One of the major themes of this election season is the decline of the wars over social and cultural values. The front-runner, by far, of the Republicans is only talking about government and the economy, and so are the two Democrats (pioneered by Bernie, with Hillary having to address these issues instead of 100% identity politics).
That hasn't kept the die-hards from struggling to keep it alive, and they've rallied behind Ted Cruz.
Fortunately all of this sanctimonious, holier-than-thou grandstanding is going to come to a screeching halt. News is breaking about Cruz allegedly having had as many as five mistresses while married, and perhaps while a father too. Read the post and wade into the comments for all the details, and check out #CruzSexScandal on Twitter (which trended nationally last night).
Suffice it to say that the three we know about are all former political operatives for Cruz, who have gone on to other things by now. Katrina Pierson became a spokesperson for Trump, bringing the news to him sometime last year and giving him a great big bucket of ammunition to waste Cruz with, when the time was right. I wouldn't be surprised if her case turns out to be a false alarm, and that she was only propositioned by Cruz, creeping her out and finding a sympathetic ear with the Trump campaign.
Amanda Carpenter is the crazy Cruz lady you may have seen on CNN's talking head panel. And Sarah Isgur Flores moved on to the Carly Fiorina campaign, where she may have received half a million dollars as hush money, laundered from a Cruz PAC to a Carly PAC.
It's not only the fact that he has been such a tiresome moralistic scold, while indulging in the exact opposite of what he preaches. That level of hypocrisy would be bad enough. But these weren't a bunch of randos like Monica Lewinsky -- they were political operatives, who have shuffled around to other parts of the DC world. Carpenter shills nightly for Cruz, and Flores may have collected half a mil in laundered campaign contributions.
On top of the sexual moral hypocrisy is corruption. Usually they're separate -- one politician caught boinking a mistress (or rent boy), another politician caught paying off a reporter for favorable coverage. To have both themes joined repulsively together in the Cruz sex scandal means there's no recovery possible. Good riddance, Cruz cult.
I'm glad the Trump camp waited until now to pull the trigger, after Cruz received the most sought-after of Establishment endorsements -- Jeb, Romney, etc. -- and after mega-huckster Glenn Beck went all in for him, and after the Mormon hive delivered him a nearly 70% vote in Utah.
These icons of both wings of the Old Republican Party -- Wall Street donors and Cultural Right snake oil salesmen -- have become forever tainted and can be purged from the body politic. And, without having to argue endlessly about it -- just look at who they feverishly held up as their anointed living prophet.
We won't need to keep harping on this topic, but we will need to beat it to death for several weeks or even months, just to make it clear that all this culture war bullshit has been not only impotent to effect any real change about abortion, divorce, and gay marriage, but that it has also been led by wicked false prophets.
The sooner we beat that point to death, we can get to moving on to the important matters facing our government and economy -- borders, deportation, bringing industries back, trade imbalances, debt, and so on.
And every time some culture warrior tries to derail or distract us, we can instantly dismiss it with "Go back to your false prophet".
I hope there is a spiritual revival, given how godless our country has become. But it's not going to be spearheaded by wannabe theocrats who want to politicize the culture war. Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's. We will change social and cultural outcomes only by changing people's minds so that abortion, divorce, and Sodomite marriage feel disgusting and anathema. And that can only happen by grassroots organization and evangelism.
This moral populism could be interwoven with an economic and political populism, akin to the Temperance movement that accompanied the Progressive movement around the turn of the 20th century. Trying to wage culture war top-down through the government, though, has proven not to work whatsoever.
"We will change social and cultural outcomes only by changing people's minds so that abortion, divorce, and Sodomite marriage feel disgusting and anathema. And that can only happen by grassroots organization and evangelism."
ReplyDeleteThis is absolutely false. Social conservatives have lost the culture wars in every generation because they try to communicate respectfully with the vulgar masses, who are only interested in sports and what the television tells them to think. Evangelicals more than anyone else throw their pearls to swine.
