If We're Going To Have Garbage Like Ted Cruz In The Senate, Let's Balance Him Out With Shenna Bellows

Ron Johnson is pretty much acknowledged to be one of the dimmest bulbs in the Senate-- and one of the most ideologically stubborn. He's Wisconsin's far right senator whose 52-47% defeat of Russ Feingold in 2010 was one of that very upsetting year's biggest upsets. Many in Wisconsin have been very sorry ever since. Example: 2 weeks ago only 3 crackpots in the whole Senate voted against the bipartisan compromise authorizing desperately needed money for the V.A. Even teabaggers Ted Cruz (R-TX), Mike Lee (R-UT), Pat Toomey (R-PA), and Rand Paul (R-KY) and anti-veteran fanatic Richard Burr (R-NC) voted for it. A couple of obstructionist Confederates and Johnson were the 3 NO votes. It passed 93-3, after Johnson's right-wing fillbuster failed 75-19. Although ProgressivePunch rates his voting record as the 3rd most reactionary in the Senate, his minus 79.49, which takes into account the politics of his constituents, is the single worst voting record in the entire Senate, worse than Ted Cruz, worse than Mitch McConnell, worse than Jim Inhofe, worse than Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III.

Yesterday on CNBC's Squawk Box, Johnson seemed to blame his bizarre voting record-- that is so jarringly extreme and out of sync with Wisconsin voters-- on that fact that he's old and unable to keep up with changing times. But even if he refused to fund veterans' healthcare and will oppose Hispanics with his dying breath, he'll go along-- grundgingly-- with gay marriage.

"I'm a pretty traditional guy," Johnson said. "I'm almost 60 years old. I think marriage is between a man and a woman. But again if the voters decide that they want gay marriage, I'm not going to oppose it."

Johnson was drawn into a discussion on social issues, including immigration and gay marriage. Initially, he focused on "the economic issues that overweigh all the other ones."

"These social issues are going to primarily be decided in the states, through (the) democratic process and that's the way it should happen," Johnson said. "I'll certainly go with the judgment of the American people in terms of where they want to fall on, whether it's the abortion issues or gay marriage."

He said on immigration, "We've got a lot of migrant workers in Wisconsin. I've never had a migrant worker ask me for citizenship. They just don't want us to deport their moms and dads, their husbands and wives. I don't think we're going to do that. We need to actually solve this problem. We need a functioning legal immigration system."

Johnson said the country needs to reduce or eliminate the incentives for illegal immigration.

Ted Cruz is an entirely different kettle of fish. Johnson, a former polyester manufacturer, is a tongue-tied dunce who flunked out of a night school where he was trying to get an MBA. Ted Cruz, a slick and well-practised debater, is a lot smarter. Even though his brain was taken over by the sociopathic foreign economic theories of Ayn Rand, Friedrich Hayek, and Ludwig von Mises at an early age, he graduated Princeton with honors, and went on to Harvard Law, where Alan Dershowitz called him "off-the-charts brilliant."

This week, Jeffrey Toobin, writing for The New Yorker, profiled him in an article aptly titled The Absolutist. Ron Johnson would struggle to understand it. Toobin puts Cruz's extremism in context by positing that "Establishment Republicans, based in Washington, remain at some level committed to uphold rudimentary operations of government and at least talk about broadening the Party’s appeal. Ardent conservatives [like Cruz], including those in the Tea Party movement, regard the Capitol as a cesspool of corruption, and they see compromise as betrayal."

Cruz’s ascendancy reflects the dilemma of the modern Republican Party, because his popularity within the Party is based largely on an act that was reviled in the broader national community. Last fall, Cruz’s strident opposition to Obamacare led in a significant way to the shutdown of the federal government. “It was not a productive enterprise,” John McCain told me. “We needed sixty-seven votes in the Senate to stop Obamacare, and we didn’t have it. It was a fool’s errand, and it hurt the Republican Party and it hurt my state. I think Ted has learned his lesson.” But Cruz has learned no such lesson. As he travels the country, he has hardened his positions, delighting the base of his party but moving farther from the positions of most Americans on most issues. He denies the existence of man-made climate change, opposes comprehensive immigration reform, rejects marriage equality, and, of course, demands the repeal of “every blessed word of Obamacare.” (Cruz gets his own health-care coverage from Goldman Sachs, where his wife is a vice-president.)

…"Marriage is under assault," Cruz told the crowd. "It is under assault in a way that is pervasive. We’re seeing marriage under assault in the courts, including, sadly, the Supreme Court of the United States. It struck down the California marriage laws. California had a referendum. They asked the voters of California, 'Do you want marriage to be a traditional marriage between one man and one woman?' And the voters of California-- those crazy right-wing kooks-- said, 'Yes, now that you mention it, we like marriage to be between one man and one woman!' Went to the U.S. Supreme Court, and the U.S. Supreme Court said, 'You can’t say that,' and struck it down. You want to know what judicial activism is? Judicial activism is judges imposing their policy preferences on the words of the Constitution." (Cruz’s views on marriage equality are widely shared within the Texas Republican Party. The John Birch Society was allowed to have a booth at the convention, but Log Cabin Republicans, a gay-rights group, wasn’t.)

As Cruz built to his peroration, he said, "I’m going to encourage three very simple things. No. 1, I’m going to encourage each and every man and woman here to pray. If ever there was an issue on which we should come to our knees to God about, it is preserving marriage of one man and one woman. And this is an issue on which we need as many praying warriors as possible to turn back the tide.

"A second thing I’ll tell you: when the President tried to impose federal law in Utah, I introduced federal legislation, along with Senator Mike Lee, to prevent the federal government from setting aside the marriage laws of the states across this country. We need to stand and defend marriage, and we need to defend the prerogative of the citizens of Texas to determine what marriage means in the state of Texas.

So, unlike Ron Johnson, Ted Cruz vows to be a human roadblock to equality for the LGBT community, the same way deranged segregationists like Orval Faubus (AR), Strom Thurmond (SC), Ross Barnett (MS), Lester Maddox (GA), Jesse Helms (NC), and George Wallace (AL) worked hard to put themselves onto the garbage heap of history for a similar cause when I was growing up.

Who's going to stand up for Ted Cruz and his followers, the way patriots stood up to the white racists in the '60s? Shenna Bellows, for one. She and her husband waited to get married until it was legal in Maine for their LGBT friends to get married. Watch her speech yesterday at the Portland Pride celebration: