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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsThe inimitable Matt Taibbi: R.I.P. GOP
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Cruz glanced back and forth across the room with that odd, neckless, monitor-lizard posture of his. He had to know the import of this moment. Nothing less than the future of the Republican Party had been at stake in the Indiana primary.
A Cruz loss effectively meant ceding control of the once-mighty organization to Trump, a seemingly unrepentant non-Republican more likely to read Penthouse than the National Review.
Before the vote, Cruz put it this way: "We are at the edge of a cliff, staring downward."
Now, Cruz was over that cliff, having been trounced 53 to 36 percent in his last-gasp effort to keep Trump from the nomination. In a detail the film-buff candidate Cruz would appreciate, he left Indiana with the same number of delegates as future senator John Blutarsky's grade-point average in Animal House: zero-point-zero.
Still, Cruz looked like he was ready for the "Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor?" speech. He was going to fight.
"Will we hold fast to our founding values of rewarding talent, hard work and industry?" he asked. "Or will we continue on that path of creeping socialism that incentivizes apathy and dependency?"
The crowd roared.
"Will we keep America safe from the threats of nuclear war and atomic terrorism?" he thundered. "Or will we pass on to future generations a land devastated and destroyed by the enemies of civilization?"
More raucous cheers.
Cruz smiled. If he has a good quality, it is that he's not easily deterred by criticism. As he took the stage that night, he surely knew that former Speaker of the House John Boehner had recently called him "Lucifer in the flesh," and that fellow senator Lindsey Graham had said, "If you kill Ted Cruz on the floor of the Senate, and the trial was in the Senate, nobody could convict you." Likewise, when it was revealed Cruz once stated that one has no inherent right to "stimulate one's genitals," his college roommate Craig Mazin popped up to call him a hypocrite who'd whacked it plenty in college.
Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/r-i-p-gop-how-trump-is-killing-the-republican-party-20160518#ixzz49K4lSUlc
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cali
(114,904 posts)If this isn't the end for the Republican Party, it'll be a shame. They dominated American political life for 50 years and were never anything but monsters. They bred in their voters the incredible attitude that Republicans were the only people within our borders who raised children, loved their country, died in battle or paid taxes. They even sullied the word "American" by insisting they were the only real ones. They preferred Lubbock to Paris, and their idea of an intellectual was Newt Gingrich. Their leaders, from Ralph Reed to Bill Frist to Tom DeLay to Rick Santorum to Romney and Ryan, were an interminable assembly line of shrieking, witch-hunting celibates, all with the same haircut the kind of people who thought Iran-Contra was nothing, but would grind the affairs of state to a halt over a blow job or Terri Schiavo's feeding tube.
A century ago, the small-town American was Gary Cooper: tough, silent, upright and confident. The modern Republican Party changed that person into a haranguing neurotic who couldn't make it through a dinner without quizzing you about your politics. They destroyed the American character. No hell is hot enough for them. And when Trump came along, they rolled over like the weaklings they've always been, bowing more or less instantly to his parodic show of strength.
In the weeks surrounding Cruz's cat-fart of a surrender in Indiana, party luminaries began the predictably Soviet process of coalescing around the once-despised new ruler. Trump endorsements of varying degrees of sincerity spilled in from the likes of Dick Cheney, Bob Dole, Mitch McConnell and even John McCain.
MisterP
(23,730 posts)dixiegrrrrl
(60,010 posts)Damn he is good with description!
ContinentalOp
(5,356 posts)dixiegrrrrl
(60,010 posts)whew.
Good article....rec.
awoke_in_2003
(34,582 posts)when I read the headline, I thought you were telling Taibbi to RIP.
demmiblue
(36,885 posts)bjo59
(1,166 posts)"Democracies End When There is too Much Democracy," harks back to the 1973 Trilateral Commission Report (written in support of multinational corporate interests) which stated that "too much democracy" leads to "democratic distemper." Sullivan suggests that Trump is the "inevitable product of too much democracy" but one can imagine that, behind closed doors, this is the attitude of the Democratic Party's elite as well... something along the lines, of course, that Bernie Sanders is the inevitable product of too much democracy. Corporate interests are diametrically opposed to democracy and political candidates who take huge sums of money from mega corporations and banks must always, as a result, work against democracy. People who support Bernie Sanders know this very, very well.
dixiegrrrrl
(60,010 posts)bullwinkle428
(20,630 posts)BootinUp
(47,186 posts)cali
(114,904 posts)shadowmayor
(1,325 posts)Another Taibbi masterpiece! Trump made George Will type "penis" - Priceless!!!
Guy Whitey Corngood
(26,505 posts)who once was. First Rove/Jr., now even fucking Drumpf? What a sorry ass weasel.