Why Ted must be defeated

                           “Consistent. Conservative. Trusted.”  

These were the words that adorned the banner before which Rafael Edward "Ted" Cruz launched his campaign for the White House. The message was rather simple - Cruz is staunchly, unapologetically and consistently conservative, but most importantly, Ted Cruz is an honest and upright man who can always be trusted to do the right thing no matter what the circumstance. The fact that the man is deeply religious add to this halo of morality.

It is widely regarded that an effective way to judge a candidate running for political office is to study the manner in which the campaign is managed. How campaign strategies are planned and how they are implemented on the ground provide great insight into the nature of the leader and the person. A political campaign has a candidate in high pressure situations, in moments of glory when there is victory and moments of despair when there is defeat. There are challenges all through the journey with tough decisions to be made. But it is these situations, especially the adverse circumstances that brings out the true character of an individual. Is the candidate humble when victorious and gracious in defeat? Given a choice which does the candidate chose the righteous path that may lead to defeat or the iniquitous path that will lead to victory? 


We go back to Iowa, where Cruz scored a narrow victory. During the night of the Iowa Causus, CNN claimed that that Dr. Ben Carson was quitting the race and that he “won’t go to NH/SC, but instead will head home to Florida for some R&R” and it was followed by another tweet that clarified “Ben Carson’s campaign tells me he plans to stay in the race beyond Iowa no matter what the results are tonight.” The Cruz campaign conveniently ignored the second tweet and swung into action by sending out mailers, voice messages and getting volunteers all over the state to spread the message of Carson quitting and that a vote for Carson would be wasted. Since Cruz and Carson were targeting the same group of religious conservative voters, it is quite possible that this piece of information swayed potential voters in Cruz’s direction. It is also possible that these were the very votes that took Cruz to the top, ahead of Donald Trump. Cruz has since apologized to Ben Carson but does that help in anyway? Dr. Carson put it well on The O’Reilly Factor when he said “A culture exists within the Cruz camp that would allow people to take advantage of a situation like this in a very dishonest way. Isn't this the same thing we see with the Obama administration? The IRS scandal? No responsibility.” Dr. Carson also lambasted the Cruz campaign for being too eager to circulate the false story without bothering to confirm the authenticity of it with his campaign.

Here’s Karl Rove, on how Cruz’s tactics may have cost Trump the election

But that was not the only major offence that Ted Cruz committed in Iowa. The Cruz campaign also sent out mailers  disguised to look like official government communication, this time accusing Iowan of a “voting violation” based on caucus participation. The mailer named and graded individuals along with their neighbors based their voting history claiming it was public record. It then warned people to participate in the caucus to improve their grade. Even the differently abled were not spared as Cruz tried to shame people into participating in the caucus. Iowan authorities were quick to issue a statement repudiating and condemning the mailer. There had been no disclosure by the Cruz campaign about the process behind the gradation of caucus goers, there has also been no apology. This was not just blatant act of forgery and impersonation but also a violation of privacy as ‘grades’ were shared with neighbors without any prior permission.. Not only what this illegal, this was and immoral act. Yes there was no apology, instead Cruz responded by saying that he used every tool he had to encourage Iowa voters to come out and vote. 

A few weeks later in the state of Nevada, the Cruz campaign published a video of rival candidate Marco Rubio walking by a Cruz staffer and Cruz’s father, who were reading the Bible in a hotel lobby. The subtitles in the video has Rubio saying, “Got a good book there, not many answers in it.”  If true this would have been a huge setback for Rubio who is known to be devoutly religious by his supporters. The very next day, the truth was revealed when the Rubio campaign published the entire video with correct subtitles, in reality Rubio had said “all the answers are in there.” Subsequently, Cruz apologized to Rubio claiming that it was ‘“grave error in judgment”.  But he also accused Rubio of exploiting the controversy for political advantage and to distract from his own record. Cruz then went on to sack his communication director who had posted the video. But many saw this as a desperate move by Cruz as news of his fraudulent practices in Iowa was gaining traction and a narrative was being built that he probably wasn’t the ‘trusted’ man he claimed to be. The communications director was merely a fall guy, so that Cruz could tell people ‘He was the problem, he is out, we are all back to being honest and virtuous’. It has to be noted that the Cruz campaign had previously put out a badly photo shopped image of a smiling Rubio shaking hands with President Obama on their website, the photo was taken down but there was no apology.

