His second appearance on our RADAR was a small but very important court fight, to keep the Ten Commandments monument on our state capitol grounds. He argued the case, and he won.

In conversations he has always understood the Conservative position, articulated it well, and I am pretty sure that his sense of strategy is as good as the wiliest of Dimocrats, and they are snakes with legs.

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”

The criticism always rings hollow, that is, after it does its damage.

But the real payers are still standing. They are still up front. Perry, Palin. Cruz – are better than all their critics, especially the likes of McCain and Graham and pundit after pundit who obviously do not know doodle since they were wrong wrong wrong about everything and for 6 long years now.

Well, I haven’t seen Cruz for long enough to make a judgment on it, but I’d say that it depends whether he’s trying to get attention because he feeds off it personally, or whether he wants to get attention for his ideas and because he thinks the GOP and conservatives should be more aggressive about that.

I do like certain things about his resume, though, very much. His family background (particularly his father’s experience), his debating skills, and his senior thesis as a Princeton undergrad:

Cruz’s senior thesis on the separation of powers, titled “Clipping the Wings of Angels,” draws its inspiration from a passage attributed to President James Madison: “If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary.” Cruz argued that the drafters of the Constitution intended to protect the rights of their constituents, and the last two items in the Bill of Rights offered an explicit stop against an all-powerful state. Cruz wrote: “They simply do so from different directions. The Tenth stops new powers, and the Ninth fortifies all other rights, or non-powers.

Not a NEOcon :-).

So, I’ll watch your ‘lead’ on the Cruz thing and see what your far closer observations bring…

Let’s not get side tracked into thinking Leftist propaganda is reasonable because it appears “sane”.

Propaganda is propaganda, designed to control people’s emotions and thoughts, whether it is based upon the truth or deception.

I think you’re correct. The position he took was an intellectual abstraction that time has shown to have been true. The problem was that it could easily be propagandized into the much-easier-to-understand position of the racist south.
America has not become more dispassionate and analytical in the interim (probably the opposite in fact), and the Democrats have shown their eagerness to exploit any number of “-isms” to win.

I endorse Bill Whittle’s approach to winning over the voters: show them that what they actually believe in are conservative values, and remind them of all the ways the Democrats work to oppose the things the voters believe in.
If the Dems want to fight that in their usual way, it will then be a battle of emotion-vs.-emotion. I assume the scales will be tipped in our favor, since we have reality and history on our side.

The daisy ad. See also this.

I don’t believe you, mitsu. I don’t believe this conversation ever took place. It is too pat, “an engaging Mormon woman from Salt Lake City” who can’t bring herself to vote for Romney because of the “extreme people” in the Republican party. It reeks of the posts you see from people calling themselves “concerned conservatives” or “lifelong Republicans” who just *had* to vote for Obama. Yeah, right.

There is a certain odor in all your posts – the chin-stroking “thoughtfulness” and “balance” doesn’t quite conceal the smugness or the very calculated agenda-mongering. You also have a tendency to jump on the beginning of a thread and try to drag it in a direction that is not really on topic, e. g. the Norm Geras thread.

Goldwater was on the right (as in correct side) in insisting that individuales have the right (liberty) to decide to interact or not interact with whomever they choose. We all, left or right, make decisions about who we wish to interact or not interact.

Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness were lost long ago. I fear (yes, fear) it will require the shedding of much blood to reclaim these rights or that they will be lost for generations, including my grandchildren and great-great-great grandchildren that I will never hold in my arms.