Go pop some popcorn! In a GQ articleexcerpted here,
Cruz told the magazine that conservatives were “embarrassed” to vote in 2008 — the year that McCain was the Republican presidential nominee.
“I don’t know a conservative who didn’t feel embarrassed voting in 2006 or 2008,” Cruz told GQ. “I think the Republican Party lost its way. We didn’t stand for the principles we’re supposed to believe in.”
Of course, the insults run both ways. Two months after Cruz got into the Senate, McCain called Cruz a "wacko bird". He apologized.
For a while, veteran Republicans groused in private about the new guy. But it boiled over when Cruz joined Kentucky senator Rand Paul's filibuster of John Brennan's nomination to head the CIA—an act of protest against Obama's drone program. John McCain, already seething over Cruz's treatment of Hagel, called them "wacko birds." "He fucking hates Cruz," one adviser of the Arizona senator told me. "He's just offended by his style."
In case you've forgotten, here's his treatment of Hagel:
Little more than a month after Cruz was sworn in, Senator Barbara Boxer, a Democrat from California, likened him to Joe McCarthy for his conduct during Chuck Hagel's confirmation for secretary of defense. Without presenting a shred of evidence, Cruz insinuated that Hagel, a fellow Republican, was on the take from America's enemies. Because Hagel had declined to reveal the source of a $200,000 payment, Cruz suggested, how do we know it didn't come from the North Korean government? Or Saudi Arabia's? Even South Carolina senator Lindsey Graham, also a Republican, called Cruz's line of inquiry "out of bounds."
Cruz's comments about McCain is sure to infuriate him, and we can only hope that it will help keep McCain and some others on the side of reason during the budget/debt debate showdowns. May the GOP splinter away! Unfortunately, they are doing all they can to harm us while they fight.
I guess health care in the US and the world economy are just collateral damage.
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Addendum: McCain elevated Palin, who led the charge against the ACA by falsely chanting "death panels." Cruz is just building off of that.
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Tired of politics? Need to escape? Try one of my Greek-mythology based novels, either the story of Jocasta: The Mother-Wife of Oedipus or a trilogy about Niobe, or one of the first examples of civil disobedience, Antigone and Creon. Or, if you like mysteries and/or Jane Austen, treat yourself to The Highbury Murders: A Mystery Set in the Village of Jane Austen’s Emma very positively reviewed at the Daily Kos Monday Murder Mystery blog.