Ted Cruz: Slippery on positions, a neoconservative and Glenn Beck

The unfortunate thing during the GOP presidential primary season today is for people that love liberty, smaller government both in foreign and domestic spending and a more reasonable foreign policy, there is truly a lack of a good choice.

photo donkey hotey

While it is easy to rule out authoritarianism in the the front-runner, or the blatant neoconservatism of the gentlemen from Florida and Ohio, Texas Senator Ted Cruz has been slippery enough to trick a great deal of small government conservatives and libertarians into believing he is the choice.

I almost fell for it. However, a select group of issues have been bothering me.

First, Cruz is a master politician and can hardly be considered an outsider (none of them are), despite what Hannity and Beck say. He has been involved in high levels of state and federal government most of his adult life.

He is also a master politician as he has slowly altered his positions, like fine tuning a dial on a radio, depending on who he thought his main competition was.

This is nothing new from Cruz. It was once written:

Whatever cause is most popular, he jumps to that cause, whether it was George Bush’s form of being a Republican when that was popular, that’s what he was.  Now that he’s a Tea Party guy, that’s what he is. 

Well, we’ve seen plenty of that during this campaign season. Many months ago when Cruz thought his main competition was Kentucky Senator Rand Paul, Cruz was heavily stumping against the NSA and the Federal Reserve and essentially any other issue that Paul was noted for.

Out goes Paul, In comes Trump.

Trumps became hugely popular largely because of two issues–immigration and trade. Listen to Cruz today, his policy echoes that of Mr Trump.

He even turned tail on Edward Snowden. In 2013, Cruz said,  “If it is the case that the federal government is seizing millions of personal records about law-abiding citizens, and if it is the case that there are minimal restrictions on accessing or reviewing those records, then I think Mr. Snowden has done a considerable public service by bringing it to light.”

However, just two months ago Cruz came out and now says Snowden is a traitor and should be charged for treason. Could that have been an adjustment in his political battle with Marco Rubio?

Listen to his stumps speeches depending on who his audience is: While campaigning in Iowa, Cruz totally pandered to the evangelicals, a day after he won he was in New Hampshire trying to get the libertarian vote talking issues they want to hear and then he went to South Carolina and unveiled a huge military build-up onboard a warship in that state.

He has called other members of his party neoconservative while all along having people like John Bolton as an advisor. The neoconservative overlord, Bill Kristol even said, “I think at the end of the day a Ted Cruz administration would follow a foreign policy that I would be pretty happy with.”

Lastly, there’s Glenn Beck. Ugh.

This has a huge disappointment as Beck was one of the few “conservative” talk radio programs I could stomach as it was relatively interesting and dug into things nobody else would. However, the past couple months it has become the Ted Cruz for President radio show and has become intolerable and vomit-worthy.

While most others are sucking at the Trump teet–Hannity, Gallagher, et al, Beck has taken it to painful level.

Will Beck’s efforts help Cruz? Not sure. However, at least one radio show host, Chris Markowski, who likes Cruz, has noticed the same and said recently that Beck may actually be hurting Cruz by doing this on his show.

I have no idea whether that’s true, but it has to be turning off listeners.

Related:

• Ted Cruz and his big military spending 
• Ted Cruz: Peeling back the layers of a politician 
• Ted Cruz: Does he believe in bailouts or not?