{"id":104940,"date":"2023-06-08T17:05:34","date_gmt":"2023-06-08T15:05:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/?p=104940"},"modified":"2023-06-08T08:15:37","modified_gmt":"2023-06-08T06:15:37","slug":"15-05-89","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/?p=104940","title":{"rendered":"America\u2019s Most Israeli Politician"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>America\u2019s Most Israeli Politician<\/a><\/strong><\/span><\/h5>\n

LIEL LEIBOVITZ<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

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I like Ted Cruz. Why?<\/strong><\/span><\/h4>\n

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\nSTEPHEN VOSS<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

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Earlier this year, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas was called to testify before the Senate\u2019s Judiciary Committee. Ted Cruz, a member of the committee, was there to greet him.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Cruz: Good morning, Secretary Mayorkas.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Mayorkas: Good morning.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Cruz: Is there a crisis at our southern border?<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Mayorkas: There\u2019s a very significant challenge\u2026<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Cruz: That\u2019s a yes or no question. Is there a crisis?<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Mayorkas, looking a bit like a man who\u2019d just returned home to find his significant other mid-tryst with a paramour, tilted his head and adjusted his microphone before responding.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Mayorkas: Senator, there\u2019s a very significant, there is a very significant challenge that we are facing.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Cruz: Yes or no. Is there a crisis?<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Mayorkas: I believe I\u2019ve addressed that question.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Cruz: So you\u2019re refusing to answer.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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It was all downhill from there. Cruz, perched over his desk like a peregrine falcon, confronted Mayorkas with a large poster featuring the testimony of Raul Ortiz, President Biden\u2019s Chief of Border Patrol, who, last summer, answered the very same question Cruz was posing in the affirmative. The senator pushed the secretary with more barbed inquiries. Sitting erect and visibly uncomfortable, the secretary dodged each one.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Cruz: How many migrants died in 2022?<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Mayorkas: Approaching our southern border?<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Cruz: Yes.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Mayorkas: Precisely why we are seeking to exclude the smuggling organizations.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Cruz: Do you know the answer? Do you know how many died?<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Mayorkas: I do not.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Cruz: You do not? Of course you don\u2019t. I know how many died. 853\u2026 You don\u2019t even know how many have died! What do you say to the Texas farmers and ranchers who find pregnant ladies dead on their property, who find toddlers dead on their property? What do you say to them?<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The secretary tried to respond, but the senator cut him off again and again. Cruz asked how many criminals were able to sneak through the porous border, and how many civilians, Mexican and American alike, were hurt by the gangs that have made the border their base of operations. It went on for more than ten minutes, and when time was up, Cruz didn\u2019t bother masking his contempt.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Cruz: Mr. Secretary, I want to say to you right now your behavior is disgraceful. And the deaths, the children assaulted, the children raped, they are at your feet. And if you had integrity, you would resign. And I will tell you, the men and women of the Border Patrol, they\u2019ve never had a political leader undermine them. They despise you, Mr. Secretary, because you\u2019re willing to let children be raped to follow political orders. This is a crisis. It\u2019s a disgrace. And you won\u2019t even admit this human tragedy is a crisis.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The committee\u2019s chairman offered Mayorkas one minute to respond, but the secretary refused.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Mayorkas: What the senator said was revolting. I\u2019m not going to address it.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Cruz: Your refusal to do your job is revolting.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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It was like a courtroom scene by Aaron Sorkin, but the media reporting on the incident left little room for doubt as to which of the two men was the nefarious Colonel Jessup and who the valiant Lieutenant Kaffee. \u201cTed Cruz erupts\u201d reported Newsweek<\/em><\/a>, while the senator\u2019s own hometown paper, the Houston Chronicle<\/em>, accused him of shouting down<\/a> the secretary and Salon <\/em>alerted<\/a> its readers that the senator was \u201cslammed for \u2018revolting\u2019 hearing claim.