Ted Cruz

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Persons of interest

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“”I do think in the media there is a tendency to describe conservatives as one of two things: stupid or evil.

—Ted Cruz, asking — why can't it be both?

“”...the only real debate around Ted Cruz’s personal qualities is whether he’s better described as a “creep” or an “asshole.”

—Nathan Robinson

Rafael Edward "Ted" Cruz, suspected Zodiac Killer, a.k.a Lyin' Ted, Sweaty Teddy, or Cancún Cruz, (1970–) is a Canadian-Texan Senator and a leading light of the absurdist wing of the GOP.

Like any senator from said state, he's a gibbering Tea Party nut — an obnoxious reactionary on every social and economic issue. When people he (and his bosom buddy Mike Lee) doesn't like make decisions he doesn't agree with, he implies they are in violation of the Constitution, because his supporters are morons who respond to divisive idiocy like that. He also looks — and behaves — uncomfortably like Joseph McCarthy. Or a villain from a Barbie movie.

Cruz was a leading candidate for the 2016 Republican Party presidential nomination. You have to remember this is the guy who blew up chiefly thanks to Sarah Palin endorsing him for Senate. His 'credentials' are beyond reproach. It is truly an honor to witness such a meteoric rise. He suspended his campaign in May 2016; even Teabaggers have no time for a Dominionist with no track record of successful legislation whatsoever. Ever since then, he has become one of the worst Trump bootlickers in the Senate, even going so far as vote against the certification of Arizona's electoral votes for Joe Biden, a move many people claim to be treasonous, especially considering that a violent horde of Trump supporters had broken into the Capitol during the vote, the first time something like that had ever happened since 1814. All of this in spite of the very nasty comments that Trump has made about his wife, and in spite of Trump having given Cruz the moniker "Lyin' Ted" (though he did later change it to "Beautiful Ted" in the 2018 midterms).

Of course, given the way the Republicans took the ball and ran with birtherism when a black Democrat was in the White House, you'd think they would have immediately shut down the candidacy of someone who was born in Canada. Oddly enough, that never seemed to have come up (except in a passing mention by Trump, of course). You'd almost think the whole birtherism thing was pure partisanship and/or racism, if you didn't know better.

Former US Speaker of the House of Representatives John Boehner (a fellow Republican and a Catholic) called Cruz "Lucifer in the Flesh"- but that's insulting to Satanists, who want nothing to do with Cruz. Ted Cruz actually gives us a lot of hope. Republicans hate him, Democrats hate him. It's wonderful to see how people can come together, if only in their hatred of Ted Cruz — the most hated man in the Senate, especially since he was one of the six senators who voted to help Trump steal the 2020 election (out of the 13 who initially threatened to vote for such before the failed Trumpist coup). To call him a "clown" is insulting to clowns.

My Father, the Hero

Some of Cruz's ideology can be traced to his father, Rafael Bienvenido Cruz y Díaz. According to stories long repeated by Rafael Cruz on the conservative conference circuit, Rafael Cruz's youth in his native Cuba was shaped by four years, as a teenager, working as a gun-toting rebel leader with an underground resistance movement against dictator Fulgencio Batista's government (a position that at the time aligned him with the movement of Fidel Castro). Not long after Rafael turned 18, according to Rafael, he was arrested as a suspected terrorist in his native Cuba. Due to this arrest, he decided that it was best to flee the country and applied for a student visa at various American universities. Accepted by the University of Texas, he moved to Austin to pursue a math major with a minor in chemical engineering (according to the story, the money for the entire trip was sewn in Rafael Cruz's underwear). Knowing no English, he learned the language from scratch and supported himself by working as a dishwasher.