A few weeks later in Hawaii, the Cruz campaign emailed a story that was originally carried by CNN to voters, suggesting that Marco was exiting of the race to the White House. This is the very foul tactic he had employed against Dr. Ben Carson in Iowa. Rubio’s campaign denied the CNN report as they blasted Cruz for dirty tricks. The Rubio campaign then forwarded the email to reporters that proved that it had originated from campaign@tedcruzhawaii.org.  The email had an image of Cruz along with the Cruz campaign’s official logo.  Cruz responded to the accusations saying the email did not come from within the campaign, he said it was a volunteer.  He added that his campaign had over 200,000 volunteers across the country, and that he could not possibly control all of them. Since both Rubio and Cruz were very far behind in the poll, the story didn’t garner much attention in the media.

Now for the pettiest of them all, where attempts were made to manipulate an online poll for a Drudge Report to project Cruz the winner of the recent CNN GOP debate.  After the debate, Matt Drudge noted that there were three hundred votes a minute being cast for Ted Cruz. Upon investigation Drudge confirmed that the spam originated from Delaware and were forty four thousand votes in total for Ted Cruz. There has been no reaction from the Cruz campaign as yet.

All through the Primary Race, the Ted Cruz  has personally spread falsehoods about that Donald Trump. Cruz claimed that strongly favored of Obamacare and was pro-choice, but the truth is quite to the contrary.  Cruz claimed that Donald Trump has "described Hillary Clinton as one of the best secretaries of state in history." The truth is Trump has consistently called her the worst. Cruz also claimed that a couple of debates ago, Donald Trump had said ‘if you don’t support socialized health care, you’re heartless’, a blatant falsehood. Cruz claimed that Donald Trump had suggested that his sister Maryanne Trump Barry would have a great judge, in reality Trump was joking and he made that pretty clear. On that topic, Cruz also added that she was appointed by Bill Clinton, but conveniently forgot to mention that she was appointed by Reagan first.

Recently, thousands of people gathered at the University of Illinois at Chicago Pavilion to hear Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump speak at a rally. At the same time several violent and pre-orchestrated 'protests' occurred outside the venue. Upon his arrival in Chicago, Trump met with law enforcement and was compelled to postpone his rally owing to serious safety concerns for all those in attendance. In a moment like this where there are attempts to silence opposing voices through violence and intimidation, anybody who believes in democracy and the constitution should suspend political rivalry and stand for the rights of freedom of expression of the speaker. The very liberal Hillary Clinton, who you would expect stand up against suppression of freedom of expression, blamed Trump’s ‘divisive rhetoric’ for the protests. Surprisingly she had support from Senator Ted Cruz who said "A campaign bears responsibility for creating an environment where the candidate urges supporters to engage in violence." These are the sort of occasions that show the true character of an individual. Cruz could have risen above politics, shown moral character and stood by the front runner from his party. But instead used the occasion to diminish his opponent and score petty political points. He did end up siding with the perpetrators of violence instead of supporting the first amendment rights of an individual. 

During his tenure in the senate, Cruz compared the Obama IRS scandal to Nixon scandal that brought down his presidency. Ted Cruz said that the ultimate responsibility always lies on the individual at the top of an organization always bears. “No politician has the right to use the machinery of the Executive Branch to target their political enemies. When Richard Nixon did it, it was wrong and he rightly resigned from the presidency in disgrace for his abuse of power.” Should these very standards not be applied to Cruz himself?

We all know that politicians have a proclivity to overstate their achievements and underplay their shortcomings. It is unfortunately part of the game and we have all reluctantly learned to accept it. But there is a huge difference between slight exaggeration and blatant falsification. There is a difference between a mistake and a premeditated tactic to unfairly malign an opponent. We all know that political campaigns are a massive operations and mistake do occur, but for the Cruz campaign there have been way to many lies and act of deception for this to be an accident or coincidence. These blatant acts of fraud committed by the Cruz campaign in recent months has taken political maneuvering to a revolting level of darkness and despair. What makes this particularly hypocritical, is that Cruz is running on the platform of an honest upright outsider who is there to clean up things. But if he were to follow his own words, the ultimate responsibility lies at the top.  In a strange twist of irony Cruz has fulfilled his promise of being consistent, but consistent at malpractice, rumor mongering and falsifying. Can the American people afford to have another charlatan such as this leading their country in this hour of need?

Email: rajanlaad@gmail.com