America has a Ted Cruz problem.
Cruz, the junior senator from Texas, is like a modern-day Joe McCarthy. But instead of using Cold War paranoia to fuel his witch hunt, he seized on the Affordable Care Act and upended the functioning of our government.
McCarthy was an irrational fear-monger, but he at least lived at a time when communists posed a conceivable threat to our democracy.
By contrast, President Obama's health care program is no threat at all to our democracy and actually will make life better for millions of Americans. Cruz nevertheless depicts the president and his backers as socialistic, and, in doing so, is stirring up fear and hatred for no reason other than self-aggrandizement.
Even some members of Cruz's own party, along with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, have come to realize that a man willing to put people out of work and place the economy on the line is hardly going to be fixing the country for anyone.
Now, amazingly, Cruz claims victory for his tactics and derides fellow Republicans who didn't go along with him. By so doing, he has made his own party seem weak and ineffectual.
Cruz's rhetoric on health care is in keeping with his over-the-top language on other issues. Only this past summer, he warned that allowing gay marriage would end free speech.
His is a politics of exaggeration and demonization -- the kind of politics that goes by the name of McCarthyism.
We don't need another round of McCarthyism today. We need responsible leadership in both parties, and a willingness to express differences of opinion in a civil manner. Only then can our government function in a rational way.
Jose Miguel Leyva is a freelance writer and journalist living in El Paso, Texas. He can be reached at pmproj@progressive.org.
Copyright Jose Miguel Leyva.
Illustration: Flickr user Mike Licht, creative commons licensed.