It's no surprise that this plugs into a belief of might is right. It also suggests that you can't deal with folks like that by reasoning, you just have to show them a bigger stick.
2025-09-24 22:08:47
This Politico piece talks about that. It’s clear the 54-year-old Texan is wagering that at some future date, when he’s still young enough to run for president again, his party will drift back to its free market and free speech moorings. I know Cruz well enough to hear him saying it on the stump at some future Pizza Ranch stop: Look, folks, I think Trump did a lot of good and his critics never gave him a fair shot, but I stood up for our conservative values when it wasn’t totally popular in our party. (And, yes, it’s also no coincidence that Cruz has used his two major critiques to target other actors in the administration rather than Trump himself.)
One thing that I'm struck by about Cruz' defense of free speech (and Rand Paul's I think) is not that we do this because strength comes from a diversity of opinions, but because the liberals might do it to us. This suggests that if there wasn't that argument, he's be all in.
It's no surprise that this plugs into a belief of might is right. It also suggests that you can't deal with folks like that by reasoning, you just have to show them a bigger stick.
This Politico piece talks about that.
It’s clear the 54-year-old Texan is wagering that at some future date, when he’s still young enough to run for president again, his party will drift back to its free market and free speech moorings. I know Cruz well enough to hear him saying it on the stump at some future Pizza Ranch stop: Look, folks, I think Trump did a lot of good and his critics never gave him a fair shot, but I stood up for our conservative values when it wasn’t totally popular in our party. (And, yes, it’s also no coincidence that Cruz has used his two major critiques to target other actors in the administration rather than Trump himself.)
One thing that I'm struck by about Cruz' defense of free speech (and Rand Paul's I think) is not that we do this because strength comes from a diversity of opinions, but because the liberals might do it to us. This suggests that if there wasn't that argument, he's be all in.