Ted Cruz has built his whole political persona around being the guy who never backs down, never wavers on his principles, however much opposition he may face. But in the days since he announced he was running for president, he's already had to
backtrack on his claim that he was signing up for Obamacare because the law compelled him to do so. That's not all. At
Mother Jones, Andy Kroll and David Corn round up
three big differences between what Cruz was saying a few years back as a BigLaw lawyer and what he's saying now as a rising conservative star.
There was the man sentenced to the death penalty who Cruz defended, citing prosecutorial misconduct. Well, you can probably guess how Cruz feels about prosecutors and the criminal justice system these days—he doesn't actually use the word "infallible," but he sure gives that sense. There was the giant punitive damages jury award he defended, only to turn around and now support a tight cap on punitive damages. And there was this:
THEN: In 2009, he wrote a brief arguing that giving federal stimulus money to retired Texas teachers "will directly further the greater purpose of economic recovery for America."
NOW: Obama's economic program is "yet another rehash of the same big-government stimulus programs that have consistently failed to generate jobs."
Then again, 9/11 changed the man's entire
taste in music. Should we be surprised that he's ... responsive to the different incentives of a hundreds of thousands of dollars a year law firm job vs. a far-right senator who hopes to be president?