Ted Cruz's "Evil Empire" moment

Brady: Does Right have no mean­ing to you, sir?

Drum­mond: Real­iz­ing that I may prej­u­dice the case of my client, I must tell you that “Right” has no mean­ing to me what­so­ever! But Truth has mean­ing — as a direction.

Inherit the Wind 1960

I was all set to write another papist piece this morn­ing when I turned on the TV and saw Morn­ing Joe all a twit­ter (although strangely not tweet­ing) con­cern­ing Ted Cruz.

Dur­ing the party line vote in Com­mit­tee that sent the Chuck Hagel nom­i­na­tion to the floor Ted Cruz did the unthink­able. He said aloud some­thing every­one knew was absolutely true for the record:

Chuck Hagel is endorsed by Iran. Here is the clip from Cruz’s speech on the subject.

The reac­tion to Cruz’s words was incred­i­ble. It was called unfair, it was said we shouldn’t judge Hagel by those who endorse him, and Ted Cruz was attacked. His words were said to be inflam­ma­tory, uncalled for, extreme, improper and defam­a­tory toward a per­son as hon­or­able as Chuck Hagel.

Morn­ing Joe par­tic­u­larly tore into Ted Cruz, he was por­trayed as beyond the pale, as an extrem­ist. He was mocked and derided and the entire Morn­ing Joe table had a lot of things to say about what Ted Cruz had to say about Chuck Hagel.

In all of the words in all the cri­tiques of Ted Cruz by the left in gen­eral and MSNBC & Morn­ing Joe in par­tic­u­lar there is one word that I noticed was miss­ing from every state­ment hit­ting Sen­a­tor Cruz for his state­ments on Sen­a­tor Hagel:

False.

The fact is Iran (along with North Korea) is the biggest ter­ror threat to the United States and the President’s nom­i­nee for Sec­re­tary of defense has been endorsed by them. All of the brick­bats thrown at Ted Cruz for say­ing it aloud will not make it any less true.

I was instantly reminded of another repub­li­can hated by the Media who once said a known truth aloud and was pil­lo­ried for it.

The sim­ple power of being will­ing to say the truth aloud in the face of MSM cri­tique is exactly the trait that the GOP needs the most. It is the trait that Ronald Rea­gan had and the MSM hated him for it. That Reganesque trait in Ted Cruz, a ris­ing His­panic star in the GOP, is why MSNBC in gen­eral and Morn­ing Joe in par­tic­u­lar are ded­i­cated to destroy­ing him.

Per­haps in 30 or 50 years when Ted Cruz is safely in his grave, the left will find rea­son to praise him

BTW here are Sen­a­tor Cruz’s full unedited remarks for those of you who don’t want to rely on the TPM’s edited version:

Update: Just to make it clear it is Iran not North Korea who has endorsed Hagel.

Update 2: Insta­lanche (thanks Glenn) also changed the “That” to “The” in the para­graph start­ing with…The fact is Iran as bet­ter gram­mat­i­cally, also removed the word “dol­lars” below as redun­dant with the $ already present.

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[ther­mome­ter raised=27 target=300 height =200 ]

The good news for me is the amount in this week’s pay­check is infi­nitely higher than it was yesterday.

The bad news is that’s because it’s gone from $0 to $27.

I’m grate­ful to the two peo­ple who hit DaTip­Jar yes­ter­day and the Sub­scriber who kicked in for $2. I would ask those who have not kicked in who con­sider this cov­er­age valu­able to con­sider mov­ing that Ther­mome­ter a bit higher if you can.

and remem­ber my sub­scrip­tion com­men­tary comes out today so if you hit DaTip­Jar or Sub­scribe you will get this week’s full com­men­tary called “Heroes”