Now that failed Republican presidential candidate Sen. Ted Cruz has gone back to his day job of being the most disliked person in Washington, he apparently has come to the realization that being the most disliked person in Washington is not, in general, a winning career path. So he's going to make an effort to be nicer, apparently. He's going to put on his best Hannibal Lecter smile and cook a nice meal for his new friends.
And the first step to improving his rancorous relationships, the Texas senator’s allies say, will be to help them keep their Senate seats. The freshman senator wants to return to the campaign trail this fall as a conservative surrogate for Republicans aiming to turn out the GOP base, they say.
Of course, there could be a problem with this plan: It would require his colleagues to appear in public with Ted Cruz, and many of them aren't eager to do that because of the whole most-disliked-person-in-Washington thing. It also probably won't help that, as with seemingly every other thing Ted Cruz has ever done, he's clearly only doing it for himself. He doesn't want to help anyone, he just needs some of the people he's called cowards and sell-outs to owe him something.
As Cruz preps for reelection in 2018 and eyes a 2020 presidential bid, there’s a tacit recognition among some members of his political circle that the opposition he faced from his own Republican colleagues was a real problem for his candidacy as the primary field dwindled. Only three senators publicly endorsed him, and the bad blood Cruz engendered over the years among Republicans prevented him from coalescing the anti-Trump crowd when he needed to most.
Which really puts the worst possible spin on Ted Cruz's supposed new helpfulness.
His crack team has gone through the data, and determined that his future career requires doing a certain number of supposed good deeds. Those deeds shall now be dispensed, soda-machine style, until Cruz has built up the required base of suckers well-wishers ...
... upon which he can go back to campaigning against them.
Well, it will at least be interesting to see who, if anyone, takes Cruz up on his offer. It’s doubtful there’s been a politician yet who has trusted Ted Cruz and had that work out for them. He seems to have become widely despised everywhere he's ever gone, from college onward, which is an impressive life record—but no doubt it'll all be different this time around. Let's watch!