Ted Cruz Crowns Himself The Stand-In For The American People

Ted Cruz Crowns Himself The Stand-In For The American People

 

 

 

By Amanda Marcotte

Thursday, November 14, 2013 10:15 EST

 

 

Topics: Ted Cruz

Ted Cruz is really testing the limits of the Explosive Douchebaggery Theorem, which holds that every few years, there has to be an ego-driven wingnut whose unearned and delusional sense of self-regard grows exponentially every day until the sheer weight of his ego causes his career to collapse unto itself like a black hole. As with Tom Delay, Newt Gingrich, Joe McCarthy, Michele Bachmann and many more before, for months and years, the right wing nut believes that they can keep up with having their egotistical weirdness double daily, but eventually their hubris does catch up with them. Ted Cruz is going down this path, and nothing that I can see will stop it.

The latest example is a doozy. Cruz was interviewed by the Politichicks, a right wing website, and got the “how do you work so hard when everyone is such a meanie?” softball question. His answer is a a jewel of overwhelming self-aggrandizement.

“I’m encouraged,” Cruz insisted. “I’m encouraged because I think all across the country, I think people are getting energized, they’re getting engaged, they’re speaking up. And we shouldn’t be surprised. Changing the country isn’t easy. And the establishment is going to fight back. In both parties, they don’t want to change.”

“And so, the reason — the nastier the attacks get — I mean, they’re directed at all of us, they are directed at the American people,” he continued. “Because a lot of the folks in Washington don’t want to be held accountable.”

In a sense, it’s just another example of the hard right tendency to assume that you’re not a real American if you don’t belong to the 30-ish percent that holds, as Rick Perlstein puts it, the belief that liberalism is “the ideology that steals from hard-working, taxpaying whites and gives the spoils to indolent, grasping blacks” and that they’re here to save America from the supposed dangers of, to be blunt, democracy. But with Ted Cruz, I think he’s reaching a new stage in his exponential ego growth. This is the part where he starts to see himself as a god of sorts, a prophet put on earth to be the body of “America”. It’s really no surprise. Cruz’s father has been running around hinting that he believes his son is some kind of emissary of God’s, here to end the supposed “great transfer of wealth”. See above from Rick Perlstein about what that means.

Not that you need to bother, since Rafael Cruz is pretty blunt about his racism:

Evangelical pastor Rafael Cruz, father of tea party star Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), called black and Hispanic voters “uninformed” and “deceived” during a speech to conservative activists in February.

After attending a panel on minority outreach at the FreedomWorks grassroots summit, Cruz, a Cuban-American, born-again Christian, spoke at the conference. He noted that a previous speaker “mentioned something about Hispanics being uninformed or deceived.”

“Well, the same thing is true of the black population,” Cruz said.

And of course, there’s the “go back to Kenya” crap.

(I don’t even know that I should bother addressing the content of the argument that is being forwarded by implication by the hard right, but it’s worth pointing out both that black people do, in fact, pay taxes, and white people also get government benefits. In fact, wealthy and middle class people, who are disproportionately white, tend to get more government benefits, in the form of tax breaks and government investment in business and education.)

So, Cruz is on a path that’s well-known to all of us. The only question is what form the career flame-out will take. Will he resign in disgrace like Newt Gingrich? Will he be facing indictments or jail time like Tom Delay? Sex scandal? Exposure of campaign “irregularities” like Michele Bachmann? Public humiliation when he runs for President and realizes that the American people he believes he is one with actually see him for the crazed wingnut that he is?

Amanda Marcotte is a freelance journalist born and bred in Texas, but now living in the writer reserve of Brooklyn. She focuses on feminism, national politics, and pop culture, with the order shifting depending on her mood and the state of the nation.