The tawdriness of American identity politics reached a new low this week as former New Mexico governor, frustrated 2008 democrat presidential candidate, and serial corruption suspect Bill Richardson offered his take on the junior senator from Texas.
On Sunday, Richardson was a guest on ABC’S This Week when he said that because Ted Cruz doesn’t support amnesty for illegal aliens, he shouldn’t be considered an Hispanic!
“Almost every Hispanic in the country wants to see immigration reform. No, I don’t think he should be defined as a Hispanic,” Richardson said.
Such a politically perverse statement reminds me of how a certain former CNN anchoress, the ambiguously ethnic Obama flack Soledad O’Brien, decided that it was appropriate to refer to Nifonged neighborhood watch captain George Zimmerman as a “white Hispanic.”
Jack Cashill, author of Deconstructing Obama, and of the about-to-be-released If I Had a Son: Race, Guns, and the Railroading of George Zimmerman, commented about Richardson’s ridiculous remark, “Odd that a guy named ‘Richardson’ would call a guy named ‘Cruz’ not Hispanic.”
(I might point out that the name “O’Brien” isn’t exactly Afro-Cuban, either.)
Of course we know why Richardson spouted his absurdity, just as we know why O’Brien piled on with her distortion: The narrative of the Left demands that anyone who doesn’t come across as “down for the struggle” of the allegedly oppressed brown supremacists — especially anyone who seems lacking in melanin just enough to be plausibly shoved into the category of “white” by virtue of “acting white” — gets their card pulled, gets kicked out of the Tan Klan, and gets dis-invited from the diversity banquet.
Why does Ted Cruz drive his opponents into conniptions and night sweats?
Bluntly put, Cruz scares the crap out of his foes, and he runs legal circles around them. As a Republican opponent, he represents their ultimate nightmare — a minority with an authentic storybook tale of rising from almost nothing. His father fled from Castro’s communist revolution in Cuba with $100 sewn into his underwear, to arrive in America and make 50 cents an hour washing dishes in an Austin, Texas restaurant while learning English and tackling courses at the University of Texas. Young Ted grew up to earn himself platinum-plated Ivy League creds, having graduated cum laude from Princeton, then magna cum laude from Harvard Law. While at Princeton, he won several national debating championships and awards. While at Harvard Law, Cruz was a primary editor of the Harvard Law Review, and executive editor of the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy, among other high accolades. As a student, famed Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz said, “Cruz was off-the-charts brilliant.”
As if all that wasn’t bad enough news for his foes, Cruz was the first Hispanic to clerk for a Chief Justice of the United States (William Rehnquist), has subsequently written numerous briefs for and argued key cases before the SCOTUS, was the first Hispanic Solicitor General in Texas, and the rest of his C.V. is so chock full of seemingly endless awards and important jobs, teaching positions, memberships, and accomplishments that it’s no wonder democrats have been reduced to sniveling puddles of pathos when confronted by such an ace.
Not only does Cruz have a stellar resume, he has the courage of his convictions, and the willingness to get in the faces of comparatively bumbling, venal crybabies like Diane “I’m not a sixth grader” Feinstein on gun control, and Harry “Ted Cruz is a schoolyard bully” Reid on the budget, when it counts. And he doesn’t seem to really care if he alienates anyone in the establishment or on the Georgetown cocktail party circuit, which is so refreshing as to be a pinch-yourself dream quality in a politician, to those of us of the Tea Party mindset.
