Remember when Sen. Ted Cruz this week made certain statements that caused Sen. Barbara Boxer to suggest that he might be a new Joe McCarthy? Well, Jane Mayer of
The New Yorker writes today that there might be something to this. She happens to have covered a conference at which Cruz spoke a few years back and
files this report today:
Boxer’s analogy may have been more apt than she realized. Two and a half
years ago, Cruz gave a stem-winder of a speech at a Fourth of July
weekend political rally in Austin, Texas, in which he accused the
Harvard Law School of harboring a dozen Communists on its faculty when
he studied there. Cruz attended Harvard Law School from 1992 until 1995.
His spokeswoman didn’t respond to a request to discuss the speech.
Cruz made the accusation while speaking to a rapt ballroom audience
during a luncheon at a conference called “Defending the American Dream,”
sponsored by Americans for Prosperity, a non-profit political
organization founded and funded in part by the billionaire industrialist
brothers Charles and David Koch. Cruz greeted the audience jovially,
but soon launched an impassioned attack on President Obama, whom he
described as “the most radical” President “ever to occupy the Oval
Office.” (I was covering the conference and kept the notes.)
He then went on to assert that Obama, who attended Harvard Law School
four years ahead of him, “would have made a perfect president of Harvard
Law School.” The reason, said Cruz, was that, “There were fewer
declared Republicans in the faculty when we were there than Communists!
There was one Republican. But there were twelve who would say they were
Marxists who believed in the Communists overthrowing the United States
government.”
“We are puzzled by the Senator’s assertions, as we are unaware of any
basis for them,” Robb London, a spokesman for Harvard Law School, told
me.
Greg Mitchell is author of more than a dozen books, including four on influential American political campaigns, such as Obama-Romney 2012.
1 comment:
He's definitely wrong. Only a dozen? I'd guess it's in the hundreds.
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