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Charlie, please comment on the Dems running in the WI Senate primary. Anyone substantial who could beat Johnson?

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Happy B-Day to all at The B. A great piece of worthwhile work all around. Best wishes for many more!

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So. On that piece about what didn't happen. We're really just absolving all the supposed R's that care about democracy, are we? There's been a lot of talk about Manchin, but as I recall, ZERO republicans supported his voting rights bill. Not Romney, not Murkowski, not Blunt, not Portman, not Toomey, not Shelby, not Burr. In case you're curious, the last five of those are retiring. In the house, neither Kissinger or Cheney support voting rights legislation, and actively voted to shut down the government during this pandemic we're in.

At some point, we need to call a spade a spade. Either there are no good republicans, or the standard of 'good' is so meaningless as to be useless. Because all the people we're told are 'good' are entirely geared towards supporting Trumpism. They might not publicly speak the hymns, but they vote accordingly. And what one does is always more important than what one says.

There's a lot of recriminations that the left would go after Manchin, a man who spends his time creating bills that will die, supporting measures that would put more of his constituents into poverty, and generally being a pain in everyone's rear. But he's got no answers for what he intends to actually do now. He made a bill that was meant to get GOP support, and not even Murkowski, who CO SPONSORED THE BILL, voted for it. Which means that any GOP officeholders are not willing to walk the walk when it comes to actually fighting Trumpism.

This, to me, seems apt. After all, this is how the conservative movement has always operated. It prizes 'respectability' over actually doing the right thing, which is how we get praise for Buckley, a man who said segregation was good and civil rights were bad, and how we get praise for Goldwater, a man who wanted to nuke Russia, and who was later seen as not conservative enough.

If we truly believe that democracy is in peril, then we should be raking people like Romney over the coals. We should be putting Blunt and Toomey's feet to the fire and asking 'what are you doing to save your own party?' If the answer is 'nothing' then they're no better than Trumpists like Hawley and Cruz.

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Happy birthday, Bulwark!

I can’t bring myself to watch Fox “News”, so thanks for bring me this latest chapter in the self-abasement of Sen. Cruz. Can he really be so delusional to think that the MAGA world so enamored of strength would remotely consider his sniveling self to be Presidential material?

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In the annals of the English language no one has personified the word "oleaginous" better than Ted Cruz. Nothing describes that unctuous Texan pol's character better unless it is the word "pusillanimous" -- can we still say pussy? -- after his groveling performance before Fox bad boy Tucker Carlson. Egad!

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It has been obvious for years that the only person that Rafael Cruz represents is Rafael Cruz. He will do and say whatever he thinks is necessary to serve Rafael Cruz's ambition... including pretending that he isn't named Rafael. He is a man of absolutely zero principle. I do not understand how any self-respecting Texan could possibly vote for such a lick-spittle butt kisser. I thought Texan's had a tad more self-respect.

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Hold up. Tucker called himself a reporter here!! So is it possible to can his ridiculous legal defenses about merely being a opinion host? Let the defamation suits resume, please.

Happy Birthday to The Bulwark! I am grateful for you guys every day.

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Happy Birthday, Bulwark. Being a Bulwark subscriber is money well spent as far as I am concerned. I wish you lot would develop an app for my phone to enjoy other podcasts available to Bulwark + members when I am out on my morning run or exercising at my gym.

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The interesting part of the story for a Republican Senator like Cruz is how he would have to put on an Oscar-winning crying performance like Adam Kinzinger before he got any positive press from the left media. So then, why fall for their absurd breathless hyperbole and lies about Jan 6?

The Democrat party, once the home of the American working class, is now committed to claiming all American working class Trump supporters as Nazis for their failure to capitulate to the Global New World Order Great Reset project. That is their well coordinated, Billionaire Boys Club-funded, dishonest corporate media-powered political propaganda strategy... generate copious negative character branding about Trump and his supporters leading up to the mid-terms. Because the American voters are clearly not buying the Democrat political platform dog food... they are abandoning Old Joe like the wealthy leaving the Titanic before it sunk.

Cruz, and any Republican that gives the smallest of indication that Jan-6 was anything more than a largely peaceful protest where a small contingent of protestors were whipped up into a frenzy in encouraged aggression by several still anonymous people within the crowd who somehow have not been arrested yet but seem to have connections with the FBI, and then who went through not very strongly capitol police defended barriers to occupy the Capitol... are only hurting: themselves, the Republicans and the Democrats who continue to think that this cult of anti-Trump supporters and anti-American working class is going to help the party. It is not going to do any of those things.

It was not an insurrection. It was not terrorism. It is not a 9-11 or D-Day. Those are absurd hyperbolic intellectually dishonest accusations. Cruz and all Republicans need to be on the opposite side of anything the Democrats claim about Jan-6 other than there are a few people that committed trespassing and assaults on law enforcement, and they should be arrested and prosecuted for those crimes. Nancy's partisan Commission is just political theater as was her putting fencing and military personnel around the capitol. All of this is just political media theater at this time, and Cruz should have recognized it and stayed completely out of the dishonest script.

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Thank the gods for The Bulwark! And happy birthday!

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I live in Texas and I remind people that Ted Cruz does not represent Texas in the Senate. Ted Cruz represents Ted Cruz in the Senate.

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The picture of LIz Cheney and her dad in the Houses Chamber is breathtaking. It is stark and moving and the best visual statement about the entire Republican party. Not only the tea party members, but the cowards and crazies refusing to come to the Chamber of their own House to support the Officers that saved their lives on January 6, 2021. Front page picture should appear every day in every newspaper and on every piece of social media.

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Happy Birthday to The Bulwark!

Ted Cruz is such a tragic and unsympathetic character. I think part of the reason is because he thinks he is the protagonist of an Aaron Sorkin type story when in reality he is the supporting character in a Coen Brothers film.

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It occurred to me while reading this, that we have texts from Hannity and Ingraham on the day asking the President to stop things... but we never heard Tucker's take because he was in favor or did he just have Trump's direct line.

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Happy Birthday to the Bulwark! I was with you guys from the start and have never regretted it. Re: Ted Cruz - I feel that the ads write themselves if he should run again for president. You can put anyone against him and see him grovelling - Putin, Kim Jun-Un, Xi, Big Bird..... Trump will still win at disgracing America with foreign leaders, but I think Ted will give him a run for his money.

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Happy Birthday y'all! Thriving without an ad on any page in sight. Well done.

I was surprised to see that the top story in Bulwark history was a piece on Rapinoe (I figured it would be something by Tim Miller for sure). I wonder what Ms. Rapinoe thinks of Lia Thomas at UPenn. I wonder what she would think about competing against a team full of Lia Thomases out of Germany in the World Cup.

Ted Cruz knows he screwed up bad. You can go to Cancun during a once in a millennium Texas snowstorm, abandoning your primary voters who deny the climate-change that started the whole thing, but you cannot refer to people who assaulted the US Capitol in service to Trump as terrorists. You do that, and GOP primary voters in Texas might even choose Beto over you, Ted.

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