When Rafael Cruz returned to visit Cuba in 1959, Fidel Castro was fully in charge. According to Rafael Cruz's conservative stumping, he was shocked, shocked!!, that the revolutionary Marxist authoritarian he supported was actually implementing Marxist and authoritarian policies. (The exact reasons for this shock are a bit muddled, but it appears that Rafael Cruz's fierce commitment to his Christianity (and Castro's persecution of Christianity) might have played a key factor.) After graduating, Rafael Cruz got a job in the oil industry, married, had two kids, divorced, married again, followed the oil industry to Canada, sired Ted, and moved back to Texas. Critically, in 1975, Rafael Cruz converted from the Catholicism of his native Cuba and joined the Baptist church. This led to Rafael Cruz getting involved with a mirror group to Jerry Falwell Sr.'s Moral Majority called the Religious Roundtable. This, plus the particularly bad economic climate for the oil industry under the Jimmy Carter administration, also seems to have led to Rafael Cruz embracing the free market zealotry of Ronald Reagan devotees, a zealotry that he successfully taught to his son.

Rafael Cruz's account of his youth in Cuba has been disputed as partial bullshit by some who knew him. According to one source, Rafael Cruz was merely an ojalatero, a person "wishing and praying that Batista would fall, but not doing much to act on it." His arrest for revolutionary terrorism may have been an arrest merely for illegally possessing a revolver. In one interview, both Ted and Rafael Cruz described a battle that occurred on November 30, 1956 known as the Santiago De Cuba Uprising. Mistakenly, they claimed that Cuban revolutionary Frank País was killed there. In reality, País was killed by Santiago police in a raid on July 30, 1957.

A star is born

“”I think we might have messed up again in Texas. We thought Ted Cruz would be an educated, articulate senator with a positive vision of constitutional conservatism. But it turns out he might also be crazy, and not the Charlie Wilson "Let's see how many Playboy bunnies fit into this hot tub!" kind of crazy. Ted Cruz's crazy is the unfunny, dangerous kind, and we just gave him a six-year term. Sorry.

—Jason Stranford

George W. Bush is seen by the vast majority of people in the country and the rest of the world as being a disgrace and an embarrassment. You could make the claim that the failures of his presidency single-handedly killed the neoconservative movement, specifically the 1990s-style Joe Scarborough, Newt Gingrich, and the "But muh tax cuts!" types. The Republican Party had to do something to re-brand their party after that. Hence the "True Conservative" à la the directionless Grand Old Pile known as the Tea Party, which gave us Ted Cruz in all his glory.

Prior to his election to the Senate, from 2003-2008 Cruz served as Solicitor General of Texas under Governor Rick Perry. As a Senator, Tailgunner Ted came to prominence during the party's efforts to obstruct Obamacare by near-singlehandedly attempting to blow up the world economy. His 21-hour sermon (technically not a "filibuster", just a waste of everybody's time) on the matter failed, but it was interesting for its wanderings into… well, readings from Doctor Seuss don't often happen in Congress, while Darth Vader impersonations are not unheard of in the Senate. The first time he really made the news, however, was by just asking questions about whether or not the Secretary of Defence was taking money from North Korea. (Ironically, he and his family have registered for Obamacare.)

During his run for the 2016 Republican Presidential nomination, questions were raised as to whether Ted Cruz, who was born in 1970, is the Zodiac Killer (whose killing spree started in the 1960s). He has so far refused to deny the allegations. Make of this what you will.

Mask of sanity

Of all the supporters of all the clown car candidates, Cruz supporters are the most baffling. They have to ignore so many signs of an antisocial disorder in order to convince themselves that Cruz is the purest conservative candidate. Evidently, all it takes to do that is repeat the word "Constitution" 10-15 times a minute for five years.

The press keeps hitting at the same issue with this guy; he doesn't want to pass legislation. He doesn't want to govern. He just wants to create the illusion of doing something to placate the people voting for him (the deep-red Texas) and sending him money (the anarchic Tea Party). Heaven forbid he take any concrete action in a crisis. As an example, in early 2021, Texas was hit with an unusually frigid winter storm that left 4 million people without power, causing a cascade of other infrastructure failures. Cruz's response to this crisis? Running away to vacation in Cancún, Mexico. And when called out on this, he blamed his daughters, which turned out to be a lie. Contrast his response to that of Beto O'Rourke, the guy who nearly beat him, who held an event to help seniors who were stuck without power. Way to show Texas how much you care, Ted!

