Has Ted Cruz Already Joined Speaker Ryan's War Against Evangelical Christians?

Early Wednesday Sarah Palin tweeted a Neil Munro post at Breitbart about the Republicans (Paul Ryan) giving away the store in the Omnibus. Paul Ryan has been trying to cover his ass for compromising and not shutting down the government in his first month as Speaker, primarily by serially tweeting about how the repeal of the Oil Export ban is "like having 100 Keystone pipelines" and how there will be no "new funding" for Obamacare. What a message!

And still not good enough for the right-wing extremists who feel they didn't just lose their country but have now lost their party. In fact, Billy Graham's son, the far more right-wing and satanic Franklin Graham, best known, aside from who his daddy is, as an Islamophobic maniac, announced to his flock, via Facebook, that he's leaving the Republican Party. He's angry the Ayn-Rand devotee from Janesville didn't shut down the government to get even with all the myriad sins of Planned Parenthood colliding inside his brain. "After all of the appalling facts revealed this year about Planned Parenthood, our representatives in Washington had a chance to put a stop to this, but they didn’t... murder in God’s eyes," he howled.

I don't know if that means this is the end of his backing for the Trumpf candidacy or not but as Betsy Woodruff wrote at the DailyBeast, Graham's "growing frustration highlights growing (and sometimes paradoxical) anger that pro-life and evangelical Christian leaders have for Republican Party leadership... [E]vangelical leaders say he’s channeling a sentiment that’s increasingly widespread in their community."

After the House voted to pass the omnibus spending bill that kept federal dollars in place for Planned Parenthood, many conservative Christians-- evangelical and Catholic-- were furious.

Robert Jeffress, the pastor of First Baptist Church in Dallas, said the uproar isn’t surprising.

“This Planned Parenthood sponsorship in this bill further confirms what many evangelical Christians believe about the Republican Party establishment, and that is, there’s not a dime’s worth of difference between the Republican establishment and the Democratic establishment,” he said.

“And I believe that disenchantment that many evangelical Christians have explains the rise of Ted Cruz and Donald Trump,” he added.

Jeffress said this disenchantment has been growing for more than a decade, especially since George W. Bush’s 2004 presidential campaign. During that race, Bush pushed for a federal Constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage as part of a strategy to get evangelical Christians to the polls. It worked, and he got reelected thanks to their strong showing. But in his second term, the president and his team abandoned their promise to try to write a gay-marriage ban into the Constitution. And that left many evangelicals feeling used and betrayed.

Brent Bozell, a prominent conservative activist who founded the Media Research Center, said Graham’s split from the Republican Party is especially devastating because of his role as a faith leader, rather than a political one... “He’s not taking a political position,” said Bozell. “He’s taking a moral position, which is far more serious in the evangelical world.”

That means Graham’s excoriation of party leaders carries special significance.

“When they’re funding the murder of children, this is where the evangelicals say, enough is enough,” Bozell said.

Ed Martin, the president of Eagle Forum-- a conservative activism organization that Phyllis Schlafly started-- called the inclusion of Planned Parenthood in the spending bill “an extraordinary betrayal.”

“When Franklin Graham and others say, ‘Hey don’t put all your hope in a party because that’s not the ultimate hope and should not be the focus of this earthly realm,’ we recognize that,” he said. “So there’s a tension that you want to further the values informing your heart and life through politics, through policy. But you also want to say, don’t make a political party a false god. Any false god will fail you. There’s only one true God”... And Graham’s comments will fuel that anger.

Schlafly has already endorsed Trumpf (not Cruz). Pastor Huckabee, who, still hasn't ended his embarrassing, aborted presidential campaign, seemed to agree when they humored him on Morning Joe Wednesday. "I do know that voters are very angry. You sense it on the campaign trail. One of the things you see is a seething rage. This budget vote last week… it put a lot of people over the top because they just feel like the whole purpose of working hard to get Republican majorities in the House and the Senate was to make some significant policy changes. The Republicans folded... They were given four aces, and they laid their cards down before they even anted up for the game... [A]ll the Republicans got was export of oil. What does that say about Republicans? That the only thing they care about is exporting oil? They don’t care a hoot about rank-and-file Republicans? That’s why people in the Republican Party are just bolting for the door." Yep... GOP priorities are always about their rich contributors, like the Koch brothers who only cared about this one point and made that completely clear to Ryan.

