I got to be honest, I'm still in awe at Ted Cruz's awesome ability to make everyone else hate his guts. His fellow Republicans hate him, Democrats mock him and the public outside the Teabagger base doesn't much care for him either. I don't think I've ever seen a politician garner such across the board hatred from so many quarters in so brief a time.
Yet does Ted care or even seem to notice? Nope. To him, he's won a great victory...or at least he would have if it wasn't for those backstabbing GOP traitors who sold him out. And in typical Cruz fashion, he's plotting his revenge:
When pressed to cite specific Republican senators who may face primary trouble, Cruz refuses — “I’m not interested in a battle of personalities.” But he strongly urges conservatives to hold those lawmakers “accountable.”
“As with every decision elected officials make, the consequences of those decisions are up to the American people,” Cruz says. “But I will say this: From Day One in office, I’ve urged the American people to hold every elected official accountable, and far too many elected officials are not listening to the American people. . . . when you’ve got 10 to 20 Senate Republicans going on television, day after day after day, saying, ‘we cannot win, this is a fool’s errand, we will lose, nothing will happen, we will surrender,’ and blaming Republicans every step of the way, it eliminates the ability to get a positive outcome.
“Now, I have publicly said it is likely that I will stay out of all incumbent primaries,” he continues. “But every elected official has to make the case to the grassroots in his or her state on why he or she is effectively fighting for them.” When asked whether using the word “likely” means he’s leaving room to back a challenger, Cruz repeats the line, saying it’s “likely” he’ll stay out.
To borrow a quote from Dr. Bruce Banner: "Don't make me angry. You wouldn't like me when I'm angry."
So it's typical Cruz. He is the glorious leader and everyone else is a backstabbing lickspittle who sabotaged his glorious crusade. And according to Josh Marshall at TPM, he's always been like this. A little backstory, in a piece from Marshall last month in his own words:
Last year, I heard there was a Tea Party guy running for Senate in Texas named Ted Cruz. I didn't think a lot about it (since it wasn't a competitive race in the general) or have any sense I had any connection to him. But then after he was elected I started noticing and thinking, wow, this guy seems like a royal jerk.
And at some point my wife said, "You don't remember?"
Well, it turns out Ted and I went to college together. And not just we happened to be at the same place at the same time. We were both at a pretty small part of a relatively small university. We both went to Princeton. I was one year ahead of him. But we were both in the same residential college, which basically meant a small cluster of dorms of freshmen and sophomores numbering four or five hundred students who all ate in the same dining hall.
My wife meanwhile was also in the same residential college and she was actually Ted's year - Class of 92. [In case you're wondering, no, my wife and I haven't been together for 25 years. We knew each other in college but only got together as a couple a dozen years later.] She totally remembered Ted and basically as a conceited and fairly nerdy jerk.
Go read the whole column. Its' a great read and it gets the gist of what Cruz is, as Marshall sums up in his final line of the piece:
An incredibly bright guy who's an arrogant jerk who basically everybody ends up hating.
And he's not done yet. Following up on Harry Reid's
epic takedown of Cruz a couple days ago, Marshall has
this piece in which he tries to explain Cruz's post-shutdown behavior:
As I mentioned before, back when he showed up at Harvard Law School in 1992, he stunned his fellow classmates by putting up flyers around campus for an 'elite study group' with the instructions 'only magnas from top Ivys need apply.' In other words, at a place where arrogance is like air and self-awareness a precious commodity, Cruz managed to stand out on day one as a triple-ply arrogant ass.
Cruz never seems to have grasped that there are people every bit as sharp as him who didn't go to an Ivy League School (even a 'top Ivy'). My read on Cruz, from talking to people who knew him very well in college and law school, is that he's so confirmed in his belief in his own rectitude and genius that he's likely impervious to what most of us would interpret as rejection or failure. This didn't work? Well, too many stupid people or cowards who didn't flock to my banner. That seemed to bethe gist of his speech before the vote. And my guess it wasn't just puffing but represented his genuine belief.
Makes sense to me. It also explains how he can not only casually threaten his colleagues who "sold him out," but also
threaten to do this all over again in a few months. What we have here is an megalomaniac with a massive superiority complex who thinks he's smarter then all of us and (thanks to
his crackpot father) chosen by God to save us all. And if he fails, well, it's all those idiots who just aren't as smart and special and anointed as he is.
I'll let Marshall sum it up:
He won't turn back. He's impervious to negative feedback. The only question now is what do other power players in the GOP do with him
What to do, indeed.