Friday, December 11, 2015

Ted Cruz quietly becoming the anti-gay right's favorite GOP presidential candidate

Editor's note - Today's news briefs may be either pre-empted or postponed.

Ted Cruz
Here is a scary FACT. While Donald Trump is grabbing all of the headlines and attention, Ted Cruz (a more serious candidate for president) has been quietly grabbing support and endorsements from anti-gay organizations and figures.

From Right Wing Watch:

Ted Cruz won a major victory in his effort to consolidate support from the Religious Right today when he was endorsed by Bob Vander Plaats, who leads the Iowa-based conservative group, The Family Leader. Vander Plaats, a two-time gubernatorial candidate who in the two previous election cycles backed Iowa caucus winners Mike Huckabee and Rick Santorum, respectively, offers one of the most highly sought after endorsements in the state: Donald Trump reportedly joked that he would turn his plane around to join The Family Leader’s presidential forum if Vander Plaats would guarantee him his backing. Vander Plaats is one of several right-wing figures to coalesce behind Cruz, who has attracted the support of ultraconservative activists like Troy Newman, who wishes the government would execute abortion providers; Ron Baity, a pastor who links gay rights to Ebola; Flip Benham, a convicted abortion doctor stalker who holds protests at gay couples’ weddings; Sandy Rios, a virulently anti-LGBT radio host and hate group official; Dick Black, a Virginia lawmaker with noxious views on marital rape and “baby pesticide”; and Cynthia Dunbar, who thinks gay rights advocacy is “the same type of thing that was done in pre-Holocaust Germany.” 

And then there are these words from Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council via email:

The campaign's intentional effort to win over social conservatives is paying off, as Cruz pieces together a formidable army of support from evangelicals, whose causes he has never failed to champion. While Ted has been effective on an array of national issues, he hasn't strayed from his theme -- which is that 2016 is going to be a "religious liberty election." That continues to resonate with Americans, who open their newspapers every day to a new story of religious hostility -- whether it's the Air Force Academy football team or the University of Tennessee's censorship.

Unlike the ghosts of candidates past, Cruz is not only unafraid of the tough issues -- he's fearless in tackling them. Just this week, the senator blasted the most disliked commander-in-chief in generations, telling a group of black pastors that it's no wonder President Obama has a pathetic level of support (15 percent) from American service members. "You look at the military," Cruz told FRC's E.W. Jackson, "and one of the things we've seen is morale in the military under the Obama administration has plummeted, and it has plummeted because you have a commander-in-chief that doesn't support our soldiers and sailors and airmen and Marines." He won't even name the enemy "radical Islamic terrorism," Cruz went on, and is "more interested in promoting homosexuality in the military" than in "defeating our enemy."

I don't know how you feel, but I personally think Cruz is scarier than Trump. Trump is a self-aggrandizing blowhard. Cruz may actually have a shot at being the GOP nominee.