Month: December 2015

Political portraits

by digby

A 9 year old friend of mine named Evelyn Wool watched the Democratic debate on Saturday and did some portraits of the candidates I thought you might enjoy:

I think she captured their essences, don’t you?

(If you wonder why a 9 year old would be watching Democratic debates it’s because her dad is an Alaska state representative and her mom comes from a famous political family. But even with that it’s pretty impressive that a 4th 3rd grader would sit through a political debate. It’s good to see we’re getting the post-millennials early…)

The Holiday fundraiser continues and I hope you’ll consider throwing a little something in the kitty to keep this old thing going.

Happy Hollandaise everyone!

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They say they want a revolution …

by digby

Yesterday former Tea Party GOP representative Joe Walsh addressed a meeting of young conservative activists and brought the house down. They really, really liked the sound of this:

“I think that we’ve begun a third American revolution,” Walsh told TheBlaze in an exclusive interview over the weekend. “I think people who recoil against both parties and believe in freedom are finally rising up. They’re angry — I mean, look at [Republican frontrunner Donald] Trump — and they want to do something about it. I think we’re at the beginning of this, and I think you’re going to see it play out in the Republican Party because there could be a split in the Republican Party.”

According to Walsh, the first step for “revolutionaries” — or, conservatives, Tea Partiers and grassroots activists — is to “clean out the Republican Party.” If that does not work, he said, a new political party or movement could be on the horizon.”

It’s hard to say, ‘don’t’ be afraid of it,’ because we don’t know what’s going to happen,” Walsh, 53, said. “Remember, revolution is a scary term. It implies violence; it implies open rebellion. People shouldn’t be afraid because initially we’re going to use the political system in this revolt to try to fight back.”

“It’s not going to get violent at first, but look, the two prior revolutions we had got violent — the American Revolution and the Civil War,” the one-term congressman continued.

“Our founders believed that it may take violence to take back our country every now and then.”

You, God bless you, were brought into this world and brought into this country, I would argue, right now, at this point in time, right now at the dawn of the third American revolution to fight,” Walsh told the students who had traveled to West Palm Beach, Florida from all around the country.”

They liked what they heard.

Am I the only one feeling that everything Joe Walsh is saying has been on their minds forever? Love this. #WinterInWPB #TPUSA— Marissa Dorsett (@mardorlawyer21) December 19, 2015

This man though. Let's hear about that Third American Revolution #TPUSA #WinterInWPB pic.twitter.com/wvsMlrYzWt— Nathan Williamson (@njwillforever) December 19, 2015

Walsh is a fringe character talk radio host now, but he used to be in congress. He’s always been way out there. I just bring this up to show how casually the right is now talking about violence. This was not always the case. They alluded to it, they dogwhistled it with talk of “tyranny”. But you rarely heard anyone in the modern era telling young college kids it was inevitable that we would have a violent uprising within the US — at least outside secret militia and white supremacy meetings. This is becoming mainstream.

The Holiday fundraiser continues and I hope you’ll consider throwing a little something in the kitty to keep this old thing going.

Happy Hollandaise everyone!

Oh Peggy, I’m sorry the GOP is crazy. Maybe the dolphins can help.

by digby

Peggy Noonan and the Villagers seemed almost distraught this morning on Face the Nation. They seem not to have noticed until now that the Republican party is a violent, bloodthirsty political faction that wants to deport, imprison or kill half the world. They seemed … bewildered. Crooks and Liars caught the whole thing:

DICKERSON: — I was talking to were talking about it this week is they put Trump and Cruz in the same basket. So they’re looking for a mainstream candidate. And they were hoping that Rubio would come out of this debate not — being that…

NOONAN: Yes.

DICKERSON: — and he didn’t. And the field is split. There are several non-Trump candidates.

NOONAN: Yes, and there’s the sense that — that Cruz is on the upalator in some way and Rubio is on the downalator.

I want to mention something that I think the Republicans are making a mistake on. The cumulative effect of what they say at their debates. I love it that they’re fighting and hitting each other over the head and occasionally addressing serious issues in a serious way.

But the cumulative effect of the sort of harshness and even unlovingness of their rhetoric on immigration is going to, in the end, hurt them.

