On this date in 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, as well as 2018, “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day posted profiles of U.S. Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, a man the general public finds to have the most inexplicable desire to punch in the face upon gazing upon his visage, that after hearing him speak, makes them only wish they’d gone with that instinct. Sen. Cruz is one of the most willfully repugnant heels in the GOP these days, who revels in causing outrage among those on the left, as if it’s a form of sustenance he needs to survive day to day. Ted Cruz (a.k.a. Rafael Cruz) has not only inherited an uncanny likeness to legendary “Red Scare” perpetrator Sen. Joe McCarthy, he has also adopted his tactics, making baseless claims to demonize anyone to the left of his far, far right agenda while sneering through media interviews where he plays the victim of a “vast liberal media conspiracy” when he’s called out for being a total douchebag (Cruz actually accused the moderator of the third GOP Primary debate of liberal bias for asking him a question he didn’t want to answer about the debt ceiling).
It’s hard to pick any one single moment as Cruz’s potential lowest point in politics as in 2016, among his most revolting moments included when he advocated for U.S. surveillance of Muslim communities to “patrol and secure” practitioners of Islam, when he sat down for an interview with the leader of the anti-gay hate group, the Family Research Council, Tony Perkins, and spread lies about how transgendered people are sexually assaulting women in public bathrooms, when he blamed Democrats for not caring enough about violence against the LGBTQ community after the shooting at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, and called a witness to testify in Congress who immediately accused our two Muslim Congressmen, Keith Ellison and Andre Carson, of being secret members of the Muslim Brotherhood.
Sen. Cruz was the driving force behind the 2013 Government Shutdown, and then was shocked when his GOP colleagues held him accountable for it when it quickly proved a failed endeavor. Even though opinion polls have shown that the more people who learn Ted Cruz exists, the more people polled also develop an unfavorable view of him, he decided to make a run for the White House in 2016, only avoiding being the biggest racist, sexist troll of the bunch because Donald Trump was in the mix. Ted Cruz once filibustered for 21 hours straight in Congress (which he ignorantly compared to the Bataan death march), and by “filibuster” I mean “talks ad nauseum while no other Congressional business was scheduled”. The highlight of that speech was perhaps when he misinterpreted the meaning behind the classic children’s book “Green Eggs and Ham” in regards to the Affordable Care Act, and interpreted to be about someone who was justifiably stubborn, rather than a tale of someone who should be open to new things. Without irony, he called himself a “modern day Galileo” for his brave stance in denying climate change AGAINST all science and reason, which is precisely the opposite of what Galileo did back during the Renaissance. Cruz single-handedly held up government aid to fix the lead-contaminated water system in Flint, Michigan for no particular reason except that he’s a d***.
Cruz is such a callous prick that he actually stated joking about Vice President Joe Biden while he was grieving over the loss of his son, Beau, and was not speaking publicly, and when news broke that former President Jimmy Carter was battling brain cancer, Cruz took it as a cue to bash his one term in office at the Iowa State Fair to garner Republican Primary votes. He considers the Supreme Court’s rulings on same sex marriage “the very definition of tyranny”. He has tried proving his manliness by placing raw bacon on the barrel of a machine gun, firing it repeatedly so it would get hot, and then eat it. Ted Cruz is a man whose honest goal is to see he U.S. Senate filled with himself and 99 other people just like his hero, legendary Senator and unapologetic segregationalist Jesse Helms. He is, in short, the most unlikable bastard in Washington, D.C. at the moment, to the extent that his own party has stalwarts like Sen. John McCain who referred to him as a “whacko bird”, a term that Cruz takes as a compliment and former House Speaker John Boehner calls Ted Cruz to “Lucifer in the Flesh”.
Seriously, everyone hates Ted Cruz, down to his own family, as evidenced by the above animated gif of his daughter recoiling in horror at the thought of getting a kiss from him, and the unedited, raw footage of his family awkwardly trying to come up with nice things to say about him during his presidential campaign. Before his campaign was over, he elbowed his own wife in the face, and decided to make a last-ditch effort to catch up to Donald Trump by naming a vice-presidential candidate on his ticket to help him get more support with Republican women… Carly Fiorina… who proceeded to fall off the stage when she was introduced at one of his rallies.
