Cruz doesn't get America
We Are One People

During Thursday night's South Carolina debate, Ted Cruz sneered that Donald Trump has "New York values," ones South Carolinians, he implied, understood to be alien and inimical to their own interests.

I was most reminded of when 1960s Freedom Riders from Northern regions traveled to the South to aid voter registration. Scattered voices then decried "outsiders," and "New York agitators."

Tellingly, the Cruz campaign is pursuing that regionally divisive scheme. Politico on 1/15 quoted Cruz surrogate Charlie Condon, former South Carolina attorney general. 

Of Trump, Condon said, "He's against traditional values. He's New York, and he's got to talk about that."

Whether we hail from the North, South, East, West -- or Midwest, which includes my home state of Iowa -- we are all Americans. We are one. 

Attack any of us, and you've attacked all of us.

Ted Cruz apparently doesn't get that. That's his problem; it needn't be ours.