There’s simply too much riding on the 2016 Presidential election to be intimidated by its vast field of candidates. So in the spirit of true post-partisanship, the Weeklings has decided to help America vote right. Over the course of this 8-part series kicking off with the Iowa Caucuses and running through the New Hampshire Primary, we break down our favorite Republican contenders, and tell you exactly who’s worth pulling the lever for.
YOU KNOW WHAT prevents decisive action and dooms presidencies?
Self doubt.
Reagan had it (but he had his wife—and she had her astrologer). Bush 41 had it; you could read his lips. Clinton…what was driving that unrestrained libido other than self-loathing and the Big Dawg’s Daddy Issues? George W. Bush? Even The Bard and Oedipus, locked in Hunter S. Thompson’s belfry, couldn’t concoct that kind of pathology. Obama? What the liberal media calls thoughtful and cautious the rest of us recognize as petrified and paralyzed.
Who then, amongst us, doesn’t suffer from a shred of uncertainty, doesn’t question for one second who he is, what he wants, and how much he deserves?
Ted Cruz.
The nerve of us, really.
Here’s a man willing not only to sell out his colleagues, friends and family, but preempted the ordeal of forming principles so he could save time betraying them. And we can’t at least ensure he’s our next president?
Did it ever occur to any of the naysayers that alienating every single person you’ve ever met is exhausting, often thankless work, and something that requires the type of ambition and effort that would likely reduce a lesser specimen to a used-up husk, a conscience-ridden shell of a swindler, on both knees in a (Southern Baptist) confessional?
Bear with me.
Americans obsess over which candidate we’d most enjoy sharing a domestic beer with, and this becomes the implicit or, in the case of Gore vs. Bush, explicit issue driving public perception of a candidate’s so-called electability.
How about, at long last, flipping the script and going with a guy we despise from the get-go?
Seriously.
No honeymoon period, no disillusionment, no bad blood halfway through the first term (or, if he or she is a Democrat, half a week after their inauguration).
We agonize, needlessly, over the types of trivial imperatives that inform high school elections. It’s time we acted like adults and select someone who would do anything to do the job.
Think how liberating it would be. For us. For him.
Imagine, instead of starry-eyed chants and extravagant optimism, we held our collective noses, averted our eyes, and treated our commander-in-chief the way we treat our dentists, doctors, CEOs and especially our lawyers. We need them, and they need us to need them, but who ever said you had to like the asshole repairing your car or your teeth or, heaven help you, your heart.
Case in point: national security. If Ted Cruz is thoroughly reviled to the point of being scorned on public stage by his own compatriots, imagine how many fucks he won’t give about our “allies” abroad?
Obama draws crowds wherever he travels? Good for him.
Cruz will make America feared the way an abused child cowers from his alcoholic stepfather. That’s what this nation needs after coddling terrorists, fretting about due process and kidding ourselves that sanctions are more effective than carpet bombing.
Remember when Bush embarrassed everyone by claiming to look into Putin’s eyes and getting a sense of his soul? No worries with Cruz: everyone knows he doesn’t have a soul to speak of, at least the way we usually speak about souls and who has them.
Can we be certain Rubio would really stop at nothing to overturn a woman’s right to choose? Are we positive Jeb (!) will preserve our 2nd Amendment rights? Can we count on Christie to terminate, with extreme prejudice, those who’ve had enough chances already? Do we really believe Donald Trump will put God before himself? Too many Republicans are willing to pander on these issues, and then forget them once America hands them the keys to the country. Can anyone doubt that Ted Cruz doubts himself on any of these issues?
How we feel about the fervency of his faith says more about us than him. If you have doubts, consider the source: it’s God’s word, right there in the bible, in plain English.
If we want to eradicate uncertainty and avoid the nuances of not knowing who we’re really dealing with, there’s only one choice and it’s that beautiful black boot in our face. We must lick that boot and surrender ourselves to the brute, brute heart of a brute like Cruz.
This piece originally appeared at The Weeklings on 2/4/16
