Ted Cruz Is Right to Attack the 'Neocons'
pjmedia.com
[/] By David P. Goldman December 16, 2015 [/] Article printed
from Spengler: https://pjmedia.com/spengler
[/
Article url:] http://j.mp/0CruzOK1
or
https://pjmedia.com/spengler/2015/12/16/ted-cruz-is-right-to-attack-the-neocons
Hillary
Clinton has no record to run on. Family income is lower and the
world is more dangerous. Donald
Trump nailed it when he told Chris Wallace, "Hillary
calls me 'dangerous'? She's killed hundreds of thousands of people
with her stupidity." Trump was referring to the Obama
administration's campaign to overthrow Arab dictators like Libya's
Qaddafi and Egypt's Mubarak, which contributed to the chaos in the
Middle East after the so-called "Arab Spring." Marco
Rubio can't attack Hillary's disastrous foreign policy record
because--as Ted
Cruz observes--Rubio supported all the same stupid policies.
Picture a Cruz-Clinton presidential debate: Cruz denounces
Hillary's incompetence in promoting chaos in the Middle East.
Hillary remonstrates, "But most Republicans supported me!"
Cruz counters: "That's right--I'm running against you and
against the Establishment in my own party." Game, set, match.
Here's
a word of consolation for my neocon friends: It's not personal,
just business. I'm a neocon too, an ex-lefty who went rightward
with Reagan and carried my spear in the final phase of the
Cold War. I was chief economist at Jude Wanniski's supply-side
consulting firm Polyconomics, which is as neocon as you can get,
and I give the neocons all
the credit for Reaganomics. I've published in Commentary
Magazine and Irving Kristol's Public
Interest. I traveled the world promoting the Reagan
model between 1988 and 1993--Mexico, Peru, Nicaragua, and most of
all Russia--and learned firsthand how Quixotic was the conceit
that our model could be exported.
Every
ideology has a use-by date and you're long past yours. Henry
Kissinger did great service to this country by opening
relations to China, a necessary if not sufficient condition for
winning the Cold War. But Kissinger couldn't see past the dull
calculus of detente, while Reagan foresaw unconditional American
victory over Communism--and without you neocons, he never could
have done it. You made a Gargantuan error, though, when you
assumed that the Reagan Revolution could be exported to the Middle
East, Russia and China, and you misplayed the strongest hand that
any world power ever held. America went from only-hyperpower
status when George W. Bush took office to a playing second fiddle
to Vladimir Putin today. No-one wants to hear your claim
that we really won in Iraq in 2008 and lost it all because
Obama wouldn't leave a few divisions there. And when the "Arab
Spring" came along, you mistook the oncoming express for
the light at the end of the tunnel. You and the Obama crowd played
"Dumb
and Dumber." You both bought into the idea that Muslim
democracy would arise from Islamist opposition to the old
dictatorships.
So
Ted Cruz has thrown you under the bus, just as you threw Henry
Kissinger under the bus when Reagan came to office in 1981. Tim
Alberta and Eliana Johnson record your outrage in National
Review:
So when Ted Cruz, on the campaign trail in Iowa and again in an interview with Bloomberg News, recently pointed the finger at “neocons” in an attempt to defend his own understanding of American interests abroad, the response among some conservative foreign-policy experts — many of whom the term has been used to disparage — was of shock, anger, and dismay. “He knows that the term in the usual far-left and far-right parlance means warmonger, if not warmongering Jewish advisers, so it is not something he should’ve done,” says Elliott Abrams, a former Bush administration National Security Council official and a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.
That's
chutzpah
(like the man who murdered his parents asking the judge for
clemency because he's an orphan). "Neocon" became a term
of opprobrium because it represented a coherent and well-defined
body of thought that produced bad results. To suggest that Ted
Cruz is stirring up bigotry against Jews is just nasty.
No, Cruz is doing the
right thing: Just as Reagan sacrificed Henry Kissinger, Cruz will
sacrifice you. It's all for the greater good. For the past eight
years the Republican Party has worn the sins of the George W. Bush
administration like the chains on Marley's Ghost. The American
public doesn't easily forget that it was stirred to sacrifice in
Iraq and Afghanistan and has nothing to show for it. A break with
the Bush past vastly increases the odds for a Republican
victory. Rubio can't do this, but Cruz can. Like Kissinger,
you should glory in your past contributions and let other people
take charge. Go with God. But go.
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