For Democrats, he was the gift that kept on giving — until the GOP took control of the Senate.

Remaking Washington in his image

In 2015, in a truly horrifying nightmare-turned-real for science, he was appointed the new Head of the Senate Subcommittee for Science, Space, and Competitiveness. To put that in perspective, this is the man who said that net neutrality was "Obamacare for the internet," proving he knows nothing of either. And he has been placed in charge of the Senate subcommittee that deals with both. Start hammering out those rock spears and weaving those fur rags, boys! We're going back to the Stone Age!

He has now been appointed to oversee NASA. You may weep now. Better yet, be outraged because someone this blatantly ignorant has the authority to tell actual scientists and engineers what to do. As chair, he does not believe NASA should focus on climate change (or Earth sciences at all), but rather the exploration of the solar system only. This absurd notion was quickly smacked down by the then-Director of NASA, Charles Bolden.

Further showing his complete misunderstanding of the word "science", Cruz enjoys wasting taxpayer dollars holding hearings to question the objectivity of climate science. On the issue of global warming, Cruz, a denialist, compares himself to Galileo and his opponents to Flat Earthers.

To give him a modicum of credit, he is at least pro-GMO.

Poisoning the party

While he's universally disliked by anyone rational (as well as some who certainly aren't), Cruz has a frightening amount of power within the Senate and the House. He's already notorious for teaming up with Rand Paul to shut down the government in 2013, which did nothing to harm the Republicans in the 2014 midterms. He somehow got Mitch McConnell to appoint him as head of the Senate Subcommittee for Science, Space, and Competitiveness, and as the overseer of NASA; by all accounts, Cruz should have been purged from the party, yet McConnell, to guard his right flank, allowed this asshole to gain actual authority in the Senate.

The House Freedom Caucus, an Orwellian-named Tea Party splinter group formed in January 2015, is filled with some of the most ultra right wing members ever seen in the Republican Party. Senator Cruz, once a month, meets with the Freedom Caucus to advise them on how to drive their agenda and champions himself as "standing up to the Republican establishment" while he runs for the White House. This is best shown when Senator Cruz tried using Planned Parenthood as a wedge issue to try to shut down the government again in 2015; the Freedom Caucus jumped at the call as soon as Cruz brought it up. Cruz became the leading attack dog against Planned Parenthood, rallying evangelicals in an anti-abortion crusade, airing advertising against Planned Parenthood, and insisting that "religious freedom is under attack." This skyrocketed his popularity among evangelicals, especially in Iowa. During the Trump presidency, Cruz was largely responsible for reshaping the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals to be staunchly anti-abortion, including getting his friend James Ho appointed to the court, which includes Texas and is responsible in part for Texas' particularly cruel anti-abortion laws. Despite having bragged about reshaping the federal court, he has been unusually silent about abortion during his 2024 reelection campaign, indicating the unpopularity of the near-total ban on abortion in Texas.

Cruz has insisted that Christians don't commit terrorism.

With his blessing, the Freedom Caucus forced John Boehner, seen by many as Cruz's rival, to resign from the Speakership. Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, the heir apparent to Boehner, announced his intention to replace Boehner as Speaker, and immediately ran into a wall from the Freedom Caucus. One day before the vote was scheduled, Cruz met with the Freedom Caucus. One day later, McCarthy withdrew his candidacy for Speaker. While Cruz refused to weigh in on Randroid Ryan's candidacy, and the Freedom Caucus was wishy-washy on Ryan as well (in one month he went from "one of the last real conservatives" to a RINO-in-disguise; it's amazing what being Speaker can do for a career). Ryan's very nomination has effectively mainstreamed the extremists in the Republican Party, embodied most of all by the Freedom Caucus (and Ryan himself).