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Watching the exchange, I saw something different. Maybe it was the adversarial body language. Maybe it was the verbal throwdown, and the pleasure he seemed to take in sparring in front of the cameras. Maybe it was his anger, which felt real and profound. Whatever it was, at that moment Ted Cruz looked and sounded to me like America\u2019s most Israeli politician.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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There is, of course, the unmistakably Israeli bombast\u2014which some find refreshing, but many others, including Republicans, find highly unlikeable, or even repellent. In 2016, when fellow Republican John Boehner called Cruz \u201cLucifer in the flesh,\u201d a spokesman for The Satanic Temple quickly released a statement<\/a> saying that the group wanted \u201cnothing to do\u201d with the senator. In 2018, Cruz defeated his opponent, Beto O\u2019Rourke, by only about 215,000 votes, the narrowest margin Texas has seen in three decades. In 2021, a New York Times <\/em>profile was titled \u201cHow Ted Cruz Became the Least Sympathetic Politician in America\u201d\u2014a headline that turned no heads because it simply stated what many people already thought.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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With the 2024 election upon us, the MAGA crowd is cheering for the second coming of its demon emperor, the Marauder of Mar-a-lago. The \u201cintellectual right\u201d (increasingly conflated with the \u201cvery online right\u201d) is hailing Ron DeSantis as Trump with a better brain. Team Haley waxes poetic about civility and a return to basics. There is no competing choir of sycophants lamenting Cruz\u2019s apparent decision to sit out presidential politics this time and focus instead on \u201ckeeping Texas red.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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But there is also a deeper level on which Cruz calls to mind political actors from the Jewish state, most recently but not only in that exchange with Mayorkas. When Trump talks about the border, his signature issue, it\u2019s usually in hollow and inflamed propositions, saying things like Build the Wall or complaining that America is flooded by bad hombres. When DeSantis talks about the border, he sounds like he\u2019s firing straight out of the think tank, issuing proposals like Florida\u2019s Senate Bill 1718 that would require employers to use special software to verify the eligibility of employees and impose fines on those who fail to comply. You can argue about the efficacy of such proposals, but read it\u2014or any other statement by DeSantis\u2014and you won\u2019t find much by way of moral outrage, because the Florida governor is an instrumentalist who sees nothing but problems calling out for solutions, which requires little more than his hand on the levers of power. Nor will you find much moral outrage in Trump, a man who strikes even his most ardent supporters as a cynical nihilist who may occasionally wage and win the right fights but rarely, if ever, for the right reasons.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Not so Cruz. Clashing with Mayorkas, he was not only tossing around facts and figures about the border with a debater\u2019s\u2014or a trial lawyer\u2019s\u2014command. He seemed genuinely incensed by what he viewed as a moral wrong<\/em>: The laws being ignored, America\u2019s sovereignty and security being compromised, and, most important, throngs of innocents suffering as a result of bad policies. His wasn\u2019t the rage politicians manufacture when they\u2019re mugging for the cameras. His was the sort of rage you see in church, or shul, or wherever good and evil are still earnestly discussed. Because Cruz\u2019s vision of America\u2019s future isn\u2019t merely a set of arguments about policies and prescriptions. It\u2019s rooted in a sense of calling from on high, the belief that the nation was divinely chosen to shine a light unto the nations, a singular and sacred mission that makes each failure feel that much more searing and urgent.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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It\u2019s easy to miss it, especially if you don\u2019t have the benefit of being an immigrant and growing up with a radically different political framework, but Ted Cruz is practicing a different kind of politics, and\u2014like it or hate it\u2014it\u2019s an interesting departure from the modus vivendi that got us into this gridlock. As you might\u2019ve noticed, political assent in America no longer conforms to old ideas about political norms, personal likability, or partisan fealty. The Roman-like Caesar who can employ personal magnetism to seduce the masses and flights of intellectual oratory to impress the elites is extinct in America. There is more room now for an Old Testament figure\u2014the castigated believer who lives alone with his vision for years in the wilderness before it\u2019s his time. Perhaps there is space, in other words, for a kind of politician that still strikes many Americans as weird, even annoying, but which Israelis understand and sympathize with instinctively\u2014the covenantal kind.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Try not to laugh\u2014but that, my friends, is Ted Cruz.