PrintCruz Missile
Still going on now after 19 hours -- at 10:00 AM the morning after the evening on which it started -- Ted Cruz's magnificent, courageous, magisterial, and sustained broadside against Obamacare will be permanently remembered as an exemplar of what one man can accomplish through principle, panache, and passion.
Standing alone on the Senate floor, Mr. Cruz is leaving no stone unturned in his D-Day assault against the so-called healthcare behemoth which threatens not only our economy, but also our autonomy, our health, our privacy, our traditions, and our freedoms.
Never acrimoniously, but with deftness -- armed with facts, filled with admiration for Americans' work ethic, and embodying a quiet but unmistakable disdain for the bullying of Harry Reid, the Democrats' strangulation of debate, and the cravenness some of his Republican fellows -- Ted Cruz is exploding one pillbox, bunker, and fortification of nascent socialism after another as he advances inexorably along and retakes the beachfront to reestablish American sanity, entrepreneurship, productivity, self-reliance, and liberty.
Unafraid of special interests -- and, in the person of a particular president, of the grantor of special dispensations -- Mr. Cruz, with assists by several stalwarts in the persons of Senators Rubio, Paul and a few others, is unhesitating in calling for the defunding, repeal, and defeat of Obamacare as the "train wreck" and "nightmare" it has justly been called. That latter term, Mr. Cruz has taken pains to say, is not his. Rather, it was used by an erstwhile supporter of the law: James Hoffa of the teamsters. Cruz has not merely suggested, but rather asserted forthrightly, that Mr. Obama, Justice Roberts, Harry Reid, and all of Congress and its staff, should be made to enroll in Obamacare if, after all, it is so wonderful. His deep, tacit, powerful sardonicism is more powerful than the vulgar, blustering, ad hominem, deceitful stink bombs to which we have lamentably become accustomed from the throttlers of freedom in both parties. And he does not spare the president from a soft-spoken but scalpel-sharp indictment of his imperious disregard of law which, if the day ever comes, will be a virtual template for a bill of impeachment.
Describing the denial of medical care, the crushing rise of oppressive IRS enforcement, and the emerging horror stories all barreling towards America as Obamacare's socialized provisions take hold, Cruz is both enlightening and harrowing in his thorough mastery of what's wrong with this legislation, and the mindset which wrote it, forced it through, and supports it. Eschewing pessimism and the mocking hostility of the press -- which calls defunding "hopeless" -- and disdaining the Senate's tactics of exclusion and cloture, Cruz is calling for holding true debate; for hearing the genuine sentiments of the American people; and for unabashedly rejecting socialized medicine, which he is not afraid of calling by name. And returning repeatedly to the stirring mantra he has established for this most heroic of demonstrations, that we "must make D.C. listen."
Ted Cruz this morning is standing for all the people of this nation. One day, in a more serene and less polarized America, even those who are his opponents today will look back with relief and gratitude, and thank him for what he has done on the Senate floor today. His inspirational signature response throughout this magnificent performance will itself deserve to be remembered by future patriot-legislators when they muster the courage and strength to truly represent those who elected them: "I am happy to yield for a question without yielding the floor."