Cruz's influence in the party is the dirty little secret many Republicans refuse to acknowledge. In September 2013, just eight months into his congressional career, Cruz met with House Republicans privately to talk strategy over the budget crisis, with Cruz insisting on including amendments aimed at dismantling Obamacare in the budget resolution that meant to avert the shutdown. A few days later, GOP lawmakers shut down the government. In October 2013, two weeks into the shutdown, John Boehner was pushing for a vote on a bill that would have reopened the government and avoided a debt default. Cruz hosted a secret meeting with House Republicans to discuss the deal, and the meeting was filled with many of the same allies who backed anti-Obamacare amendments in the budget deal as a caveat to avoiding a shutdown. The next day, realizing he didn’t have the votes, Boehner and the rest of the House Republican leadership withdrew their proposal in shame. Boehner, who already held off a coup attempt in January 2013, had to rely on House Democrats to end the shutdown. This turned Boehner into a leader without followers, and the party insurgents would confront him with regular threats of challenges to his speakership should he not obey their every wish. At every point, Cruz was there pushing the House insurgents to sucker punch Boehner. By taking advantage of the conservative backlash against the party establishment, and presenting himself as a point man, Cruz personified everything that's tearing the Republican Party apart.

It doesn't end there. In April 2014, Cruz hosted a discussion with House Republicans about strategy on immigration reform. A bipartisan reform bill died in the chamber soon after. In June 2014, on the same day that Kevin McCarthy was elected to replace Eric Cantor, Cruz met again with a group of House Republicans to put wingnut Steve Scalise as Majority Whip. In July 2014, Cruz huddled with House Republicans yet again, who took his advice, ignored their party’s leadership, and derailed a GOP border bill. Each time, Cruz garnered support from the party insurgents, from everything to Obamacare and the executive action that prevented deportations to millions of undocumented immigrants. Steve King (R-Iowa) even called him a “perfect catalyst” who has a “real rapport with conservatives in the House.” And once again, when Boehner tried to pass an Omnibus Bill at the end of 2014, Cruz was right there, gathering up party insurgents and devising ways to delay or obstruct its passage in the House.

Even on the campaign trail, Cruz catered to the anti-establishment and ultra-conservative segments of the primary base. He was the first to support Donald Trump and adopt his insane policies, from hating on immigrants to ending birthright citizenship; however, at the 2016 GOP convention, he refused to endorse Trump for POTUS. His strategy was twofold: if Trump falters, Cruz takes his supporters, but if Trump wins, Cruz was angling for a possible VP pick. It would have been a win either way, and when it failed, he still had a recalcitrant House and Senate in his back pocket. However he did have to abandon the last shreds of his dignity and become a toady for Trump.

If you had any doubts that Cruz turned the Freedom Caucus into his own personal mini-party, they actively campaigned for Cruz as he ran for the presidency.

2016 Presidential campaign

“”The only joy that came from watching Trump win the GOP nomination was watching him de-pants Cruz at every step of the way—but I can't even enjoy that now because Trump might make this oil slick in the shape of a human being a Supreme Court justice. I'm gonna be sick.

—Drew Magary

On 21 March 2015, Ted Cruz surprised everyone by becoming the first person to announce that he was going to run for President. We'll queue up some fitting songs to describe his campaign for you. Cruz was only in this race to make other Republicans look moderate by comparison—before all the moderates slit their own throats with Trump's help.

He also won the first primary in Iowa decisively, as it's a religious rural state with a knack of going for the runner up. However, his supporters spread false rumors that other candidates were dropping out, so the legitimacy of that win is in doubt. It was in Iowa that Ted Cruz tried out his best fundamentalist lines, exhorting the Iowa flock to "awaken the body of Christ" and to "strap on the full armor of God." Cruz won that primary despite very few Iowans attempting either feat.