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Cruz\u2019s political faith was forged at the knee of his father, Rafael. The elder Cruz was born in Matanzas, a shore town about 50 miles east of Havana. The name means \u201cmassacre,\u201d a testament to a 1510 rebellion involving local fishermen drowning Spanish conquistadors in the bay, and the spirit of uprising was alive and well in Cruz senior. As a teenaged boy in the late 1950s, he was militating against the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista. He was a follower of Fidel Castro along with Che Guevara\u2014 the future dorm room icon of the third worldist politics that Ted Cruz would spend his days skewering on Twitter, the elitist social media website to which the Senator is firmly addicted.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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After a brief stint in jail, Rafael Cruz managed to obtain a student visa to study at the University of Texas. He came to America with $100 sewn into his underwear. He learned English from going to movies, which he could afford only by taking a string of dishwashing jobs. He also spoke passionately at every Rotary and Kiwanis club that would have him, convincing his new friends and neighbors to lend their ears and dollars to the Revoluci\u00f3n. Later, he would make a point of revisiting all these same venues and apologizing, admitting that Castro\u2019s regime was a hideous tyranny. The only way to oppose it, he now preached, was through faith and freedom, the twin pillars on which the United States of America was erected.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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And not just the United States. Ted Cruz says he was kneeling in front of his TV set at the age of five when he saw the first reports of a daring raid halfway across the world: Israeli commandos had landed in Entebbe, Uganda, rescued 102 out of 106 civilians taken hostage by Palestinian and German terrorists, and eliminated all seven hijackers as well as more than 100 Ugandan soldiers assisting them before safely returning to Israel. The memory of the news bulletins he saw that day would stay with him for the rest of his life.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cTo me, and this is a five-year-old looking at it, what the Entebbe raid told me about Israel was that you may take Israeli citizens hostage, and if you do, those Israelis may lose their lives, but you\u2019re gonna die,\u201d the senator told me as we rolled down the highway together in the back of a pick-up truck on a recent Sunday in his home state. \u201cAnd to me, that was a very Texas foreign policy.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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As he grew up, Cruz maintained his passion for policy, conviction, and the ways they interact. He graduated from Princeton and Harvard Law School\u2014both times Magna Cum Laude\u2014and took off a few clerkship positions, including with Chief justice William Rehnquist. In private practice, he was involved in preparing the case for Bill Clinton\u2019s impeachment, and in the aftermath of the shambolic 2000 election, he helped assemble the Republican team to argue Bush v. Gore, for which he was rewarded with a handful of administration positions. In 2003, he became Texas\u2019s Solicitor General, and made national headlines for appearing before the Supreme Court and successfully defending the constitutionality of a monument depicting the Ten Commandments on the grounds of the state capitol.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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He had a similar high profile case in 2004, this time arguing against a challenge to the Pledge of Allegiance. Then, in 2012, after another stint in private practice, he ran as the Tea Party\u2019s candidate in the Republican Party\u2019s primaries, and won. The Washington Post<\/em> called<\/a> his accomplishment \u201cthe biggest upset of 2012,\u201d and Cruz had no problem crushing his Democratic opponent in the general elections. His decade of service in the Senate won him no friends, with most of his party\u2019s senior leaders repeatedly criticizing his language and legislative proposals alike as being beyond the pale of politics as usual, most notably his enthusiastic championing of the 2013 Federal government shutdown. He made a strong showing in his 2016 bid for president, but was bested by Trump and chose to cooperate with the president despite being the target of some of Trump\u2019s most rank insults. In 2021, he was among the leaders of the effort to delay the electoral vote on January 6 to allow Republican lawmakers in six states more time to contest Biden\u2019s election following allegations of voting fraud. When a pro-Trump gaggle stormed the Capitol, Cruz issued repeated condemnations, but has since emerged as a staunch voice for arguing that the FBI and the Department of Justice are applying what he called<\/a> \u201cwildly disparate standards\u201d in handling the January 6 culprits as opposed to rioting members of Antifa and Black Lives Matter.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Ted Cruz is practicing a different kind of politics, and\u2014like it or hate it\u2014it\u2019s an interesting departure from the modus vivendi that got us into this gridlock<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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At some point in this long and storied career, Cruz became best-known, and derided by Congressional colleagues in both parties, as an obnoxious know-it-all who believes he was chosen by God for some mission\u2014which isn\u2019t wrong.