Ted Cruz

Atheist Writer: Most 2016 Presidential Candidates Are ‘God-Fearing Clowns and Faith-Mongering Nitwits’
By Tom Johnson | April 20, 2015 | 9:23 PM EDT

Imagine a president of the United States proclaiming in his or her inaugural address, “I do not believe in God. I do not believe in a hereafter…There is no hope, save in ourselves.” If something like that ever happens, writer Jeffrey Tayler’s dream will have come true.

Tayler, who routinely trashes religion for the liberal online magazine Salon, complained in a Sunday article that several recent announcements of presidential candidacies have brought about “a media carnival featuring, on both sides, an array of supposedly God-fearing clowns and faith-mongering nitwits groveling before Evangelicals and nattering on about their belief in the Almighty.” He called on the media not to let the candidates “get away with God talk without making them answer for it.”

Will GOP Candidates Push Back Against Media Coverage of Hillary?
By Jeffrey Lord | April 18, 2015 | 11:06 PM EDT

Will they just stand there and take it? Or will the Republican candidates for president push back against the fawning media coverage of Hillary Clinton?

NYT Tries Best to Make Major Cruz Donor Sound Sinister on Front Page
By Clay Waters | April 11, 2015 | 10:12 PM EDT

Eric Lichtblau and Alexandra Stevenson made the front of the New York Times by taking pains to make a major donor to Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz, sound suspicious, even sinister, digging up unflattering (and irrelevant) details and finding two liberal Democratic congressmen to criticize him.

MSNBC's Thomas Roberts: We'll Gladly Take Our Cameras and Mikes to Meet Ted Cruz's Crazy Dad
By Bryan Ballas | April 9, 2015 | 6:57 AM EDT

Much like playground bullies, it does not take long for the liberal media to poke fun at the family members of candidates they don’t like  – Republican candidates. The father-bashing began in earnest on Tuesday afternoon shortly after Rand Paul’s campaign announcement when MSNBC’s Live With Thomas Roberts decided to headline a segment of the fathers of Republican candidates with the phrase  “GOP Contenders with Father Issues?”
Having set a tone nowhere close to objectivity, Roberts jabbed Ted Cruz’s father, Rafael Cruz, asking how Ted Cruz will “break his father's shadow or potential hindrance of saying something and really getting caught with having to explain it away.”

Roberts added, “I think reporters will -- if he doesn't show up on the campaign trail, they’re happy to go find Rafael Cruz, and take the cameras and microphones to him.”

Nets Skip ‘Conservative’ Tag for Rand Paul; Labeled Cruz 13 Times
By Jeffrey Meyer | April 7, 2015 | 11:13 AM EDT

On Tuesday, Kentucky Senator Rand Paul became the second Republican to officially enter the 2016 presidential race, following Senator Ted Cruz’s announcement on March 23. However, on the morning of their respective presidential announcements, the “Big Three” (ABC, CBS, and NBC) networks went out of their way to label Cruz a “conservative” 13 times, compared to zero conservative labels for Senator Paul.

Lefty Writer: GOP Presidential Primaries ‘Offer a Showcase For Some Horrifying...Ideas’
By Tom Johnson | April 6, 2015 | 2:02 PM EDT

Conor P. Williams really enjoys watching the amazing race -- not the CBS program, but the race for the Republican presidential nomination, which Williams called “my favorite TV show” in a Monday column on Talking Points Memo.

For Williams, much of the “entertainment value” of the GOP contest lies in its right-wing extremism: “This is a show where the American conservative id fully unravels in public…The Democrats' primaries are relatively boring. Why? Because they don't have an empowered fringe. Their candidates operate pretty securely within the Overton Window of political possibility. The GOP's empowered, hard-right wing makes their primaries way more interesting.”

