Gonna have to sedate him like one of those bears that wanders too close to civilization.
Republican presidential candidate and (sigh) actual Senator Ted Cruz has been having another one of his frequent meltdowns
these last few days. This time it is over the Supreme Court decision affirming same-sex marriage, of course, and he's ready to tear down the Constitution itself if it means he'll be able to punish those meddling justices for their meddling ways. Lifetime appointments to the Supreme Court? Screw that, from now on let's say the justices
have to face nationwide re-election every eight years. Rule of law? Nonsense, state clerks should be able to
ignore the Supreme Court on this one if they believe their religion sez so. And we need a constitutional amendment overturning the Supreme Court decision and
returning it to the states. And from now on everyone needs to name their new dog Not Gay Marriage. When you consider letting two consenting adults enter into a marriage compact to be among
the darkest 24 hours in our nation's history, after all, rewriting the founding documents and engaging in a bit of good-old-fashioned nullification seems the very least we could do.
(Aside: This is not a man who responds well to supposed crisis, and I wonder if giving this fellow the nuclear football would, in the end, be prudent.)
So Cruz appeared on Today this morning to defend and explain all these various things about the nation that we need to change right-the-hell-now rather than letting two men or two women share the same legal rights afforded to, say, Rush Limbaugh and life partner of the moment. It did not go well, devolving into host Savannah Guthrie asking him to explain how this is any different from state officials refusing to marry interracial couples on "religious" grounds because that, too, was a thing until very recently, and Cruz saying it just was, because reasons.
"If a state clerk refused to issue a marriage license to an interracial couple, would you agree with that too?" she asked Cruz on Monday morning, noting that people who once objected to interracial marriage used religion to support their beliefs.
"There’s no religious backing for that," Cruz responded.
Sez you. They said there was, right up until the Supreme Court said
that wouldn't fly. Then he said that bigotry was wrong and that slavery was "grotesque and immoral," just to make those things clear, and otherwise refused to clarify why he thinks the one thing has valid "religious backing" and the other does not other than well-that's-just-how-things-are.
You would think he would have had a better prepared answer on this, given that he had just spent his Sunday with Fox News's Howard Kurtz discussing similar themes. There, he was asked to clarify his opinion that the media has only been asking him questions about his gay marriage stances/screeds/bills/amendments because they are "obsessed with sex."
He told Kurtz there’s a “trap” in politics that when Republicans get asked questions––especially about those aforementioned “sex” issues––the focus of the media reaction is “attack headlines.”
He clarified that of course he doesn’t have animosity towards gay people, he just didn’t want the media trying to distort his views.
Well, sure. Ted Cruz thinks we need multiple constitutional amendments to right the wrong of gay marriage, and that Supreme Court justices should now face elections rather than have the country put up with these things, and that clerks should ignore court orders if they have a deep religious belief that gay Americans are icky, but the one thing that would take all of this too far is for a reporter to ask Ted Cruz about any of these things. Why are these reporters all so obsessed with sex?