On Sunday on CNN's State of the Union, Dana Bash, while interviewing Texas Senator and GOP presidential candidate Ted Cruz, attempted to compare his alleged lack of experience to that of Barack Obama when he declared his candidacy in 2007.
It did not go well for her. It's a mystery why Bash might have thought that Cruz wouldn't have an answer for her faux concerns, but he did, and he hit her pitches out of the park.
Transcript (full transcript of entire interview is here):
DANA BASH: I want to first read something to you a description — a Harvard law graduate, 40 something years old, two young daughters, in the Senate for only two years who thinks he can be president. I could be describing you, I could be describing Barack Obama.
SEN. TED CRUZ (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: True enough, but I think there are a lot more notable differences between us than the similarities.
BASH: That is true, but, you know, one of the key things that we're already hearing is you don't have a lot of experience when it comes to being in federal office or being in office at all, and that you're, you know, too young and too inexperienced for the job.
CRUZ: Well you know, Dana, I think there are really two sharp distinctions between where I am today and where Barack Obama was when he launched his campaign.
Number one, in his time in the Senate he had basically been a back bencher. He had not been leading on issues of any significance. In my time in the Senate you can accuse me of being a lot of things, but a back bencher is not one of them.
BASH: That may be true, but the big criticism of President Obama especially as the years have gone on is that, he didn't have any experience in an executive function, he didn't run any organization and the same can be said about you.
CRUZ: But -
BASH: What experience do you have to be commander in chief of the United States military, for example?
CRUZ: Well, unlike Barack Obama, I was not a community organizer before I was elected to the senate. I spent 5-1/2 years as the solicitor general of Texas, the chief lawyer for Texas in front of the U.S. Supreme Court. I supervised and led every appeal for the state of Texas in a 4,000 person agency with over 700 lawyers. And over the course of 5-1/2 years over and over again Texas led the nation defending conservative principles and winning.
Except for the fact that he successfully ran an agency with 4,000 employees, Cruz has no executive experience.
Wow, Dana. That's some great research you did. (/sarcasm)
I can't wait to hear Bash ask Hillary Clinton about her executive experience running her own rogue intel operation while on the payroll of the United States of America supposedly serving as its Secretary of State. I also look forward to seeing Bash ask former Maryland Governor Martine O'Malley about the utter failure of his state's Obamacare exchange.
Actually, I can wait for both, because I'm pretty sure I'll have to. I'm quite confident that the CNN reporter will never get around to either task. Grilling is only for Republicans, especially conservatives.
Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com.