Now, back to Palin's suggestion that all good little right-wing robots read Munro's nonsense at Breitbart: "Beltway-insider publications Politico and The Hill are hiding House Speaker Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI)’s 2016’s disastrous report card, even days after the Dec. 18 passage of his $1.1-plus trillion 2016 spending-and-tax plan. Ryan and his top aides 'really gave away the store,' Democratic leader Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) declared Dec. 18.  Her report-card phrase-- 'they really gave away the store'-- doesn’t appear in Politico or The Hill, even by Dec. 22. Instead, Politico suggested that Ryan came out roughly even. 'The four leaders-- Ryan, Pelosi (D-Calif.), Senate Majority Leader Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and Senate Minority Leader Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV)-- were all able to tout wins. There were complaints from the right about high levels of spending and gripes from the left about aiding Big Oil, but each side got enough in return to pass the deal in overwhelming fashion.'"

Oh, no wonder Palin was pushing this post. Munro ends with a plus for her: "'The GOP establishment in Congress is our abuser,' she added. 'We can’t hide the black eyes any more. The whole neighborhood knows. The Democrats are gloating. Obama thanked Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) effusively-- and why shouldn’t he?'"

And that brings us to a very dishonest Texas neo-fascist senator, who tells every audience a different story. Remember when he was raising money among right-wing gays with flamboyant Fire Island entrepreneurs Mati Weiderpass and Ian Reisner at their Central Park den of inequity. When he got called out in the press for cavorting with unsavory types, he quickly introduced two symbolic anti-LGBT bills in the Senate, knowing full well neither had any chance to even get out of committee. Cruz also solicits money from Peter Thiel, a crackpot libertarian gay billionaire, who have given him thousands of dollars directly and thru the pro-Cruz Endorse Liberty PAC to which Thiel has given around $3 million.

But all that was nothing when the psychotically insane and gay-obsessed Wilks brothers gave a Cruz SuperPAC $15,000,000 premised on one issue: ugly, militant homophobia (one fancies himself a preacher). So now Cruz goes back and forth from pandering to lunatics who want to kill gays to reassuring more mainstream wing nuts that he just says that to keep the idiots from all deserting him and running off to Herr Trumpf or-- God forbid-- the even more anti-gay candidate, Marco Rubio. This is all blowing up in Cruz's face now because Mike Allen wrote about it a couple days ago at Politico, making Cruz sound just like... an untrustworthy politician who tells everyone what they want to hear. How do you think the lunatic fringe reads this-- and you can count on Rubio to make sure they do read it?

In June, Ted Cruz promised on NPR that opposition to gay marriage would be “front and center” in his 2016 campaign.

In July, he said the Supreme Court’s decision allowing same-sex marriage was the “very definition of tyranny” and urged states to ignore the ruling.

But in December, behind closed doors at a big-dollar Manhattan fundraiser, the quickly ascending presidential candidate assured a Republican gay-rights supporter that a Cruz administration would not make fighting same-sex marriage a top priority.

In a recording provided to Politico, Cruz answers a flat “No” when asked whether fighting gay marriage is a “top-three priority,” an answer that pleased his socially moderate hosts but could surprise some of his evangelical backers.

While Cruz’s private comments to a more moderate GOP audience do not contradict what the Republican Texas senator has said elsewhere, they demonstrate an adeptness at nuance in tone and emphasis that befits his Ivy League background. Indeed, the wording looks jarring when compared with the conservative, evangelical rhetoric he serves at his rallies, which have ballooned in size and excitement as he has moved to the front of the pack in Iowa.

...A well-known Republican operative not affiliated with a 2016 campaign said by email when sent Cruz's quote: "Wow. Does this not undermine all of his positions? Abortion, Common Core-- all to the states? ... Worse, he sounds like a slick D.C. politician-- says one thing on the campaign trail and trims his sails with NYC elites. Not supposed to be like that."

Among the hardcore anti-gay fanatics who have endorsed Cruz because they assumed he would be as anti-gay as they are, are David Barton, Cynthia Dunbar, Ron Baity, a final solution maniac from hate group Reclaim America, notorious hate-monger Matt Barber, Flip Benham of Operation Save America and American Family Association lobbyist and Hate Talk Radio host Sandy Rios. Will they all skip over to Rubio's side now that Cruz has been exposed as a two-faced hack?