The Republican feared most by liberals? The one described with the most overwrought hyperbole. Yes, some things never change.
According to ex-MSNBC pundit Cenk Uygur (pronounced Jenk U-gur), that Republican is none other than Senator Ted Cruz of Texas. Should he learn this, Cruz might very well take it as a badge of honor.
Uygur, creator of the The Young Turks, which claims to be the "largest online news show in the world," appeared on the Kickass Politics podcast Nov. 13 with fellow Young Turks Ana Kasparian and John Iadarola.
After describing the Turks' 99-hour on-air "filibuster" of Samuel Alito's nomination to the Supreme Court in 2005, Uygur said this about Hillary Clinton and Ted Cruz --
KICKASS POLITICS HOST BEN MATHIS: Well, do you guys see anything else on the political horizon, short of a Trump presidency, that might be filibuster-worthy?
UYGUR: Well, look, all of these guys are painful to think about as president on the Republican side, let alone Hillary Clinton, right? So, uh ...
MATHIS: Oh, you're anti-Hillary too?
UYGUR: Yeah.
MATHIS: Oh, OK.
UYGUR: So, wish us luck. (laughter all around)
MATHIS: Good luck with that!
UYGUR: OK. So, look, Hillary Clinton, just like Barack Obama, is the establishment, right? So, if you want things to continue as they are and a lot of people do, then vote for Hillary Clinton and she'll continue things almost identical to what they are today, right? And if you're powerful, you're rich, you should love that. I mean, these rich guys that are fighting against Hillary Clinton, their greed knows no bounds because she says, I'll let you keep all your money exactly as it is today ...
Except for the 50-percent plus they already pay to government ... except for that!
UYGUR: ... you're already (sic) won and they're saying, no! I want more! I want more tax cuts! I want more deregulation! I want to be able to pollute more, I want to be able to cheat more on Wall Street, I want more of the money I cheated to win in the first place, right? (Property is theft!)
IADAROLA: And they're likely to get more of that even with Hillary Clinton because she'll almost certainly be facing a Republican Senate and a House as well.
UYGUR: Yeah, they already bought the Senate and the House ...
Not to mention the White House, with President Romney gearing up to buy it again in 2016 ...
UYGUR: ... so Hillary Clinton has no chance of getting anything done, anyway, if she were inclined in that direction and she is not inclined in that direction. So, I mean,Ted Cruz, though, out of all these parade of horribles in front of us, right, is -- in both senses of that phrase -- is the worst demagogue and I think that he actually has a chance of winning and, I mean, you can't filibuster a presidential candidate (or permanently censor them, yet!), but if I could stop one guy, I'd stop Ted Cruz. And I think that if you're a Republican out there and you think, oh that means I should support Ted Cruz 'cause these libs don't like him, right? No, no, no, you're missing the boat.
John Kasich has a decent point to make about what he did with the budget in Ohio, what happened with unemployment in Ohio. You want to support a reasonable Republican who you think has had success, I understand going toward Kasich, I'm not trying to stop the strongest Republican from winning, right? (sarcastically again). No, Cruz is a dangerous, dangerous guy and he's going to be dangerous to the Republicans as much as he is to the Democrats and by that I mean, I don't care about the political parties as you can tell from this conversation, I mean, conservative voters, liberal voters, the guy's a maniac and I don't want him anywhere near power.
Nor can Uygur abide Clinton or Obama, since both are quite obviously not nearly liberal enough, leaving socialist Bernie Sanders his only alternative. Unless, that is, Uygur deems the candidate who actually spent his honeymoon in the Soviet Union as insufficiently doctrinaire.
It remains eternally amusing when a left-winger deigns to advise conservatives as to what is in our best interests.
The underlying reason Uygur maligns Cruz as "dangerous" and "a maniac"? Uygur mentioned it earlier in his screed while not citing it as the reason -- Cruz "actually has a chance of winning." Rest assured, however, that regardless of whether it is Cruz, the eventual GOP nominee will be demonized on the left as maniacal, much as an earlier generation of collectivists vilified Reagan as a "madman." Reagan embodied the left's worst nightmare -- he challenged the grandest of their utopian schemes, the one that filled more cemeteries than any other, and prevailed. Such men and women are most dangerous of all.
In case you're wondering about the politics of Kickass Politics, I haven't listened long enough to discern leanings one way or another, but Mathis invites guests from across the spectrum. In the last month alone, he's interviewed conservative scholar Steven. F. Hayward, the Washington Post's Bob Woodward, former GOP congresswoman Michele Bachmann, and Democrat strategist David Axelrod.
