Democrats hate Texas Sen. Ted Cruz — but these days they (should) love him more than they despise him. Why? Mark Salter, former chief of staff to Sen. John McCain, who was alsowas a senior adviser to the McCain for President campaign, gives the answers in a piece on RealClearPolitics. Some key excerpts:
Sen. Ted Cruz excites the passions of both his admirers and his detractors. The latter greatly outnumber the former for the moment and probably indefinitely, and they don’t merely dislike Cruz. They despise him.
An accurate statement, unless you visit some conservative websites, watch Fox News, listen to conservative talkers or read or listen to anything related to former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, who is the de facto mentor of Cruz’s: someone who talks with demonizing, over-the-top, inaccurate rhetoric that is red meat for ideologist and hyper partisan true believers who all but carry signs saying: “Will demonize for food.” In terms of national polling, Cruz’s favorability rating is like the fish you see at PetCo: in the tank.
The real joke is the senator’s presumption that Democrats would like him to disappear. Why would they want that? They’re not afraid of him. They’re counting on him. If the president thought for a moment that Cruz was actually in some danger, I imagine he would immediately provide him a Secret Service detail.
Let’s examine briefly the good service our scourge of the squishes has recently rendered the president and the Democratic Party.
He then recounts the series of events led by Cruz, who is likely to go down in history as not resembling Ronald Reagan or even Newt Gingrich but more like George Armstrong Custer, or like Jim Jones, only this time serving the Republican Party political Kool Aid. He then writes about how what Cruz assumed would happen and what he told true believers would happen has utterly failed and adds:
Just over half of those polled say they want the government to do more rather than less. Cruz and his confederates are managing to make the country more sympathetic to the central tenet of Democrats’ governing philosophy.
But the most perverse consequence has to be that support for Obamacare has increased. It’s still unpopular, but less so than it was before the shutdown. A majority of Americans now say they do not want funding for it totally eliminated. And all this happened during the program’s launch, which was, by bipartisan consensus, a disaster, with millions of people unable to choose a health care plan because of faulty software that could have been better designed by the average teenager. Had Cruz and his allies not gotten in the way, Obamacare might have become as unpopular as they now are.
Good work, fellas. As McInturff noted, their gambit turned into an “ideological boomerang.” Is there any chance they’ll sit down now and let adults try to repair the damage? Probably not, which is more good news for Democrats.
Liberals may despise Cruz, but in one of those ironies common in politics, they know that right now he’s big government’s best friend. Democrats won’t utter the words out loud, but in their hearts they’re chanting, “Go, Ted, Go!” And in quiet moments, as they count their unearned blessings, they dare to dream their secret ally might be the next Republican nominee for president.
And clearly when his piece was written it was done before the latest: Palin and Cruz showing up at a Tea Party rally for veterans in Washington, whipping up outrage about the government shutdown impacting veterans when they have championed the government shutdown and tried to intimidate Republican moderates or traditional conservatives who view it as political suicide. Cruz made a stunningly hypocritical and ridiculous assertion there. Pain and Cruz were being at that rally, in front of the White House, while someone proudly held up a Confederate flag.
At least Custer’s crew held up the only a red, white and blue flag.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.