Republicans hate Ted Cruz as much as you do

Thursday, Sep 26, 2013 07:44 AM EST
Republicans hate Ted Cruz as much as you do
Sure, he's an arrogant liar. But his real sin? He embarrassed his party and exposed its Obamacare sham
By Brian Beutler


Amid a million stories about what constitutes a filibuster, and who does and doesn’t like Ted Cruz (and whether his anti-Obamacare talkathon will be good or bad for his presidential campaign), let’s not lose sight of the dynamic that gave rise to it.

What happened over the past 24 hours is a direct consequence of Republicans making sport out of misleading the public, and particularly conservatives, about the threat Obamacare poses to the country. It created an incentive for publicity-hungry members to stage more and more elaborate, but ultimately symbolic, anti-Obamacare performances

If Republicans really worried that Obamacare is as dangerous as they’ve been claiming for years — if they truly believed it will sap the middle class of ambition and bankrupt the country — then many more of them would have joined Cruz over the past 24 hours. At the very least, they wouldn’t have blown him off and attacked his motives and trashed him anonymously in the press.

But the deceptive nature of their opposition campaign created an opening for a false savior like Cruz to outperform them.

Republicans are annoyed with Cruz for plenty of reasons — he’s arrogant, he’s lying to primary voters about the limits of GOP power, he’s inching Congress toward a government shutdown most of the party wants to avoid. But a big subtext here is that he’s exposed the simple message that once united the party as a sham. If Obamacare is as perilous as the party claims, why wait until the next election to try and derail it? By swooping in like he did, knowing he couldn’t deliver, he actually exposed both charades — his own and his GOP antagonists’ — and left ACA intact.


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http://www.salon.com/2013/09/26/republicans_hate_ted_cruz_as_much_as_you_do/