The conservative firebrand from Texas isn’t going to be president anytime soon.
Jonathan Bernstein made a great observation the other day about current Senator Ted Cruz’s quest for the White House. Cruz’s consistent support for shutting down the Department Of Homeland Security is now blowing up in his face and as a result the Texas Republican is now trying to save face by passing the buck to everyone else in his party.
As Bernstein put it:
This time, we see it in the aftermath of the Homeland Security shutdown showdown, which was hard to regard as anything but a complete loss for Republicans. As Todd Gillman of the Dallas Morning News reports, after demanding for months that Republicans hold DHS funding hostage until President Barack Obama relented on his executive actions on immigration, Cruz is now claiming he never supported that strategy and instead blames Republican “leadership in both houses” for the defeat.
And this sort of behavior is making it incredibly hard for Cruz to build support among Republican Party actors because:
First of all, parties want candidates who play well with others. After all, many people making that choice —other politicians, governing professionals, interest-group leaders—are going to have to live with that nominee in the Oval Office.
Does he or she keep promises? Negotiate honestly? Share credit for successes, and accept his or her share of blame for failures? Think of those not as a test of character, but as practical questions about what their jobs will be like with this candidate as president.
Cruz fails that test every time.
That’s exactly right. Just pretend that you are a major Republican donor for a minute. Are you really going to trust someone who browbeats your party into a no win situation with Obama and then turns around and blames everyone else for the debacle with your hard earned money? Maybe, but then maybe you’re the type of person who would be really interested in a great deal on beachfront property in Wyoming.
Ted Cruz is good at heaping scorn on his political opponents, but he doesn’t seem capable of operating at the highest level of American politics.
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