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cThere are two nations and only two nations on earth that were formed as havens for those fleeing persecution and seeking freedom,\u201d Cruz told me. \u201cAmerica and Israel. Israel\u2019s very existence, the modern state of Israel was formed so that Jews across the globe would have a place to which they could go, to flee if need be the horrific scourge of antisemitism that has cursed history for millennia, to flee the immediate atrocity of the Holocaust. And, like Israel, America was also founded by people fleeing religious oppression, fleeing those that would not allow them to live according to their faith, according to their conscience. And we came to a new land where our nation was founded on the proposition that Jefferson famously penned: \u2018We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.\u2019 Those are extraordinary words. Those were revolutionary words, and only America and Israel embody that promise.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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When Cruz speaks like this, it is easy to hear his father talking. Speaking in Washington, D.C. in 2014 after being introduced by his famous son, Rafael Cruz thundered that America\u2019s future is intertwined with its faith, and that, just like ancient Israel, it will rise or fall only if it is wise to tether its policies to its religious beliefs.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cWhen Judea had a righteous king or Israel had a righteous king, the whole country followed the Lord,\u201d he said. \u201cWhen Israel or Judea had a wicked king, the whole country went to idolatry. As the government went, so went the people\u2026 I think we cannot separate politics and religion; they are interrelated. They\u2019ve always been interrelated.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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It\u2019s a worldview that clarifies the bitter acrimony between Cruz, his colleagues, and his opponents. Instrumentalist conservative politicians who believe they can be crafty and cold-blooded enough to transform or outmaneuver Washington politics\u2014a gelatinous blob where federal bureaucrats, tech companies, corporate and industry lobbies, and other interested parties melt into each other for the benefit of the few and the frustration of the many\u2014usually don\u2019t last for very long or make much of an impression. A Republican who wants not only to win elections but also to positively transform American politics, Cruz believes, needs to be covenantal\u2014the way Reagan was.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Just what does Cruz mean by covenantal, a term that ordinarily has no concrete political meaning? The concept, like all deeply held beliefs, is intricate, but it comes back to the idea that a nation might–or could–or does–exist in a covenantal relationship with God, an idea that he also applies to the United States. If you believe, like woke progressives do, that America is steeped in the Original Sin of slavery and can only redeem itself by prostrating before the rest of the planet; or if you believe, like Curtis Yarvin, the influential blogger who is a Machiavelli for the MAGA crowd, that the only way to cure America of its ills is to erect a European-style monarchy stateside; or if the idea of a covenant between God and particular nations and peoples (and not others) strikes you as a thinly disguised form of murderous ethnic exceptionalism, you likely think of Cruz as either a hypocrite or a dangerous lunatic, and probably as some mixture of both.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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But if, on the other hand, you\u2019re not a political player but merely a normal American voter\u2014like, say, the 4.2 million Texans who handed Cruz his reelection in 2018\u2014Cruz\u2019s covenantalism is a major draw, a foundational pillar of a belief system that reaffirms the Founding Fathers\u2019 convictions and sees America as a special place. And covenants, unlike contracts, aren\u2019t a one-and-done deal; they have to be reaffirmed every century or so, and no reaffirmation is like the other. Americans entered the covenant when they fought for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. They renewed it again about 100 years later when they waged civil war so that all, and not some, may be free, and then again a century hence to finish the sacred work of civil rights. If you believe it\u2019s time to step up and renew the covenant\u2014not only assert a set of narrowly held ideological convictions, but once again charge America with the mighty spiritual current that shocked it into birth and kept the city on the hill illuminated, Ted Cruz promises something much more precious than winning at politics\u2014he promises a very different politics.