The left seized the institutions by ruthlessly cutting off its lowbrow prole base and even their middlebrow striver yuppies, and focusing entirely on controlling just a handful of the most elite universities. This is how they built their Cathedral, with well placed leverage, while every mass "great awakening" of religion in America amounted to absolutely nothing of cultural value in the long run.
Political campaigns accomplish nothing as far as the court system is concerned. Getting one's tribe a healthy representation at Harvard and Yale is what matters, and securing a notable share of the local population in New York and DC carries a lot of weight, too.
State universities and especially religious educational institutions ought to be shut down. Their graduates are obnoxious midwits who are just a generation behind the working class in degeneracy, but these schools still soak up too many talented conservatives who could have gone to the universities that actually matter.
Empathetic conservatives don't know when it's time to separate their kids capable of elite careers with the ones meant for menial work. They're both educated at a typical pace and thus their talent base never becomes competitive with the left's.
Change the elite opinion and the vulgar opinion will start to change a generation later. The masses will completely change their mind within only a decade, to pretty much any issue I can conceive.
Ted Cruz knows all of this, by the way. He's running a cynical campaign exploiting morally just people only for his benefit, while Trump correctly understands that the president is meant to be a strong figurehead who doesn't have much of any real power. Unless we're lucky and he changes that...
If Trump has been sitting on this that long, Hillary and the Democrat Party should start to sweat. Openly.
ReplyDeleteLook, Bernie's mostly hanging on in the race because he sees a chance that Hillary actually might get indicted and drop out. He's thrilled to spew his commie nonsense (paid for by the rich folks of VT and Soros)and push her left, but he can't be dumb enough to think she'd stick with it once elected...could he? He knows Clinton Triangulation, he's not a total fool.
So I think he's hanging on at this point because if Hillary gets indicted and drops out, he's the go-to guy. Not that Biden and others wouldn't push for a convention-chosen candidate, but Bernie thinks he has the best chance there.
But Bernie would be such easy pickings for Trump it isn't funny. If Trump (and Roger Stone, running his shadow campaign) was willing to wait until this moment to launch on Cruz...could Trump have an October surprise on Hillary that would move the needle on indictment?
Note that Trump wouldn't have to launch it to derail her nomination. Instead, he could wait until after she's nominated, after they've coalesced around her, and BAMN---release the info in September, force the indictment to come down, and then the Dems are left scrambling to find a candidate literally one month before election day. And Hillary faces jail.
Like I said, sweat openly.
Trump's ability to manipulate the media is amazing. He remains ten steps ahead of the competition. I have little doubt that someone from the Trump camp (maybe Roger Stone) passed this information on to the National Enquirer, just so he can make a sweep in the primaries in April. Something also tells me that these aren't the only five women Ted has had affairs with and Trump intends to torture the Cruz campaign moving forward with numerous scandals that will drag him down, cause his fundraising to dry up, and causes infighting amongst the GOPe who has inexplicably thrown their weight behind him.
ReplyDeleteIt's a good strategy to ensure he gets the 1237 delegates he needs.
So far the media has been silent about even the controversy.
ReplyDelete"So far the media has been silent about even the controversy."
ReplyDeleteOn Drudge, there's a link about Playboy magazine being up for sale -- do you notice what year it's from, and what two of the topics are on the cover? Matt Drudge, and the politics of oral sex.
Of all Playboy cover images, he chose one about the Lewinsky scandal that he (Drudge) broke. He knows what's up, and is just waiting for more thorough vetting and confirmation to come to light.
And Stacey Dash linked to the NE post on her Twitter account before anyone else did, on Wednesday night. She's on Fox News every now and then.
ReplyDeleteI disagree that Trump ignores the culture wars. Attacking PC speech is at the core of the culture wars. It is the most visible means by which cultural liberals and radicals have redefined normal ideas so that they are declared out of bounds. Trump understands that standing up to PC does more for all forms of conservatism than just being pro abortion or going to church.
