Opinion: Cory Booker, Rebel With No Cause – By Yosef Stein

New Jersey owes America an apology. As if to outdo our state’s embarrassing excuse for a senior senator in Bob Menendez, whose corruption trial last year ended in a hung jury, Senator Cory Booker

last week made a mockery of himself on the national stage as he ineptly attempted to derail the confirmation of Judge Brett Kavanaugh, President Trump’s nominee to fill Anthony Kennedy’s seat on the Supreme Court.

On the morning of Thursday, September 6, Booker declared to a national television audience viewing the Senate Judiciary Committee’s third day of Kavanaugh hearings that he would be releasing a Kavanaugh-authored document that had been marked “committee confidential,” ostensibly in defiance of Senate rules. “I understand the penalty comes with potential ousting from the Senate,” Booker gravely proclaimed, with a manner of grandiose pomposity that could only be located within the halls of Congress. “I openly accept and invite the consequences of my team releasing that email right now.” Then, as though his absurddemonstration of faux martyrdom didn’t already beggar belief, the senator went on to compare himself to Spartacus, a leader of escaped Roman slaves who, as portrayed in a classic movie, was eventually cornered with his men by Roman soldiers who demanded to know which one of them was Spartacus. In the film’s telling, Spartacus was protected by his fellow escapees,who each declared “I am Spartacus!” Clearly, this scene is highly relevant, and consequentially equivalent, to Cory Booker releasing an email about racial profiling. As you can plainly see, contrived drama doesn’t get any more cringe-worthy or eyeroll-inducing than that manufactured by Cory Booker.

As it turns out, the email in question had already been declassified hours earlier, in the wee hours of Thursday morning, and Cory Booker knew it. So his entire performance, aside from being humiliatingly farcical, was also patently unnecessary. The document was no longer marked confidential, and as such Booker was not violating any rules by releasing it. That pesky detail would surely have complicated Booker’s efforts to portray himself as a martyr, however, which is why he chose to lie about the email’s confidentiality status. (This reality resulted in an exceedingly awkward interview with CNN’s Anderson Cooper later that day, in which the New Jersey senator clumsily insisted that he had in fact broken the rules, much like a middle-schooler trying to convince his friends as to his naughtiness – and his consequent “coolness.”) Adding bizarre insult to self-inflicted injury, the supposedly damning email released by Booker’s office, which Booker had previously billed as evidence of alleged support for racial profiling on the part of Kavanaugh, unequivocally stated that Kavanaugh did NOT support racial profiling!!! Cory Booker is a clown – but, unlike an ordinary clown, he is neither funny nor scary, only pathetic. And we New Jerseyans elected him!

In our defense (and I use the terms “we” and “our” rather loosely here, as I certainly never voted for Cory Booker, and it’s hard to imagine a circumstance under which I would), we were never shown this side of Cory Booker before he was initially elected to the US Senate in 2013. Prior to his ascendancy to the Senate, Mr. Booker was renowned among New Jersey and national Democrats as a moderate, a pragmatist, a bridge-builder as opposed to a mudslinger. It was only after he became a senator that he began to walk, swim and quack like the far-left ideologue he appeared to be last week.

Over the past several years, many Americans – in New Jersey and beyond, including many within our own community – have been bewildered by Booker’s erratic behavior and unpredictable antics in the US Senate. They’ve puzzled over whether the “real” Cory Booker is the moderate consensus-builder from Newark or the radical leftist creature of Washington. Booker’s ideology is indeed a puzzle that is by no means easy to crack, and the topic takes on increased significance in light of the senator’s very public flirtations with running for president in 2020. So who is Cory Booker really? Before we can endeavor to resolve this million-dollar question, it would be prudent to take a dive into Booker’s past to seek clues.

If there has been one hallmark of Booker’s political career, dating back to his failed run for mayor of Newark in 2002, it has been opportunism. In his ill-fated 2002 campaign, and again during his successful run for the same position four years later, Cory Booker leaned heavily on stories of his interactions and relationships with various figures of dubious repute in Newark’s most violent neighborhoods. In particular, Booker liked to regale audiences with tales of the exploits of T-Bone, his gangster friend whom the Yale-educated lawyer did his best to set on the straight-and-narrow. The strategic appeal of recounting such anecdotes is easily evident. Booker was an outsider, an Ivy League lawyer, a rich kid who had grown up in suburbia – a far cry from the residents of the urban, impoverished city that he desired to lead. Sharing accounts of his adventures with T-Bone was a way of reassuring the people of Newark that he was like them, that he understood them – which, of course, he wasn’t and he didn’t. T-Bone turned out to be nonexistent, a fabrication of Cory Booker’s Stanford- and Yale-educated imagination, and the unfortunate residents of Newark were stuck with a poor mayor for 7 years – someone who neither understood their problems nor seemed to have much desire or ability to solve them.