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Menachem Begin, Ariel Sharon, Rechavam Ze\u2019evi, Yitzchak Rabin\u2014these men weren\u2019t \u201cpoliticians\u201d in any way that corresponds with the contemporary American understanding of this term. They didn\u2019t enter the public arena only because they were obsessed by power, nor did they have clear ideological convictions that mapped onto obvious partisan divides. These (largely secular) men had something else, though: an almost mystical belief in their country\u2019s covenantal destiny, and an understanding of themselves as custodians of a special national mission handed down from history, or tradition, or God. Their job wasn\u2019t just to win elections, as they saw it, but to implement a vision determined by a higher authority\u2014meaning if they had to first spend decades as figures of ridicule and hatred before achieving their goal, that was just fine. Begin, leader of the hard-core Irgun and enemy of David Ben-Gurion, emerged after decades in opposition to lead the 1979 peace treaty with Egypt and Israeli withdrawal from the Sinai. Rabin, forced to resign in disgrace in 1977 after he was implicated in a personal financial scandal, emerged 15 years later as the unlikely herald of talks with the Palestinians that came closer than any before or since to establishing peace. Sharon, also forced to resign in disgrace in 1983 after he was implicated in Begin\u2019s disastrous Lebanon war, emerged 18 years later as the unlikely leader of the Israeli withdrawal and disengagement from Gaza.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

STEPHEN VOSS<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

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These unlikely turns of history can easily strike an observer as the work of some higher power, which is precisely what Cruz believes about much of American history. \u201cI do believe God\u2019s providential hand has been on America from our founding,\u201d he told me. \u201cJust look at the extraordinary assemblage of geniuses who came together in America\u2019s founding to author our Constitution and lead our government.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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This worldview, he told me as we were making our way to church on a Sunday morning, is why he views Israel as a religious question. And he believes, he added, that his Democratic opponents do, too.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cIt\u2019s a morality play,\u201d he says, of the current Administration\u2019s policy approaches to the Jewish State. \u201cThey live in the war of good guys and bad guys in their world. And it\u2019s bizarro land. The good guys are the people who hate America. The bad guys are the people who like America. When the radical left looks at Israel, they see the Iranian as good guys and the Israelis as bad guys and all of their policy decisions flow from that worldview. What do they want to see? They want to see a Palestinian Jerusalem. What do they want to see? They want to see Israel cease to be a Jewish state because its existence as a Jewish state is noxious to them.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cMind you,\u201d he continues, \u201cthey don\u2019t care about the human rights abuses of Iran. They don\u2019t care about the human rights abuses of China. They don\u2019t care about the human rights abuses of Russia. But Israel, the only Jewish state on the face of the planet? That is worthy of American taxpayers paying to fund racist NGOs to try to undermine it.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

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On at least one occasion, Cruz watched giddily as these conflicting worldviews were embodied on the steps of the Knesset. In 2014, a year after assuming office, he traveled to Israel and was scheduled to spend time with then prime minister Bibi Netanyahu. The day before the meeting, Barack Obama\u2019s ambassador to Israel, Dan Shapiro, called to say that he would like to join the meeting. Cruz refused. The trip, he said, was a private one, and the meeting was a private meeting, and the ambassador wasn\u2019t invited. Shapiro threatened to pull security; Cruz laughed and said he could hire his own private guards, and, besides, that he didn\u2019t believe for a moment that the Obama administration was foolish enough to risk a U.S. Senator being in a significant security incident. He was calling Shapiro\u2019s bluff.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cWe were literally bumping chests,\u201d Cruz says, \u201clike junior high kids. He backed out the next day.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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It\u2019s a story that would please those on both parties who understand American politics as a contact sport, and understand Cruz as a GOP attack dog. And yet, later the same year, Cruz showed a radically different side: He had filed an amendment to restore American funding for Israel\u2019s Iron Dome defense system, and worked vigorously to secure bipartisan support.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cAt that point,\u201d he says, \u201cHarry Reid, then the Senate majority leader, made an extraordinary demand. One that I\u2019ve never before or since seen in the Senate. Reed told me, Ted, your amendment will pass into law, but only if you pull your name off of it and make it no longer your amendment. And only if you give it to Michael Bennett, a Democrat from Colorado, who\u2019s up for reelection, so that he can claim it\u2019s his amendment, word for word, the amendment you drafted. If he can submit it as his amendment, we\u2019ll pass it in the law. I\u2019ve never before or since seen that happen in the Senate, but my objective was the substance, not worrying about who gets credit for it. So I said, great. If it\u2019ll pass, give it to Bennett. I don\u2019t know of another thing he\u2019s done in the Senate, so he can pass my amendment if that\u2019s what he wants to do. And that\u2019s what happened.