By Thomas Carney―
Texas Sen. Ted Cruz has been in the news a lot recently and not for a good reason. Sen. Cruz traveled to Cancun, Mexico as the recent Texas ice storm was happening. Instead of staying in Texas and raising funds for direct relief for his constituents, he jetted off to Mexico.
Members of the opposite party, such as Beto O’Rourke and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, have made phone calls to thousands of senior citizens and raised almost five million dollars for Texans, respectively. Over the course of his career as a senator from Texas, Cruz has become wildly unpopular in his home state, among colleagues and among everyday Americans. Cruz should not continue to serve as a senator from Texas or in any elected office.
The first time I became aware of Ted Cruz was during the 2016 Republican presidential primary campaign. Cruz started as a front runner. He was a member of the Senate for four years and the Solicitor General in Texas for five years before becoming a senator. He slowly faded as former President Donald Trump rose in the polls. During the campaign, Trump suggested among many other things that Cruz’s father was part of the plot to kill former President John F. Kennedy, slandered his wife and called Cruz a sniveling coward. At the 2016 RNC, Cruz suggested that the delegates should vote their conscience. After being one of the most outspoken, anti-Trump members of the GOP, he has become a lap dog for the former president.
After the 2020 presidential election, Cruz was one of the most outspoken supporters of the election fraud conspiracy theory. Cruz was one of the backers of the Supreme Court brief filed by members of Congress to not count the Pennsylvania Electoral College votes. Perhaps an even worse decision was, along with Sen. Josh Hawley and many others, to try to overturn the election in the Senate by objecting to many different states’ votes. Prior to the storming of the Capitol building, Cruz and others were going to object to election results from Arizona, Georgia, Wisconsin and Michigan. Looking back, the reason for Cruz’s objection is clear— to boost his popularity for a 2024 Presidential campaign.
In the Senate, Cruz is one of the most disliked senators by people on both sides of the aisle. Former Sen. John McCain was one of the outspoken members of the GOP against Cruz, “it’s always the wacko birds on right and left that get the media megaphone. I think it can be harmful if there is a belief among the American people that those people are reflective of the views of the majority of Republicans.” During the 2016 primary, former Speaker of the House John Boehner called Cruz, “Lucifer in the flesh.” South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham said during an interview that “if you killed Ted Cruz on the floor of the Senate and the trial was in the Senate, nobody would convict you.”
Cruz has been one of the polarizing members of the Senate during his tenure. Rather than attempting to work across the aisle and compromise with those who disagree with him, he works for himself and his own interests. Cruz abandoned his fellow Texans, failed the Constitution and sacrificed his own morals and his relationship with his family in his quest to reach the highest office in the land.