Over the last few months Ted Cruz has repeatedly celebrated the endorsements he has received from an array of far-right, anti-gay, Christian-Nation activists. Now, with Marco Rubio’s campaign crumbling, Cruz is picking up more support from Republicans who want to keep Donald Trump from getting the nomination. Last night right-wing author and radio host Mark Levin jumped on the Cruz bandwagon, predicting that Cruz would “wipe the floor” with Hillary Clinton in a debate.
In a long and winding explanation that took about half an hour to finally get to his announcement that he is supporting Cruz, Levin talked about his studies of the founding era and about the changes that have taken place throughout American history to bring us to the point where the two political parties are both part of “the modern centralized socialist state.” And he used the opportunity to promote his books, including “Men in Black: How the Supreme Court is Destroying America,” “Liberty and Tyranny: A Conservative Manifesto, Ameritopia,” the “Liberty Amendments,” and, most recently, “Plunder and Deceit.”
When you consider the totality of a candidate’s life and career, Levin said, “it really is a simple decision, is it not? If you’re a conservative, if you’re a constitutionalist, if you’ve been a Tea Party activist, if you’re a Reaganite or a Reagan Democrat, it really is in the end a simple decision. At least it is for me.”
We need somebody who actually understands and comprehends America’s founding, why it’s important. We need somebody who understands how to get it back. Again, it’s not a put-down of Donald Trump. He has different strengths. But right now, we need to get our country back, our Constitution back, our civil society back, our families back. We need to defend our faith. And there’s only one person right now who understands that, and that’s Ted Cruz.
Levin also criticized “the Republican establishment” for their “outrageous” treatment of Donald Trump, Ben Carson and Rand Paul. “But the one they despised the most, and the one they despised the longest,” he said, “is Ted Cruz.” Members of the establishment hate Cruz, said Levin, for the same reason they hate movement conservatives who push elected officials to be true to conservative principles.
“The Republican establishment is as diabolical as it’s ever been,” he said. “Maybe even more so. Mitt Romney coming out and giving the speech he gave, was awful. It was cheap … If I have to choose between Donald Trump and the establishment, that’s not a hard choice, I choose Donald Trump,” who he said has more integrity than any congressional leaders. Republican insiders are attacking Trump because they want to impose their will, he said. And there’s nobody who’s more anti-establishment than Cruz.
“We live in a post-constitutional period for the most part,” he complained. He has spent years railing against “entrenched Republicans,” he said, because they’re perfectly willing to go along with the direction of the country as long as they have some power. “The Republican ruling class stands in the way of us being able to nominate for president of the United States somebody who will begin the long road toward reversing course, somebody who can be relied on as a serious, principled, thoughtful, substantive conservative who has the courage, who has the motivation, who has the willpower to lead this nation, to lead this nation in a totally different direction.”
Here’s a sampling of Levin’s own “serious, principled, thoughtful, substantive” conservatism:
- Levin suggested in 2013 that President Obama was organizing a Brownshirt paramilitary to defend and promote the Affordable Care Act.
- He said in 2014 that President Obama’s Jewish donors are “self-haters” who “despise their own country.”
- At the 2013 Values Voter Summit, Levin said President Obama, Congress and the Supreme Court were engaged in “tyranny” and said that Obama needs to “sit down and shut up.”
- In 2014 he talked about a poll that asked people what would be the most positive thing about a Hillary Clinton presidency; more people mentioned the potential to elect a first woman president than anything else. Levin’s response:
“Hillary Clinton’s gender? Do they mean her genitalia is her top 2016 selling point? Is that what that means?” Levin later said “But the key is it’s her genitalia. That’s why so many people would vote for her. I wonder if Bill Clinton would vote for her because of that. He seems to — well, he likes genitalia but maybe not hers.”
