Just asking questions.
Just spreading a false narrative.
Just raising money.
There is more than one way to bear false witness in politics.
Let me give liars some practical advice. It is smarter to exaggerate than outright lie. Claim something big. Stick to a landslide claim. If you claim a landslide then surely you must have at least won. A big claim moves the area of potential disagreement in your favor.
Here is another one. When making accusations that embed false facts you want to attach to someone, it is smarter to share falsehoods in the form of questions rather than direct statements. The question works just as well to feed the lie, and it gives the liar deniability in the face of lawsuits. Notice how incautious Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell were in saying outright as fact that Dominion machines switched votes. Dominion is both lawyers. They should have just "asked questions" that implied corrupt behavior. Dominion would be just as damaged, but Giuliani and Powell would be in the clear.
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| Cruz in South Carolina, 2016 |
I use the biblical words "false witness," because the Judeo-Christian tradition commands against defaming others. I watched Ted Cruz up close in New Hampshire and South Carolina. His political schtick mixes Texas cowboy boots, political conservatism, and God. He was the leading Christian nationalist candidate in the early months of the 2016 nomination campaign. Cruz was "trusTED." He had the Christian flame of the holy spirit, right there in his campaign logo.
Cruz was overtaken by a celebrity willing to take the fight to liberals, harder and nastier than Cruz, but with more humor. Pocahontas was funny. Cruz was serious. Trump had a better act. Trump understood that in the war for all-American culture, the ends justified the means. There are bad guys: The fake news, the liberals, the socialists, the haughty cosmopolitan elites, terrorist-sheltering Muslims, Blacks with their affirmative action privilege, the immigrants who get everything handed to them. Trump was unapologetic. He proudly asserted it was morally OK to crush losers and enemies. Audiences loved watching it. Voters loved watching it.
Ted Cruz learned from Trump. Voters in the current GOP activist base do not want Christian piety or sportsmanship. They don't mind exaggeration and lies. They reward strength. I participate in a longitudinal experiment to see what the Ted Cruz base likes and responds to. I am on his email list. He writes me about five days a week for five years with "red meat" and a request for money. He has had over a thousand trial runs to hone a message that delivers for him.
***Ted Cruz's base likes conspiracies. There are dark mysterious forces that threaten people.
***Ted Cruz's base responds to innuendo. The "just asking questions" technique seems to work.
***Ted Cruz's base wants to believe that January 6 riot was the fault of their enemies, not their own teammates.
Ray Epps is an Arizona resident, a Trump supporter, and a leader in the "Oath Keepers." He participated in speeches and rallies on January 5 and 6 near the Capitol. He is not a FBI informant nor employee and has said so adamantly. Ted Cruz knows this. He also knows Justice Department employees cannot comment on ongoing investigations so their refusal to answer was a given and not suspicious. Ray Epps is collateral damage used to feed a debunked conspiracy theory. The irony is that Epps' reputation is being besmirched because Cruz is implying that he works in law enforcement to protect the Constitution. He doesn't and never has. He is a volunteer Trump-activist attempting to stop a Constitutional process, i.e. a "good guy" within the check-writing GOP orbit. Cruz is defaming him.
Here is a portion of the email Ted Cruz sent me this week. It says something about Cruz. It says something about Cruz's audience. This is what works with them.
From:Ted Cruz
This week I led the search for answers on whether there was any federal involvement in January 6.
I grilled a senior FBI official– and she REFUSED to answer key questions.
Who is Ray Epps? Was Ray Epps a federal agent or informant?
Did ANY FBI agents or confidential informants actively participate in the events that day?
We know the FBI has been misused in the past to target President Trump and our conservative movement and run interference for the Democrats.
Just look at the Russia Collusion Hoax- James Comey and Peter Strzok...
…and now AG Merrick Garland won’t answer questions from Congress.
What are they trying to hide now about the events of January 6, 2021?
I’m working hard to expose the full truth and shine a light on whether there was any FBI involvement on that day... and the liberal media can’t stand it! . . .
Democrats want to twist the events of January 6 to fit their completely dishonest narrative, with their pals in the liberal media all-in on the scam.
12 comments:
The 2024 Republican Primary has begun.
Question: Does Ted Cruz really believe he could be the Republican nominee for POTUS in 2024?
It seems the broader narrative has two tracks:
1. Out Trump Trump
2. Kindler, Gentler...but still Trumpy
While one or the other of these approaches may be successful depending on the region, it remains to be seen which one will be the national strategy. My bet is #2. I think the #2 crowd will go after the #1 crowd, while the #1 goes after Trump, hopefully along with the SDNY and the IRS. The goal is to break up the base thereby sabotaging Trump's dominance. It won't be pretty.
The other question is whether facing all this Trump has the stomach to run. Sooner or later one of the #1s (Cruz?) will realize they have to directly challenge him. Who will be first?
Anyone's guess at this point.
Cruz is such an oily greaseball that all by himself he could support Texas’s petroleum industry.
Rick,
At the moment it looks like DeSantis might be first.
Insead of trusTED I would like to see ousTED.