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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After church at Houston\u2019s First Baptist, Cruz and I grab a cup of coffee and go shooting. It\u2019s a pursuit that Cruz both enjoys and is good at, still an advantage for anyone seeking office in Texas. This is true even\u2014or especially\u2014after the recent law enforcement failure in the small Texas town of Uvalde, when over a dozen armed policemen waited outside a school for an hour while a lone killer methodically murdered at least 19 schoolchildren and two teachers inside.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Like Israel, Cruz\u2019s understanding of the issue of guns is providential: <\/strong>The Second Amendment is part of the foundational pact that created the American people, which is the Constitution of the United States. Attempts to replace that foundational pact with ever-changing up-to-date notions of \u201cthe common good,\u201d or to suggest that the Constitution is only a bunch of words written on paper by fallible men (including slaveholders), areprofoundly mistaken.  Where the state\u2019s senior Senator, John Cornyn, made himself a pivotal figure in a so-called \u201cgun control\u201d compromise in the Senate that watered down some second amendment protections, Cruz took the opposite tack, putting forward a bill that would strengthen the ability of schools to protect students by responding forcefully to armed intruders. Which presumes, of course, the ability of responders to shoot back.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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More than anything else, Saddle River, Houston\u2019s fanciest shooting range, resembles an upscale California wine store, only instead of pinots and cabs the wares on offer are Rugers and Glocks and every form of weapon or accessory you could possibly desire. Friday is date night at the in-house Caf\u00e9 2A, kids are welcome, and the friendly staff emit nothing of the typical short-tempered ruggedness you usually find in establishments like these.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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We walk past the display and over to the back, where golden letters announce that we\u2019re about to enter Club Crocket. Inside are leather sofas, personalized mahogany lockers, and all the other attributes of an upscale private club. But the senator is not here to socialize; he\u2019s here to enjoy the arsenal in the small hardback case one of his aides just carried into the shooting lane.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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He asks me which I\u2019d like to shoot first. My eyes rest on a .357 revolver, which, when fired, makes you feel, in slow-motion, every step of the bullet\u2019s journey from drum to target. It\u2019s the gun he\u2019d bought his wife Heidi, the senator tells me; with no safety or additional complications, it\u2019s a simple point-and-shoot, perfect for home defense and less experienced operators.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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As I toy around with the revolver, taking pleasure in what still feels like the equivalent of putting on a vinyl record in a world increasingly dominated by hi-tech streaming music devices, the senator picks up an M4 carbine with a suppressor and a green laser sight. When you hold a semi-automatic, and you\u2019ve watched a few action movies, you\u2019re always tempted to just flip that switch and let it rip, channeling your inner Chuck Norris for a few seconds, shooting from the hip and grooving along with the barrel. But the senator doesn\u2019t lose discipline; he takes his time, aims, readjusts the rifle against his shoulder, squeezes the trigger. A minute or two later, he pushes the button to retrieve the targets and inspect his efforts: Tight little batches, half an inch or so up and to the left of dead center, a neat feat of shooting.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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We sweep the floor of the spent casings, and are just about ready to leave\u2014we\u2019ve been here for nearly an hour, and the protective gear we\u2019re wearing is getting hot and tight. But the senator wants me to try out one more firearm: it\u2019s his pride and joy, a 9mm made for him by the Texas-based gun maker Staccato. It\u2019s a limited edition, with the senator\u2019s name and the American flag engraved into the metallic surface. I\u2019ve been shooting guns for nearly 40 years now, but when I take the Staccato I quickly realize it\u2019s like nothing else I\u2019ve ever fired, a smooth and flat machine that all but eliminates the annoying bits of handling handguns, like muzzle rise, and makes you feel like you\u2019re on board the Millennium Falcon, shooting Han Solo\u2019s blaster rather than a piece of equipment designed according to principles that remain largely unchanged for more than a century.