Rivalry with Rubio

When Cruz was running for Senate in 2012, he wanted an endorsement from Florida Senator Marco Rubio, who was elected on the Tea Party wave in 2010, but he didn't get it, and Cruz has been bitter ever since. Both are even taking opposite routes in the Senate: Rubio voted to give President Obama fast track authority on the Trans-Pacific Partnership, whereas Cruz did not. Cruz pushed for a shutdown over Planned Parenthood, while Rubio did not. When both launched their presidential campaigns in 2015, Cruz courted the insurgent anti-establishment evangelical wing, while Rubio gradually outgrew his Tea Party label, notably by courting support from Mitch McConnell, Cruz's rival in the Senate.

Why is this relevant? As Donald Trump dominated the headlines, it is Cruz and Rubio who had the most to gain as the rest of the primary field struggled to keep ahead. Both were 44-year old freshman Senators vying to become the first Latino President, both are natural born (probably, some people think that he is legally Canadian) American citizens with immigrant families, both are stridently anti-Castro Cuban Americans, and both were leading vice presidential candidates if they were to ever falter as well. Cleveland's not big enough for the two of them.

Et tu?

“”It's hard not to find this a little amusing. After all, Ted Cruz helped create an environment where populist demagoguery would flourish on the right. Of course, he, no doubt, assumed he would be the beneficiary of this… He figured wrong.

—Matt Lewis

After Rubio dropped out, and Cruz ran along a bunch of delegates from western states, he was seen as the top opponent to Donald Trump… until he hit a brick wall in New York; he lost so badly, he was mathematically eliminated from the race. On 3 May 2016, Ted Cruz announced he was dropping out after being defeated by large margins by Donald Trump in the third to last primary state, Indiana.

The only person who ever even considered supporting him was Jeff Sessions, who instead endorsed Donald Trump. Poor Ted. In his mind, God tells him to run and even kills Scalia to make every conservative voter realize how important Ted winning is for them, and then snubs him in favor of Donald Trump? Did Job get it this bad?

And let's not forget Cruz picking Fiorina as his running mate mere days before he dropped out. It was like a Sunset Boulevard delusion. You could clearly see a moment of genuine worry cross Carly's face. Then she fell off the stage (or passed out from the smell of Ted's chloroform; it happens a lot) while he pretended not to notice. The next President of the United States!

"Smartest guy in the room"

His memoir

Possibly taking a page out of the Scientology playbook, Cruz may have attempted to shoehorn his way onto the New York Times Bestseller List, but failed because an "overwhelming preponderance of evidence was that sales were limited to strategic bulk purchases" according to a NYT spokesperson. His publisher, HarperCollins, denied that there were bulk orders after an "exhaustive internal review". Cruz's book appeared on the Times' Bestseller list the following week. According to the Times, they stand by their original analysis for the first week and the second week's entry is based on the same methodology they have always used in recent times.

Working the rubes

Cruz seems to be assembled from the most annoying parts of all the GOP Presidential candidates. Let's think about this guy for a minute: As a law student at Harvard, he refused to study with anyone who hadn't been an undergrad at Harvard, Princeton, or Yale (sounds like he has a long tradition of fighting for the working man). He worked for George W. Bush's campaign in 2000, was Speaker Boehner's private attorney, used to clerk for Chief Justice Rehnquist, and he's married to a Goldman Sachs executive, giving him extra juice with that company. But somehow he ran an "outsider, grassroots" campaign in Texas. With a resumé like his, the only way he could become more "insider" is if Barack divorced Michelle and married him!

You don't graduate magna cum laude out of Harvard Law and have Alan Dershowitz call you "off the charts brilliant" and not know that you're full of shit when you make the kinds of climate change jokes he does (hurr durr ice on the ground). If he chose the corporate world, this would be the guy who openly says he has no friends, but goes to every event, party or conference with the explicit goal of "networking".