I also think the sort of severity and drama of their language on ISIS makes them look radical, do you know what I mean, as opposed to people…

GOLDBERG: Panicky?

NOONAN: — take…

GOLDBERG: Like panicky?

NOONAN: Not panicky, Jeffrey, but extreme.

DICKERSON: Does it (INAUDIBLE)…

NOONAN: Do you know what I mean?

So that…

BALZ: There’s a belligerence to the — to the talk.

NOONAN: Yes, there is.

BALZ: Well, if it goes beyond…

NOONAN: That’s actually the word…

BALZ: — muscularity to…

NOONAN: And it’s…

BALZ: — to belligerence.

NOONAN: Yes.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Right.

NOONAN: And you don’t have to be…

GOLDBERG: Well, carpet bombing.

NOONAN: — to be belligerent…

GOLDBERG: I mean, you know, when you start talking about carpet bombing whole cities…

NOONAN: Yes. And…

GOLDBERG: — you know, in response to a…

NOONAN: — and turning desserts to glass…

GOLDBERG: — a number.

NOONAN: — and stuff like that, you can be very strong, very definitive, very seriousness, but not use this harsh, severe over the top…

AXELROD: Except the…

NOONAN: — rhetoric. It’s un — misunderstanding their own base, I think.

AXELROD: The reality, though, is — and Jeff’s written about this — there are no easy answers to the situation that we face there. And so the substitute for a coherent answer is bellicosity, let’s be as ro…

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Right.

AXELROD: — let’s be as strong — because I think people are tired of the complexity of the situation and they’re responding to strength. And — and that’s how — that translates into the kind of language that you’re talking about.

NOONAN: They do want strength. They don’t want braggadocio and carelessness.

AXELROD: Yes, I don’t agree with you.

GOLDBERG: Well, but they seem to want that.

I mean what is Donald Trump giving them but braggadocio and — and carelessness. And he remains — no matter what he system, he maintains his numbers. So…

NOONAN: But heavily…

(CROSSTALK)

NOONAN: — on ISIS, he doesn’t talk much.

BALZ: Christie, too, in the debate.

AXELROD: But I — I’m sorry.

BALZ: Oh, was — was — I mean just — almost reflexively…

(CROSSTALK)

BALZ: — talking about shooting down Russian planes. You know, this is…

(CROSSTALK)

AXELROD: But we are two countries and let’s remember that there’s a primary electorate and then there’s a general election. And I agree with you, in the general electorate, that kind of rhetoric can be crippling.

But in the primary and given the sort of red hot nature of the Republican base, you know, you get the effect that you see with Trump, where people are responding. He is the anti-Obama. I always believed that the incumbent sets the terms of the debate. And people never choose the replica of what they have, particularly in the other party.

They choose the remedy. And there’s no one more anti — so — there’s no more of an antithesis to Barack Obama than Donald Trump.

Yes, Noonan actually said that Cruz is on the “upalator” and Rubio is on the “downalator.”

And yes, she condemned their lack of “lovingness” and characterized these violent freaks as “extreme.”

You built this party Peggy. And no they aren’t misunderstanding the base. They understand them very well …

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Happy Hollandaise everyone!

Sunday Funnies

by digby

Tom Tomorrow

Matt Davies:

Joel Pett:

Matt Bors:

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Happy Hollandaise everyone!

“Can you imagine that as president?”

by digby

On Fox and Friends this morning Trump showed up by phone as he does on all the morning shows and they played him this comment by Hillary Clinton in last night’s debate:

Clinton: Mr Trump has great capacity to use bluster and bigotry to inflame people and to make them think there are easy answers to very complex questions. We also need to make sure that the discriminatory messages that Trump is sending around the world don’t fall on receptive ears. He is becoming ISIS’s best recruiter…

This is how Trump responded:

Can you imagine that as president? I’m just watching and to see that as president just doesn’t work.

I’m fairly sure I understand what he meant. I’m going to guess most women do. But if you don’t, you can take a look back at his earlier comment about Carly Fiorina:

“Look at that face! Would anyone vote for that? Can you imagine that, the face of our next president?!”

