The Cruz Troika - By Josh Marshall

In all the other Ted Cruz nonsense over recent days, I'm not sure how many people saw this piece by Josh Rogin, now at Bloomberg, on Cruz's foreign policy agenda. The article is based on extensive interview from last year. The part that stuck out to me is Cruz's list of three foreign policy experts he most trusts. It's quite a list.

First is Elliot Abrams, a respected neoconservative foreign policy hand. His view may not be your cup of tea; they're not mine. He is a good exemplar of the first term Bush foreign policy. There's the Iran-Contra stuff thirty years ago. But he's no crazy person. Alas, he heads up what you would have to call the moderate-Realist wing of the Cruz foreign policy troika. After Abrams, respected neoconservative, you have John Bolton, who might be charitably called a clownish warmonger. He now spends the time he's not on Fox News sending crazy emails to raise money for his PAC, John Bolton PAC. (Yes, I get them.)

After the respected neoconservative and the clownish warmonger you have a guy who might simply be certifiable: former CIA Director James Woolsey, perhaps the champion at being the biggest purveyor crap in the lead up to the Iraq War, which is saying something because the competition is intense. He may be the only former high level official still holding on to Saddam Hussein being the mastermind of 9/11.

Like everything else with Cruz's campaign, this really is if not the first then the ultimate Fox News candidacy. Like Cruz himself, the effort is not just extreme but focused less on implementation than provocation and histrionics. Even Cruz doesn't seem to go in for nutball conspiracy theories. But his favorite experts do. Basically it's just as bad as you might have expected with Cruz or perhaps worse.

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http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/the-cruz-troika