Not racist, but #1 with racists

Dylann Roof, the perpetrator of a shooting inside a black church in Charleston, was influenced by the "Council of Conservative Citizens", a white supremacist group. The leader of said group donated tens of thousands of dollars to Republican campaigns, including those of 2016 presidential contenders such as Rick Santorum, Rand Paul, and (yes) Ted Cruz. To their credit, Santorum's and Cruz's campaigns said they're going to return the money. Paul's campaign donated it to the families. Regardless, one would do well to wonder why white supremacists support Republican policies.

This is my gift, my curse

Cruz has a made-up super ability called "audiographic memory," where he remembers literally anything anyone has ever said about him; this gives him an "unfair advantage" in debates. Is this the same Cruz Missile who can't even handle debate moderators?

How can he ban himself?

While working on behalf of then-Attorney General Greg Abbott (now governor) of Texas, Cruz wrote a 76-page legal brief defending the Texas penal (ahem) code prohibition on "the advertisement and sale of dildos, artificial vaginas, and other obscene devices". Cruz maintained that the government had an interest in "discouraging… autonomous sex" and the brief equated using them to "hiring a willing prostitute or engaging in consensual bigamy." Texas lost the case on appeal and decided not to pursue the case to the Supreme Court, perhaps because Cruz did not want to talk about sex to a Supreme Court Justice who is also a grandmother. Both the Trump-sycophantic National Enquirer (for bigamy) and Cruz's college roommate (for allegedly using a masturbatory aid) have, essentially, called Cruz a hypocrite.

Mommas, Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be This Guy

But he sure likes him some country music, because rock music reacted badly to 9/11.

This is literally what he said.

Messianic nutball

Guano

He's the son of batshit pastor Rafael Cruz, who — among other things — believes that Ted is "annointed" by God to supervise the transfer of wealth from Big Government to "God's bankers".

In other totally unsurprising news, Cruz claims an atheist is not fit to be president. A president has to fear God and pray daily. "Any president who doesn't begin every day on his knees isn't fit to be commander-in-chief of this country," according to Cruz. No word on if you have to be praying when you go down onto your knees. For a Constitutional scholar, it's staggering how ignorant he is of the Constitution.

Truthiness

See the main article on this topic: Truthiness

In the wake of the shooting at a Planned Parenthood facility in Colorado Springs, Cruz released a stunning non sequitur: the "overwhelming majority of violent criminals are Democrats." The research he cited was not studying political affiliation, so the rigor and thoughtfulness that went into the other points were not applied to that (somewhat throwaway) question. It is massively unlikely that Cruz found this article while trolling academic journals years ago, saw a piece of information and decided to try and pull the wool over the public's' eyes; rather, a naïve staff-member probably saw something that aligned with his biases and fed it to Cruz who simply believed it. Cruz is trying to massage the legacy of Jim Crow — Nixon/Reagan-era drug policies that overwhelmingly target minorities — into an indictment of the Democratic Party. In the South, Dixiecrats/Republicans pit lower-class whites against blacks to come out ahead in elections. Cruz is just perpetuating this tradition, and trying to pin the blame for it on the people who aren't engaging in it.

In 2016, he spoke even more boldly, blaming Australia's tough gun laws on an uptick in sexual assault. This increase is likely a reflection of the rise in the reporting of sexual assaults (i.e., correlation does not imply causation). It's amazing how the far right suddenly care so much about women's rights when they think they can use them as a stick to beat liberals and minorities.

Even with The Washington Post explaining the errors, most people will still not understand it and assume Cruz is correct.

Forward to yesterday!

It's about goddamn time the U.S. embraced the gold standard. We at RW remember a simpler time when a corporation was allowed to dump toxic waste in the water table without the fear of big government or the EPA's sticky fingers shutting them down.

A time when a man was judged by how much he could exploit the environment and not what he's done to help it.

A time where a man could treat filthy immigrants as endless waves of cheap expendable sub-human resources.

A time where a man could legally pay women less for the same work.

A time when a man could purchase his own army, invade a small brown country and declare himself president, if he so chose.

A time when idiotic and unnecessary excesses led directly to the worst economic crises in American History (Only for most of the last century. Quit exaggerating.)

