Sunday, February 17, 2013

Separated at birth?

 
[Senators Joseph McCarthy and Ted Cruz.]

The resemblance of junior senator to junior senator is more than rhetorical. It’s the curling lower lip that does it.

*

February 22: The New Yorker reports on Cruz’s claim that when he was a student at Harvard Law School, twelve Harvard law professors believed, in Cruz’s words, “in the Communists overthrowing the United States government.”

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comments: 4

zzi said...

What did Rafael Cruz say to compare him to McCarthy?

Michael Leddy said...

From the New York Times:

“At times, the meeting slipped into an unusually accusatory and bitter back-and-forth, with Republicans like Ted Cruz, a freshman senator from Texas, going as far as to suggest that Mr. Hagel had accepted money from nations that oppose American interests.

Saying that he had serious doubts about the source of payments that Mr. Hagel had accepted for speaking engagements, Mr. Cruz declared, ‘It is at a minimum relevant to know if that $200,000 that he deposited in his bank account came directly from Saudi Arabia, came directly from North Korea.’

Senator Bill Nelson of Florida and other Democrats countered by saying that Republicans had unfairly questioned the integrity of both Mr. Hagel, a two-time Purple Heart recipient, and had undermined the work of the normally bipartisan committee itself.

‘Senator Cruz has gone over the line,’ Mr. Nelson said. ‘He basically has impugned the patriotism of the nominee.’”

zzi said...

not from the NY Times:
If Party R questions Party D and Party D also defends Party D but Party R has some very good arguments as to why Party D shouldn't be nominated, including a lot of this stuff about him not disclosing who's paid him to give speeches, which I think are legitimate questions. *He also has an obsession with a tiny strip of land in the Middle East no larger than New Jersey. *tip of the hat to "A Few Ideas"

Michael Leddy said...

Asking whether North Korea or Saudi Arabia has paid for a speech, while offering no evidence that either has, seems pretty McCarthy-like to me.