{"id":15063,"date":"2015-11-11T18:49:35","date_gmt":"2015-11-12T01:49:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/?p=15063"},"modified":"2015-11-11T18:49:35","modified_gmt":"2015-11-12T01:49:35","slug":"cruz-versus-paul","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/2015\/11\/11\/cruz-versus-paul\/","title":{"rendered":"Cruz versus Paul"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hm<\/a>.<\/p>\n

On an August trip to Haiti to perform pro bono eye surgery, a twangy song came over the speakers while he was in the operating room. A reporter in the room asked if, while he performed surgery, he had any music preferences.<\/em>
\n\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Just not this,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d the Kentucky senator said<\/a>, then laughed. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m not a big country person.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/em>
\n\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Do you like this song though?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d someone else asked.<\/em>
\n\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Is it about beer and leaving your woman and beer and a truck?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Mr. Paul responded.<\/em>
\nBy contrast, his fellow Republican candidates have tripped over one another to pledge fidelity to Nashville. Last spring, Senator Ted Cruz said he had converted<\/a> from listening to classic rock to country music after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.<\/em><\/p>\n

Tellingly, this “conversion” highlights the foreign policy issues at stake visa vie Rand Paul versus Ted Cruz.\u00c2\u00a0 Post 9\/11 Country is awash in jingoistic “We’ll Put a Boot in Your Ass, It’s the American Way” and on to “Iraq, I Roll, I’m a High Tech GI Joe” and then there’s “Have you Forgotten?”<\/p>\n

Or for that matter the redone “Okie from Muskogee”…<\/p>\n

So we’re left with this take away.<\/p>\n

Other Republican primary voters have found a superior version of Mr. Paul in Mr. Cruz, who has campaigned by preaching almost exclusively to the conservative choir.<\/em><\/p>\n

Superior version of Rand Paul, who is attempting to preach to something beyond the “conservative choir” — or following up Ron Paul’s funny liberal base of anti-war (admittedly one the editor of the Nation dismisses as something of a “bro-mance” — too able to look past the abortion issue and the wide array of insanity that comes from the opposite of progressive Ron Paul… though, worth noting the Nation’s problem on litmus testings<\/a>) as too that constellation of weird sources —<\/p>\n

I note that the Alex Jones “infowars” \/ “prisonplanet” is upping their Rand Paul news items as of late… perhaps we can sense the desperation of Rand Paul getting trumped by Ted Cruz.<\/p>\n

… who is more apt to support a hawkish demeanor against Iran, and Russia, and Guam… and…<\/p>\n

It is worth noting that Rand Paul is up for Senate re-election in 2016<\/a>.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s also worth noting that the odd odd year gubernatorial election was an upset disaster for the Democrats — seems to be spurred by the Kim Davis issue — so the wobbly “reasons for optimism” of Democratic Party Kentucky in that hazy end of Bush era is long gone.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hm. On an August trip to Haiti to perform pro bono eye surgery, a twangy song came over the speakers while he was in the operating room. A reporter in the room asked if, while he performed surgery, he had any music preferences. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Just not this,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d the Kentucky senator said, then laughed. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m not a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15063","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15063","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15063"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15063\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15064,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15063\/revisions\/15064"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15063"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15063"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15063"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}