ReplyDelete"Social conservatives have lost the culture wars in every generation because they try to communicate respectfully with the vulgar masses, who are only interested in sports and what the television tells them to think."
ReplyDeleteSports have become a middle-class and upper-middle class obsession. In general the culture wars are waged by the middle and upper classes, who compete against one another in moral status contests. They couldn't care less what blue-collar people think, and do not bother addressing them.
You're a perfect example of that mindset.
"The left seized the institutions by ruthlessly cutting off its lowbrow prole base and even their middlebrow striver yuppies, and focusing entirely on controlling just a handful of the most elite universities."
What do elite universities matter? They are the tail, not the dog. They are useful idiots who rationalize and cheerlead for whatever the truly wealthy and powerful people are up to.
How different would the world be where conservatives controlled the elite universities, but the economy and government were the same as today? You'd have fewer dipshit college students whining about Black Lives Matter, but otherwise society would look and feel the same.
"while every mass "great awakening" of religion in America amounted to absolutely nothing of cultural value in the long run."
The great social and cultural moderation of roughly 1920-1970 was the outcome of the Temperance movement, Progressive political movement, and labor union economic movement. That reversed the decadence, drunkenness, red light district atmosphere of the Gilded Age.
If you complain that this change was itself reversed since 1970, that's true -- but that will be reversed in its turn as well.
And the religious revivals do leave lasting effects -- the largest Protestant denominations are the outcomes of revivals, namely the Baptists and the Methodists. Outside Christianity, Mormonism is still a large religion (out West anyway), for better or worse. All of these churches persist, even during dark ages, and offer people something to plug into when they want to turn things around.
"Change the elite opinion and the vulgar opinion will start to change a generation later."
You're mistaking cause and effect. Both elite and common opinion change in response to changes in other aspects of society -- economic, political, etc. Elites may respond faster, but that doesn't mean that their change mechanistically causes the change in the common people, who merely take a little longer to respond -- independent and mostly unaware of what the upper-middle class is up to.
Thus, we need to change those underlying aspects of society, and that will bring both the elite and common people back into moderation. We don't just target the elite and wait for the commoners to imitate.
There's no evidence that common people imitate the elites -- in just about any domain. Language, clothing, grooming, dating-and-mating, work habits, child-rearing, and so on. Most of them wouldn't have ready role models from the upper-middle-class even if they did want to imitate them.
Charles Murray shows this in Coming Apart, where marriage, work, substance use, and family patterns have moderated among the elites since about 1980, after the turbulent '70s, whereas they've continued to worsen among the working class.
The fundamental change is the dismantling of the American economy, selling it for scrap overseas, bringing in immigrants to replace Americans, and gutting any government program that could stall or prevent such changes.
That's what the Trump movement is working to reverse, and once we do that, the social and cultural moderation will take care of itself, a la the 1950s coming after the Progressive era.
Drudge just took down the photo of the Playboy cover whose blurbs referred to both the Lewinsky scandal and Drudge's breaking of the story. This one:
ReplyDeletehttp://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/61EN1QDBLZL._SX258_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg
Underneath that item, he juxtaposed a link about Glenn Beck saying that "no true Christian" would vote for Trump.
He knows what's up, gave us a clear signal with both of those items, and is just waiting for it to go a little more mainstream before turning on the sirens.
The Katrina Pierson angle is the only piece that needs to be put in place. This is from what I've read so far; won't link since you can find it if needed.
ReplyDeleteBreitbart was going to run the story back in February, but editor Ben Shapiro killed it (he's an Establishment shill). While it was in limbo there, Katrina tweeted the would-be story-breaker (Allum Bokhari) asking eagerly what was taking so long for the big news about Cruz to be revealed.
