Ted Cruz Condemns Unladylike Actions Of Planned Parenthood Terrorist

Not nearly as stupid as everything he says

Surprise! Ted Cruz said another stupid thing, this time about the shooting at the Colorado Springs Planned Parenthood. Asked about reports that the alleged killer, Robert L. Dear, had told police "No more baby parts," which suggests he might have been motivated by anger at the nonexistent Planned Parenthood Baby Parts Swap-n-Save Mart, Cruz confidently replied, “We know that he was a man registered to vote as a woman” and that he had been reported to be a "transgendered [sic] leftist activist."

Oh, Ted, why you ackin' so cray-cray? As our blogpal Charles Johnson pointed outat Little Green Footballs, it sure sounds like Cruz drank the weird Kool-Aid served up by the Former Stupidest Man on the Internet, Jim Hoft, who "broke" the important news that Dear's voter registration listed him as "female" and added the fanciful explanation that Dear "identifies as a woman." Because such a thing could never result from a clerical error. Cruz appears to have added the "leftist activist" as his very own flourish, which is a pretty weird thing to say about Dear, whoseColorado neighbor says he distributed anti-Obama pamphlets and insisted that Obama needed to be impeached. Maybe Cruz has an inside source who found out Dear hated Obama over the TPP trade treaty.

So, Ted Cruz believes the craziest stuff from the weirdest fringes of the wingnuttosphere, right? Maybe in lots of cases, but in this one, we're betting not. We think Emily Chambers at Pajiba nails it:  

[Cruz] never meant to imply that he personally believed that the shooter was a “transgender leftist activist.” What he meant to do was much worse.

What he actually did was intentionally obscure the facts with internet noise.

[contextly_sidebar id="wSwnXelTO8kM4Cs8huLKLpDDiwWVrKEc"]Like his good Christian buddy Mike Huckabee, Cruz has plenty of reasons to muddy the waters and to insulate the extreme "pro-life" movement from any responsibility for what happened in Colorado Springs. If Robert L. Dear is a Radical Christian Extremist, that looks bad for other "pro-life" folks, so best to shout "Squirrel!" and point elsewhere. If several mainstream media sources report that Dear told police he was trying to stop the clandestine sale of "baby parts," why not drop something absurd from a rightwing source, to "prove" that there's a whole lot of crazy things being said out there, and why should we believe any of it yet?

We're in a political environment where Donald Trump's perfect memory of Muslims dancing in the streets of Jersey City on 9/11 is every bit as credible for the Republican base as news and police reports debunking the myth. If a guy commits murders inside a Planned Parenthood, and that guy's ex-wife says he read the Bible from cover to cover and thought abortion was murder, and the guy also repeats claims made by lying videos that have been key to the Republican campaign against Planned Parenthood, then one hell of a big squirrel is called for. Why not suggest that all that stuff is every bit as absurd and irrelevant as a story that converts a typo on a voter registration form into a declaration of transgender status? A blog post on RedState even praises Cruz's obfuscation as a masterful way of handling the liberal media with all their unobjective questions.

Cruz has even more reason than Huck to try to distance the Planned Parenthood shootings from the "pro-life" movement, considering the radical wing of the movement that Cruz has hooked up with. Cruz recently bragged that he had the bestest, most pro-lifeyest bona fides of any candidate when he received the endorsement of Operation Rescue leader Troy Newman, of whom Cruz said, "We need leaders like Troy Newman in this country who will stand up for those who do not have a voice." Newman has some unique ideas about the proper role of limited government:

Newman argued in his 2003 book, “Their Blood Cries Out,” that the biblical duty of government “rightly involves executing convicted murderers, including abortionists, for their crimes in order to expunge bloodguilt from the land and people.” [...]

Newman also wrote in his book that women who have abortions should be considered “a murderer” just like “any other mother, killing any other family member.” Along with Operation Rescue’s Cheryl Sullenger, who was once convicted of conspiring to bomb an abortion clinic, Newman later claimed that a man convicted of murdering an abortion provider should have been allowed to argue that the homicide was justified. 

He seems nice. Compared to having a lot of people talking about his ties to Newman and Sullenger, Cruz probably calculated that being accused of believing some nonsense on the WingoSphere was a way better option. Not only will it not hurt him with the loonies who actually do think Gateway Pundit is super SMRT, Cruz also gets the added benefit of being able to say that he was merely trolling the gullible liberals in the media all along.

[ ThinkProgress / LGF / Gateway Pundit / Buzzfeed / Pajiba / NYT / RedState / RightWingWatch ]