Senator Ted Cruz doesn’t appreciate the federal government trampling on states’ rights, unless of course those rights include things that Ted Cruz does not like.
In a recent 10,000 word essay published in the Harvard Law Review, Sen. Cruz went on and on about the dangers of usurping state sovereignty, especially where international treaties are concerned, using 181 footnotes to save us all from Agenda 21, UN gun-grabbers and NAFTA Superhighways. As Ben Jacobs of The Daily Beast put it,
Voters with these concerns make up a surprisingly substantial portion of Republican primary voters, but are relatively hard for mainstream politicians to pander to without coming across as wacky. Cruz is using language and arguments that appeal to these voters but in a way that is entirely mainstream.
In other words, he’s using words and arguments that sound smart to appeal to dumb people.
So, shorter Sen. Ted Cruz: Federal government bad, states’ rights good!
But just this past Friday during his keynote speech at Texas Public Policy Foundation’s Policy Orientation, Cruz indirectly called President Obama’s respect for states’ rights “dangerous and terrifying.” Ooooh. I’m shivering with fear.
“We are a nation of laws and not men,” according to Cruz. “If we had a system where a president can pick and choose what laws to follow at utter whim … that is seriously dangerous.”
And what makes this president so dangerous and terrifying? Not imprisoning marijuana smokers in Colorado and using federal law to uphold traditional marriage, for starters.
“You can go to Congress, you can get a conversation, you could get Democrats and Republicans who would say, ‘We ought to change our drug policy in some way,’ and you could have a real conversation, you could have hearings, you could look at the problem, you could discuss commonsense changes that maybe should happen or shouldn’t happen. This president didn’t do that. He just said, ‘The laws say one thing’ — and mind you these are criminal laws, these are laws that say if you do ‘X, Y, and Z’ you will go to prison. The president announced, ‘No, you won’t.’”
Or, you could just let the states decide how they want to deal with marijuana and same sex marriage?
In other words, Ted Cruz wants to use the full force of the federal government to impose its will on the states, whatever the cost, arresting people for smoking pot and getting married, but at the same time nullifying laws that he personally believes violate state sovereignty. If it were up to Ted Cruz, we’d still be defending slave owners.
The day before his big speech in Texas, Sen. Cruz countered the president’s ‘Promise Zones‘ idea with his own ideas on tackling the issue of wealth inequality in America:
“Reduced barriers to small businesses creating private-sector jobs–and we should start by repealing every word of Obamacare, building the Keystone pipeline, abolishing the IRS, and rolling back abusive regulations.”
And if no one likes your insane ideas, you can always shut down the government of the people, continue to deny 6 million Texans access to healthcare and put it all on the federal government’s tab.
To Sen. Ted Cruz, “we are a nation of laws and not men,” unless that man is Ted Cruz.