Perhaps the reason for Booker’s ineffectiveness as mayor is that in his mind’s eye, he had already shifted his focus to the next big step in his career: a run for statewide office. Knowing that New Jersey’s Democratic voters tend to be pretty moderate by national standards, regularly voting for establishment liberals over slash-and-burn progressives, Booker began to cultivate a moderate image within the state Democratic Party. Additionally, he starred in several glamorous acts of heroism on the streets of his adopted city, which the national and local media preferred to focus on instead of his mismanagement of the city, which included his miserable failures to meaningfully curb violent crime and improve education, in spite of a massive influx of outside dollars to assist with those efforts. Booker’s rise to fame as a celebrity and media darling was no accident; it was carefully orchestrated by the calculating mayor and his political operatives while Newark suffered.

By 2013, Booker was ready to make the leap to statewide office. He declined to challenge Governor Christie for reelection, however, because he almost certainly would have lost. Instead, he opted to run for Senate after then-Senator Frank Lautenberg passed away, triggering a special election.Predictably, Booker easily dispatched several progressive primary opponents and then defeated perennial candidate Steve Lonegan in the general election. Since that time, Booker has clearly been moving toward a presidential run. Accordingly, hehas been moving leftward in an attempt to win over his next political audience, the national Democratic primary electorate, currently comprised largely of frenzied socialists who are incensed with Trump, Republicans, Democrats, Independents, rich people, religious people, and each other.

This takes us back to the query I posed earlier in this piece: Who is the “real” Cory Booker – a mainstream moderate, or a flaming progressive? As we can now see, he is neither of those things. Cory Booker’s sole ideology is that of opportunism; in other words, he is whatever he thinks you want him to be – provided that you have the power to propel him to his next political conquest. He would just as soon be a Republican as a Democrat, a libertarian as a socialist, a Red Sox fan as a Yankees fan (cue the audible gasps), if being so would boost him politically, enabling him to cling onto the next rung of the political ladder with the frantically grasping tips of his cold, slimy fingers.

As is so painfully evident from his awkward “I am Spartacus” moment, Cory Booker sees himself as a hero, some kind of champion of American values. The rich irony present in this delusion runs deep. Just recently, the US Senate lost a true hero, a true American champion, the indefatigable John McCain, who lost his battle with brain cancer last month at the age of 81.John McCain was a man who sacrificed everything in the pursuit of something greater, and who never requested praise or admiration – which is, in all likelihood, precisely why the late senator was the subject of so much praise and admiration. Cory Booker, by contrast, has sacrificed nothing, in the pursuit of nothingness – yet he nonetheless demands accolades all the way down to the sewer-tier circus that the 2020 Democratic primary for president is shaping up to be. It’s no wonder that all he hears in response are echoes of his own delusions.

2020 should be an exceedingly interesting year. May the best clown win!

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11 COMMENTS

    • Based on the contents of this article – not to mention the recent pro-Palestinian/anti-Israel picture incident – it would seem he is done with our community. Especially as he pivots far-leftward, his “values” would be diverging sharply from ours and any perceived closeness to us and what would stand for would only hurt him in pursuit of higher office.

    • That attitude got you Murphy. Booker is a grandstanding opportunist who gears his promises to the audience he’s addressing. Booker and the Dems are no friends of Israel. Right now John Kerry is on a rogue mission to save the Iran deal.

      Cut them loose. They cannot be trusted.

  1. Yosef. I’m a fan. With all due respect, you need a better picture! Please call me to stop by my studio and get it done right, gratis. ronbenvenisti.com (Warning: Commercial Photography Site may be blocked by filter. Contains non Tznius material for global markets).

  2. He needs us more than we need him. So what has he done for you lately. Read between the lines: Spartacus was a “community activist” dedicated to leading an armed revolt against the Roman “oligarchy”. Kinda like Antifa and their other cheer leaders, like Waters, et.al. Read between the lines, God put the words in his mouth.

  3. This article, while well written, shows only one side of the story. With a vast vocabulary and vivid imagery you have painted Booker as quite the villian. I am not as up to date on Mr. Booker’s history as you are but there is a reason people become heroes. Booker was an urban legend and to reduce his legacy to insults and innuendo is highly suspicious and inappropriate.

    • Definition of urban legend – a story with little or no supporting evidence circulated as true. Also called an URBAN MYTH.

      You got that part right. Look into Cory’s imaginary friend T-Bone when Cory was running for Mayor of Newark, a convicted drug dealer who Cory claimed to have reformed. A reporter’s investigation proved there was no T-Bone. Many of Bookers stories and promises have been proven false, just like his phony Spartacus moment.

      Yosef’s story is not insults and innuendo. Booker is no hero.

  4. I didn’t read the article, time constraints, but I am down with anything that is negative about Booker. He is too intelligent to actually believe the garbage he has been spewing the last few years.

    He has sold out all his principles for the single purpose of maneuvering himself into position to be the leftist Democratic nominee for President for 2020.

    There is nothing more dangerous than a politician whose foremost concern is furthering their own power.

Comments are closed.