WASHINGTON -- Beto O'Rourke has earned presidential insult status.
The Democratic challenger to Sen. Ted Cruz reached that dubious threshold early Wednesday when President Donald Trump took to Twitter to lash out at O'Rourke by name as someone who is "not in the same league with Ted Cruz & what the great people of Texas stand for & want."
"Beto is a Flake," the president wrote, adding in another Tweet that Cruz had done well for Texas and O'Rourke would "blow it all.
O'Rourke's campaign took the jab as a compliment, particularly coming the morning after O'Rourke and Cruz sparred in their second Senate debate."Well there you have it," Chris Evans, O'Rourke's spokesman, wrote on Twitter, quoting Trump's attack. "Beto definitely won last night's debate."
The insult, in any case, is not an insignificant marker. Trump is known to delight in belittling his biggest rivals, often with derogatory nicknames. Hillary Clinton was "Crooked Hillary." Marco Rubio was "Little Marco." Elizabeth Warren is "Pocahontas." Chuck Schumer is "Cryin' Chuck." Jeb Bush was "Low Energy Jeb."
"Sen. Cruz is not going to be honest with you," the Democrat said. "He's going to make up positions and votes that I've never held or taken. He's dishonest. It's why the president called him, 'Lyin' Ted.' And it's why the nickname stuck. Because it's true."
Cruz laughed off that attack. "It's clear Congressman O'Rourke's pollsters have told him to come out on the attack," he said. "So if he wants to insult me and call me a liar that's fine. But John Adams famously said, 'Facts are stubborn things.'"
[Beto responded to the effect that this is yet another lie, because he doesn't have any pollsters.]
click here
I am certain many of them will remark on all of this nonsense, and maybe only a few will buy into it and will spout the party line, but not very many, judging by the strong endorsements and analyses that I have been reading in papers like the Waco Herald, the Houston Chronicle, the Dallas Morning News, the Corpus Christi Daily-Caller, the San Antonio Express News, and papers in Brownsville, McAllen, the University of North Texas at Denton, and so on.
>>>>>
Meanwhile, today in Nevada, Obama warned that not voting in the Midterm elections is "profoundly dangerous." From Mother Jones, in David Corn's article, the MJ Washington Bureau Chief:
"This is not just about one person in the White House," he said, pointedly avoiding naming President Trump in his speech. "This is about Congress and governor's races and state legislative races"If all it took was being president, I would have solved everything."
In his concluding words, Obama warned that failing to vote in this election may have grave consequences. "The biggest threat to our democracy is indifference," he said. "The biggest threat to our democracy is cynicism that says 'we're just gonna stay home because my vote doesn't matter.'"
click here
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
1
1
1
