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I agree completely with Patrick Caldwell's assessment of wingnut Sen. Ted Cruz and his remarks this Saturday at the National Review Institute Summit about two "highly decorated former veterans" John Kerry and Chuck Hagel. This guy is quickly proving himself to be the Michele Bachmann of the Senate, constantly willing to throw red meat to their base: Chicken Hawk Ted Cruz Smears Kerry and Hagel:

Cruz appeared in Washington, D.C., at a forum hosted by the National Review Institute, the non-profit arm of the conservative magazine. "We've got two pending nominations, John Kerry and Chuck Hagel. Both of whom are very prominently [pause] less than ardent fans of the U.S. military," Cruz said to chuckles from the crowd.

A quick refresher about the two men he claims somehow oppose the U.S. military. In 1966, secretary of state nominee John Kerry, while studying at Yale University, enlisted in the U.S. Navy. In 1968, at the peak of the conflict, he requested to serve in Vietnam. The U.S. government ultimately awarded Kerry three Purple Hearts, a Bronze Star, and a Silver Star for his service. Contra the despicable Swift Boat ads trotted out in the 2004 presidential campaign, Kerry is indisputably a war hero.

In 1967, Chuck Hagel, the secretary of defense nominee, was called before the draft board and volunteered to serve in the U.S. Army. Hagel saw combat in both Vietnam and Cambodia. Along with the shrapnel from a mine explosion still lodged in his chest, Hagel walked away from the war with two Purple Hearts and a host of other commendations.

The two men would later serve together in the U.S. Senate—Kerry as a Democrat, Hagel as a Republican. Neither voted consistently against the use of American forces abroad. Both, in fact, approved the resolution granting George W. Bush approval to pursue the foolish Iraq War.

Yet for Ted Cruz, who never served in the military, both Kerry and Hagel are dangerous peaceniks who cannot be trusted. Cruz, who has quickly earned a reputation in Washington for serving up Michelle Bachmann-style red meat to the right-wing crowd, didn't elaborate on his statement on stage and ducked out of the conference without fielding questions from the media. But it's simple to see where his objection lies: President Obama nominated Kerry and Hagel. If a Democratic president has nominated you, you must loathe the military. And if you're just another chicken-hawk Republican, you must love it more.

And here's more from the HuffPo:

Cruz went on to say that former President Ronald Reagan was more deserving of a Nobel Peace Prize than every other nominee put together for his stance towards the Soviet Union. Cruz threw in a reference to the only vice president ever to resign from the office, Spiro Agnew, who served under former President Richard Nixon, saying Reagan overcame the "nattering nabobs" at the Department of State to tell Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev at the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, "Tear down this wall."

"My view of national security and foreign policy is exactly that of Reagan's," he said.

You've got to love these Republicans. They just can't stop worshiping their imaginary version of St. Ronnie that only exists in their minds. The GOP has been so quick to prop this guy up because they're hoping he's going to help them with the Hispanic vote. Good luck with that.

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Conservative radio host Laura Ingraham on Sunday pointed to the roots of Southern strategy of the late 1960s -- which appealed to racism in the South -- as an example of how the Republican Party should reform itself after President Barack Obama won re-election.

"If the reaction to the election is let's dig into our core principles and try to remake them, I think the GOP will lose even more seats in 2014," Ingraham told Fox News host Chris Wallace. "If it becomes a bidding war with Republicans in either this group or that group -- whether it's Latinos or women -- we're going to give you more stuff or we're going to do amnesty plus... it's not going to work."

"The Republicans have to take a lesson from -- and I hate to bring up Reagan again -- when Goldwater got shellacked in '64, Bill Buckley and Brent Bozell Sr. and all these conservatives got together and they said, we're going to figure out how to sell this idea of economic conservatism and the conservative framework to new voters. And they went into the South and they transformed Mississippi and Alabama, all these places where people had never voted Republican before."

In his book "From the New Deal to the New Right: Race and the Southern Origins of Modern Conservatism," author Joseph Lowndes points out that William F. Buckley used the National Review to argue that southern whites were superior to blacks and Brent Bozell wrote that the federal government had no right to end segregation.

The National Review later moved away from overt racism and supported Barry Goldwater, whose presidential run became the template for the "Southern strategy" to appeal to white voters in the South.

