Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

A snarling mass of vitriolic jackals

Balloon Juice has never been a refuge for the linguistically delicate.

Pessimism assures that nothing of any importance will change.

They are lying in pursuit of an agenda.

They fucked up the fucking up of the fuckup!

I’d hate to be the candidate who lost to this guy.

Schmidt just says fuck it, opens a tea shop.

Proof that we need a blogger ethics panel.

They traffic in fear. it is their only currency. if we are fearful, they are winning.

“Jesus paying for the sins of everyone is an insult to those who paid for their own sins.”

Too often we confuse noise with substance. too often we confuse setbacks with defeat.

The willow is too close to the house.

White supremacy is terrorism.

Republicans in disarray!

Too often we hand the biggest microphones to the cynics and the critics who delight in declaring failure.

Let us savor the impending downfall of lawless scoundrels who richly deserve the trouble barreling their way.

Fuck these fucking interesting times.

🎶 Those boots were made for mockin’ 🎵

The arc of history bends toward the same old fuckery.

It’s time for the GOP to dust off that post-2012 autopsy, completely ignore it, and light the party on fire again.

This fight is for everything.

This year has been the longest three days of putin’s life.

Thanks to your bullshit, we are now under siege.

Republican obstruction dressed up as bipartisanship. Again.

You are here: Home / Politics / Politicans / Cruz-ifiction / Late Night Open Thread: Cruz, In for A Bruisin’…

Late Night Open Thread: Cruz, In for A Bruisin’…

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Could not happen to a more deserving simulacrum of a human being…

WaPo reporter Ashley Parker, FOR THE WIN:

Usually, it takes at least one full day in Cancún to do something embarrassing you’ll never live down.

But for Ted Cruz (R-Tex.), it took just 10 hours — from when his United plane touched down at Cancún International Airport at 7:52 p.m. Wednesday to when he booked a return flight back to Houston around 6 a.m. Thursday — for the state’s junior senator to apparently realize he had made a horrible mistake…

Cancún-gate checked nearly every possible box of a scandal. The sad-sack black roller suitcase and oversize canvas tote, awaiting its beach debut! The fleece half-zip as part of the classic frumpy Dad ensemble! The 6 a.m. scramble to book a return flight! The politician seeming to blame his preteen daughters! The adorable family dog, possibly left home alone! The police escort! The leaked text messages, with a “Real Housewives of Houston” mood!

And the hypocrisy of a man who has trashed fellow politicians for vacationing during crises — vacationing in Cancún during a crisis himself…

Just when the situation seemed like it couldn’t get much worse for Cruz — his statement about coming back Thursday, after all, had been misleading at best — a cute pooch entered the narrative. Houston-based journalist Michael Hardy had driven by Cruz’s house Thursday and snapped a photo of the front of his home — lights off, tiny white fluff ball staring out of the glass front door…

Reader Interactions

53Comments

  2. 2.

    lurker

    not first! yay

     

    ETA: now that i have established my position –

    Cruz almost makes it too easy to criticize him.  Cannot see how he could get elected in very many other places besides TX.  Unfathomable.

  3. 3.

    Chetan Murthy

    @lurker: Louisiana (Diaper Vitter), Mississippi, Alabama (Roy “actually, it’s ephebophilia” Moore), Idaho (Larry “WIde Stance” Craig), need we go on?

  5. 5.

    jl

    Cruz has really impressed me with this stunt. Like a lot of the Ivy league GOPers who want to be the next Trump (so ridiculous, I can’t type it without chuckling), he’s pretty bland. And skeevy. Bland and skeevy is unappealing. Sort of like wet moldy cardboard.

    But this ongoing series of pratfalls and exploding cigars is so hilarious and spectacular, it’s breath taking, awesome. The self-owns and self-debunkings are works of art, of the highest order.

    Only downside is that the one useful function a Senator Cruz could ever perform would be to help Texas and Texans get the assistance needed to come of the disaster. But, he was too busy lounging in the warm beachside sun to do anything for his suffering constituents. In this case, karmic justice was swift, merciless, and hilarious, which is also a rare thing.

  6. 6.

    Pete Downunder

    I recall Al Franken’s great line: “I like Ted Cruz better than my colleagues do. And I hate Ted Cruz”.

  7. 7.

    West of the Rockies

    Thrid!

