There’s nothing wrong with pointing out that Ted Cruz is a real jerk, and laughing. Still, let’s not pretend that he’s some kind of anomaly. It’s not like McCain, Graham, Grassley or some of the other long-serving members of the cooling saucer are universally beloved sweethearts who were shocked and hurt by Ted’s refusal to accept their heartfelt welcomes and displays of collegial bonhomie.
They hate Cruz not because he’s an asshole, but because he’s not their kind of asshole. He doesn’t want to kiss the right old butts to so he can move to the front of the line at a press gaggle. He doesn’t want to sprinkle the Senate rules with holy water and hold them up for their daily veneration. He’s in it for a fuck and run, because Ted is, at least in his own mind, on the Obama plan: a couple of years in the Senate and then the White House. McCain fucking hates Cruz because Cruz doesn’t think the road the Presidency is lined with 3,500 appearances on Meet the Press, 7,500 cloture votes, and being the ranking member on the Armed Services committee for three decades.
Jerzy Russian
I think the word “Canadian” should always appear before the words “Ted Cruz”. In this way we won’t get confused about which Ted Cruz we are talking about.
MattF
I know it’s dangerous to assume that a politician has any self-awareness, but I’m guessing that Cruz knows he’s not ever going to be popular enough to be elected President. Look for a DeMint-style exit to the Land of Dollars.
shortstop
And also because every moment spent looking at and listening to this upstart is time stolen from the rightful center of America’s attention, Mr. John McCain. He seriously can’t stand to be irrelevant, and he really has a thing against younger guys in general — even when they aren’t smarter and cooler and darker.
The Moar You Know
@Jerzy Russian: His name’s not “Ted”. It’s Rafael.
Canadian Rafael Cruz.
See how far he gets in the GOP with that handle. Like throwing a kitten into a tank full of sharks.
David Hunt
Interesting point: I don’t think that Obama was running on the “Obama Plan” in 2004 when he ran for Senate. I think he was running on the Hillary Clinton Plan. To put it more clearly, I think Obama expected that John Kerry was going to be elected President in 2004, so he wouldn’t be able to run against him in 2008 but would run to replace in 2012 (or against whatever Republican who had beaten him in 2008). So he’d have been in the Senate for a respectable eight years rather than a mayfly’s four (with only two before he started running). He knew what John Rogers expressed http://kfmonkey.blogspot.com/2005/05/senate-quicksand.html . That if you’re in the senate for any great length of time, there are too many votes for ugly things that can be tied to you due to the compromise you made to keep the GOP from blowing up the world, so you have get out of there before a decade passes.
Hillary Clinton timed it perfectly btw. She’d been in the Senate eight years, and wasn’t running against an incumbent Democrat. The country was sick of the GOP. She was the Anointed One. She just had the bad luck to end up running against Barrack Obama. I’ve never doubted that Obama ran that campaign from the beginning with the goal of winning. I saw him at Yearly Kos and he was on fire. However, I don’t know if he expected to actually come out on top. Did he think that the more likely result was to get the VP slot with Clinton and run in 2016?
RP
I don’t know if I buy that. I think Cruz is in his own special category of asshole. I mean, I’m sure McCain et al are annoyed at him for stealing some of their thunder, but I think it goes well beyond that.
(BTW, I know I’m a stupid guy who isn’t thinking clearly, but holy smokes is that girl in the orange dress hot.)
Mike in NC
Ted Cruz needs to get a tire swing and invite Cokie Roberts and a bunch of other media morons over for a BBQ lunch before he can plan on redecorating the Oval Office.
Feudalism Now!
Ted Cruz is reminiscent of Caribou Barbie. Great White North types pissing in Grampy McCain’s Post Toaties. It is personal to Crash McCain.
Barry
“McCain fucking hates Cruz because Cruz doesn’t think the road the Presidency is lined with 3,500 appearances on Meet the Press, 7,500 cloture votes, and being the ranking member on the Armed Services committee for three decades.”
Probably more because McCain blew his chance at the White House, and Cruz (God help us!) still has one.
Punchy
Pretty sure Canadian Rafael Cruz cannot be elected if BOTH the Republicans and Dems detest him. Both barrels of the metaphorical oppo research gun aimed at him? Someone’s going to have a video of him speaking Spanish (French?) to a colleague, and that will sink him in the GOP primary.
