Reagan's 11th Commandment

(By American Zen's Mike Flannigan, on loan from Ari Goldstein.)

"I've never worked with a more miserable son of a bitch in my life." - former House Speaker John Boehner, April 27, 2016

When former President Ronald Reagan handed down his dictum of, "Thou shalt not speak ill of a fellow Republican," no one realized that people like Ted Cruz would require a codicil. In other words, "Thou shalt not speak ill of a fellow Republican*"

     "*Ted Cruz, excepted, of course."

     Yesterday at a Town Hall, former House Speaker John Boehner (R-Super Tans) actually called Ted Cruz "Lucifer in the flesh", no doubt the kind of ad hominem that will get attention especially when coming from a fellow Republican. One wonders what the 40th president would think of this exception to his 11th Commandment. Then one must wonder what Reagan would've thought of the junior senator from Texas had he been in Congress during his administration. And then one wonders if, on meeting the loathsome Cruz, the Great Communicator would himself had quietly added that loophole in his own 11th Commandment.

     Boehner's feelings on Cruz had been roiling just beneath his Corinthian leather skin when the latter essentially usurped the Speaker's authority during the showdown between the right wingers in Congress and the Executive branch just before the ruinous government shutdown in the first half of October 2013 that cost the government about $25 billion. Then a freshman senator, Cruz delivered a rambling ten hour plus "filibuster" that included reading "Green Eggs and Ham" by Dr. Seuss, a boneheaded stunt that should've ended his political career by any reasonable rubric.

     But Cruz got swept in to Congress during the Teabagger resurgence of 2012 in a revolution that less resembled the Republican predecessor of 1995 and more like a ruptured sewage pipe. We're now living in a political landscape in which the Freedom Caucus does more than its part to ensure that Crazy is new Sane and anything goes. And when he first got to Capitol Hill the following January, Cruz wasted no time in alienating not just Democrats but his fellow Republicans. Considering how massively unpopular Cruz has been in the higher chamber, it's a wonder it took Boehner or anyone from the right side of the aisle this long to call him out for what he is.

Here's a half a million dollars. Will You be my Running Mate?

      Lending at least some short-term credence to Boehner's very politically incorrect but nonetheless spot-on appraisal of a man whose father thinks was born to rule the earth in a divine Dominion, Ted Cruz named Carly Fiorina as his running mate at the same time Boehner was spitting venom at him at a Town Hall. (At least when inflicting Sarah Palin on the lower 48, McCain waited until late August '08 and was assured of being the GOP nominee.).
     There's so much that is wrong about this choice, not the least reason of which is Cruz's nomination in Cleveland this summer a mathematical impossibility (from here on in, Cruz could run the table, grab every delegate and still not get the 1237 delegates he'd need.). What pipe dreams Cruz still has seem to hinge on a brokered convention, which the GOP might not want to risk. It would also require the Republican Rules Committee to move back the goalposts on Trump by changing the requirements for Rule 40(b), which could further alienate the surprisingly incendiary Trump constituency.

     It's become obvious to many on both sides of the Great Ideological Divide that Trump's baleful presence over the political landscape is the only thing that explains Cruz's otherwise inexplicable viability. Cruz is like that ugly barfly still loitering at the end of the bar during last call and mainstream Republican voters that horny, desperate guy nervously adjusting his beer goggles, unwilling to go home to the wife with the bad orange hair and big mouth that just won't ever shut THE FUCK up.

     But Cruz is not only massively unpopular with his fellow Republican senators (he didn't get his first endorsement from there until last March when Utah's Mike Lee, after openly campaigning with Marco Rubio, finally gave him the nod almost a full year after Cruz threw his dunce cap in the ring at Liberty University).

     Otherwise, it seems Cruz's campaign is a good thing only for makers of memes, urban legends and late night TV jokes. And now, the man who's been half-seriously put forth as a Zodiac suspect has made as his running mate the even more massively unpopular Carly Fiorina, a woman to whom his Super PAC had given $500,000 not long before a sex scandal broke.

     Hm.

     I don't have to tell you, Constant Reader, that just conjures images of a pile of money on a night stand in a hot bed motel. The optics also makes less ludicrous than it ought to be a Ted Cruz lookalike agreeing to be in a porno flick for $10,000.

     Welcome to 2016, folks. This is not Ronald Reagan's Republican Party, anymore.