Jim Hightower

If you thought that right-wing politicos couldn't get any goofier – take a peek at "Texas on Cruz Control."

Ted Cruz is America's latest tea party darling. He just pulled off a contortion in Texas that few would've thought humanly possible: he got to the right of Gov. Rick Perry – himself a former tea party darling who's such a far-out know-nothing that he's best known for putting the goober in gubernatorial. In the recent Republican primary, however, Cruz squinched himself Houdini-like into even-further-out political positions than Perry has taken, thus defeating the guy whom Perry wanted to be the Party's nominee for a seat in the U.S. Senate.

How far out is he, you ask? One of the white-hot talking points Cruz used to fire-up the narrow extremists who now control the Texas GOP is that he will, by God, defend America's golf courses! You might not have realized that golf course defense is a burning national issue crying out for U.S. Senate attention, but such deep vigilence is apparently what makes Cruz a tea party fave. He says that he has ferreted out a diabolical United Nations plot to "abolish 'unsustainable' environments, including golf courses."

Attention Patriots: grab your putters and rush to your local links, for the UN is coming! To burnish his crazy bonafides, Cruz adds that, "The originator of this grand scheme is George Soros."

While Cruz promises to save American golfers from this tea party boogeyman, he says he also intends to save all of us from Social Security – by turning our retirement money over to the altruistic geniuses of Wall Street. Oh, let's get rid of unemployment benefits, too, because, explains Professor Cruz, helping the jobless increases unemployment.

Cruz is what's happening to the Republican Party nationally – veering off from conservative… to crazy.