The radical liberal website Raw Story ran a piece on Saturday reporting on a Ted Cruz event in Strafford County, New Hampshire.  At one point, Cruz tried to paint a picture of the consequences of a Democratic victory in 2016:

“It is now or never,” he explained. “I don’t think we’ve reached the point of no return yet. But we’re close. We are close! And I believe if we go four or eight more years on this same path, we risk losing the greatest country in the history of the world.”

“Millions of Americans are realizing this isn’t working,” the possible Republican presidential candidate continued. “The Obama economy is a disaster. Obamacare is a train wreck.”

“And the Obama-Clinton foreign policy of leading from behind — the whole world is on fire.”

At that point, a little 3-year-old girl interrupted he speech and repeated, "The world is on fire?"  Cruz assured the tot that the adults would protect her and "put the fire out."

A Tampa Bay Times reporter tweeted that Cruz scared the little girl, and Raw Story ran with the headline "Ted Cruz scares the hell out of a terrified little girl in New Hampshire."

Her mother tells a different story:

Cruz did not scare her daughter, her mom Michelle said in an interview with WRKO Radio in Boston.

“There was no tears,” Trant said, telling the show she told her daughter that ”Ted Cruz is the one that will put this fire out. And then she then looked at him as a hero.”

“I’m telling you: She was quite happy,” Trant added. “She was like, ‘oh? you’re going to put that out? We’re good. We’re good here.’”

The "Ted Cruz is mean and scary" meme was picked up by several liberal sites and exploded on Twitter.  But along with the usual blather about Cruz, the underlying criticism is apparently that Cruz's rhetoric was extreme – that the world isn't "on fire."

Yes, our peaceful, pacific planet has never been in better shape.  The Obama administration has everything under control in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Syria, Iraq, Libya, the West Bank, Gaza, Yemen, Egypt, the Kurdish region of Turkey, Somalia, South Sudan, the Republic of Congo, Niger, Chad, Nigeria, Chechnya, Mexico, Guatamala, and Colombia, not to mention dozens and dozens of terror groups, militias, rape gangs, and rebels dotting the landscape like small wildfires trying to coalesce into one, gigantic conflagration.

Yes, the world is on fire.  And it is hardly "extreme" for Cruz to say so.  What's "extreme" is liberals burying their heads in the sand, hoping everything will turn out OK.