Ted Cruz, the junior Senator from Texas and presumptive Republican presidential nominee, is routinely billed by the mainstream media as a Tea Party outsider who is reviled by fellow Republicans as a “wacko bird” along with Kentucky Senator Rand Paul and GOP Rep. Justin Amash of Michigan.

It is not simply his wife’s connection to Goldman Sachs and investment banking or his unreported loan from the multinational investment banking firm, however, that betrays this image.

A closer look at Cruz reveals he is a neocon insider, not a renegade outsider.

His campaign manager, Chad C. Sweet, co-founded the Chertoff Group with former Bush and Obama administration Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff. Sweet, as a leader of the Chertoff Group, “advocated for expanding NSA metadata collection,” according to his bio on the risk-management and security consulting company’s webpage.

“Mr. Sweet formerly served as the Chief of Staff of the United States Department of Homeland Security (DHS). Prior to becoming Chief of Staff of DHS, Mr. Sweet worked as an investment banker at the firms of Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs as well as served in the CIA’s National Clandestine Service,” the bio continues.

Cruz’s foreign policy advisor is the notorious neocon James Woolsey, the former director of the CIA during the Clinton administration. Woolsey is connected to the now largely defunct Project for the New American Century (PNAC), a think tank with an agenda formulated by top neocons William Kristol and Robert Kagan. PNAC was at the forefront of the Bush administration push to invade Iraq. He is a former vice president of the defense contractor Booz Allen Hamilton and an advocate of the neocon hardline on Iran.

Ted’s foreign policy team includes Elliot Abrams, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and the son-in-law of Norman Podhoretz, a trailblazing neoconservative ideologue. Abrams was a key adviser on Mideast policy at the National Security Council (NSC) during the George W. Bush presidency and also a staunch advocate of the Iraq invasion, the hardline on Iran and military strikes against the government of Bashar al-Assad in Syria.

Finally, a volunteer working in public relations for the Cruz campaign, Dan P. Gabriel, is a former CIA covert action officer and a founding partner of Applied Memetics, a company “focused solely on developing engineered influence for clients seeking to alter their tactical or strategic operational environments,”according to its webpage. The company specializes in propagating memes that ”can move through the cultural sociosphere in a manner similar to the contagious behavior of a virus,” in other words Applied Memetics specializes in propaganda.

The latest Cruz meme is working hard to convince followers of Rand Paul, who dropped out of the race in the wake of the Iowa caucus, that Cruz “is the natural inheritor of the modern libertarian movement built by Ron Paul, which was especially resonant here in New Hampshire, where the elder Paul won second place four years ago,” CNN reports.

“Cruz’s entreaties appear to be paying off. A number of state legislators—in places ranging from here in New Hampshire to the Paul family’s Texas—signed onto the Cruz team.”

Ted Cruz is not even remotely a libertarian. He is a neocon masquerading as a champion of liberty. If nominated and elected he will continue the forever war agenda initiated by the Bush regime and further expand the high-tech surveillance police state.

Unfortunately many Republicans, desperate to beat Hillary Clinton and the Democrats in November, are buying into the illusion.

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