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It seems the National Review's John Derbyshire has caused quite a stir with a recent column he wrote for Taki’s Magazine, describing "the talk" he has given to his children about race. Chris Hayes and his panel discussed the column in the video above and here's how Hayes opened up the segment:

HAYES: In the wake of Trayvon Martin's death at the hand of George Zimmerman, plenty of black journalists who are also parents have written extensively of the advice they've given to their sons about dealing with the police so as to avoid a misunderstanding that might leave them dead. And what we've learned from Zimmerman is sometimes that talk doesn't even have to be about a police officer.

National Review writer John Derbyshire has written a piece for Taki's Magazine [...] about the talk he's had with his two teenagers, white teenagers, non-black teenagers I should say, to deal with black people. I'm going to read you some of the things he says. He tells them:

(10d) Do not attend events likely to draw a lot of blacks.

(10e) If you are at some public event at which the number of blacks suddenly swells, leave as quickly as possible.

It is one of the most sort of avowedly racist things I've seen in a long time. Derbyshire has a reputation for being [...] an avowed racist. He is a white supremacist. He thinks white people are superior to black people and he writes about that in the piece and all this I.Q. craziness. What is really interesting is that he is a contributor to The National Review and one of the things that happens when you have conversations about race is that the right feels that it is unfairly called racist all the time, that it is constantly being singled out and that liberals use the race card and accusations of racism way to liberally and it's unfair.

And I think the response that I tend to have is you have people in your coalition, if you look at where are the racists in America, which coalition are they part of? They're part of your coalition.

As Hayes pointed out, it's up to those like the National Review to decide whether they want to align themselves with the likes of Derbyshire or not, and it's up to them to police those boundaries. Hayes followed up with some interesting discussion with his panel of Van Jones, Joan Walsh, Ann Friedman and Josh Barro, who as Hayes pointed out, wrote about the right's problem with race even before this latest screed by Derbyshire was published.

Our own John Amato wrote about Derbyshire way back in 2007 and you can read more about that here and here. And Think Progress has more on his background here:- Derbyshire In 2003: I’m A Proud ‘Racist’ and here: In 2009, Derbyshire Argued Women Shouldn’t Vote: ‘Women Voting Is Bad For Conservatism’.

And from Think Progress as well, here's more on Derbyshire's latest: National Review Writer Pens Racist Screed: ‘Avoid Concentrations Of Blacks,’ ‘Stay Out Of’ Their Neighborhoods:

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I'm glad we've had a few liberals to stand up for the working class on that deficit commission like Jan Schakowsky since it looks like their recommendations are going nowhere for now. During her interview on CNN's Parker/Spitzer, Schakowsky explains to Parker fill-in Will Cain that out in the real world, there is not this obsession with deficit reduction or entitlement cuts that we're seeing out of our beltway Villagers chattering class. She also does a good job of explaining that Social Security does not reduce the deficit, despite being called unserious by Cain.

The bad news is, this is just a preview of what's yet to come. Here's more on that from Chris Bowers -- What happens next on the Deficit Commission.

Full transcript via CNN.

SPITZER: Let me ask you very simply, is this commission becoming a train wreck? I mean, it just seems hard to imagine, there are going to be 14 votes for any plan or any even piece of this plan as it's been rolled out it's been met with derision and opposition. What do you think? Fourteen votes in the cards for this plan?

SCHAKOWSKY: I don't see 14 votes for this plan, but I do think that if we would trim back our ambitions and make more of a laundry list of things that we could all agree on, and I think there would be some that point us at least in the right direction, that we could make a powerful statement, nonetheless. It seems, however, that Bowles- Simpson have done sort of Bowles-Simpson 2.0 that they're going to introduce -- we may even get a copy of it tonight that will be discussed tomorrow and then voted on Friday. If it still has a lot of the things that hurt the middle class, I'm an old-fashion Democrat and think we ought to stand up for middle class people, that cut social security benefits, that add to the cost of Medicare for the elderly that put very tough caps on discretionary spending which is mostly programs that help ordinary people, then I don't see how I can vote for this plan. And also, it doesn't have any kind of investment in the economy, helping to create jobs, which really does promote deficit reduction through growth.

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