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The analogy entertains the senator, a big sci-fi nerd whose literary diet growing up consisted largely of Tolkien, Asimov, and Heinlein. In part, it\u2019s because his understanding of American politics remains deeply informed by the double helix of our modern American mythology, Star Wars<\/em> and Star Trek<\/em>. In a 2015 interview, he told a mildly hostile New York Times <\/em>reporter that James Tiberius Kirk, the original captain of the Enterprise, was a Republican, while Jean-Luc Picard, his successor on Star Trek: The Next Generation<\/em>, was a Democrat.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cLet me do a little psychoanalysis,\u201d he said. \u201cIf you look at \u2018Star Trek: The Next Generation,\u2019 it basically split James T. Kirk into two people. Picard was Kirk\u2019s rational side, and William Riker was his passionate side. I prefer a complete captain. To be effective, you need both heart and mind\u2026 The original \u2018Star Trek\u2019 was grittier. Kirk is working class; Picard is an aristocrat. Kirk is a passionate fighter for justice; Picard is a cerebral philosopher. The original \u2018Star Trek\u2019 pressed for racial equality, which was one of its best characteristics, but it did so without sermonizing.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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This move\u2014weaving together contemporary politics and pop culture detritus to create a bigger theory of everything\u2014is another Cruz specialty, which parallels and at times exceeds his embrace of religion. Last year, when Disney fired the actress Gina Carano from its hit Star Wars<\/em> show The Mandalorian<\/em> after she expressed conservative views on social media, the senator came to her defense.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cTexan Gina Carano broke barriers in the Star Wars universe,\u201d Cruz tweeted. \u201cNot a princess, not a victim, not some emotionally tortured Jedi. She played a woman who kicked ass & who girls looked up to. She was instrumental in making Star Wars fun again. Of course Disney canceled her.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Cruz\u2019s critics were enraged. Daisy Ridley herself, the Star Wars<\/em>\u2019 franchise latest heroine, felt compelled to jump into the political fray and warn the conservative interloper to stay in his lane and keep out of cultural fields that no longer welcome his kind. But Cruz doesn\u2019t care. Unlike many of his colleagues on the GOP, for whom America is now starkly divided into the woke and the biased, two warring tribes, each with its brands and heroes and elected affinities, Cruz keeps saying that he believes in a shared America. He believes, too,in the possibility of coming together, and in the ability of rational, informed debate to sway opinions and perceptions.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cI tell my staff so much, they\u2019re sick of hearing it already,\u201d he says as we climb back into the truck and begin the long drive home to Houston. He doesn\u2019t even have to finish the sentence. His aides in the front seat do it for him. \u201cHearts and minds,\u201d they say, almost in unison, freely rolling their eyes.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cHearts and minds,\u201d the senator repeats, smiling. \u201cRepublicans and conservatives spend far too much time preaching to the choir, talking to the same 2.6 million people watching Fox News. We need to spend a lot more time talking to young people, to Hispanics, to African Americans, to suburban moms.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Anyone who thinks this is all just bluster was treated to a surprising display earlier this month when Cruz came out\u2014full-throatedly<\/a>\u2014against Uganda\u2019s punitive anti-gay bill, calling it \u201chorrific and wrong\u201d and stating that \u201call civilized nations should join together in condemning this human rights abuse.\u201d The statement won Cruz no favors from his detractors\u2014MSNBC\u2019s headline simply read \u201cTed Cruz Cleared the lowest bar possible for LGBTQ rights\u201d\u2014but Cruz wasn\u2019t in it for the applause. When Tom Ascol, a prominent Florida pastor, challenged the senator on Twitter for calling what Ascol referred to as God\u2019s law\u2014citing the Old Testament prohibition on homosexual sex between two men\u2014Cruz responded forcefully.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cJesus told us to \u2018render to Caesar the things that are Caesar\u2019s, and to God the things that are God\u2019s.\u2019 We are talking the laws of man, not the Old Testament laws of God. Do you really believe that the US govt should execute every person who is gay??\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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He was just getting started. Leviticus, he continued, also prohibited disrespecting one\u2019s parents. \u201cShould the govt execute every child who\u2019s disrespectful to his parents?\u201d he tweeted at Ascol. \u201cThat ignores Grace & the New Testament. As our Savior taught us, \u2018let he that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.\u2019\u201d The exchange led to more rancor from conservatives online, who took Cruz to task for what they saw as taking the wrong side in the culture war. Figures like Lauren Witzke, who ran as the GOP\u2019s candidate for Senate in Delaware in 2020 and remains a prominent far-right pundit, tweeted<\/a> at the senator, arguing that the more people identify as LGBTQ, the higher suicide rates surge. \u201cGet real, Ted,\u201d she wrote. \u201cBe a man and focus on being a father, and stay out of our way as we try to save this country.