    Honestly, I mostly hope this event causes those Texans who vote Republican to rethink matters.  Hopefully, this sad and tragic situation does serious damage to the whole success-by-bootstrap-lifting mythos

    *Well, I was Thrid! when I started this…

  8. 8.

    jl

    @West of the Rockies:  Getting on TV and advertising what his constituents need, getting on the phone to wheedle Biden into springing aid, and telling his staff what is needed so they can work the strings at FEMA, is the only useful work I can imagine that Cruz could ever do.

    But it’s work, and the cold was unpleasant, so Cruz missed probably the only potentially useful days of his working life.

  12. 12.

    jl

    I don’t think the irresponsibility and callousness of Cruz’s excellent sun soaked beach vacay adventure makes any difference to the GOP primary voting base.

    But if a virtuoso Trump style shock jock politician in Texas wants to make fun of him, get up some mean memes and generally ridicule Cruz about it, and call him a LOSER, the Cruz might be in trouble. But in the pit of the GOP base, I don’t think anyone cares whether he bothers to do what most of us would consider to be his job.

  13. 13.

    FelonyGovt

    Has anyone posted about how that awful NewsMax organization criticized Champ Biden as “dirty, disheveled and an unpresidential” dog? What nerve. A well loved 14- year old rescue.

  15. 15.

    Mary G

    All he had to do was put on a Carhart and a pair of cowboy boots and show up somewhere with a TV crew, a few cases of water and some tough talk and he would’ve been golden. He probably could even have survived the radio silence of 12 hours, which equals eight months on Twitter, and the lying about when the trip was planned and when he’d intended to come home, but leaving his little dog Snowflake alone in a freezing house in a position to be seen staring sadly out the front door waiting for his or her humans to come back was just the straw that broke the camel’s back for me. I already hated him, but now I hate him at a nuclear level.

  16. 16.

    prostratedragon

    Someone who actually worked on one of Cruz’s campaigns told this one:
    Q — Why do so many people take such an instant dislike to Ted Cruz?
    A — It saves time.

  17. 17.

    jl

    ” Would you guys watch a limited action/adventure docuseries about my undercover mission to rescue Ted Cruz’s dog? Asking for Netflix. ”

    No, I will not watch that.

    I read that Cruz’s bodyguard took care the dog. Steven Wright could make a nice short flick out of that heartwarming interlude. (not joking, Cruz wasn’t there to irritate the poor dog, so, heartwarming in a wistful way, since the dog probably senses that Cruz will come back)

  19. 19.

    jl

    @FelonyGovt:

    ” Has anyone posted about how that awful NewsMax organization criticized Champ Biden as “dirty, disheveled and an unpresidential” dog? What nerve. A well loved 14- year old rescue. ”

    I am waiting for the reaction to the first time Biden washes and waxes whatever that muscle car is that he likes on the WH lawn. That will be a hoot.

    Edit: I read a history of the WH, I think on its website. Used to be when this country actually was busy doing stuff, people didn’t worry that much about what the damned president did with the damned WH grounds. Some presidents had big frowsy gardens, there were greenhouses, a couple had cows munching on the grass, or a zoo of pets. I think one of them liked horseshoes, so dug a horseshoe pit.

    I decided I don’t care about the WH looking all 100 percent distinguished.

  22. 22.

    mrmoshpotato

    If Ted Cruz were an ordinary dude, and he did a Mexico roundtrip in less than 17 hours, the DEA would be waiting on his lawn when he got home.

    Again – the Zodiac killer is a drug trafficker.

    ETA – and I’m sure his trash wife is too.

  24. 24.

    jl

    @FelonyGovt: The WH history says that crows, myna birds, parakeets, and parrots used to be popular presidential pets. I guess maybe they were good company for small talk.

    So, let’s chip and get Biden a parrot, who can add commentary to pressers. A myna bird probably better at imitating correspondents, though. Let’s get him both, one of each shoulder.

  25. 25.

    jl

    @?BillinGlendaleCA:

    A flock of sheep running off some endless lawn in front of a manner house is the first damn thing you see in those BBC historical shows. Whatever the latest thing was, it had a flock of sheep that ran off an endless lawn in front of a manner house into some trees. I got bored after that and would turn it off.

    So, that means it’s classy and historical. We need to get one for the WH to keep up with the Brits.

