Fucking clown:
During a rally in Georgetown, Texas, on Tuesday, for Republican Senator Ted Cruz, a supporter shouted “Lock him up” in reference to Cruz’s opponent, Beto O’Rourke. Cruz replied that O’Rourke could share a cell with former presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.
“Well, you know, there’s a double-occupancy cell with Hillary Clinton,” Cruz said. “Ya’ll are gonna get me in trouble with that,” he added.
Cruz and O’Rourke are battling for office in Texas. Should O’Rourke win, he would become the first Democratic senator in the state in at least 20 years. The “lock her up” chant referenced at the rally Tuesday could be heard often during President Donald Trump’s campaign in 2016, in reference to Clinton. Some Trump supporters used it as a rallying cry against the Democratic nominee.
Trump himself, in a shift, has been vocal in his support for Cruz. The president previously dubbed the senator “Lyin’ Ted,” but has since changed his tune. Trump has now dubbed Cruz "beautiful Ted" and "Texas Ted," saying he "actually likes him a lot."
Yeah, let’s leave the comedy to the professionals, Ted. Speaking of which:
And of course, this:
By the way, not only does Cruz’s embrace of Trump reminds us how desperate he truly is:
Last month, Cruz posted a video of O’Rourke addressing a black congregation in Texas, and expressing the (extremely reasonable) position that the off-duty police officer who shot Botham Jean in his own home should not have done that. A lot of people, myself included, were baffled as to the point of this, but it slowly dawned on me and others that Cruz had posted this video specifically to appeal to people so deeply racist that they would be outraged O’Rourke criticized any police officer for anything. Cruz even weepily followed all of this up by repeatedly claiming at his rallies that the video was proof O’Rourke did not support Texas’s police officers.
Cruz is likely embracing the negative because he can’t get a positive news cycle to save his life. He has no friends in the Senate purely because of his personality. He can’t stop getting trolled by young people. He gets run out of restaurants. He needs to kiss up to Trump to win the election. The headlines you see about poor, soggy Ted do not paint the picture of a man on the rise, or even a man who is keeping it together. If you’re familiar with how momentum works in sports, you probably get the idea.
As the November election grows nearer, I can only imagine that Ted will get even sweatier and dig more deeply into shitty right-wing tropes. His most high-profile "accomplishments" in the Senate were failed attempts to repeal the Affordable Care Act and his hand in the 2013 government shutdown, neither of which make for a great stump speech. Given the current state of politics, that might be enough for him to win reelection, Betomania or no. But I would hope that enough voters are beginning to see Cruz in a new light—not as a maverick who stands by his principles or has any real interest in improving the lives of the people he represents, but as someone who will say literally anything to cling to power.
He’s literally become the Devil’s Advocate:
If Goethe had written the Left Behind novels, his climactic moment probably would have looked like what was on display Monday night in Houston—a man, scrounging the tight, dark corners of his soul, probing every nook and cranny of his essential being, for one last, little splinter of a smidgen of a chip of a portion of a piece of it that he could sell to a political loan shark for another six years in the U.S. Senate. For what doth it profit a man if he gain the Subcommittee on Seapower, but lose his own soul?
Nonetheless, there he was: Tailgunner Ted Cruz, scourge of the Godless, mighty sword of the conservative host, assuring his fellow Texans that the man he once called a "sniveling coward," the man who attacked Ted Cruz's wife for not being a supermodel and Ted Cruz's father for allegedly having beignets at Cafe du Monde with Lee Harvey Oswald, the man whose supporters at the 2016 Republican National Convention assaulted his wife in the loge seats and then booed him off the podium for telling them to vote their conscience, was worthy of his devotion, and therefore, theirs.
