Ted Cruz Is 'Rebranding' In Tight Race, Say Very, Very Gullible People
Unless going from 'dickhead' to 'cosmic dickhead' is a rebrand, then sure.
One of our least favorite genres of political story is the one that tries to soften a particular kind of terrible candidate. The one that says, “Don’t look now, but [excruciating dickhead] is making a name for himself by working across the aisle,” or “To the surprise of many on Capitol Hill, [galactic fuck-knuckle] has suddenly discovered that to accomplish anything in Congress, it helps to embrace bipartisanship,” or “[brain-dead douche nozzle] says he wants to be a leader, and he’s backing it up by working with [other brain-dead douche nozzle] on a comprehensive ‘grind all the homeless into a nutritious paste for farm animals’ bill,” or some such crap.
These pieces become especially prevalent when the subject is facing a tough re-election. And right on cue, here comes Politico to tell us that Ted Cruz — Ted Cruz! — is rebranding as the polls in his re-election campaign show a tight race:
“What is new is not that I’m passing bipartisan legislation that helps produce jobs in Texas. I’ve been doing that since the day I arrived in the Senate,” Cruz told POLITICO as he campaigned in El Paso. “What is new is we’re finally getting the press to report on it.”
Sure, who can forget all the bipartisan legislation Cruz has championed during his 12 years of alienating each and every single one of his colleagues? Because when you think of bipartisanship in the Senate, don’t you think of Ted Cruz? Of course you don’t. Nobody does. Nobody who has watched Ted Cruz for the entirety of his two terms in the Senate or any other time in his life going back to when he spilled out of his mother’s womb onto frozen Canadian soil has ever looked at him and thought anything other than, “Wow, that guy is a dick.”
But Cruz is indeed locked in a tight race, leading his Democratic challenger, Rep. Colin Allred, by a mere 3.5 points with five weeks until the election. So Cruz is casting votes like one last week to pass a continuing resolution to keep the government open. Don’t worry, he’ll start voting against CRs again (like he did last February) as soon as no one’s looking.
Politico at least points out that Cruz’s record doesn’t necessarily match his rhetoric, like when asked about his No vote on a bipartisan border bill a couple of months ago:
“The bill was an absolutely terrible bill. It was a Chuck Schumer bill that was designed to make the border crisis worse,” Cruz said in the interview. “It was such a bad bill that any Republican reading it said, ‘This is terrible, and I can’t support it.’”
Everyone knows that “Chuck Schumer bill” (actually a James Lankford of Oklahoma bill, and that guy is riiiiight-wiiiing and he was PISSED) died because Donald Trump wanted it to die, and Ted Cruz wants nothing more than to remain on Trump’s good side, but sure, pretend there was a principle beyond naked self-interest at work there.
And he’s still Ted Cruz, annoying culture warrior:
Cruz isn’t entirely shying away from all the hot-button issues for which he’s become known. His latest TV ads lean heavily into Allred’s votes in Washington against Republican-sponsored bill amendments that opposed transgender women playing women’s interscholastic sports.
Nothing screams “I’m becoming more bipartisan” than persecuting transgender teenagers who just want to join the field hockey team.
There is precedent for Cruz being in a tight race. In 2018 he beat Beto O’Rourke by a mere three points, and that was an off-year election. His counterpart John Cornyn won re-election by nearly 10 points in 2020, which would suggest that a) turnout is higher in a presidential election year (duh), and b) that Ted Cruz is a particularly unlikable specimen of politician and human (again, duh), and even in Texas this makes him vulnerable.
We’re not going to count chickens — this is still Texas, which hasn’t sent a Democrat to the Senate since Lloyd Bentsen’s last re-election in 1988. But if Ted Cruz is really sweating for some other reason besides the oppressive heat in Texas or simply because he always looks like he’s sweating, we’re good with that.
[POLITICO]
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"Because when you think of bipartisanship in the Senate, don’t you think of Ted Cruz?"
Sort of, yes. Cruz is equally hated by Republicans and Democrats. It is one of the few areas of bipartisan consensus in the Senate.
Ted Cruz is a loathsome individual by basically every standard, but I personally will *never* forgive him for leaving the family pooch behind while he hid in Cancun. Fuck him.