She would not be eager if the rumor about her were true, and her reputation would be ruined. She was eager because she knew the rumor about her was false, but that it was true for several others in the Cruz camp.
She is the only one of the alleged mistresses quoted in the NE article -- denying the rumor that she and Cruz did anything, and blaming the rumor on "political hacks". None of the others are quoted to any effect.
This morning she tweets:
"What's worse? People who actually believe the trash in tabloids, or the ones who know it's false &spread it anyway? #stupidity on all levels"
Then she qualifies:
"Yes... and only speaking for myself, of course. :)"
She denies the allegations only for herself, implying that it could well be true for the others, and does so with a shit-eating grin for all to see.
This strongly suggests that she didn't actually do anything with Creepy Cruz, but that she knew what he was doing with the others. That was the invaluable info that she brought to the Trump campaign -- either she approached them and said, "Guess what I know? Want to hire me?" or they put out feelers for "Who knows something damning? Want to earn big bucks and be on TV?"
If Trump was really prepared, he could have sent in Katrina as a mole way back in 2013... although I doubt he sensed that Cruz would be a big threat back then. Probably she and the Trump team met last year.
If the NE is going forward and exposing themselves to massive libel damages if they're wrong, they have hard evidence. Author is the Pulitzer-winner for the John Edwards love child story.
And since Cruz wasn't a huge threat until recently, I'm guessing Katrina documented the proof while still somewhat on the inside. Snapping a camera pic here and there of Cruz and Carpenter snuggling up (article says they were seen getting cozy on the campaign trail -- by whom? Nobody was paying him any attention).
Maybe she got the proof before she joined the Trump team, so that she'd have something tangible to present them with. Or maybe she said she could get it if they wanted it, and they kept her working the inside for awhile until it was collected, and then she officially jumped ship once the re-con was done.
She just doesn't seem like the hypocritical trainwreck slut type like the crazy cult lady Carpenter. In pictures from her days with Cruz and now on TV, she looks basically upbeat and optimistic, more like a Sarah Palin type.
She joined the Cruz campaign with stars in her eyes, became quickly disillusioned with his hucksterism and selling out, and once the Trump phenomenon blew up, she had a real alternative to fight for.
Trump would probably not have taken her on, let alone promoted her as the face of the campaign, if she had in fact slept with Cruz -- then she'd be tainted, and the Trump team by association.
ReplyDeleteIt would limit his exposure to the chaos if she had not in fact slept with Cruz, and it would make for a better story. "No, she never slept with that creep -- she thought he was the anointed one, was quickly disillusioned, and came running to the genuine article before she became his next victim."
BTW, that makes an excellent motivational story for the Cruz followers to abandon him for Trump --
ReplyDelete"Katrina was once in your place, placing her faith in Cruz, until she woke up to the cold ugly truth about him, and then came running into the saving arms of the Trump team. Former Cruz supporters, we understand where you're coming from and feel your pain. There's still a place for you on the Trump train."
https://www.facebook.com/DonaldTrump/posts/10156829629555725
ReplyDeleteLMAO:
"Ted Cruz’s problem with the National Enquirer is his and his alone, and while they were right about O.J. Simpson, John Edwards, and many others, I certainly hope they are not right about Lyin’ Ted Cruz."
This could further the re-alignment I discussed in the post about trading Mormons for Michigan, where the Cultural Right defects to the Democratic Party, which becomes the party of identity politics and aggrieved minorities.
ReplyDeleteThe Cultural Right is already a minority, it's a cultural group, they feel persecuted, besieged, etc., and now their anointed one and his false prophets in the media are being brought down by SLUT SHAMING. "Seriously, are we really going to go there, in 2016, really?"
"What Ted Cruz does with pundit #1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 is none of the mainstream media's business. Denying political office to a serial adulterer threatens to bring Big Government into the private bedrooms of ordinary homewrecking Americans everywhere."
