Skip to main content

The Passion of Cicero




The reaction to Obama's speech last Thursday ranges from the predictable to totally outrageous.  For whatever reason, CNN has made New Gingrich one of its political commentators, and his rebuttal to the president's address has quickly spread through the conservative blogosphere, making you wonder who CNN is serving these days?  It appears to have become a light version of Fox News, hoping to break into its conservative audience.

Gingrich disingenuously claims that Obama's "fine speech" doesn't match the executive orders he plans to carry out.  Newt cleverly ties in "Obamacare" with "Obamagration," making it sound like the President is purposely misleading Americans with his deeply flawed policies, calling it another "Gruber Speech."

This, however, doesn't compare with Ted Cruz's rhetorically charged rebuttal, in which he paints Obama as Catiline from Cicero's famous speech over 2000 years ago.  Cruz apparently wanted to take the high road by referring to a classic text, evoked by Harry Truman and Thomas Jefferson (both Democrats by the way) in the past.  The only problem is that Cruz seems to know Cicero about as well as he does net neutrality, misrepresenting the context of the speech and blurring the lines to justify his own argument.  Easy enough to do with an unsuspecting conservative audience, who probably had to google Cicero if they bothered at all to find out who this Roman senator was.

Roman society was class based.  There was little room for firebrands like Catiline, who threatened the aristocratic order of society by appealing to the masses.  Maybe this is how Cruz sees American society?  But, throughout his tumultuous first tenure as a senator he has taken the conservative "populist" line on almost every issue.  Whatever the case, Cruz explicitly accuses Obama of treason by defying the US Senate, which he claims to represent, even though members of his own party have openly chastised him.

By saying that Obama has dishonestly presented his immigration reform policies, as they claim he did the Affordable Care Act, or worse that he is committing treason, these Republican spokesmen are setting up impeachment hearings by accusing the President of "high crimes and misdemeanors."

It doesn't matter that the President has a legal team that has studied the Constitution and has crafted his executive orders in such a way that they don't overstep his authority.  In fact, more than once during his speech he referred to the Senate immigration bill that has been sitting in the House of Representatives for over 500 days because the House Speaker has refused to put the bill to a vote on the floor out of fear that there might be just enough Republicans to help Democrats carry the bill, as they represent districts that want immigration reform.  This handful of Republicans, like Geraldo Rivera said on Fox News, know that immigration reform is necessary, even if they don't trust the President.

Rivera embraces his immigrant past.  Ted Cruz does not.  Cruz would like us to think that his American roots go back as far as Jefferson.  Maybe his mother does, but his father immigrated to the United States after Castro had assumed power in Cuba.  Dear old Dad denounced his socialist roots and became a religious zealot, prone to racist statements.  Ted has become the darling of the Dominionists, which should give any suspecting American citizen great pause, as these persons actively promote the "End Times."

Gingrich just wants Obama out, much as he wanted Clinton out.  Ted Cruz seems to want a public hanging, working on the basest fears of his deeply conservative audience -- a very dangerous form of rhetoric that is far more threatening to our society than is immigration reform.


Comments

Popular posts from this blog

O Pioneers!

It is hard not to think of Nebraska without thinking of its greatest writer.  Here is a marvelous piece by Capote, Remembering Willa Cather . I remember seeing a stage production of O Pioneers! and being deeply moved by its raw emotions.  I had read My Antonia before, and soon found myself hooked, like Capote was by the simple elegance of her prose and the way she was able to evoke so many feelings through her characters.  Much of it came from the fact that she had lived those experiences herself. Her father dragged the family from Virginia to Nebraska in 1883, when it was still a young state, settling in the town of Red Cloud. named after one of the great Oglala chiefs.  Red Cloud was still alive at the time, living on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, in the aftermath of the "Great Sioux Wars" of 1876-77.  I don't know whether Cather took any interest in the famous chief, although it is hard to imagine not.  Upon his death in 1909, he was eulogi

The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire

  Welcome to this month's reading group selection.  David Von Drehle mentions The Melting Pot , a play by Israel Zangwill, that premiered on Broadway in 1908.  At that time theater was accessible to a broad section of the public, not the exclusive domain it has become over the decades.  Zangwill carried a hopeful message that America was a place where old hatreds and prejudices were pointless, and that in this new country immigrants would find a more open society.  I suppose the reference was more an ironic one for Von Drehle, as he notes the racial and ethnic hatreds were on display everywhere, and at best Zangwill's play helped persons forget for a moment how deep these divides ran.  Nevertheless, "the melting pot" made its way into the American lexicon, even if New York could best be describing as a boiling cauldron in the early twentieth century. Triangle: The Fire That Changed America takes a broad view of events that led up the notorious fire, noting the gro

Colonel

Now with Colonel Roosevelt , the magnum opus is complete. And it deserves to stand as the definitive study of its restless, mutable, ever-boyish, erudite and tirelessly energetic subject. Mr. Morris has addressed the toughest and most frustrating part of Roosevelt’s life with the same care and precision that he brought to the two earlier installments. And if this story of a lifetime is his own life’s work, he has reason to be immensely proud.  -- Janet Maslin -- NY Times . Let the discussion begin!