Senator Ted Cruz recently appeared on Fox and Friends to discuss the election reactions by the left. He made a couple of statement that may be a little too sweeping. While the essence of the comments were true, such broad brush statements tend to invalidate whatever truth is embedded in them.
First, he said, “We’ve seen hypocrisy on rank display from the left”. Well, yes, I guess we could agree that some Democrats have made some radical statements that smack of hypocrisy. However, I doubt that the Democrats have a lock on that practice and hopefully Sen. Cruz was referring to a few of the Democrat leadership, not to all Democrats.
Then he said, ‘Right now the Democrats seem to be in this weird spiral of getting nuttier and nuttier”. Those kinds of blanket statements turn me off for two reasons. They label all Democrats as being nutty and that clearly isn’t true (even if they did elect Obama twice). Again, generalities like that are self-defeating. Plus, whether a person or group is nutty or not is largely dependent on what rhetoric or actions one considers as being nutty. A lot of wiggle room in that.
Maybe those kinds of sweeping statements are why I was never a big fan of his, along with that smirk displayed after every statement he made. It seemed to say “Me Senator, you idiot”.
He went on to declare that Trump has won a “resounding victory” and now has an “incredible mandate”. Really? I wouldn’t consider that nail-biter election as either a resounding victory nor an incredible mandate. Even if you throw in the state level wins, the house, and holding the majority of the senate by a thread it is something less than resounding.
What I do agree with though is that the Trump win was largely unexpected by the pollsters and political analysts. Even the Democratic leadership, including Sanders, Obama, and Clinton felt comfortable that they would win big. Trump was an outsider, he insulted people, he was sometimes crude and often bombastic. All true. But, he was something else that all those naysayers failed to note. He tapped into the frustrations and fears of the massive bundle of middle Americans and thus became their standard bearer. They are not a homogeneous lot, they are not often in the limelight nor front page news. They are not “sort-able” by race, religion, registered political party, nor ethnic background. Therefore, they are hard to track and often under the radar of polls and media. They are “we the people” and they voted in numbers not recently seen. To that degree, I suppose one could say that the Republicans have a mandate of sorts.
The Democrats also expected more solid support from Hispanics. After all, hadn’t Trump insulted them and promised to throw some 11 million out of the country. Well, that is kind of true. But what was not noted is that those Hispanics here legally don’t want illegals here either. They give those that are legal a bad name, thus Trump didn’t loose all the Hispanic vote. Many in the union ranks and people of color also swung from a traditional position of supporting Democratic candidates to Trump. He promised something they could believe in and he hadn’t been promising it for years. That is where his being an “outsider” from the political ranks helped him. Clinton and others had this cloud over them that they should have already done what they were now promising to do.
Clearly, this country is widely divided on many axis and as Lincoln said;
“A country divided can not long endure”
Of all the challenges facing Trump, congress, and their appointees, healing those wounds and pulling the people together will be their biggest test.