Megyn Kelly, Rachel Maddow, Kate Bolduan, and all other feminazis band together with the Democrats, who defend Cruz, Rubio, and Kasich against self-esteem-destroying allegations of being serial adulterers and faggots.
Rubio delivers a somber address to formally declare the split: "I didn't leave the foam party, the foam party left me."
I've been so engrossed in following all the updates on Twitter, Conservative Treehouse, etc., that I forgot to check good ol' Blind Gossip:
ReplyDeletehttp://blindgossip.com/?p=75482
They put up an item about Cruz, now solved, on Dec 14, 2015. That was well ahead of the supposed-to-be article at Breitbart in February 2016.
They said the woman they knew about in Dec. was a lobbyist who Cruz met as a Senator, and that the affair was "very recent". They also say she either does or does not look like Melania Trump. Hmm.
Amanda Carpenter is married with two school-aged children... I wonder what her husband is wondering about.
ReplyDeleteCuckedByCruzNowAConservadad
Corporate America and academia, the institutions that matter, can ignore social conservatives because they won't cut their human capital dead weight loose. The latter are stuck in marginal small businesses with no political power because they refuse to discriminate against the dullest members of the community.
ReplyDeleteThe simpletons predictably gravitate towards what the television says no matter how hard one drills them with dogma. They don't reciprocate any friendship with any members of their own families or faith groups. They look up to the elites and Hollywood, while the social conservatives ironically insist upon a fair play universal egalitarianism that doesn't hold up against modernity. I'm speaking from personal experience here when I say that the stupid Christians need to be written off as a loss before they pull everyone down.
How many supreme court justices or CEO's or college presidents do evangelical schools produce? How many positions could evangelicals win if they dumped their stupid prole schools and focused solely on getting into the only schools that matter for the culture in the long run? Think about it. It worked for the Jews...
It's worth noting that the smart Christians tend to be Orthodox or Catholic. The quirky individualistic Protestant denominations are filled with stupid Christians who invariably drift prole within a generation. They are an obsolete relic of rural America.
ReplyDelete"They are an obsolete relic of rural America."
DeleteHi Kevin Williamson!
Possibility for the Blind Gossip paramour is Andrea McWilliams. Just a possibility. BG, in their update, teases that the lobbyist paramour "looks a little like Melania, just kidding, maybe." McWilliams kind of does in the video of her as Cruz supporter in March discussing Melania (but in previous pictures, I didn't see the resemblance w/ Melania; perhaps BG didn't back when they posted that blind). She's from Austin, Texas (same as another alleged paramour in National Enquirer). Interestingly, Cruz's spokeswoman, Alice Stewart, distanced the Cruz campaign from McWilliams' harsh remarks; excepting Katrina Pierson, the alleged paramours have a history of being stridently anti-Trump, pro-Cruz. Seriously, they're like girlfriends running interference for their boyfriend (did they know about each other?)
ReplyDeleteHave no idea when she came into his orbit, her name doesn't pop up until March and apparently she only seemed to be there in her capacity as a powerful/society/political supporter.
She is married with kids and seems to be about same age as Cruz, 40s I'm guessing.
BG says they don't know if their lobbyist is one of the 3 powerful National Enquirer gals (other 2 being the teacher and a whore), so it may not do any good to see if she is one of the pixelated NE gals.
Could you clarify further what you believe is the difference between the "Cultural Right" and future grassroots spiritual revivals/efforts against degeneracy. Obvious what groups such as http://www.abortionno.org are not working, but why is your proposal different?
ReplyDeleteAnother question, why does Trump seem to support affirmative action? This is the only policy of his that I have an explicit problem with, or cannot defend on one level or another. How is it a "good deal" for less qualified people to gain positions, either in jobs or education, simply because they're black (or Hispanic)? It may sound "libertarian," but shouldn't one of our goals still be to restore freedom of association?
