"Ted will be our next senator. And I gave Rafael a word the other day I said, 'This is just the beginning... He's going to become senator - and I believe some day either Supreme Court justice or vice president' " - Megachurch pastor Larry Huch, in prophesy given to Rafael Cruz (link to transcript) on August 26, 2012
Five Thirty Eight's Harry Enten
argues, probably correctly, that Ted Cruz' chances of winning the Republican Party's 2016 presidential nomination are very slim indeed; he's too politically extreme and too unpopular.
But what if Cruz isn't really after that nomination ?
More likely, he's after the VP pick. Just as Sarah Palin - Cruz' movement soulmate, did in 2008, Ted's just the guy to energize the GOP's conservative evangelical voter base in 2016. And beyond the VP slot, Ted Cruz can pop up in all sorts of unpleasant places if the Republican Party wins the presidency in 2016:
Consider Cruz as Attorney General. His legal acumen is widely acknowledged. Or, imagine Ted Cruz on the Supreme Court. And why not - he's been before the court many times, to argue important cases.
The problem with liberal mockery of Cruz isn't exactly that it's unwarranted. The problem is that such mockery tends to supplant real reporting and analysis, on Ted Cruz within his proper context - a crown prince of the dominionist Christian right.
There's shocking material on Cruz that needs to be before the general public, that hasn't yet gotten much notice but which might forestall Ted Cruz being installed in other top administration positions, in the event of a GOP win in 2016.
For example:
The general public has not yet seen the video footage from a 2013 ceremony in which Ted Cruz was blessed and anointed, with the laying-on of hands, by pastor David Lane - who has made calls for what sounded very much like a religious war, and by pseudo-historian David Barton - whom Cruz has heartily endorsed and who has claimed that the U.S. Constitution is based on principles derived from the Bible, including from the Old Testament books of Leviticus and Deuteronomy.
Barton, whose recent book on Thomas Jefferson was withdrawn by its publisher because of numerous inaccuracies, has also claimed that Jesus would have opposed the minimum wage: a sacralizing of inequality certain to warm the hearts of the Koch brothers, whose funding networks Ted Cruz has been given entree to.
And Ted Cruz, by his own account, has spoken many times before the shadowy, far-right Council For National Policy, arguably the religious right's top leadership council.
Cruz has also appeared many times onstage with the apostles and prophets (such as Bishop Harry Jackson, Jr., and Jim Garlow) of the dominionist, virulently anti-LGBT New Apostolic Reformation movement that, as it was confirmed in a 2011 NPR interview, helped give America Sarah Palin.
During the 2008 election, a video surfaced showing a 2005 church ceremony in which Sarah Palin was blessed and anointed, with the laying on of hands, by a Kenyan pastor who called upon God to protect Palin against witchcraft, and to supernaturally advance her political career.
Media and the left mocked that too, focusing on the witchcraft bit.
But prior to the anointing ceremony, that Kenyan pastor, Thomas Muthee, gave a short speech in which he called upon believers to "invade" and "infiltrate" seven major sectors of society including government.
Those seven sectors - government, business, media, arts and entertainment, religion, and the family, are known within the NAR movement as the "Seven Mountains", a motivational mantra for the Christian Dominionist movement.
The anti-democratic idea that "believers" must "inflitrate", that they must engage in deception to attain positions of influence and power atop those "mountains", now permeates the American religious right.
The issue of dominionism surfaced briefly in 2011, within the context of the presidential aspirations of two other Republicans with ties to the dominionist movement, Rick Perry and Michele Bachmann.
But Ted Cruz' own father has promoted dominionism too. Will the media take notice ?
In 2012, shortly after Ted Cruz' upset victory that won him a U.S. Senate seat, Cruz' father Rafael Cruz made an appearance at the Irving, TX New Beginnings megachurch of Larry Huch (link to video and transcript.)
Introducing Rafael Cruz, Huch told his flock that Ted Cruz had been elected to the senate in order to implement "divine government". Rafael Cruz then took the stage and told his audience,
Praise God. What a blessing. The pastor referred to Proverbs 24:13, a little while ago, which says that the wealth of the wicked is stored for the righteous. And it is through the Kings, anointed to take dominion, that that transfer of wealth is going to occur.
God, even though he's sovereign, even though he's omnipotent - he doesn't just let it rain out of the sky; he's gonna use people to do it.
There are some of you, as a matter of fact I will dare to say the majority of you, that your anointing is not an anointing as priests. It's an anointing as kings. And God has given you an anointing to go to the battlefield.
And what's the battlefield ? The battlefield is the market place. To go to the marketplace
and occupy the land. To go to the marketplace and take dominion.
If you remember, the last time I was on this pulpit I talked to you about Genesis chapter 1 verse 28, where God says unto Adam and Eve, "go forth, multiply, take dominion over all creation."
And if you will recall, we talked about the fact that that dominion is not just in the Church. That dominion is over every area: society, education, government, economics."
Rafael Cruz went on to repeatedly hammer home the point that kings were anointed by priests to go into battle and then bring the spoils of war home to the priests:
"But there is a second anointing... Kings who are anointed to take dominion. Kings who are anointed to go to war, win the war, and bring the spoils of war to the priests, so the work of the kingdom of God could be accomplished.
[...]
And they were successful in battle because God went with them. Now, the priest also needed for the king to be successful in battle. Because the priest needed the spoils of war in order to repair the temple, in order to carry out the ministry that God had entrusted him. So the king and the priests complemented each other. And they were both very, very interested in blessing one another."
Taking the stage next was Larry Huch, who prophesied to his audience that one day Ted Cruz - who from the context was clearly presented as one of the anointed "kings" who would one day bring back the "spoils" of war and so help bring about the "great wealth transfer" - would one day become either Vice President of the United States or a US Supreme Court Justice:
"I gave Rafael a word the other day I said, "This is just the beginning. It's going to be much, much, much higher.... He's going to become senator - and I believe some day either Supreme Court justice or vice president"