Today, Canadian anchor babby Ted Cruz, the señor senator from Texas, launched his campaign to be the Jesus-Humper-in-Chief of these Jesus States of America. In case anyone was unsure of which Americans Cruz was really speaking to, he chose as the site of his speech Liberty University, the evangelical Christian school founded by Jerry Falwell in Lynchburg, Virginia. No better way to show your commitment to the diverse religious masses that populate our nation than that!
Cruz’s speechwriter must be a John Lennon fan. The senator kept asking us to imagine this or that. Imagine a teenager in Cuba fighting Batista and then fleeing to the United States, where he washed dishes and later became an evangelical lunatic. Imagine a poor girl in Delaware overcoming her terrible childhood to become the first woman in her family to go to college, and then become a renowned computer programmer in the 1950s and 1960s. (Subdued applause from the evangelical crowd for that one.) Imagine a couple who drank too much, but then the father “gave his life to Jesus Christ. And God transformed his heart.” And now in his old age he doesn’t ever need to see a cardiologist or watch his cholesterol.
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Imagine how many cups of coffee Wonkette’s Los Angeles bureau needed to get up at 7 A.M. to listen to this fakakta crap.
Then it was onto the laundry list of wingnut ideas for government that every two-bit televangelist huckster- cum -politician has been rolling out for years. Imagine a flat tax so you can fill out your returns on a postcard. Imagine abolishing the IRS, says Ted Cruz, who we think has no idea what function the IRS actually serves. Imagine the private sector creating millions and millions of jobs. Imagine a president signing legislation repealing every word of Obamacare. This line got the loudest and longest cheer of the speech from this crowd of entitled college twits who, thanks to Obamacare, can stay on their parents’ insurance until they are 26 on the off-chance that Jesus doesn’t create those millions of jobs Ted Cruz is promising them.
Cruz also wants to repeal every word of Common Core, which is not an actual law passed by Congress, but rather, a set of goals and guidelines developed by the states and endorsed by the Department of Education. He is also very concerned with every American child getting a quality education, whether in a public school, or private, or charter, or Christian, or parochial, or home school. What about madrasas? Um …
Cruz also asked his audience to imagine a president who does not disrespect Bibi Netanyahu and “stands unapologetically with the nation of Israel!” This also gets loud, long cheers from this crowd of evangelicals who need Israel to exist to serve as the Playmate of the Month in their eschatonic sex fantasies. Vote for Ted Cruz: He promises Armageddon and the fulfillment of the end times prophecies! This will play so well outside of Lynchburg.
Then we got this: “Text the word Constitution to 33733.” Ah yes, here is the grift, the sale, the building of the phone list he can use to solicit campaign donations, and also rent to right-wing organizations for piles of money while they turn around and beg for more money. Cool scheme. Ted Cruz is going to be fabulously wealthy, and evangelicals are going to be poorer and once again disappointed that they can’t live in a Christian theocracy. Well, we never said this guy was stupid, just an asshole.
Then Cruz rolls out his wife Heidi, wearing an unthreatening pink suit – what, no pillbox hat to give everyone PTSD flashbacks? – and his two little daughters, who unenthusiastically wave American flags and look as if they’d rather be watching Dora the Explorer . Hell, yr Wonkette would rather be watching Dora the Explorer right now. Mr. and Mrs. Cruz do that insincere smile-and-wave-to-the-cheering-throngs thing that all political couples must practice at home in lieu of doing anything interesting like watching Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt or practicing other positions besides missionary.
Late Sunday night Cruz also rolled out his campaign website, which he does not manage to plug in the speech, probably because it looks like it was slapped together by a student in a mid-level Learning Annex coding class. The student appears to have forgotten (or more likely was too dumb to know about it) to throw in a Secure Sockets Layer certificate, which is that little part of a website that encrypts data like, say, your bank account number. (We're sure pointing this out is a conspiracy of the liberal mainstream media, which hates Christians.) So careful if you want to donate money online to Cruz’s campaign, what with his website mechanism for it not being secure and all.
Though come to think of it, maybe being able to suck money directly out of your bank account without you realizing it is part of Cruz’s grift. You should give to Wonkette instead, we’ll at least redirect you to a secure PayPal page.
To sum up: An evangelical huckster is running for president and will be lucky to last past Iowa. But since that’s a year away, imagine how much head-hitting-desk fun we’re all going to have listening to him before then.
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"Ah yes, here is the grift, the sale, the building of the phone list he can use to solicit campaign donations, and also rent to right-wing organizations for piles of money while they turn around and beg for more money. Cool scheme."
Seriously, thanks for that explanation. It costs boatloads of money to run for any political office, and I couldn't figure out if Cruz is really that stupid or really that egomaniacal to run for an office he doesn't have a snowball's chance in hell of winning. But grift makes sense.
You must really hate that chainsaw.