It's heartening to me as a lifelong conservative and student of history to see America's staunch progressives and leftists today repose an almost childlike trust in agencies like the FBI and the CIA, even after decades of often bitter accusations of dishonesty, agent-provocateur infiltration, and all-around foul play. Nevertheless, I think that defining our terms and placing them into proper objective context must be job one.
"Conspiracy" and "conspiracy theory" are very commonly used these days. Presumably they must mean more--or less?--than coordinated action or beliefs which are as-yet unproven, otherwise highly-speculative, illicit, or far-fetched. After all, the redoubtable Congressional January 6 committee is right now actively pursuing various conspiracies and theories of conspiracy to commit sedition and insurrection against our very government's continued existence, along with related theories concerning the ongoing subversion of state election results, all of which sophisticated consumers of news and social media know are ipso facto genuine and reliable.
It depends then, does it not, as with the bedrock civic necessity (in 2005) or the arch-racist loophole (in 2022) that is the filibuster, on who is proffering the conspiracy theory and who underwriting the existence of the criminal conspiracy? The failsafe test is what Democrats wish and need right now. That's how we know, for instance--with the aid of unimpeachable intelligence stalwarts like the CIA's John Brennan, the NSA's James "No Patriot Act Metadata Mining of American Citizens, Under Oath" Clapper, and the FBI's Peter Strzok and Andrew McCabe, both fired for dishonesty, from appearances on e.g., CNN and MSNBC, or in the WaPo and NYT--that's how we know the Steele dossier was a credible source, and that the Hunter Biden laptop with its purported Biden family influence-peddling details is nothing but pure fabrication from the latest Russian disinformation campaign.
The FBI infiltrate, monitor and subvert establishment-disfavored political groups? SNCC, the Weathermen and the Black Panthers back in the day, natch, contemporaneous denials notwithstanding. The Oath Keepers in 2021, or those Michigan militia would-be kidnappers of the governor? The inquiry is preposterous on its face, and unpatriotic even to raise.
Ted Cruz was the sleaze that I most wanted out of the race in 2015. We of course ended up with even worse. I am guessing he would not make it far as a candidate in 2024.
Check out the excellent program from PBS which aired last night on Frontline, about Alex Jones and his conspiracy lies.
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film/united-states-of-conspiracy/
Yes - the old "when did you stop beating your wife?" shtick. What's surprising to me (but perhaps not Low Dudgeon) is the overall trend reported by Gallup, where the US population overall is buying into this and trending Red. Do people really want to replace Democracy with the kind of smackdown autocratic rule espoused by the most vocal GOP leaders?
Claiming a landslide might be an exaggeration if Trump had won, but since he didn’t, it’s an outright lie. Big lies repeated often – that’s Nazi propaganda 101, which has become the Republican playbook. After four years of Trump’s daily pathological lying, Giuliani and Powell must have assumed they too could say whatever they want.
The GOP reminds me of the bandits in Treasure of the Sierra Madre who claimed they were Federales. When asked for their badges, the response was: “Badges? We ain’t got no badges! We don’t need no badges! I don’t have to show you any stinking badges!”
Similarly, when Trump’s lawyers were asked by the courts for facts to support their allegations of voting fraud by Dominion or anyone else, their response amounted to: “Facts? We ain’t got no facts! We don’t need no facts! I don’t have to show you any stinking facts!”
And why should they? Trump’s base will eagerly swallow whatever bullshit he feeds them.
John—
That decided Red trend is not really so surprising if we consider that it’s not primarily based on election conspiracy theories re 2020 (GOP),2022 or 2024 (Dem), but on the abject failure of the Biden administration so far in almost every single respect. His bumbling, querulous press conference performance today will do nothing to alter that increasingly widespread and cross-partisan perception. Until November, though, I agree we should all remain vigilant about election-seizure conspiracies, especially as posited by those who almost certainly will lose in any event. Democrats, as always trust accretions of executive power.
Dear LD,
Re: “the abject failure of the Biden administration so far in almost every single respect”. I hear this a lot from my conservative friends. When I ask them to elaborate on substance, I am met with exasperated eye-rolls.
I think/hope you’ll agree that every President inherits what the previous one or two Presidents handed to him/her (e.g. pandemic, homelessness, immigration, crime, global supply chain issues). Most Presidents' actions have a long arc and often a long tail. Is the economy the result of the current president's policies or the three guys before him? Or Congress? Or things completely outside of his/her control, like technological breakthroughs?
It’s hard (I think) to argue against the fact that that Biden inherited a difficult fractious situation, exacerbated by an outgoing President (kicking and screaming) and his party’s leaders who have sought to not just delegitimize Biden’s presidency itself, but openly and contemptuously sabotage his administration using every lever of power and influence, they can muster, regardless of policy. It's about winners and losers.
I would argue that Biden’s failings are more (but not all) about image rather than substance, but I’d love to hear your specific points to the contrary.
I've been very pleased with the Biden administration.
At least we don't have to apologize for being Americans like we did during the Trump administration.
John--
Appreciated, and well said. Have you been commenting here for a while? Not on you that I don't recall. I and perhaps more effectively Mr. Trigoboff have expressed here our specific objections to Biden's affirmative performance previously. I'm not rolling my eyes if you haven't seen that and want it reiterated! Meanwhile, the arguably awful presser yesterday alone covers substance as well as optics and inherited faits accompli.
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