For too long we've lost sight of what it means to be an American. It's about time someone like Ted Cruz reminded us.

Take us home, Ted, take us home.

Vatman

It's not a FairTax, it's a Valued Added Tax, which is different... because it sounds different.

The sad thing is of all the major Republican candidates, his proposed tax policy is the least insane. What Ted is actually proposing is a European-style National Sales Tax. He won't admit it, because saying "Europe" would cause parts of his voters to sizzle and fall off. (It's also known as a "Consumption Tax", which Americans like even less.) Still too opaque? Essentially he is calling for a 19 percent federal sales tax that would apply to all purchases of goods and services made in the U.S. Many of the taxes you pay in the U.S. for things are already built into the price or services so you don't see them on a paper receipt. So the poor and middle class pay the same or more. Upper 20 percent pay the same, but no more gift and estate tax for super wealthy. He's also proposing cutting taxes to 0 for everyone making under $36,000/year, so everyone's savings should increase. That doesn't mean there are more jobs, and it doesn't mean income inequality goes away.

Putting aside the feasibility of ramming this tax plan through Congress, will it work? Conservatives hate this idea, so don't scroll down the page just yet. However, there are a few baked-in problems with the VAT: Cruz argues that his plan is a tax on businesses, not on consumers. Economists argue that it's a distinction without a difference. If you tax businesses, they’re going to pass those costs onto the workers and consumers. Pundits who claim otherwise are probably being a bit naïve. In theory, it would unfairly burden lower and lower middle class families, since 1) A greater portion of their income goes to consumption because there are fixed costs they cannot escape, e.g. gasoline, and 2) upper-middle and upper class taxpayers can use business entities to hide their consumption (like they already do now).

Cruz's plan is dangerous for the way it handles corporate taxation more than anything.

On his place of birth

“”The more of a genuine 'originalist' someone (like Cruz) is, the harder it becomes to resolve that 'serious question' in Cruz’s favor. The more of a 'living constitutionalist' someone (like me) is, the easier it becomes to conclude that 'natural born citizen' has gradually acquired the broader meaning on which Cruz necessarily relies.

—Cruz's former professor at Harvard, Laurence Tribe

Cruz is an immigrant who is opposed to immigration reform: He was born in Alberta, Canada, the son of a Cuban exile (and former child-soldier for Fidel Castro, really) and an American citizen, Eleanor Elizabeth Darragh. Due in part to bitterness over birthers' claims about Barack Obama, some people (Donald Trump, Ann Coulter and Rand Paul) have made some hay about Cruz's birth in Canada. Those pushing this should knock it off — unless you're a Canadian having fun.

And even then this joke gets old fast. As the child of an American citizen, he would be a "natural-born citizen," and eligible for the Presidency. Though the appearance of Cruz's mother, Eleanor Cruz, on a 1974 Canadian voter list does give one pause.

In 1974, his parents — including his American born mother — were found to be full-fledged Canadian voters. Being a Canadian citizen requires swearing an oath of allegiance. According to Section 349 of the US Immigration and Nationality Act, American citizens who swear allegiance to another country may lose their American citizenship. If true at the time of his birth (1970), this would mean that Cruz cannot run for the Presidency since his mother renounced her own American citizenship. However, the US Supreme Court, notably in the cases Afroyim v. Rusk and Vance v. Terrazas, rendered that particular section of the INA (as well as the old Bancroft Treaties) virtually unenforceable. So, basically all Cruz's mother has to do is officially say that she never meant to relinquish US citizenship and voila! She's a citizen again (if she did in fact lose her citizenship).

Mister Popularity

“”What do you call that thing where a person has neither a moral center nor the social skills to conceal that fact?

—Craig Mazin on freshman roommate Ted Cruz

“”Is there some rule that you can’t confess error in your state?

—Justice Anthony Kennedy speaking to Ted Cruz in Dretke v. Haley

“”The chief of the wacko birds.