\u201d Cruz didn\u2019t budge.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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It\u2019s now late in the afternoon, and the senator is winding down. He is still speaking in full paragraphs as he details his efforts to stop Nord Stream 2\u2014the massive natural gas pipeline from Russia to Germany that is a main source of financing for Vladimir Putin\u2014but he\u2019s slower now, and there\u2019s much yet to do in the day. His oldest daughter needs to be driven to her soccer practice, and then it\u2019s back to D.C., where his presence is required at an early morning meeting, which means missing the Sunday evening basketball game that is his chief source of relaxation.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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But I\u2019m struggling with something. The Israeli giants I\u2019m used to back home didn\u2019t go to fancy colleges. They didn\u2019t send their kids to tawny schools. They took pleasure in shunning anything and anyone that smacked of elitism, which is why Ariel Sharon lived on a farm and Rechavam Ze\u2019evi, even as minister, refused any measure of secret service protection, a decision that eventually cost him his life\u2014he was assassinated by Palestinian terrorists outside his Jerusalem hotel room in 2001. And here was Ted Cruz, who reminded me so much of these men in so many ways, yet was also very much a recognizable member of the meritocracy. So I decide to pounce.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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It\u2019s funny, I say to him, you keep going on about how universities are centers of left-wing indoctrination, yet you wear your Princeton class ring and I know for a fact you haven\u2019t missed a single big reunion. You\u2019re Mr. Right-Wing Populism, but you send your kids to a progressive elite private school. Your father, who is not only your hero but also a frequent campaign surrogate, keeps saying that you didn\u2019t go to Washington to compromise, and here you are talking about bipartisanship. If you truly believe the Democrats are so brain-washed and the left is so bad and that everything they touch, from academia to Hollywood, is irredeemably corrupt, why not blow it all up? Why not tell Princeton where to put its class rings, and start planning  for a national divorce?<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cNever,\u201d Cruz responds. Universities, he tells me, are indeed a mess, but he\u2019d still encourage young people to get what they can out of them. Popular culture is filled with propaganda, but it should be grappled with, not abandoned. Everything will be alright in the end, not because of the mechanics of politics, but because the politics we obsess over on earth–and at which Cruz himself excels–don\u2019t account for larger providential designs.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Can we make room for such faith in our current and grim political moment? Can we let go of our partisan zealotry long enough to start believing that America is different, and that in America\u2014to appropriate Ben Gurion\u2019s favorite quip about Israeli politics\u2014being a realist means fully expecting miracles? Can we, Jews especially, hear what Ted Cruz is saying above the sound and the fury of cable news rancor?<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Even though we\u2019re parked in his driveway and he\u2019s late for carpool duties, he leans in and delivers one more speedy sermon. \u201cI do believe God\u2019s providential hand has been on America from our founding,\u201d he says. \u201cEvery time in the history of our nation when we have faced extraordinary challenges, the American people have risen to the occasion. That is based on the character of the American people. It is based on the extra ordinary values behind this nation and in its base. And I hope we will continue to enjoy God\u2019s providential blessing.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Liel Leibovitz<\/strong> is editor at large for Tablet Magazine and a host of its weekly culture podcast Unorthodox<\/a> and daily Talmud podcast Take One<\/a>. He is the editor of Zionism: The Tablet Guide<\/a>.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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America\u2019s Most Israeli Politician LIEL LEIBOVITZ I like Ted Cruz. Why? . STEPHEN VOSS Earlier this year, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas was called to testify before the Senate\u2019s Judiciary Committee. Ted Cruz, a member of the committee, was there to greet him. Cruz: Good morning, Secretary Mayorkas. Mayorkas: Good morning. Cruz: Is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6],"tags":[26,24],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104940"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=104940"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104940\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":104957,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104940\/revisions\/104957"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=104940"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=104940"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=104940"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}