Cruz's magic: meaningful pablum

Ted Cruz, chatting yesterday with Candy Crowley:

I'm convinced there's a new paradigm in politics, that actually has Washington very uncomfortable. And it has politicians in both parties very uncomfortable. And that new paradigm is the rise of the grass roots, the ability of grass-roots activists to demand of their elected officials they do the right thing.

To which Ed Kilgore reacts:

Now you can treat this sort of remark as meaningless pablum. Or you can look at it as part of a more general tendency on the Right to discount democratic institutions in favor of expressions of the "demands" of people whose opinions matter more than those of other Americans.

False choice. It's the meaningless pablum of the arrogant Right's anti-democratic dismissiveness.

Yet, there is a meaning in it, of a sort, and it's one that has fascinated students of demagoguery since ancient Greece: How do manifest charlatans such as Ted Cruz manage to so deeply appeal to so many with such an extraordinarily shallow message? 

And in Cruz's case, laughably shallow. Grass-roots activism as the new paradigm? Well yeah, sure, if you're Thomas Paine. 

Cruz's one-browed minions, however, will never stop to reflect on his Word--for his Word, the Word, is fundamentally one of flattery, which auditors seldom question. Yes, yes of course, they know what the "right thing" to do is--or so they hear themselves repeating--and they're unafraid to demand it, and that makes those powerful Washingtonians "uncomfortable."

Cruz merely imbues the anti-democratic rubes with a sense of their own fearsome potency, which, if they don't say so themselves, they find rather appealing.

Comments

[AnneJ]

I would say I can't believe the media treats this clown as if he has anything of value to say, or that he is serious about governing. To me, he is the end result of thirty years of hearing how government is the problem. People like Ted Cruz prove the adage is true. And here I thought republicans didn't like spending their tax dollars on non-productive freeloaders. Go figure.