The oddest thing about the 2016 GOP Presidential Primary was that somehow, Donald Trump proved himself to be enough of a raging ***hole that we almost… ALMOST felt bad for Ted Cruz. If there was ever a metaphor for Cruz being overshadowed by Trump, it was probably when he was literally speaking out against the sentient rancid tangerine at the RNC, and Trump’s plane buzzed his speech. I mean, when he got called “Lyin’ Ted”, we didn’t blink, because Ted Cruz is a prolific liar. But when Trump started outright clowning him and called his wife Heidi ugly, or accused Sen. Cruz’s father of being an accomplice in the assassination of JFK… Well, that was brutal. And it made it easy to understand why Ted Cruz went out on the third night of the Republican National Convention, and refused to endorse Trump.
It was a stance most could agree with, not just because of Trump’s utter ignorance and unfitness for office… but that he personally had besmirched Cruz’s loved ones. Maybe for the first time ever, people nodded in approval for Ted Cruz for being a human being for once. Cruz promised he would not endorse Trump like a “servile puppy”. But no, Ted Cruz isn’t just a puppy, he’s a little b**** of one, and came crawling back to endorse Donald Trump and actually phone bank for him about ten weeks later. He caved, and was broken. He has voted for every horrible member of Trump’s “Cabinet of Horrors” as well as the GOP’s Senate attempt to try and repeal the Affordable Care Act that would have left 23 million people without health insurance and gutted funding from Medicaid.
Cruz spent 2017 trying to stabilize his flagging polling numbers in the build up to the 2018 election by continuing to pal around with members of Anti-Islamic hate groups, and show up and speak at their conferences. Well, that and he was trying to raise money by, y’know, sending out fundraising letters that lie and claim Planned Parenthood is using government dollars to perform abortions and that “millions of babies are being killed in the womb”. He has championed people with views or backgrounds as revolting as Brett Kavanaugh and Alex Jones in the past few years. He tried to smarm-splain Star Wars to Mark friggin’ Hamill, of all people, to gain credibility, getting none.
That doesn’t seem at all desperate, does it? What could be even more desperate? Well, how about seeing Ted Cruz have to seek out a campaign visit from Donald Trump, a man who still won’t take back accusing Cruz’s father of taking part in the assassination of JFK. We can’t help but laugh, but seriously, Ted Cruz can’t look cool no matter what he tries. He can’t even successfully post a Facebook Live video without f***ing it up. Beto O’Rourke ran circles around him in their 2018 debate, perhaps the saddest moment being when Sen. Cruz was stumped into silence for a full six seconds when asked to discuss something… anything that has nothing to do with politics that would give Texans an insight into who he is as a person.
Cruz pulled out of a town hall debate against him on CNN, effectively giving Beto a full hour of very relatable TV time to himself as a result. Beto O’Rourke was seriously living rent free in Ted Cruz’s head, as evidenced by the photo of Cruz looking pathetic and staring at a photo of O’Rourke while sitting on a plane sure makes it look that way. and then how his attempts to use photos of O’Rourke in a band in college where he wore a dress backfired, as others posted pictures of Ted Cruz in college, dressed up as a mime. Cruz has been heckled out of restaurants in Washington, D.C.
In 2019, after his re-election by a narrow margin to a second term in the Senate, Ted Cruz has continued to be human garbage. It wasn’t just that in June of 2019, that he came to the defense of a conservative pundit who was under fire for harassing a journalist from Vox with homophobic slurs (interesting battle you picked there, Ted)… In September of 2019, he tried arguing against gun control by blaming violence in Chicago (and getting its new mayor to tell him to cram it in his cramhole), then he tried to take a smarmy cheap shot on Twitter at Beto O’Rourke after his answer on climate change in the Democratic Primary debate, only to get ratio’ed and have most of the public mock him for his cluelessness on climate. when word came that Brett Kavanaugh had ANOTHER accusation of sexual assault leveled against him, Cruz responded that people “need to let the anger go”, as if it’s wrong to be ANGRY ABOUT A SERIAL SEXUAL PREDATOR ON THE SUPREME COURT.
But never forget that Ted Cruz is a repugnant, holier-than-thou Evangelical who will try and distract from say, the impeachment of Donald Trump, to be utterly repugnant, and refer to a 7 year old boy receiving hormone blockers to undergo gender conversion therapy as “child abuse”.
Seriously, the Senate GOP has a full rogues gallery of motherf***ers, but Ted Cruz is somehow still perhaps the most loathsome guy in there (and that’s saying something). His most flattering quality really is that he resembles the Zodiac Killer. We’re serious.