—John McCain

“”If you killed Ted Cruz on the floor of the Senate, and the trial was in the Senate, nobody would convict you.

—Lindsey Graham

“”... I have never worked with a more miserable son of a bitch in my life.

—John Boehner

“”Trump called his wife ugly. Trump accused his father of helping to assassinate JFK. And voters got in on the heckling too, as evidenced [Gawker.com: archive.is, web.archive.org here]... This would be a horrible thing to watch if, again, it were not Ted Cruz we were talking about. No one, aside from Ted Cruz, deserves to be stripped of their dignity. No one, aside from Ted Cruz, deserves to be so horribly slandered.

—Drew Magary

“”A running fascination of the 2016 GOP primary campaign has been the steady revelation that no one, anywhere, likes or admires Ted Cruz or remembers him fondly or wants him to be president or wants anything to do with him. His colleagues despise him. The party establishment hates his guts. His former schoolmates talk about him the way you recall a memorably revolting cave cricket you once discovered in the bathtub. Carly Fiorina threw herself off a ledge at his approach. His wife is visibly repulsed by him. His children flee from him in terror. Even his own dad seems, well… let’s be generous and call it ambivalent. Ted Cruz is Earth’s least-liked person.

—Albert Burneko

“”In 2013, three months into Mr. Cruz’s tenure, Foreign Policy magazine identified him as both “the most hated man in the Senate” and “the human equivalent of one of those flower-squirters that clowns wear on their lapels.”

—Matt Flegenheimer, The New York Times

“”I like Ted Cruz more than most of my other colleagues like Ted Cruz. And I hate Ted Cruz.

—Al Franken.

“”I don't know if I need to send you a surgeon to examine your spine or a psychiatrist to examine your head, but something is wrong with you if you continue to follow this president.

—Josh Shapiro, PA Attorney General

“”We don't need your lectures, thanks mate. You know nothing about us. And if you stand against a life-saving vaccine, then you sure as hell don't stand with Australia.

—Michael Gunner, Chief Minister of Australia's Northern Territory

Does he believe in anything?

In a review of his autobiography, Nathan Robinson writes that Cruz seems to not believe in anything, noting that he consistently mentions things that are counter to his political positions (writing in favor of bringing in low skilled immigrants while voting against exactly that) and never actually mentions why he does the things he does. Robinson writes that Cruz is only interested in becoming President, or at least being a major force in politics, and has no interest in actually governing nor implementing conservative ideas.

See also

• Deep cover liberal — Increasingly pondered.
• Ron Johnson
• Sarah Palin
• Ron Paul
• Rand Paul
• Peter Thiel — "a friend" of Cruz, PAC donor, and fellow Federalist Society alumni

Videos

• Move Over Rand, Ted Cruz Is Making Machine-Gun Bacon - Seriously now, is there a contender for the GOP nomination who isn't a walking caricature?
• Cruz Missile strikes again!

External links

• Cruz: A Vote for Marco Rubio Is a Vote for High-Heeled Booties! - "Rubio is 5’10” and Ted Cruz is 5’8″, so this shade is covered with a thick layer of pure jealousy."
• "Please Lord, let the paternity test come back negative"

References

United States 2016 presidential election articles on RationalWiki

Topics: Affordable Care Act - Citizens United v. FEC - DAESH - Gun control - Illegal immigration - Koch Industries - United States Electoral College - Trump's Wall
Parties: Democratic Party (primaries) - Green Party of the United States - Libertarian Party - Republican Party (primaries • Convention • Tea Party)
Candidates: Bush (R) - Carson (R) - Christie (R) - Clinton (D) - Cruz (R) - Huckabee (R) - Jindal (R) - Johnson (Lib) - Kasich (R) - Paul (R) - Perry (R) - Rubio (R) - Sanders (D) - Stein (Green) - Trump (R) - Walker (R) - Webb (D) • Running mates: Kaine (D) - Pence (R)
Winner: Donald Trump