This is typical among some men (and probably some women too) in reaction to any kind of aggression on the part of a woman, to automatically reduce her to an object, whether sexual or, in these two case, an inanimate object of ridicule, usually over their looks but in any event turning them into something that isn’t fully human. With Fiorina he was more explicit. With megyn Kelly he went with the “bitch on her period” line.

I guess this isn’t surprising. After all, one of his interviewers in that segment is Tucker Carlson who famously said that when Hillary Clinton comes on the screen he unconsciously crosses his legs. So, it’s clear these people have a problem. If Clinton wins the Democratic nomination we are going to have to hope that these throwback pigs are a distinct minority in 2016.

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Happy Hollandaise everyone!

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It’s time to take the Conservative Movement seriously

by digby

I spend a lot of time writing about the Republican field in this race because what I’m seeing is very, very dangerous and I think it’s important to see this phenomenon as clearly as possible.  I’m lucky enough to have a couple of contributors, Tom Sullivan and Gaius Publius, who write about the Democratic race intelligently and passionately so I don’t feel anyone who reads this blog regularly isn’t getting any information about the other side.  For myself, I will just say that I have been a fan of bernie Sanders for many years and that while a lot of people were giving it their all to get Elizabeth Warren into the race ( which I would have loved too) Blue America was trying to draft Bernie Sanders. We’ve raised a lot of money for him the past couple of years. As for Clinton, you can read how I feel about that in this piece I wrote for The Nation a year ago.

We are going to have an historic election one way or another.And not necessarily in a good way. We will elect the first woman or Jewish president or we will elect either a fascist, a far right demagogue or a puppet of a conservative majority that is in thrall to both big money and an agitated,bloodthirsty, racist base. There is no mainstream or “normal” in the Republican party. If for some reason they were to win the signal it would send to the rest of the world really could be devastating. If we have an “existential threat” in this world, it comes from within.

Just watch that Republican debate the other night. It was chilling. You can dismiss them as blustery fools if you want, but history shows that dismissing such aggressive hostility and violent rhetoric can go sideways very quickly. It’s always a good idea to take such people seriously.

I wrote this back in September when it became obvious that Trump had struck a nerve on the right. I think it holds up:

A piece by Michael Lind in Politico Magazine this week makes the case that the Tea Party isn’t libertarian as was once widely assumed, but populist, which seems to be gelling into current conventional wisdom. And it’s true that the Tea Party was never libertarian in any doctrinaire sense. They certainly claimed to be for low taxes and against big government, particularly if it tried to create a system by which most Americans could buy affordable health insurance; but beyond that it always got a little bit vague. Its members talked a lot about liberty but they referred less to esoteric notions of property rights and individual liberty than to moral values and religion — which are hardly a tenet of Randian libertarianism. They did rail some about bailouts, but they certainly didn’t put the kind of energy into opposing AIG or Fed reform that they put into opposing Obamacare and supporting gun rights.

Lind further argues that Trump’s rise and his popularity among self-identified Tea Partiers proves that the Tea Party has always been populist in the tradition of William Jennings Bryant and Huey Long. He writes:

Trump is no libertarian; quite the opposite. He is a classic populist of the right who peddles suspicion of foreigners—it’s no accident that he was the country’s leading “birther” raising questions about Barack Obama’s citizenship—combined with a kind of “producerism.” In populist ideology, society is divided not among rich and poor but among producers and parasites.

Populists are suspicious of unearned wealth, including the interest charged by bankers who manipulate “other people’s money” (to use the phrase of Louis Brandeis). And populists the world over are hostile to the idle or undeserving poor who allegedly live on welfare at the expense of productive workers and capitalists. Populists tend to attribute the existence of large numbers of the idle rich and the idle poor to government corruption. In the words of the 1892 People’s Party platform: “From the same prolific womb of governmental injustice we breed the two great classes—tramps and millionaires.”

It may seem odd that populists would choose a bombastic billionaire to express their concerns but it must be noted that unlike any of the rest of the GOP field he has supported tax hikes on the wealthy, gone after hedge funds, and picked a big fight with the Club for Growth.

Even still, let’s be real: The focus of American right wing populism is generally aimed downward at immigrants and poor people, not upward at the wealthy. The Republican base may have an abstract beef with “bail-outs” for the rich but they are utterly convinced that the government’s primary mission is to take their hard earned money and give it to lazy undeserving people who refuse to work.

So, by these definitions, Lind is correct: the Tea Party is much more populist than libertarian. But we’ve known who they really are since at least 2010 when the New York Times polled them, and it goes beyond ideology:

Tea Party supporters’ fierce animosity toward Washington, and the president in particular, is rooted in deep pessimism about the direction of the country and the conviction that the policies of the Obama administration are disproportionately directed at helping the poor rather than the middle class or the rich.

The overwhelming majority of supporters say Mr. Obama does not share the values most Americans live by and that he does not understand the problems of people like themselves. More than half say the policies of the administration favor the poor, and 25 percent think that the administration favors blacks over whites — compared with 11 percent of the general public.

They are more likely than the general public, and Republicans, to say that too much has been made of the problems facing black people…

They are far more pessimistic than Americans in general about the economy. More than 90 percent of Tea Party supporters think the country is headed in the wrong direction, compared with about 60 percent of the general public. About 6 in 10 say “America’s best years are behind us” when it comes to the availability of good jobs for American workers.

They also wanted to gut government spending for everyone but themselves, particularly social security and Medicare. Later, sociologists Theda Skocpol and Vanessa Williamson surveyed the beliefs and ideology of the Tea Party for a book called “The Tea Party and the Remaking of Republican Conservatism” and validated those results. They reported this for the NY Times during the presidential primary in 2011:

[W]e identified as Tea Partiers’ most fundamental concern … their belief that hardworking American taxpayers are being forced to foot the bill for undeserving freeloaders, particularly immigrants, the poor and the young. Young people “just feel like they are entitled,” one member of the Massachusetts Tea Party told us. A Virginia interviewee said that today’s youth “have lost the value of work.”

These views were occasionally tinged with ethnic stereotypes about immigrants “stealing” from tax-funded programs, or minorities with a “plantation mentality.” […]

Immigration was always a central, and sometimes the central, concern expressed by Tea Party activists, usually as a symbol of a broader national decline. Asked why she was a member of the movement, a woman from Virginia asked rhetorically, “what is going on in this country? What is going on with immigration?” A Tea Party leader in Massachusetts expressed her desire to stand on the border “with a gun” while an activist in Arizona jokingly referred to an immigration plan in the form of a “12 million passenger bus” to send unauthorized immigrants out of the United States. In a survey of Tea Party members in Massachusetts we conducted, immigration was second only to deficits on the list of issues the party should address.

Other pollsters studied different aspects of the Tea Party:

A new analysis by the Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion & Public Life finds that Tea Party supporters tend to have conservative opinions not just about economic matters, but also about social issues such as abortion and same-sex marriage. In addition, they are much more likely than registered voters as a whole to say that their religion is the most important factor in determining their opinions on these social issues. And they draw disproportionate support from the ranks of white evangelical Protestants.

If all this sounds familiar, it should. It’s Donald Trump’s agenda. He is the ultimate Tea Party candidate, with a strong anti-Washington, anti-immigration, nationalist message combined with his assiduous cultivation of the religious right. And the fact that his followers don’t all identify as members of the Tea Party doesn’t mean anything because the movement itself was never really a discrete political faction but rather a reaction to the loss of the presidency to an African American Democrat, the embarrassment of George W. Bush’s massive failure and the usual sense of grievance that has characterized the right wing of the Republican Party for decades. The Tea Party was simply a re-branding of the conservative movement after a catastrophic market failure.

Is the conservative movement populist? Yes, in many respects. But it’s also nationalistic, theocratic and libertarian which is exactly how Donald Trump is packaging his campaign as a conservative movement hero. All you have to do verify that is take a look at right wing radio. The hosts aren’t just obsequious. They are fawning fanboys and fangirls. Indeed, Trump is largely a talk radio phenomenon, with rare exceptions the obvious favorite among the biggest start from Limbaugh to Savage to Ingraham. These media stars don’t identify as Tea Partyers or populists or libertarians. They identify as conservatives. The fact that they are supporting him as if he is the reincarnation of Ronald Reagan says everything you need to know about the Trump phenomenon. Trump’s agenda is simply the conservative agenda, circa 2015, nothing more, nothing less.

I hope that posts such as that and those written by my contributors Tom and Gaius and Dennis provide at least some mixture of information, insight, analysis and fun when you come here and I hope you’ll keep coming back over the next year to see what we have on offer. This is a very exciting time in politics — and a dangerous one. We take what we do seriously and we try to give you our best. If it has value to you, I hope you’ll consider a donation so that we can keep the lights on for another year.

Happy Hollandaise everyone!

Poisoning the well helps no one


by Tom Sullivan

God help me, I am about to agree with Carly Fiorina. During Tuesday’s Republican presidential debate, Fiorina interrupted other bickering candidates to say, “This is why the nation is fed up…”
It is an article of faith on the left that “both sides do it” is a systematic dodge by the mainstream media to keep from calling out the right for reflexive dishonesty and worse. The media fears being accused of bias and losing precious “access.” For the most part, that is true. But something finally got under my skin this week about something both sides really do do: poisoning the well.

Distrust of government is already endemic. Caitlin Dewey at the Washington Post declared that last Friday’s “What was fake on the Internet this week” would be her last column debunking Internet hoaxes, pranks, and urban legends (emphasis mine):

Frankly, this column wasn’t designed to address the current environment. This format doesn’t make sense. I’ve spoken to several researchers and academics about this lately, because it’s started to feel a little pointless. Walter Quattrociocchi, the head of the Laboratory of Computational Social Science at IMT Lucca in Italy, has spent several years studying how conspiracy theories and misinformation spread online, and he confirmed some of my fears: Essentially, he explained, institutional distrust is so high right now, and cognitive bias so strong always, that the people who fall for hoax news stories are frequently only interested in consuming information that conforms with their views — even when it’s demonstrably fake.

The NGP VAN data breach this week triggered the same kind of bickering on the left that Fiorina was calling out on the right. DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz claimed the Sanders campaign not only “inappropriately and systematically accessed Clinton campaign data,” but had exported and downloaded it. Sanders partisans immediately assumed their candidate had been set up by a calculating Hillary Clinton, and that Wasserman Schultz used the incident to materially harm Sanders and help Clinton, the party insiders’ favorite.

I have used VoteBuilder for years. I have never seen a table delineating what functions and features come with what levels of access, or even what those levels are (and there are many). The fact that few civilians understand the nuts and bolts of how VoteBuilder works makes it easy to distort what actually happened. Even explaining it won’t help most people. In the current environment Dewey described, people on both the left and right are primed to assume the worst.

What finally struck me is that institutional distrust has led to the unexamined assumption that whenever something untoward happens to our team in politics we assume the worst motives on the part of our opponents, even among our own partisans. Nothing is an accident. Nothing ever happens because of raw stupidity, bad judgement, or carelessness. Everything becomes a plot by dark, malevolent forces too big and too powerful to stop.

Then we wonder why people don’t vote even as we model reasons for them not to. We reinforce the meme in ourselves and in the wider culture every time we jump to the cynical conclusion that shit never just happens; shit has an agenda. We purposefully misinterpret opponents’ remarks so as to damage them or to advantage ourselves. We assume the worst motives and deny the possibility of people even having better angels. Until, as Springsteen wrote, You end up like a dog that’s been beat too much / Until you spend half your life just covering up.


Listen, I am no fan of the DNC hierarchy. I am not even all that engaged with Bernie v. Hillary, as I have said. What is more important to me than others’ real or imagined motives is that elligible voters get off their couches, go down to their polling places, and exercise their franchise as citizens in America’s democracy. And it just pisses me off to have people on our side (and both sides) poisoning the well by reflexively assuming the worst of their opponents, souring fellow citizens on the process and ultimately depressing that vote.

I’m not arguing for naïveté. Just perhaps a little more Bob Cratchit and a little less Scrooge.

The Holiday fundraiser continues and I hope you’ll consider throwing a little something in the kitty to keep this old thing going.

Happy Hollandaise everyone!

The Holiday fundraiser continues and we hope you’ll consider throwing a little something in the kitty to keep this old blog going.

Happy Hollandaise everyone!

This will be my only contribution to Star Wars mania

by digby

When Star Wars came out back in the dark ages, people in my little town (Fairbanks Alaska) had to wait for weeks for the film to finish it’s run in Anchorage before our theatre got it. One of my little friends had a new Z-28 and it flew so a group of us decided to drive the 400 miles to see it when it opened. It was worth it.

I haven’t really been much of a fan since then, I must admit.  I saw the second one, barely remember the third and missed all the prequels. But the original was fun and had some simple universal messages that obviously hit a nerve with a lot of people. I wore a Luke Skywalker t-shirt all through europe some time later and it always got a conversation started with somebody in every country.

Anyway, I came across this, which most of you Star Wars obsessives have probably seen. But I hadn’t and I thought a few people might also have missed it:

The story about Han Solo is interesting. Apparently in early drafts he was a green monster. Then they made him an African American but were persuaded that much of the country would object to the flirtation between Han and Leia if he were black. (Sadly, I’m sure they were right. And America would have been the least of it. Even in the 90s and 2000s when I was selling movies to foreign countries, particularly Asia and the Middle East, this was a big problem. It’s a sick, sad world.)

Anyway, once they settled on Han Solo as a youngish, cowboy type, Ford was cast. And you can see in that audition that he had the character from the beginning.

I hope everyone’s enjoying the new one this week-end. I’m a big fan of JJ Abrams but I’d rather jam chopsticks in my ears then go to a movie like this on opening week-end. I’m happy to wait for as long as it takes.

The Holiday fundraiser continues and I hope you’ll consider throwing a little something in the kitty to keep this old blog going for another year.

Happy Hollandaise everyone!

I know it’s hard to believe, but Ted Cruz really does have a sense of humor

by digby

He doesn’t show it on the trail. And he seems to be completely humorless in interviews. But he’s smart enough to hire people who can make him seem almost human:

That’s going to run during Saturday Night Live tonight. And the pundits will be talking about it tomorrow for sure, probably more than the Democratic debate (unless something truly dramatic happens.)

When this whole campaign began I think most of us assumed that cruz was such a far right zealot and overall repulsive character that he couldn’t possibly get the nomination. He was a gadfly on the level of a Michele Bachman. But this is a different campaign than we thought it was going to be — and Cruz is a much more tactical campaigner than was predicted.

I’ve written a lot about Cruz recently after I began to read the right wing media talking about his sophisticated strategy, the money he’s collected and the hard work he’s putting in.

This piece was from August:

While Donald Trump continues to inspire what he calls “the silent majority” (and everyone else calls the racist rump of the GOP) and the other assumed front-runners Walker, Rubio and Bush flounder and flop around, another candidate is quietly gathering support from a discrete, but powerful, GOP constituency. As Peter Montgomery of Right Wing Watch pointed out earlier this week, Ted Cruz is making a huge play for the religious right. And they like what they’re seeing.

Montgomery notes that influential conservative Christian leaders have been getting progressively more anxious about the fact that they’ve been asked to pony up for less-than-devout candidates like McCain and somewhat alien religious observers like Mitt Romney when they are the reliable foot-soldiers for the Republican party who deliver votes year in and year out. With this year’s massive field from which to choose including hardcore true-believers Mike Huckabee, Bobby Jindal and Rick Santorum, these religious leaders are looking closely at all the candidates, but are homing in on Cruz.

Montgomery writes:

One big sign came late last month, when news that broke that Farris and Dan Wilks had given $15 million to Keep the Promise, a pro-Cruz super PAC. Not coincidentally, David Lane told NBC News last year that, “With Citizens United…you can have somebody who gives $15 or $20 million into a super PAC and that changes the game.” The billionaire Wilks brothers from Texas have become sugar daddies to right-wing groups generally, and to David Lane’s Pastors and Pews events specifically. 

A couple weeks later, Cruz stopped by the headquarters of the American Family Association. Lane’s American Renewal Project operates under the AFA’s umbrella, and Cruz sounded like he was reading Lane’s talking points. Cruz told AFA President Tim Wildmon that mobilizing evangelical Christian voters is the key to saving America, saying, “Nothing is more important in the next 18 months than that the body of Christ rise up and that Christians stand up, that pastors stand up and lead.” 

Cruz held a “Rally for Religious Liberty” in Iowa last week that had the influential Christian right radio host Steve Deace swooning with admiration as Cruz carried on about Christian persecution. He thundered, “You want to know what this election is about? We are one justice away from the Supreme Court saying ‘every image of God shall be torn down!” to massive applause from the audience.

The religious right feels battered after their massive loss on marriage equality. And they expect their candidates to do something about it. It appears they’ve decided the destruction of Planned Parenthood is that crusade and Cruz is only too willing to play to the crowd. According to the Washington Post:

Sen. Ted Cruz, who has assiduously courted evangelicals throughout his presidential run, will take a lead role in the launch this week of an ambitious 50-state campaign to end taxpayer support for Planned Parenthood — a move that is likely to give the GOP candidate a major primary-season boost in the fierce battle for social-conservative and evangelical voters.

More than 100,000 pastors received e-mail invitations over the weekend to participate in conference calls with Cruz on Tuesday in which they will learn details of the plan to mobilize churchgoers in every congressional district beginning Aug. 30. The requests were sent on the heels of the Texas Republican’s “Rally for Religious Liberty,” which drew 2,500 people to a Des Moines ballroom Friday.

“The recent exposure of Planned Parenthood’s barbaric practices . . . has brought about a pressing need to end taxpayer support of this institution,” Cruz said in the e-mail call to action distributed by the American Renewal Project, an organization of conservative pastors.

Not to put too fine a point on it, Cruz says he plans to shut down the government this fall unless Congress agrees to stop all funding of Planned Parenthood. And he’s making a big bet that his campaign will benefit from it:

Cruz implored more than a thousand pastors and religious leaders on Tuesday to “preach from the pulpit” against Planned Parenthood and rally public support for an amendment defunding the family provider in the must-pass federal budget bill in November. If Congress attaches the defunding amendment to the budget instead of holding a vote on the standalone bill, it cannot keep funding Planned Parenthood without shutting down the whole federal government.

“Here is the challenge,” the presidential hopeful explained on the national conference call. “The leadership of both parties, both the Democrats and Republicans, want an empty show vote. They want a vote on Planned Parenthood that has no teeth or no consequence, which allows Republicans to vote for defunding, Democrats to vote for continuing funding, and nothing to change. But the leadership of both parties have publicly said they do not want the vote tied to any legislation that must pass.”

“It will be a decision of the president’s and the president’s alone whether he would veto funding for the federal government because of a commitment to ensuring taxpayer dollars continue to flow to what appears to be a national criminal organization,” Cruz said.

As I said, the religious right is bursting to reassert its clout in the GOP and this is where they’ve decided to stand their ground. Cruz is going to lead them into battle.

That’s not to say that he’s running solely as a religious right candidate. Byron York reports that at a GOP candidate event last Monday in South Carolina featuring Cruz, Ben Carson and Scott Walker, Cruz received the most thunderous ovation. His speech wasn’t solely focused on the Christian persecution angle but he delivered what York called “an almost martial address” beating his chest about Iran and railing against sanctuary cities with the same fervor he delivered his put-away line: “No man who doesn’t begin every day on his knees is fit to stand in the Oval Office!”

York asked 53 people afterwards who did the best and 44 said Cruz, 6 said Carson and 3 said Walker. (Poor Walker is so dizzy from his immigration flip-flops that he’s stopped talking about it altogether, which the crowd did not like one little bit.) Cruz, on the other hand, has a way of making everything from EPA standards to the debt ceiling sound like a religious war which pretty much reflects the GOP base’s worldview as well.

Cruz is a true believer, but he’s also a political strategist. He has said repeatedly that his base is Tea Party voters and religious conservatives. In key Republican primaries like Iowa and South Carolina nearly 50 percent of the voters define themselves as conservative evangelicals. Cruz is betting that he can turn them out to vote for him.

Nobody knows what’s going to happen in this crazy GOP race. If Trump flames out, his voters will scatter and it will matter who has lined up the other institutional factions in the party. While everyone else spars with Trump and tries to out-immigrant bash each other, Ted Cruz is quietly working the egos and the passions of the millions of bruised conservative Christians who are desperate for a hero. When all the smoke has cleared the field he may very well be one of the last men standing.

We still don’t know if that’s going to happen. But it looks a lot more possible than it did back then.

The Holiday fundraiser continues and I hope you’ll consider throwing a little something in the kitty to keep this old thing going.

Happy Hollandaise everyone!