I was going to include an illustration along with my last post concerning Senator Ted Cruz's tactics for defeating Donald Trump at the Republican Convention and forgot to do so. It continues to amaze me that although this election is supposed to be a recall of the establishment and a thorough butt whoopin' to the media elites, we have instead chosen to reward at least the latter by allowing them to force the Lyin' Ted narrative upon us, despite the fact that he is not lying.
Again, don't misunderstand, I am not saying Donald Trump is the anti-Christ or that he is our worst possible option for President. I just don't like seeing a good man get slandered as bad as Senator Cruz has been for the past couple of months. Trump is taking advantage of any political mud that happens to stick to the target by drawing the eyes of possible onlookers to it. If this is not true, he reminds me of a certain competitive person I once knew.
This particular man was a wrestling coach of mine. Along with being an excellent citizen, he was an elite in terms of his athletic ability. So elite, however, that the possibility of defeat could not be chalked up to any failures of his own. I remember one time we were playing basketball as a team (yes, a wrestling team playing basketball). Whenever his team came in danger of losing, he would start accusing the other team of cheating. All of a sudden, everything was a foul or a travel or what have you. Defeat was not in this man's vocabulary. If I recall correctly, his team went undefeated, namely because nobody was going to question his judgment as a player, coach, official. I think Trump has the same competitive nature. But the whining about Cruz's tactics are ridiculous and I am going to use another wrestling analogy to illustrate the absurdity in the complaints.
In the sport of wrestling, when you bring your opponent down to all fours on the mat, you are no longer allowed to lock your hands around them. Any violation of this rule results in a point for your opponent and if it continues, more point get awarded. If it continues after the point value is raised, the violator gets disqualified. There is one exception to this rule against locking hands. You are allowed to lock your hands around your opponent if you are attempting a pinning combination.
Let's say that I am aware of this exception to the locking hands rule but neither my opponent nor the crowd is aware of it. Taking this scenario further, I take my opponent down and lock my hands around him to perform a pinning combination known as a cradle. My opponent becomes confused as to why the official is not stopping the move dead and the fans start shouting "Locking hands! He's locking hands!" My opponent is immobilized by the move and stunned as the official rules him pinned, crediting a victory to me. My opponent stands up utterly outraged that he was ripped off, that I cheated, and starts riling up the crowd. The crowd shouts louder and louder until they start to become absolutely enraged at the possibility that the official and I had rigged the match in my favor. So, should I be punished because I knew the rules better than my opponent and the fans? Was it unfair that I took advantage of the rules and my opponent chose to remain ignorant of them (or at least feign ignorance)?
The reality about Ted Cruz's campaign was that he has been preparing for this moment for the past few years. He understood that he had to slay a dragon and the only way to do it was to understand every strength and weakness it possessed before charging it head-on. He knew that the GOP would take advantage of every loop-hole in the rules they could find. As a result, he made sure that he could play ball with them before he stepped onto the field. This has been the weakness of past candidates that were beloved by the general public. We loved them, but they wanted to win based on merit alone...that's a lovely thought, but their opponents aren't there to be nice and play fair. With our past two nominees it is clear that not every candidate cares about being liked.
I felt like sharing these points would be necessary because we are begrudging a man for being well-prepared. Perhaps that is our problem as Americans, we want people to be elected who are just like us. We want to run into a situation, guns blazing, and ask questions only after the rest of the room is dead. In this respect, Cruz is a dead-eye. He identified all of the targets before he walked into the room and is systematically taking them out according to their threat level. I find it hard to believe that anyone faults Cruz for taking this campaign seriously. The sad thing is that neither he nor Trump have even set foot on stage, yet, against their eventual democratic opponent. When that happens, I want my nominee to be prepared for all of the sleaziness that is certain to ensue.
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