re: Lets Talk Politics

quote:

---

Ted Cruz is a sleeze ball dude

---

For real. I had to give him a tour of our nonprofit when I was an intern a while back. Dude is a pompous, grandstanding , little weasel with not a single legislative achievement. He's done nothing but posture for the presidency since he got to Washington, he's no better than President Obama.

quote:

---

He's done nothing but posture for the presidency since he got to Washington, he's no better than President Obama.

---

I think Cruz and Obama have a lot in common in terms of their personalities. I made this post on the PB a while back

quote:

---

Cruz strikes me as the right-wing Obama. An obviously incredibly smart dude who aced Harvard Law and got into politics within four years, and then immediately learned that when you get in front of a crowd, you need to gear down your brain a lot. Since it's an artifice, they tend to lay it on a little thick, and this gets especially obvious when the audience is actually somewhat educated or experienced in the arena where they're trying to condescend. (It's also why listening to either of them is like nails on a chalkboard to anyone above the 75th percentile.)

---

I also think he'd be similar to Obama in that he's an ideologue and not a dealmaker. If he were elected President, Congress would act like a cat on a leash and refuse to pass anything, leaving him to do what he could from the executive branch.

With Obama, this mostly takes the form of overly elaborate executive orders like DACA or the Clean Power Plan that try to take the place of legislation. With Cruz, given what we know of his foreign policy, I suspect this would take the form of starting a lot of goddamn wars.

quote:

---

Understood, but I'm not a huge fan of the tea party and frankly given that every politician does shite like this I find that to be relatively minor in comparison. I mean, look at how much "switching" Hilary and Jeb have done over their careers. The fact that he is a Hispanic who supports amnesty on a relatively limited basis (compared to the democratic candidates) is a nice change of pace as it at least forces the millions of auto-dem Hispanic voters to think for 2 seconds. The fact is that the republican line of "deport all illegals/fence up the border" is nonsense that is not feasible. Amnesty on some level is the way to go, as most are good hardworking people who help keep costs in multiple industries down and are more useful to us economically than many of our own lazy arse trailer trash welfare lifers.

---

now i'm gonna have to educate myself on rubio. your right about amnesty, I just want illegals to share the tax burden and we should deport ex-cons.

I think this is an accurate portrayal of both of them.

Both guys are a couple standard deviations past the mean but insist on demagoguery couched in extremely vacuous rhetoric like "We've gotta let folks be folks, folks. Yup." The only difference is that Cruz would add "Because: Jesus." Whereas Obama would say "Because: social justice."

quote:

---

As for personal preference:
Tier 1(Actively rooting for):
Rubio
Walker
Bush

Tier 2 (I'd be fine if they got the nomination):
Bobby Jindal
Lindsey Graham
Fiorina
Perry
Christie
Maybe Paul

Tier 9 (The baylor tier):
Carson
Trump
Cruz
Huckabee

---

I actually like most of the tiers you have here. I'd probably put Rand in tier 9 because of his stance on monetary policy but he seems to have backed off a little bit from his dad's stance there. Ron understood world economics probably better than 95% of politicians to ever serve, but his stance on the Fed was just batshit crazy. His only stance I ever disagreed with him on, but unfortunately it was a big fricking disagreement.

I'd put Cruz in tier go frick yourself, not because of his religious brew-hah that is obviously pandering to voters, just simply for how much he left McConnell out to dry with the debt ceiling as a political move. You don't play chicken with by far the strongest and deepest markets in the world. You want to reduce government spending and lower interest costs? So your plan is to technically default and cause the global markets to price in a "wildcard politics" premium into our debt? frick, the potential collateral impacts to Treasuries regarding haircuts with exchanges and counterparties could've been potentially disastrous. All for political chess moves. You don't do that. Politics is a very dirty game, I'm very well aware, but you don't fricking do that.

quote:

---

What in the blue frick are even saying?

---

What in the blue frick are you even saying?

Sadly enough, or maybe not, I understood him better than I did you.

You actually bought the lie about defaulting on the debt

quote:

---

What in the blue frick are even saying?

---

I was agreeing with the poster who said that Cruz and Obama are two sides of the same coin because both are ideologically-driven men who eschew pragmatism and deal-making, who possess high intelligence, but pander the the basest members of their respective political parties by engaging in a transparently overly-simplistic rhetorical style that comes off as grating and condescending to those who posess a decent intellect.

quote:

---

McConnell's a lying bitch and deserves what he gets.

---

OUR NEXT PREZ