In my last column I warned Republicans that their intense antipathy toward President Obama is destroying the legacy of Lincoln and the GOP brand while hurting America.
Now here comes National Review, pumping a potential 2016 presidential candidacy of Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and attacking the immigration bill, a combination destined to turn Florida and Texas quickly blue and bring an epic Hillary Clinton landslide in 2016.
Don't laugh. Ted Cruz is apparently thinking of bringing his ability to outrage a majority of voters and alienate a majority of his Senate Republican colleagues to a campaign to be commander in chief. And National Review appears to be joining the growing kamikaze squad of rightist Republicans determined to make the GOP a losing party for decades by sabotaging the immigration bill and outraging a huge majority of Hispanics voters for a generation.
My guess is the late and great William F. Buckley, founder of National Review and father of modern principled conservatism, must be pulling out his hair in heaven and saying of the latest edition of the magazine, "What are they doing to my child?"
Nominating Cruz for president and destroying immigration reform? Has marijuana been legalized in rightist salons?
For Democrats this is too good to be true. While Republicans continue to try to smear former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton over Benghazi, she long ago accepted her share of responsibility, and her popularity continues to tower above all national figures in American public life.
Bill Clinton remains an overwhelmingly popular former president. And the GOP brand has a popularity that remains mired in numbers barely above the popularity of defective dog food. The GOP's Benghazi offensive shows the political savvy of someone with an anger management problem kicking himself in the groin.
Hillary Clinton embodies the best of America and the best of national politics. As Nancy Pelosi has recently said, very correctly, Hillary would be the most qualified candidate in modern American history as a former first lady, United States senator and secretary of State.
Ted Cruz embodies the worst of American politics and the most intensely disliked attributes of what some Republicans call "the party of stupid." Even many Senate Republicans consider Cruz big-mouthed and untrustworthy as he violates the confidence of private meetings of Republican senators, attacks the patriotism of American war hero Chuck Hagel and seems hell-bent to alienate Hispanics from Republicans in historic numbers.
Here is a list of achievements by Cruz in his few days of service in the Senate:
By contrast, the list of achievements of Hillary Rodham Clinton is widely known and greatly admired.
It is a coincidence that the most qualified person to be president happens to be a woman. It is the good fortune for Democrats that she happens to be a Democrat. It is a blessing for the nation that she may well be elected our next president.
And if she runs against Ted Cruz, Franklin Delano Roosevelt would be jealous of the landslide she would win, including in Cruz's home state, which would vote for Hillary over Cruz in a knockout.