RSA
@The Moar You Know:
Canadian-born, Harvard-educated, Spanish-speaking Rafael “Ted” Cruz.
Not that there’s anything wrong with that–for a Democratic politician, it might even be to his advantage.
Mark S.
Christ, for a blog that spends a hell of a lot of time complaining about firebaggers and Glenn Greenwald, you’d think there would be a little more empathy why Cruz and his “Nobody else in the Senate is a true conservative” schtick is so fucking annoying to McCain and the boys. Cruz doesn’t give a fuck about ever passing anything so he can be pure as he wants.
RP
@Mark S.: I agree. I think McCain also gets a bad rap sometimes on the left. Yeah, he’s an asshole and a nut when it comes to military action, but he isn’t bug fuck crazy and generally has the best interests of the country at heart. It’s the soft bigotry of low expectations, I know, but such is life with the 2013 GOP.
Comrade Jake
I assume you folks read some of these Cruz pieces, right? This is a guy who set up a study group at Harvard Law for which only students with sufficiently high GPAs from the top Ivys could apply. No soup for anyone from “minor ivies” like Penn, Brown, Cornell, etc.
I know it’s a joke that there are plenty of assholes in the Senate, but this guy would appear to be something really special.
handsmile
John McCain’s alma mater: US Naval Academy.
Just how many members of Cruz’s Neo-Confederate party are graduates of Harvard, Yale or Princeton, or for that matter even the “lesser Ivies”? (Quite a few congressional Democrats are.)
Far more than the enmity of Gramps, Graham or Grassley, that disclosure of Rafael’s elite preferences is the epitaph for his national political ambitions. Not even multiple tire swings will help with that.
Herbal Infusion Bagger
I think you’re assuming more self-knowledge than Cruz appears to have. I think his lecturing of Feinstein on the constitution and gunnnzzzzzz like she was a six-year-old indicates exactly how self-controlled and self-aware he is.
Suffern ACE
@handsmile: He’s got that “I’m your everyman schtik” who likes expensive wine written all over him. See Ryan, Paul.
gbear
Hate to be lookist, but Cruz isn’t going to get anywhere near the presidency because he’s got a sleazy face that makes Nixon look like your most trusted friend.
He reminds me of the plastic surgeon in Brazil.
Redshirt
Cruz is a puzzle. From all evidence, he appears to be quite smart. By the same evidence, he seems to be a true believer in all things Wingnut. Can these two spheres co-exist sincerely? Are his teabagging beliefs genuine, or an act?
Paul in KY
@Mark S.: That was sorta the reason Huey Long was so hated when he was in the Senate.
cvstoner
That would be the quintessential Republican attitude, no?
burnspbesq
“Go along to get along” is so 1955.
0.5 bonus points for embedded Liz Phair reference.
shortstop
I’m not that interested in whether Cruz truly thinks he can go farther than the Senate. I’m more intrigued by the inability of the Village and even some mostly sensible journalists to separate his likely presidential campaign from its inevitable result. Against my better judgment I turned on cable news last night and heard Ezra Klein earnestly telling Lawrence O’Donnell that Cruz knows exactly what he’s doing and that it will help, not hurt, his presidential ambitions.
Yes, Ezra, and so damn what? Is he going to get the nomination? If by some fluke he did, would he be elected in the general? The crazy lady who lives down the hall from me wants to be president, too. Is that worthy of serious discussion?
Ben Cisco
@Mark S.: @RP: They’re fighting among each other.
They are all still VERY much interested in fucking the REST of us over.
No motherfucking cookies for any of them from me.
This isn’t that hard.
Mr. Longform
I want it to be true that Ted Cruz is too disgusting to everyone across the spectrum to ever be elected president, but I’ve been burned by the unimaginable happening too often – Reagan clearly too dumb; W clearly clearly too dumb and Cheney too evil; I was scared out of my mind when Princess Dumbass was within spittin’ distance.
handsmile
@burnspbesq:
I believe “Extraordinary” is already Rafael’s campaign theme song.
“Sane psycho,” though? Methinks not.
celticdragonchick
@shortstop:
Cruz still has a non negligible chance of getting the nomination, depending on how fucking insane the primary voters in Iowa and South Dakota are….
I never bet against the level of batshit insanity you find in those primaries.