For anyone who followed the 2016 campaign, it was a stunning moment of clarity. It is not often that you see a man put his entire self-worth up for purchase like a broken garden gnome at a yard sale. And it is not often that you see someone so gleefully, greedily grab it up as though it were just another pile of grimy foreign money, just another hotel he could run into the ground. Ted Cruz deserves Donald Trump even more than Donald Trump deserves Ted Cruz. He is now truly the devil's advocate, and the retainer isn't worth the embarrassment. Accept this man, said Ted Cruz. Because he is not the man Ted Cruz called a sniveling coward, said Ted Cruz. Because he is not the man Ted Cruz called a maniac, said Ted Cruz.
Also, this is just pathetic:
One of the more jarring comments President Donald Trump made Monday night in Houston came when he proclaimed himself a proud “nationalist.” It’s a term laden with bad connotations -- fascists and warmongers and white supremacists -- but for Trump, apparently, synonymous with an “America First” worldview.
On Tuesday, Sen. Ted Cruz declined to embrace the label his political benefactor celebrated at the Houston rally that Trump headlined for him, even as Trump critics raised alarms.
“I’m not going to worry about labels. I spend every day fighting for 28 million Texans, fighting for jobs, fighting for more opportunity,” he said at a campaign stop at a retirement community north of Austin.
Sen. John Cornyn, stumping this week with Cruz, expressed no discomfort with Trump’s label.
“I would call myself an American first and foremost. If that makes me a nationalist, then so be it,” said Cornyn, whose dad flew B-17s in World War II, fighting fascism -- a particularly virulent strain of nationalism.
“They were Nazis. They wanted to take over the world. I wouldn’t try to make more of that than I think the president intended,” he said.
By the way, no one should write this race off. Early voting was huge this year:
Thousands of people were already camped out at a key early voting location in Houston on Monday morning, hours before voting was even set to begin.
Nearly 2,000 people stood in line outside of the Metropolitan Multi-Service Center on West Gray near River Oaks in a scene that looked more like a Black Friday shopping morning.
"This is one of the most important elections of our lifetimes," said Cody Pogue, who arrived at 8:30 p.m. on Sunday to make sure he'd be one of the first people to cast a ballot for Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Beto O'Rourke.
Just moments later, O'Rourke was across the street firing up his supporters with a bullhorn.
"Are y'all ready?" O'Rourke said to a cascade of cheers. "Houston, I love you."
Karen Bard, who was in line more than an hour before the polls opened, said she doesn't normally vote in midterms, but O'Rourke changed that.
"It's not about me, it's about my kids," Bard said.
He’s going back up on the air and spending big on digital ads:
Rep. Beto O'Rourke has spent more on Facebook ads than any other candidate this campaign cycle, new data released by the social media company Tuesday shows. The Texas Democrat's campaign has spent $5.3 million since May.
The campaign of his opponent, incumbent Sen. Ted Cruz, has spent just over $400,000 on Facebook ads in the same period -- less than 10% of O'Rourke's expenditure.
In one week, between October 14 and October 20, O'Rourke's campaign spent more than $500,000 on the platform.
Also, according to Facebook, almost $5 million has been spent running ads on President Donald Trump's main Facebook page, "Donald J. Trump." Since May, more than 100,000 ads have been run on Trump's page, according to the company. Some of them were paid for by The Trump Make America Great Again Committee and others by Donald J. Trump for President Inc., according to Facebook.
A mural depicting Texas Senate candidate Beto O’Rourke (D) as a superhero appeared in Austin ahead of the midterm elections.
Artist Chris Rogers has been at work on the mural for weeks, according to progress documented on his Instagram, but he put the finishing touches on it just as early voting began in the state.
The mural, located in East Austin, features O’Rourke, a rising Democratic star, standing in front of a Texas flag with his shirt unbuttoned to reveal a “B” emblem, reminiscent of Superman’s “S.”
“Out of the darkness comes the light,” Rogers wrote of the mural, which is entitled “Beto For Texas.”
Let’s keep up the momentum help Beto take down pathetic, desperate, Lyin’s Ted. Click below to get involved with Beto and his fellow Texas Democrats campaigns:
Beto O’Rourke
Lizzie Pannill Fletcher
Colin Allred
Gina Ortiz Jones
M.J. Hegar