Adults say the darndest things.
They say things like Washington has “too much power” — as 60 percent of respondents, including almost two in five Democrats, told Gallup in a poll earlier this month. That 60 percent figure was the highest mark since Gallup began asking the question in 2002, when more than half said federal power was “about right.” The “too much” trend has moved steadily upward ever since.
And yet, in two of the three presidential elections since 2002, and as recently as last November, adults have elected the candidate who promised to make federal power grow, not shrink.
Adults also go to the polls and vote for candidates who run against Washington. Candidates routinely rail against Washington as a means of winning the right to live in Washington for two or four or six years, depending on the office.
Just look at the “Only in Washington” campaign Karen Handel ran for 42 days against her three leading opponents to be Georgia’s next U.S. senator — a trio of congressmen who have spent a combined 42 years in Washington, which happens to be where she wants to spend six years beginning in January 2015.
Why would Handel do such a thing? I have no doubt she believes it. But she also has every reason to believe it’ll work for her, just as it did for successful Senate candidates such as Rand Paul of Kentucky and Ted Cruz of Texas.
Adults eat that stuff up.
And yet when senators like Paul and Cruz go to Washington and actually fight Washington, a lot of adults look at them as if they’re crazy. Or “wacko birds,” in the phrase of Sen. John McCain.
You know McCain. He’s the guy who, in accepting the GOP presidential nomination in 2008, said he was going to “shake up” the “old, big-spending, do-nothing, me-first, country-second Washington crowd.” (His opponent, a fellow named Barack Obama, merely said “the change we need doesn’t come from Washington. Change comes to Washington.”)
“Fight with me,” McCain said back then. Fight against Cruz — as he fights the old, big-spending, do-nothing Washington crowd — McCain said this past week.
There’s a lot to be said about Cruz’s political theater in the Senate this past week, not all of it good by any stretch. His 21-hour speech in the name of withholding funding from Obamacare delayed no bill and swung no votes to his position. It featured the unpleasant spectacle of his allies branding Republicans who disagreed on tactics, not goals, as RINOS.
The speech did fire up the tea party, and it might have bolstered his presidential ambitions in 2016. Your mileage may vary as to whether either is a worthy goal.
But ask yourself this: What is so shocking about a politician elected to “fight Washington” deciding to, well, fight Washington?
To the extent Cruz’s action was shameless self-promotion, it was also harmless: Senate Republicans didn’t have the numbers to pass the House bill that funds all federal government functions minus Obamacare. His speech didn’t even delay Senate procedure.
But if he had somehow succeeded, wouldn’t he have been doing exactly what he promised his voters he would do? Here, note that Cruz, as a senator, represents the entire state of Texas, so this isn’t a matter of pandering to carefully selected voters in a gerrymandered district.
Still, what Cruz’s voters think of his fighting remains to be seen. You know what they say about the things adults say.