RP
@Ben Cisco: I’m not giving him cookies, but I’d take McCain 7 days a week and twice on Sundays over Cruz. Obama, Reid, Pelosi, et al can work with McCain. They can’t work with nihlists like Cruz.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Redshirt: I think he’s a true believer. I read in a article earlier that someone recalled Rafael Cruz, born in Canada, arrived at Princeton with fully formed philosophy, which did not change. it may have been the Daily Beast (yes, I read it occasionally, to my great shame) piece. i thought the TPM piece was notable for the unanimity of not just asshole, but also “super smart.”
David Hunt
@Redshirt:
I’ve read that smart people are generally harder to move from deeply held convictions, regardless of evidence. Their intelligence allows them to come up with justifications for their beliefs and to seek out any apparent hole in the evidence that they can plow through to maintain their original views. It’s (exactly) like trying to convince an intelligent religious person that there’s no god. Faith is belief without proof.
So yes, there can be really smart true-believing wingnuts.
Booger
Does anyone else perceive Calgary Raphael as the worst bits of Pat Buchanan and Spiro Agnew combined?
Cacti
@Jerzy Russian:
I prefer Cuban-Canadian Ted Cruz.
? Martin
It’s okay to fuck over the country for the benefit of the party, but it’s not okay to fuck over the party for the benefit of yourself.
But the test for Cruz will be how he comes out of this disaster – and I’m guessing he comes out on top. He will lose the backing of the RNC, but he’ll emerge as the 2016 frontrunner, everyone talking about him, and he will have all of that wingnut cash to himself. In the primaries he’s going to kick ass because he’s a volcano of red meat and he’s got the rhetorical skills to not get caught flat-footed. This guy is going to send wingnut starbursts out through every TV during the primaries because he’ll sound like Reagan. The RNC will eventually back him because they’ll have no choice.
Ferdzy
@Cacti:
Speaking as a Canadian, I prefer to remind everyone that he’s yours, all yours, now. We have our own problems. (*cough* Harper *cough*)
YoohooCthulhu
After the book club on Nixonland awhile back, I’m amazed no one has noted yet that Marshall’s piece makes Cruz sound basically like the second coming of Dick Nixon. Humble beginnings, ambition, forming clubs in college, politically strident, victim mentality…
shortstop
@celticdragonchick: No, he really doesn’t. And neither did Mike Huckabee and Rih Santorum when they won Iowa. The most Ted Cruz will do is make the primary season harder and longer for the actual candidate.
shortstop
@YoohooCthulhu: How is his paranoia level (separate from his victim mentality)? He may need to step that up a bit.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Booger: Add in some Nixon for victomhood and I think you’ve got the stew recipe precisely.
Tractarian
It’s true. Cruz may be a right-wing fanatic to the point of clinical insanity, but you have to hand it to him for shaking up the Senate and its chummy good-ol-boy tradition.
In fact, I like this guy. Not only is he pissing off other asshole conservatives, but he’s doing in such a way as to virtually ensure that none of his crazy priorities will ever stand a chance of becoming consensus.
Villago Delenda Est
From the TPM piece:
Sounds quite a bit like Tom Riddle, if you ask me.
daverave
I’m with you Mr. Longform…
Canadian Raphael Cruz is the only Repub candidate at this point that truly scares me. Another terrorist attack or other black swan event could make Canadian Cruz a viable nominee and, if the gods are against US, a potential POTUS (R-Canada)
Elizabelle
@daverave:
Ted Cruz is speaking in the Senate now.
If you watch, you will sleep easier at night.
He’s got the 27%’s vote, though.
JMS
It’s very simple. He’s a personally unlikeable human being, regardless of ideology. I suspect it’s one of those things where the closer contact you’re in with him, the worse it is.
karen
Isn’t Alberta the most Conservative part of Canada and the province that fought gay marriage when it was made legal in Canada?
Cruz scares me because he’s smart and kamikaze. Alaskan Barbie is clever but in the same way that an animal is. Cruz is actually intelligent and he has the same reasons that an Al Quaeda member has. Only his virgins in heaven will be destroying the United States to save it.
People throw the name “Hitler” around too freely for him, but I’d say he’s more like Jim Jones. If it was something people wanted to do anyway and he had the resources, he could easily create an army and stage a coup.