The Next Great Conservative Intellectual Hope

I hope you can detect the irony in the title. It's not that I think all Republicans are stupid, or that none of their ideas are worthwhile. It's simply that taken as a whole, the Republican plan for America's future does not exist, or when it does, is so rooted in the past that it fails to acknowledge the realities of the world in which we live.

So I was actually excited today when I saw this headline in the New York Times: A Tea Party Intellect From Texas, Poised to Join the Senate. Here we go I thought to myself as I clicked on the link. Finally, someone on the right who can bring a real intellectual point of view to the insanity of the Tea Party. Finally, someone who can can help lead the Republican Party back from the fringe and help them become a contributor to the future well-being of America. I'll admit that I had the same aspirations for Mitt Romney, a man I now openly despise. Mitt Romney had a chance to make the Republican Party sane again. He could have been the standard bearer for the new Republican Party, one that looks forward rather than back. He went right and is now complicit in the ongoing economic and political disaster for which conservatives are largely responsible.

Anyhow, back to this guy from Texas. I had hopes. I really did. And before I squash them completely I'll admit that I still don't know much about this next great conservative hope. I've read one article, so the jury is still out I suppose, but the early results were predictably disappointing if not surprising.

Ted Cruz is his name, and apparently he is smart. Or at least he went to good schools. There is often a correlation between intelligence and good educational institutions, but not always. The only other thing I learned about Princeton and Harvard Law graduate Ted Cruz is that he spent time at a recently rally calling Obama the nation's "most radical president" and railing against the "gay rights agenda."

Is this really how low we have sunk? To be an intellectual giant worthy of a New York Times headline, all you have to do is preach against the gay rights agenda as though there is some sort of nefarious homosexual plot to take over the world? Really? Could Ted Cruz or someone else for that matter please enlighten me on the gay rights agenda? Perhaps I'm just not on Ted Cruz's intellectual plane, but it doesn't seem to me as though most gay people want anything more than basic civil rights and perhaps bad techno music.

And how about that radical Obama. If only he were a white American Christian instead of a black Kenyan Muslim, am I right? I mean seriously, the guy wants to raise taxes on rich people! What a communist! There's more proof that he's a radical hell bent on destroying America too, like for example how he has continued to allow more exploration and drilling of offshore oil reserves in the Gulf of Mexico and off the coast of Alaska. The guy is so far to the left I can't stand it!

Unfortunately these views are all it takes to be anointed an intellectual in the Republican party perhaps because the party is devoid of anyone to whom the term may actually apply. Maybe Ted Cruz will surprise me. Maybe I don't know enough about him yet. Maybe he's just another politician pandering to his base. But more likely Ted Cruz represents the apex of conservative thinking, a low bar to begin with, but sadly that's the direction in which the party has chosen to go. And if Ted Cruz really is Republican's best intellectual bet, they're doomed to continue losing America's future because anyone who thinks there is such a thing as "the gay rights agenda," has a pretty low intellectual ceiling.