Last Wednesday, Senator Cruz brought a gun grip and a enlarged picture of a Remington 750 gun with him to the Senate floor. When it was his turn to speak, he held the pistol grip up to the picture to argue that the proposed assault weapons ban focuses on "cosmetic" features of guns like the pistol grips - that the ban is misguided and ineffective. "What [the proposed assault weapons ban] bans, I would suggest to you, are scary looking guns," he said.
...No. The ban would be on assault weapons. And that would clearly reduce the rate of gun violence in the country. And, of course, it has nothing to do with non-assault weapons (that you can damn well use to assault someone if you need to). Cruz distorted the language of the bill, falsely equating grips that may be on both assault and non-assault weapons with the different capabilities of guns.
This is the toe-high level of debate we have come to expect from Cruz. If there were Intrade odds for whether he will reduce any given debate to hollow, wholly partisan dribble, no one would bet against it. During the Chuck Hagel confirmation hearings, Cruz did nothing but berate the former Republican senator. He played clips from a radio interview in which Hagel didn't directly confront listeners who claimed that the U.S. acts as a bully in world affairs and that Israel has committed war crimes.
"The two briefly sparred over the semantics and context of the clip, with Cruz concluding that HagelÂ’'s actions in the interview were 'not the conduct one would expect of a secretary of defense,'" the Washington Post explained. Notice that Cruz asked nothing substantive. Nothing about what the United States' role should be in Syria, in Libya, in Iraq and Afghanistan, or even with Israel. Instead, Cruz metaphorically beat Hagel over the head with the flag, contributing nothing to the debate but demagoguery. And by the way, the U.S. often does act as a bully and Israel has verifiably, unquestionably, categorically committed war crimes.
Unsurprisingly, Ted Cruz has a 0-11 voting record in the Senate. Spokesman Sean Rushton deemed it a result of "principled stands when it comes to fiscal responsibility and protecting America's sovereignty.... He didn't come to Washington to make friends; he came to help save the country." No, Cruz didn't come to Washington to get anything done for Americans.
Case in point: on Meet the Press this weekend, Cruz brought up his recent trip to Afghanistan while discussing the deficit. Cruz claimed that many soldiers "clasped his arm" and asked him to "do something about the deficit." Which of course, to Cruz, means cutting Social Security and Medicare so only the rich get richer. And how fake of a story is that? I challenge Cruz to name one soldier who did that.
Watch Jimmy Dore of The Young Turks break down this preposterous claim:
