Ted Cruz Announces His Candidacy

Today Ted Cruz threw his hat in the ring. 2016 will probably be our last chance to forestall a collapse of the United States federal government, if it is even possible, so this is it. I support Ted for three reasons.

First Ted is the most likely candidate to unite social Conservatives and the Tea Party. From a practical standpoint, he is, for that reason, most likely to create a winning coalition that can win.

Second, Ted is an outsider. In a world where the insiders have shown themselves to care only for themselves, Ted is the most likely to do what is best for that vague ideal we know as America, no matter the costs to the entrenched interests in Washington.

Finally, Ted Cruz plays the social game instinctively, which is why he is flat out the best hope today to save the Republic. From this article:

Meyers welcomed Cruz on to the show on Tuesday night, and the pair had a rather jovial exchange. Things got a little tense, though, when Meyers engaged in a tortured and contrived effort to put Cruz in a corner on the issue of global warming…

At a recent speech, Cruz had warned an audience which included a three-year-old girl that the world was “on fire.”…

“I think he world’s on fire literally,” Meyers said. “Hottest year on record. But, you’re not there, right?”

Up until this point, Liberal amygdalae were getting irritated because Ted was seeming funny and personable, and the liberals wanted blood. Suddenly it looked like Cruz was going to get the hammering he deserved, and they began to experience relief and joy.

To this contention, Meyer’s audience whooped and hollered in a manner that would have made Jon Stewart feel right at home.

Cruz’s response was clever insofar as it undermined the canard to which the left’s climate alarmists cling: That they are wholly rational and data-driven, and their opponents refuse to accept consensus scientific opinion in the parochial service of their political values. Cruz noted that, for 17 years, satellite data has demonstrated that there has been no appreciable warming trend whereas climate models continue to predict catastrophic warming in the near-term. Cruz implied that it was safer to trust empiricism rather than the climate models that have yielded erroneous predictions for decades.

Cruz delivered an answer which was preformed to make anyone who opposed it appear stupid and out of touch, thereby diminishing their status. Once delivered, the rabbits have to choose, oppose Ted’s answer and endure the amygdala pain of knowing they look inferior in the eyes of the crowd, or shut up and not endure the amygdala agony. The crowd chose to pipe down, as did the host, who immediately tried to couch the choice as one not between right and wrong but rather one between two forms of technology.

“So, you trust satellites more than computers?” Meyers asked, pivoting back to a joke. Cruz followed suit, and the conversation veered back toward a humorous direction.

This socially-maneuvering skill is rare among K-strategists, for whom raw quality of effort, and an Asperger’s-like focus on facts and truth is most often the sole focus. Notice, the net effect of Cruz’s response was to demotivate the leftists. Conservatives are driven to action by amygdala irritation. Leftists are driven to depression and inaction. Depression and inaction among the left is exactly what we need.

What Ted needs to do now is focus his target audiences on their enemies (while identifying those enemies as vaguely as possible, to avoid inciting them to action), and in-group himself with his target audience against those enemies. He should do this by riling the votes he wants with anger at the enemy’s transgressions, couching himself as the best suited and most loyal to fight the enemy, and then pledging his loyalty to them and their individual causes, as well as pledging to sacrifice of himself if necessary. Along the way he should seek to keep any votes who are against him from seeing their amygdalae becoming too riled themselves, if he can avoid it. Liberals and the establishment are the enemy – of Blacks, Hispanics, working men, the poor, and the average patriot who hates how the two-party system has sold out America to the rich these last eight years.

If he can in-group himself early on and create a perception that he is “our guy” with each constituency, from the anti-politician constituency, to the pro-freedom constituency, to the anti-tyranny individual, he can instill amygdala pathways in the populace which will shield him from future attack.

If the populace feels he is a stranger and he is attacked by someone else, they will either ignore the attacks, or even join in with them. But if he is seen as a loyal ally by each constituency, attacks upon him will trigger his allies’ amygdalae, infuriate them, and only further entrench their support for him. Like in Judo, he will turn the strength of his enemies’ attacks against them. He needs to link himself with each constituency’s issue, within their amygdalae, so any attack on him is an attack on them and their pet issue, sure to provoke hatred and rage against the attacker.

Given how he has been the only voice in Washington consistently fighting for Conservative principles and against Obama, and how the established political machine, be it left or right hates him, he is already off to a good start. All he needs to do now is go issue-group by issue-group, and point that out, while angering any enemies as little as possible.

Go Ted!