  26. 26.

    Amir Khalid

    There’s always been an ineluctable … skeeviness, let’s call it that, about Ted Cruz. It’s my abiding impression of the man. It amazes me that he has a political career at all.

  27. 27.

    scav

    At this point, I’m not entirely sure that this sort of brazen irresponsibility won’t rocket him to the top of the hard-core QQQ wing.  Forget about shooting somebody in the street and not losing voters.  Real liebral owning men abandon entire states! Weeping about all those frozen losers is socialism, etc etc. Tim Boyd is regretting missing the flight south.

  29. 29.

    Anne Laurie

    @jl: I think one of them liked horseshoes, so dug a horseshoe pit.

    IIRC, the horseshoe pit was Bush the First’s project.  He said it was for the grandkids.  Would’ve been considered elitist & privileged if a Democrat did it, but…

  32. 32.

    R-Jud

    That photo in the WaPo tweet is really something. He looks like he’s auditioning to be a new Belushi brother. Or trying to distract the press with his Brando-in-The-Godfather impersonation.

  33. 33.

    Amir Khalid

    @R-Jud: ​
     

    He looks like he’s auditioning to be a new Belushi brother.

    I don’t recall that John or Jim ever looked that creepy.

  34. 34.

    James E Powell

    Cruz always reminds me of Mr Haney from Green Acres in that every word out of his mouth is just bullshit. I mean, it isn’t even good enough to call them lies. Just stupid bullshit.

  36. 36.

    satby

    @NotMax: You meant that as snark, but someone once told my mother that Cancun was nice but had too many Mexicans. My mother just said “you do know it’s in their country, right?”

  37. 37.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    The smart play for Cruz would have been to claim he was scoring a big drug deal in Mexico and planning on using the money for disaster relief,

  44. 44.

    Shalimar

    @Starfish: I suspected as much, since I’m pretty sure Ted calls it global warming rather than climate change.  But I saw it in a tweet-box from 2016, so at least someone went to some effort.

  46. 46.

    Kristine

    Not sure about Cruzin’ for a losin’. Every time he’s up for re-election, McConnell is shown to have an approval rating in the 20s and is described as the least liked political figure in KY and yet he still wins. I fear having that R after the name may also work in TX. “He may be a worthless pos, but he’s our worthless pos.”

    And yes, I know TX isn’t KY. And yes, I would love to be wrong.

  47. 47.

    trnc

    One thing I’m sure would never cross Cruz’s mind while he’s hiding behind his daughters – preteen Malia and Sasha probably would have been volunteering where they could.

    Foser:

    Ted Cruz cutting his Cancun vacation short so he can show he takes the Texas emergency seriously by … going on Hannity

    My only gripe here is use of the word “vacation” instead of the more appropriate “getaway.”

  50. 50.

    Steeplejack

    Couldn’t find this last night, but it deserves to be on the record.

    I get it now. Ted and Heidi Cruz wanted their children to be safe, to have basic sanitary services like heat and running water, to leave behind a third-world apocalyptic nightmare for a safer place. Like so many parents before them, they decided to cross the Mexican border.

    — Julie Roginsky (@julieroginsky) February 19, 2021

  51. 51.

    Rand Careaga

    @Pete Downunder:

    I recall Al Franken’s great line: “I like Ted Cruz better than my colleagues do. And I hate Ted Cruz”.

    A couple of years ago I had occasion to chat up a midswestern Senator at a fundraiser in Berkeley. I asked her if Ted Cuz was as charming in person as he was on television. She very tactfully replied “Actually, I think I get along with him better than most of my colleagues do.” —which of course conveyed “Yeah he’s an asshole” clearly but in perfectly anodyne language.

  52. 52.

    Tim Hall

    lyin ted gone cancun,
    sittin in a big hotel,
    people down in austin
    got many sad tale to tell

    lyin ted gone cancun,
    actin like he don’t know,
    people down in houston
    got no place to go

    lyin ted gone mexico,
    smokin a big cigar,
    people down in ft worth
    shiverin in their cars

    lyin ted gone to cancun,
    he don’t care at all

  53. 53.

    Dan

    @jl:  You would think that a man who hopes to be president one day would put on his resume helping Texas citizens get through one of the worst crisis the state has ever endured.

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