There is a tide in the affairs of men, which taken at the flood, leads on to fortune. Omitted, all the voyage of their life is bound in shallows and in miseries. On such a full sea are we now afloat. And we must take the current when it serves, or lose our ventures.
– Brutus in William Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar
A misguided, decrepit, corrupt, warmongering, and surveillance-happy Republican Party was already stumbling around the room; hammered drunk on its decades old power trip, led by mindless cronies with zero direction when Ted Cruz came by and gave it a charitable push to the ground. It fell swiftly with a pathetic thud. The establishment Republican Party died this week. Good riddance.
Personally, I haven’t put in enough time to look into Ted Cruz to say how I feel about him, but I can certainly support his efforts to destroy the current GOP leadership. More importantly, I can see when political winds are a changin’ and they are blowing with a typhoon’s tempo in 2013.
It all really started in back in March, when freshman Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky started the recent GOP filibuster trend by standing up against Barack Obama’s (and indeed bipartisan Congress’) drone policy. I spent a lot more time writing and commenting about the Rand Paul filibuster as opposed to Ted Cruz’ because it is far more significant for a Republican to stand against aggressive, unconstitutional military action than for a Republican to stand against ObamaCare. The latter they are expected to do, the former not so much. At the time, I wrote a post that got a huge amount of traction titled: #StandwithRand: The Filibuster that United Libertarian and Progressive Activists. Back then I wrote:
What Rand Paul did yesterday was finally bring the public debate to where it needs to be. In doing so, he united activists that are quite opposed on many issues (less than they think, but that’s for another day). This is extremely significant and we need this momentum to continue. Those of us that care about the core principles that made this country great need to stick together, find common ground and not allow the establishment to control the debate any longer.
It’s quite fitting that as Rand Paul stood for 13 hours in an impassioned attempt to call attention to the systematic dismantling of The Bill of Rights occurring in America, President Obama was having dinner with many establishment Republicans. These included the two Senators that have done more to destroy the GOP than any one else; John McCain and Lindsey Graham. Two guys who would drone their own grandmothers if it made them feel tough for a minute.
Fortunately, the momentum of libertarian and progressive activists to defend the Bill of Rights has continued, largely thanks to the revelations of Edward Snowden, as decent folks from both sides of the aisle have stood up to protect the 4th Amendment. ObamaCare is not one of those issues, nor should we expect it to be. While I think many Democrats understand the bill was basically written by insurance companies and is another crony capitalist handout, many in the party feel they need to support their puppet President Obama on something and they’ve decided ObamaCare is it. Everyone gets that. What is really significant about Ted Cruz’ filibuster is that it has finally exposed the Republican establishment for what it is. A rotting carcass of nothingness. No matter what happens with the cloture vote later today, it doesn’t really matter. It’s already over. The knives are in. The GOP leadership is dead.
The best article I have read on the subject of what the Cruz filibuster really means was written by Michael Walsh in the National Review. He wrote:
In the aftermath of Senator Ted Cruz’s epic performance on the Senate floor, a few observations:
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