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Ted Cruz Campaign Insanity Increases With Frank Gaffney Add

By Amanda Gardner
Published on: 01:04 PST, Mar 18, 2016

Ted Cruz, as a leading member of the Tea Party, has already earned a reputation among those outside that sector of the GOP as a right-wing religious extremist, and Cruz’s reputation for extremism just grew exponentially. On Thursday, according to a Bloomberg report on the assembly of his foreign policy advisers, Ted Cruz announced the members of his team, and Frank Gaffney is to be his top adviser.

For those unfamiliar with Gaffney, he rose to prominence during the Reagan administration, and afterward, he became even more prominent due to his Islamaphobic tendencies and support for multiple conspiracy theories. To rational Americans, the mere suggestion that a man like Gaffney will be added to Ted Cruz’s team increases the appearance that Cruz’s campaign is nothing more than a dogma-ridden swirl of insanity disguised as politics.

Unfortunately for rational Americans, Ted Cruz appeals to a sector of the population with whom reason, history, and even the Constitution apparently have no bearing. For example, his official campaign website, while crediting the country’s Founding Fathers, cites the First Amendment rights as “God-given.” In reality, the Founding Fathers, in writing the First Amendment, assured Americans that no one belief would influence the government of the United States. Ted Cruz, by his campaign’s capitalization of the word “God,” indicates a belief in a specific deity and makes it appear that Cruz is only willing to protect only those who share his belief.

Ted Cruz’s apparent determination to protect only the Christian members of society can be seen elsewhere on his campaign website. Cruz’s defense of Kim Davis, the government employee who refused to do the job for which she was hired, is evidence of his disregard for the rights provided by the Constitution to all Americans. As Davis was a representative of the government at the time of the incident that sparked national outrage, how is it possible that she was not acting unconstitutionally by allowing her religion to impact on a government service?

Another area in which Ted Cruz’s apparent lack of empathy, which can be seen as a complete disregard for a sector of the population, is his stance on gay marriage. First, the belief that gay marriage is wrong is a belief rooted in religion, which most believe has no place in American politics based on the U.S. Constitution. Second, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of equal rights for LGBT Americans, and Ted Cruz, by his failure to support the country’s highest court, appears unwilling to honor the decisions made by those the nation has entrusted with ensuring justice prevails for all Americans.

In a return to Frank Gaffney, it is important to realize the possible repercussions, both domestically and internationally, of having someone with his beliefs put in the national spotlight by the Ted Cruz campaign. A recent article in Vanity Fair included a list of what the author so appropriately called Gaffney’s “paranoid fantasies,” such as his belief that Obama is a Muslim and that the Missile Defense Agency logo is a sign that Sharia law has infiltrated the U.S. Department of Defense. Reportedly, Gaffney even called for a new version of McCarthyism, in which Muslims would be targeted as Communists were targeted during the Cold War.

Even with Gaffney’s outlandish ideas, Ted Cruz has made him a member of a national security advisory team. How is such a move even possible today when one can easily look back at history and see the damage done by other extremists like Joe McCarthy? Is Ted Cruz really that out of touch with reality, or is the addition of Gaffney to the Cruz campaign an attempt to win over Trump’s Islamaphobic supporters? Regardless of the thought process behind the formation of Ted Cruz’s advisory team, now is the time for rational, reasonable Americans to become very concerned about the future state of the Union.

[Photo by Susan Walsh/AP]

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