![]() Sanders: “We are the only major country on earth that does not guarantee health care to all people as a right, and I think we should change that.”Ĭruz: “We deserve trade policies that put the interests of American farmers and manufacturing jobs over the global interests funding the lobbyists.” Imagine health care reform that keeps government out of the way between you and your doctor and that makes health insurance personal and portable and affordable.” Sanders: “We need to take 11 million undocumented people out of the shadows, out of fear, and we need to provide them with legal protection.”Ĭruz: “Imagine in 2017 a new president signing legislation repealing every word of Obamacare. Either way, it left Cruz standing dramatically alone as the standard-bearer for the ideas wing of movement conservatism after November.Īlthough they never debated each other, the senators from Texas and Vermont waged a compelling year-long argument about America’s future-one hammering home the value of liberty, toughness and keeping Washington out of our hair, and the other harping on inequality, compassion and the crucial role of the government.Ĭruz: “I oppose amnesty. (No surprise, then, that elders like toppled Speaker John Boehner preferred even Trump to Cruz, whom he memorably dubbed “Lucifer in the flesh” during the primaries.) Cruz may have lost, but he used his final turn in the spotlight at the GOP convention to make a lengthy and vehement argument that principles should still matter in his party, before pointedly declining to endorse the candidate in front of him and encouraging the crowd to “vote your conscience.” Cruz’s historically bold move might have been public political suicide-or the savviest long-game move of the summer. For conservative Republicans who fretted at Trump’s wobbliness on abortion, health care and gun control, the Texas senator was the unwavering antidote, denouncing Trump with the same intransigence he had applied to his own party’s leaders during the 2013 government shutdown. 2 vote-getter in the GOP primary after Donald Trump blew all the more ideologically compromising figures off the landscape. Ted Cruz, too, built his following around ideas delivered over and over: a crisp and carefully honed set of Tea Party principles that left him the No. In a race in which one leading candidate blurted out policies seemingly on the fly, and the other clearly assembled them by committee, Sanders’ unapologetic and relentless clarity about principles-whether you found those principles thrilling or totally absurd-reminded America that you could build a following around actual ideas, shouted clearly, over and over. Not to mention that Sanders, a longtime independent who officially became a Democrat only when he declared his candidacy, persuaded the party to adopt many of his ideas in its official platform. On a number of issues-notably, trade and the $15 hourly minimum wage-Sanders got his primary rival, Hillary Clinton, to move left and, in the case of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, to reverse her position entirely. Others, like free college tuition, were barely blips on the ideas radar before he pushed them into the conversation. Some of his pet issues, like breaking up banks and switching to single-payer health care, were considered policy third rails until Sanders rode them to wins in an astonishing 23 primaries and caucuses. Cruz’s convention speech left him standing alone as the standard-bearer for the ideas wing of movement conservatism after November.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |