Elevator pitch: Ted Cruz is found murdered and every Republican in Washington is a suspect.
— Jeet Heer (@HeerJeet) January 21, 2016
People just don’t like Ted Cruz! It seems that practically everyone who’s spent so much as a long weekend in his company can’t abide him. Even other Republicans…
@politicalwire Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa)
— Jonathan Karl (@jonkarl) January 19, 2016
Whether they first met him decades ago…
Cruz College Roommate Veterans For Truth pic.twitter.com/tQJYFQsfEJ
— Andrew Kaczynski (@BuzzFeedAndrew) January 21, 2016
…. worked with him, per the NYTimes, as he first entered the DC establishment…
… In Mr. Cruz’s time as a Supreme Court clerk, a coveted step in a legal career that he had meticulously plotted out, he showed his now familiar capacity to infuriate colleagues. He also worked hard to please his boss, delved into the nuances of constitutional law for long, grueling hours and sought to smooth over harsh feelings at clerk happy hours. But when he left, he was most remembered by his fellow clerks for his fervor for capital punishment cases, a cause that would define his legal career and help him break into politics…
During his clerkship, he presented his boss with a caricature of him and other clerks pulling a stagecoach driven by the judge. According to someone who saw the illustration, there was a graveyard behind them with headstones representing the number of people executed in their jurisdiction that year…
… Or have more recently been forced to deal with him…
The NYTimes reports, “Bob Dole Warns of ‘Cataclysmic’ Losses With Ted Cruz“:
… “I question his allegiance to the party,” Mr. Dole said of Mr. Cruz. “I don’t know how often you’ve heard him say the word ‘Republican’ — not very often.” Instead, Mr. Cruz uses the word “conservative,” Mr. Dole said, before offering up a different word for Mr. Cruz: “extremist.”
“I don’t know how he’s going to deal with Congress,” he said. “Nobody likes him.”…
Same reason as everyone else who knows Cruz does RT @jaketapper: Why is Dole bashing Cruz? https://t.co/RCe5oFxlfn
— Roy Edroso (@edroso) January 21, 2016
(CNN)It was no accident that two Iowa GOP icons — Chuck Grassley and Bob Dole — attacked Ted Cruz the day after Iowa’s Republican governor said a vote for the Texas senator would be bad for the lead-off caucus state.
It is part of a fascinating and once unthinkable calculation by leading establishment figures that Donald Trump is the lesser of two evils at the top of the Republican presidential pack — and defeating Cruz in Iowa is now part of this strategy…
One leading GOP strategist involved in the effort put it this way: “If Trump loses we wash our hands of him. Cruz will think we need to be more crazy and be a long-term nightmare.”…
Open Thread: The Party Decides… That Ted Cruz Is A CreepPost + Comments (87)