ReplyDeleteAnother sign that a Cruz affair was being pitched back in mid-December 2015. Iron Patriot Media actually scooped Blind Gossip by one day, on Twitter. He indicates that it was someone on team Rubio who was shopping the story around (to Fox News), exactly as sources are saying now after the NE article.
ReplyDeleteIron Patriot Media @Ipatriotmedia
A unidentified female Cruz staffer comes forward to admit affair with Senator Cruz says Senator used his position to seduce young staffer...
9:29 AM - 13 Dec 2015
Ted Cruz and his staff mobilized to extinguish story about his affair with young female staffer. who came forward to admit affair Fox News
9:34 AM - 13 Dec 2015
Report: Marco Rubio Advisor Pushed Cruz Affair Smear @Foxnews..
10:27 AM - 13 Dec 2015
Then an exchange, also on 12/13/2015:
Billy Benson @BillyBrute
Ted Cruz had an extra-marital affair with a staffer?
Iron Patriot Media @Ipatriotmedia
That seems to be the prevailing story going around there goes his chance at the Vice Presidency. He is certainly no JFK or BillC
Billy Benson @BillyBrute
all the great ones have affairs😜
That's a nice find!
DeleteBTW, it's incredibly noticeable how subdued the DC writers and pundits are on Twitter; this crowd, whether Left or Right, is very anti-Trump. This scandal transcends politics for them as it is affecting their friends, their friends' friends, etc.
This, btw, is why I think this scandal is largely free of Trump, particularly at the beginning and the pushing of it. He certainly could have been a pusher, but he didn't need to be and, frankly, I believe he wouldn't like this story very much for reasons having to do with both ego and self-preservation.
Trump is an outsider, from New York World. All these DC people have a huge leg up for who is vulnerable and where to even begin looking for a scandal.
*Colleague at your non-profit is suddenly more taciturn lately, she finally mentions her BF, who works at a think tank, seems too friendly with a certain House rep.
*You won't believe who I spotted smoking a joint out in public with some strange woman. Those newbie reps, their new power really goes to their heads!
*So and so's husband's routine has changed. Seems different, too, sadder. Everything okay in his marriage? I've heard things...
Watching Kirsten Powers on Fox News Sunday is very instructive. She KNOWS and can only stomach the Trump angle so much because he's so very incidental to this story that is personally impacting DC.
My husband commented by the way that George Will, subdued like all the rest, looked like he was about to start crying.
Pffft http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/ex-trump-insider-donald-doesn%E2%80%99t-want-to-be-president/ar-BBr2kwt?li=BBnbcA1&OCID=DELLDHP
ReplyDeleteI don't trust Trump, but I especially don't trust "The Cunt" or Sanders. However, 2016 is shaping up to be one of the most interesting Presidential voting cycles ever! Problems in the U.S. are so ludicrously far beyond any one candidates' ability to fix or even appear to fix by impotent Presidential Decree's, Legislation, or even Acts of God. The world has been silently bought up by corporations for the past 150 years. Global Water Rights to Nestle, Steel goes to Arcelor-Mittal, Aluminum to Alcoa, Farmable Land and the future of Agriculture to Adecoagro or Monsanto. This isn't a culture war, this is the economic and physical genocide of the entire human race. Our water is being polluted, our air is being polluted, or spirits are being polluted. And we're being sold yet another "immigrant crisis" and Muslim Jihadists recycled and repackaged from circa 1096–1099 A.D. and then again in 1122–1124 for the Venetian Crusades, and yet again in 1200 by Pope Innocent III, and yet again in 1420 to 1431 against the Ottomans ( ironically their descendants are "our" allies against ISIS. We've been fighting the same stupid motherfucking culture war for the past 1000 years to distract us from one inalienable fact. There are Kings and Emperors who want to own us, to break our collective spirits and wills to resist. You don't vote for Trump or Hilary, or Bernie. You vote for whoever owns them, your vote is so you feel less impotent to affect meaningful change in your life.
ReplyDeletesay again
ReplyDelete