Cue the spotlight! Follies starring Cruz just starting
What happens to an opportunist if he has no opportunity to talk? Sen. Ted Cruz always runs as an outsider against “career politicians in both parties,” but there are just so many of them running for president that he’s having a hard time breaking in. That’s about to change.
The CNN debate lasted only as long as the Minnow’s planned three-hour tour; but it felt like we got marooned on the island, listening to people practicing remedial conversation with no hope of rescue.
As hard as it was to watch, it was probably worse for Cruz. He only talked for 10 minutes and 45 seconds. Trump talked almost twice as long. No one in the undercard debate spoke as little as Cruz did. Cruz once filibustered the Senate for 21 hours and 19 minutes. For him to feign interest in someone else talking for two hours, 49 minutes and 15 seconds probably caused him physical pain.
Cruz used his meager time at the Reagan Presidential Library in a disciplined way, attacking the Iran nuclear deal, Planned Parenthood, amnesty, and appointing John Roberts to the Supreme Court. He even had a little time left over to brag on his record as Texas solicitor general, advocate putting Rosa Parks on the $20 bill, and pick “Cohiba” as his Secret Service code name. He said exactly what the religious, tea party voters he’s courting wanted to hear — which when you think about it is exactly what’s wrong with Cruz.
At his heart, Cruz is a debater. This is not to say that he is skilled at arguing deeply felt convictions — just that he is skilled at arguing. As a child, he won approval for reciting passages of the Constitution. In college, he won national competitions for debate. It didn’t matter whether he was saying what he believed, only that he said it well. That’s how adolescent Cruz won approval in his formative years; he still hungers for the approval connoted in a gold star.
You could hear that hunger for approval in his voice during the debate. He is self-conscious about coming across as smart in a way that strikes both haughty and needy notes. It’s important that you know he won that argument before the Supreme Court and that he knows where to place the emphasis when correctly pronouncing the name of Ayatollah Khamenei. The need for approval and acclimation is so powerful that even his political enemies feel compelled to acknowledge his self-evident and implicitly self-referential intellect.
As loudly as his erudition announces itself, it’s equally obvious that he does not particularly care if you notice that he doesn’t seem to believe what he says. He’s against amnesty for unauthorized immigrants, though he helped George W. Bush write his pro-immigrant platform. He now says he would not put Roberts on the Supreme Court for reasons he once cited as reasons in favor of his appointment. It’s the Third Law of Ted Cruz: For every satisfaction, there is an equal and opposite overreaction.
The dissonance created by Cruz saying things that someone as smart as him could not possibly believe sincerely angers his liberal critics. From our vantage, he looks like a slick demagogue, like the lead in a low-budget reboot of the Joe McCarthy story.
Our Republican friends simply shrug at ol’ Ted, whom they’ve seen grow from a pushy striver on the George W. Bush campaign to a self-important staffer for Greg Abbott to an outsider taking on the Austin establishment in his upset win for U.S. Senate. People who’ve known Cruz for a long time recognize him for what he is.
Cruz’s turn in the spotlight is coming soon as he plans to filibuster any federal spending plan that allows Planned Parenthood to administer Medicaid health care funding. Because he wants anti-abortion votes, Cruz doesn’t want taxpayers to allow poor women to get Pap smears at Planned Parenthood. If he has to shut down the federal government to get all that attention and all those contributions, well, that’s a sacrifice he’s willing to make.
That’s just Cruz. He wants so badly to shine — and he’s about to get his spotlight. Get ready for the show. It’s about to start.