Check out this bone-chilling quote from Ted Cruz, in an interview with National Review's Bob Costa:
I’m convinced there is a new paradigm in politics--the rise of the grassroots. And on Obamacare, I’ve said, from the start, that if typical Washington rules apply, we can’t win this fight. If the forums in which we make this case consist of the smoke-filled rooms of Washington, the votes aren’t there. The only way this fight will be won is if the American people rise up and hold our elected officials accountable.
"If typical Washington rules apply" ... Translation: If representative democracy works.
The votes aren't there! groans Cruz, meaning that under the sacred constitutionalism of American governance--indeed the very constitutionalism that Cruz pretends to champion--Obamacare's funding and implementation should be grudgingly celebrated for now by all conservatives. From here they can make their case--again--and work to keep the House and regain the Senate and capture the White House in 2016 and then dismantle Obamacare to their popularly elected delight. That's the "paradigm." It's in all the civics books.
What Ted Cruz advocates is, instead, mob rule. Don't like the results of national elections? No problem. Just rise up! and fight! elected officials and hold them accountable! through some dark, Cruz-unarticulated system of grassroots-activism-cum-election-nullification. Elections are merely for show, and never final. In brief, mob rule.
But of course every brownshirted mob needs a leader. And while Ted Cruz is, no doubt, thunderstruck by his availability, what strikes me is the crude intellectual violence--and rather easy resurrection--of "The Authoritarian Personality."