Objectively intelligent.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by Adder

I deleted the text that I was going to respond to about Cruz et al, but there is a breed of "young" (back then) conservatives that started showing up in DC over a decade ago (Ilya Shapiro, former colleague and now "constitutional scholar" at Cato is one) that smirked and pretended to be kidding about how the Pinochet regime was good, actually. Cruz is of their type. So convinced of his own ultimate righteousness that there's nothing out of bounds as long as it's achieving his goals. If Cruz could get himself into 45's position, he would not hesitate to coup.

Movement conservatives in this country understand that they are counter-revolutionaries supporting a movement that is supporting by a minority. What they want is not popular. So they need to stick together, a la Reagan's Eleventh Amendment, and that means not turning on the more extreme conservatives. The Ilya Shapiros of the world do not want to talk about whether someone like Pinochet went too far, because that's a tactic to divide his movement, a conversation that is only safe behind closed doors.