW, the king of motivated reasoning.
It's also possible, of course, that he's 100% cynical and willing to take extreme positions at every turn because he's calculated that he can pull it off. I'm not sure which way the max asshole factor pushes the evidence. When I see something like his insane coloring book, I tend to think he's a true believer, but maybe I just can't comprehend someone that cynical.
