Letters: There’s Cruz, and there’s Obama

Re “The GOP’s Obama,” Opinion, Sept. 24

Jonah Goldberg’s comparison of Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and President Obama is a sidesplitter. Just because both went to Harvard Law School doesn’t mean they’re similar.

Cruz is intelligent, but he lacks common sense. He represents Texas, the state with the largest percentage of uninsured individuals, and he puts all his effort into defunding the Affordable Care Act. His own GOP colleagues have told him he doesn’t have the votes to defund the healthcare law.

Cruz is the albatross around the GOP’s neck, and although everyone else can see it, he is unaware of the harm he is doing to his party and country.

Richard C. Armendariz

Huntington Beach

Goldberg tells us the Affordable Care Act was “an entirely inside affair, an ugly partisan one involving horse-trading and countless backroom deals with industry and unions.” He should open a history book and discover that this “ugly” process of compromise also gave us the Social Security Act of 1935.

At the time, social insurance for the elderly was provided in western Europe. Then, too, Republicans predicted doom. Typical was Sen. Daniel Hastings (R-Del.), who said that the act would “end the progress of a great country and bring its people to the level of the average European.”

Far from a perfect piece of legislation when it passed, and facing an administrative challenge of staggering complexity, today it is considered one of the most successful pieces of social legislation in U.S. history.

Pete Samuels

Mission Viejo

Goldberg says the left’s aversion to Cruz is rooted in the fact that a Harvard-educated intellectual is a tea party champion. How dare he try to read my mind.

It has nothing to do with education. It has everything to do with policies and attitudes toward people in need. It’s about Obama’s kindness and generosity versus Cruz’s hostility and avarice.

Elizabeth Thompson

Coronado

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