“Ted Cruz is the political version of liver and onions. Some people love it and can’t get enough. And some people gag at the mere thought of it.” Those are the words of veteran GOP strategist Ana Navarro, as quoted by Sean Sullivan and Ed O’Keefe in their 04/28/16 Washington Post article “Cruz’s latest fight with fellow Republicans is a reminder: Many don’t like the guy”.
Here is more from the article:
“In the space of just seven minutes here Thursday, Ted Cruz reminded fellow Republicans that he has few friends in the party. First he tangled with former House speaker John A. Boehner, a longtime foe who so dislikes Cruz that he labeled him “Lucifer in the flesh.” Then Cruz undercut another Republican, fellow presidential candidate John Kasich, who had entered into an alliance with him to stop GOP front-runner Donald Trump. . . For Cruz, it was just another day of brawling with leading figures from his own party — a role that has formed the cornerstone of his short political career. But for many Republicans, it crystallized an overriding problem for Cruz’s campaign: Many people simply don’t like him.”
In an article published by The Hill, Charles Hurt gives a vivid explanation of Ted Cruz’s unpopularity:
“In the past eight years, no one has captivated the realistic hopes of conservative constitutionalists the way that Cruz has in this election. On every single issue of importance to conservatives, Cruz is right. He is a walking, living, breathing Supreme Court dissent, masterfully articulated and extensively annotated on paper.
Then, he opens his mouth. And people scream. They run for the exits as if their hair is on fire. They want to take a shower.
Even hardcore conservatives still stewing over the shabby defenestration of Robert Bork find Cruz cloying and unctuous. Leading conservatives who publicly support Cruz’s presidential campaign groan in private when he starts talking.
Cruz may entertain himself by impersonating characters from The Simpsons, but it is hard to get out of your mind that Cruz just might, in fact, be Mr. Burns, with those evil snake eyes and the sharp, downward curved beak. Heartless, robotic, ever-calculating, willing to do anything to maximize profits at his nuclear power plant.
. . . Even when he says things you agree with, Cruz sounds and looks like the oiliest money-grubbing television evangelist.”
In an opinion piece published by the Boston Globe, Eric Fehrnstrom has this to say about Cruz:
“Therein lies the problem for the Cruz campaign. Comedian Martin Short has a funny line about what it means to pretend to like someone in the make-believe world of Hollywood. “Of all the people I have a fake show-business relationship with,” he once told late-night talk show host Jimmy Kimmel, “I feel fake closest to you.” No one seems to have more fake friends these days than Cruz. The Texas senator is the most unloved person in the US Senate.”
The lack of love for Cruz extends into the U.S. House of Representatives. A 04/19/16 article published by ABC News starts with the following: “New York Republican Rep. Peter King really doesn’t want Sen. Ted Cruz to win the GOP nomination for president. “I hate Ted Cruz, and I think I’ll take cyanide if he even got the nomination,” King said this morning in an interview with MSNBC as his Long Island, New York, constituents headed to the polls.”
In response to Rep. King’s threat to take cyanide should Cruz become the GOP nominee, Slate columnist Jack Mirkinson writes, “It’s not every day that you see people threatening to poison themselves if a serving United States senator wins a political contest, but that is the special brand of misery that Ted Cruz induces.” In response to John Boehner’s recent criticism of Cruz, Mirkinson writes, “Boehner neatly summed up the thing that has prevented Cruz from uniting Republicans around him. It’s not only that they loathe him with near-religious fervor. It’s that they loathe him so much that some of them would rather have Trump.”
In a recent episode of NBC’s Late Night show, Seth Myers describes Cruz as a lizard dressed up in a suit.
Over at the New Republic, Alex Shephard and Clio Chang have posted a compilation of negative quotes about Cruz, with several of those quotes coming from Republican politicians and from people who attended school with Cruz. Shephard and Chang write, “Cruz has alienated about everyone he’s ever encountered in life: high school and college classmates, bosses, law professors, Supreme Court clerks, and especially his Republican colleagues in the Senate. Some detest Cruz the politician because of his grandstanding, but most dislike Cruz the person. In that respect, he’s really not your average politician—after all, most people hate politicians. But everyone hates Ted Cruz.”
If Ted Cruz leaves public office, then maybe he could star in his own TV sitcom, perhaps even getting Ray Romano to produce it.
The “Wanted” posters say the following about David: “Wanted: A refugee from planet Melmac masquerading as a human. Loves cats. If seen, contact the Alien Task Force.”