When not attacking the Muppets, the party’s leading figures have spent the year laying out plans to tax the poor and eliminate Social Security.
By Jim Hightower | September 28, 2022
Republished with Permission: The Roosevelt Island Daily News
Let me say one word to you: Nuts.
Now, let me say one name to you: Ted Cruz.
They’ve become synonymous, with the Texas lawmaker perennially topping national lists of goofy, right-wing political goobers. Only, Ted can’t rightly be called a lawmaker, for he’s not a serious participant in that process, instead devoting his senatorship to political stunts and picking silly PR fights with a growing list of enemies.
Running out of people to attack, Ted has found another species for his vitriol: Fictional icons. He’s been padding his right-wing credentials by going after Mr. Potato Head, Mickey and Pluto, and, believe it or not, the Muppets.
This U.S. senator has dedicated the power and public resources of his office to demonizing popular creatures on “Sesame Street,” specifically Big Bird and loveable little Elmo. Ted rants he has proof that Muppets are covert tools of “government propaganda.” So, this ridiculous excuse of a senator is saving America from… Muppets.
But for a whole bag of assorted nuttiness, you can’t beat Senator Rick Scott’s 11-point plan to “Rescue America.” A disgraced former healthcare mogul, Cruz’s mega-millionaire colleague reinvented himself as a wingnut Florida senator, and he now chairs a policy arm of the Republican Party.
In February, Scott set forth a stunning agenda of far-out right-wing extremism that he says his party will push if they retake the Senate this November, including:
- Implementing new federal taxes on the poorest half of Americans. So — as Scott puts it — they’ll “have skin in the game.”
- “Stopping socialism” by terminating Social Security and Medicare.
- Spending unlimited billions to build Donald Trump’s folly of a border wall (and, ironically, naming the scam after The Donald).
Fiddle-faddles like Cruz and Scott have turned the once-proud U.S. Senate into The Little Nut Shoppe on the Hill.
OtherWords columnist Jim Hightower is a radio commentator, writer, and public speaker. This op-ed was distributed by OtherWords.org.
The Line That Didn’t Land
I stood in the back of Good Shepherd Chapel on the evening of April 15, 2026, at the Steam Plant Demolition Town Hall, watching people adjust scarves and jackets before the meeting began. Benjamin Jones, President and CEO of RIOC, thanked us for attending and, without a pause, said he was “pleased to host tonight’s town hall on the city’s demolition of its steam plant.” The demolition, in other words, was not up for discussion.