Notable Quotables: The Media vs. the "Radical, Right-Wing, Scary, Dangerous and Slimy" Ted Cruz
By Rich Noyes | April 6, 2015 | 9:01 AM EDT

This week liberal reporters welcomed Ted Cruz to the 2016 presidential race by blasting him as "hardline," "right-wing," "radical," "dumb," "scary," "dangerous" and "slimy" -- all in the first 24 hours. And: the networks hype the "growing outrage" over Indiana's religous freedom law, with one pundit saying that Republicans who came out in support Mike Pence were having a "premature intolerance ejaculation."

Ted Cruz Calling The New York Times a 'Leftist Rag' a 'Badge of Honor,' Says Times Reporter
By Tim Graham | April 2, 2015 | 1:34 PM EDT

Several GOP presidential contenders have insulted The New York Times in recent days, but not with the vigor of Ted Cruz. Politico's Dylan Byers reported that in an interview with a St. Louis talk radio station on Tuesday, Cruz said Republicans shouldn't listen to "The New York Times and other leftist rags" when picking their presidential nominee.

Times Beijing bureau chief Edward Wong (Twitter handle "Comrade Wong") quickly proved the paper's liberal tilt by tweeting out that Cruz's attack on the leftist paper was a "badge of honor."

Lefty Blogger Charles Pierce: It’s Extreme ‘Journalistic Malpractice’ Not to Report That the GOP Is ‘Demented’
By Tom Johnson | March 31, 2015 | 10:02 PM EDT

Is the Republican party a political organization or “a terrarium of retrograde fauna”? Both, suggests Esquire’s Pierce, and if too few of the American people understand that, it’s in large part a result of, in his words, “the worst episode of journalistic malpractice that I can recall.”

What set Pierce off was a remark from a former Democratic congressional staffer, quoted in the newspaper The Hill, that "Elizabeth Warren is the mirror image of Ted Cruz, and if we aren't careful, she'll drive the Democrats into the same ditch Cruz is trying to drive the Republicans." Pierce says even though the Warren-Cruz comparison is “stupid and wrong...it is quintessential Washington political journalism.”

CNN's Dana Bash Goes After Ted Cruz For His ... Lack of Experience!
By Tom Blumer | March 30, 2015 | 11:14 PM EDT

On Sunday on CNN's State of the Union, Dana Bash, while interviewing Texas Senator and GOP presidential candidate Ted Cruz, attempted to compare his alleged lack of experience to that of Barack Obama when he declared his candidacy in 2007.

It did not go well for her. It's a mystery why Bash might have thought that Cruz wouldn't have an answer for her faux concerns, but he did, and he hit her pitches out of the park. Video and a transcript follow the jump.

On NPR and PBS, David Brooks Bashes Ted Cruz: Too Smart, Too Smoothly Insincere
By Tim Graham | March 30, 2015 | 3:51 PM EDT

Tim Russert used to say “If it’s Sunday, it’s Meet the Press.” Of David Brooks, we might joke, “If it’s Friday, Brooks is bashing Ted Cruz.” On both NPR and PBS Friday, the purported conservative-leaning balance to public broadcasting’s natural socialist impulses insisted the problem was that Cruz was just too smart.

On NPR’s All Things Considered, the headline for the week-in-politics segment was “Sen. Harry Reid's Retirement, Cruz's Appeal To Far-Right.”

SNL's Violent Opening Skit: Impossible to Imagine If Parties Switched
By Tom Blumer | March 29, 2015 | 11:39 PM EDT

One of the first rules of genuine comedy is that to be funny, a joke or skit needs to have some basis in truth.

On that primary measurement, the cold open on "Saturday Night Live" last night failed miserably on so many fronts, it's hard to know where to begin. Its most offensive aspect is its portrayal of a Democrat inflicting violence on three Republicans to the audience's pleausre. It is impossible to imagine the program putting on a skit showing Ronald Reagan doing to the same thing to Ted Kennedy — who, in an objectively treasonous act, sought the Soviet Union's help in the 1984 presidential election for the purpose of defeating Reagan.