New Poll Shows The Texas Senate Race Is Very Close

The chart above reflects the results of the Emerson College Poll -- done between October 18th and 21st of 815 likely voters in Texas, with a 3.4 point margin of error. 

Will Texas Voters Kick Ted Cruz Out Of The Senate?

Texas is a red state, but Republican Ted Cruz is very unpopular - and this year he's in the closest race of his life. He could actually lose! Here's how Olivia Messer and Billy Begala at MSNBC see the Texas Senate race:

There’s a reason no Democrat has accomplished a statewide victory in Texas since 1994.

Pulling off such an upset would require a uniquely talented politician running an almost perfect campaign. That candidate would need to display discipline, calm and poise. Be telegenic and quick on the feet. The candidate would need to be thoroughly Texan and have an identity infused with elements of the state’s cultural zeitgeist. The person would need to run in a halfway decent national political environment. And even with all of those boxes checked, that rare Democrat would still need to square off against an extraordinarily disliked Republican running a lackluster campaign without much support from the person's own colleagues.

Enter: Rep. Colin Allred.

Allred’s remarkable debate performance Tuesday spawned a flurry of Instagram slides, TikTok videos and X posts. Both in Texas and nationwide, news feeds have been flush this week with clips of the former professional football player rebuking Sen. Ted Cruz for hiding in a “supply closet” during the attempted insurrection at the U.S. Capitol — a riot by a mob that Cruz himself helped whip up. Others showed him repeatedly referencing the time Cruz flew to Cancun, Mexico, as hundreds of Texans died during the middle of a winter freeze, or hammering him on his abortion stance — an issue critical to white female voters who have been abandoning the GOP in droves. 

But an impressive debate performance alone is not enough for a Democrat to win a state like Texas. However, polls, fundraising and a changing political climate have all looked promising for Allred. Today, Texas Democrats are in an extraordinary situation, one that has proved elusive over the past three decades: They have an actual chance of winning a statewide race.

As of Thursday, FiveThirtyEight’s average of polls had Cruz stuck at 48.4%. A Morning Consult survey released Thursday showed Allred down by just 1 point. An internal memo from the Senate Leadership Fund — the Mitch McConnell-aligned super PAC focused on electing Republicans to the Senate — had Cruz up by only 1 point. A different polling memo released by the National Republican Senatorial Committee omitted any information on the race. If the numbers were too bad to share, that’s certainly a worrying sign for Cruz. . . .

The last time Texans had a race this close, this late in the election, was Cruz’s re-election bid in 2018, in which he narrowly beat O’Rourke by less than 3 points. But that year, the senator’s polling looked rosier then than it does today. In the world of campaign politics, any incumbent stuck under 50% in the polls when votes are days away is leaving the door open to a loss. . . .

To get to 50% + 1, Allred will need to run up the score in urban centers, especially among voters of color. He’ll also need to persuade swing-y South Texas Hispanic voters and he’ll need to do that while maintaining the favor of white, college-educated suburban voters.

It’s a huge mountain to climb — and one that hasn’t been summited in 30 years. But if Allred doesn’t emerge victorious, he’s still carried Democrats further than any other candidate in recent memory.

Presidential And Senate Races Are Closer Than Expected In Texas

 

The charts above are from the University of Texas at Austin Texas Politics Project Poll -- done between October 2nd and 10th of a random sample of 1,091 likely Texas voters, with a 2.97 point margin of error.

New Polls Show The Texas Senate Race Is Close

This chart reflects the result of the New York Times / Siena College Poll -- done between September 29th and October 6th of a random sample of 617 voters in Texas, with a 4.8 point margin of error.

This chart reflects the result of the Marist Poll -- done between Ocyober 3rd and 7th of a random sample of 1,500 Texas adults, with a 3.2 point margin of error.

 

Another Poll Shows The Texas Senate Race Is Very Close

 

The charts above are from the Clean and Prosperous America / Public Policy Polling survey -- done on September 25th and 26th of 759 registered Texas voters, with a 3.5 point margin of error.

MC Poll Has Allred By 1 Point Over Cruz In Texas

The chart above reflects the results of the Morning Consult Poll -- done between September 9th and 18th of 2,716 likely voters in Texas, with a 2 point margin of error. 

This is a respected poll. It shows that the Senate race in Texas is a lot closer than most of the pundits thought. It's basically a dead heat, and it's going to boil down to which side gets their voters out.

I think it probably still slightly favors Cruz, but if some Republicans think they have the race in the bag because Texas is a red state, and they stay home, Allred (and maybe even Harris) could win.

How can this be in red state Texas? For one thing, Cruz is not well liked by Texans. He has a less than 50% favorable rating. He also suffers because of his stand on abortion. And he has voted twice against a bill to assure access to IVF procedures.

Cruz also voted against a border bill that would have significantly reduced undocumented immigration - just so Trump could keep it as a campaign issue. 

Allred voted for the border bill, voted for the bill to assure access to IVF, and supports reproductive freedom for women (which is popular even in Texas).

The Texas Race For The Senate Has Drawn Much Closer

The chart above reflects the results of the University of Houston Hobby School Texas Trends Survey -- done between August 5th and 16th of 1,365 likely Texas voters, with a 2.65 point margin of error.

Note that Allred trails Cruz by only 2.1 points. That's within the poll's margin of error!

Allred Is Within 3 Points Of Cruz In New Texas Poll

The chart above is from the Texas Southern University Texas Trends Survey -- done between June 20th and July 1st of a sample of 1,484 likely Texas voters, with a 2.3 point margin of error. 

Cruz Says Freedom Is More Than Two Beers (Satire)

Alexandria Petri is back with more biting and hilarious satire. This time she takes on Ted Cruz's ridiculous charge that the government wants to limit the amount of beer you can consume. 

After the director of the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism said in an interview that he was watching Canada’s new two-drinks-per-week recommendation, and he could see making a similar suggestion for Americans if the data warranted it, the Outrage Machine hopped to it. “Does President Biden want to limit Americans to two beers a week?” a Fox News correspondent asked Monday in the White House press briefing. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) showed up on Newsmaxwith a Shiner in hand, complaining that the Left Wants to Control Every Aspect of Your Life. “They’re trying to go after and regulate ceiling fans,” he said, “and now these idiots have come out and said ‘Drink two beers a week.’”

Cruz seems to think that the people in charge of health guidelines are meddling directly in people’s lives. That such guidance, if implemented — which it hasn’t been! — would be not a mere suggestion but tyranny.

And, of course, that is exactly … true! Ted Cruz has never once exaggerated and he is not starting now. Everyone remembers the Gas Stove Purges, when government agents came into our homes to yank out our ranges, often causing hundreds of dollars’ worth of damage to the underlying fixtures, while our children wept and clung to our apron strings and we gnashed our teeth in frustration. Now, all the gas stoves that were not immediately melted down into electric vehicles have been pressed into service as podiums for Satanists to deliver sermons (or, worse, deliver NOTHING!). I remember how, after the Stove Purge, we all were urged to act as bounty hunters, watching to see whether our neighbors or co-workers had caramelized anything under suspicious circumstances, and then the state of Texas gave us money. I am pretty sure that is what happened. That, and not something else.

These guidelines are serious business. We all know how stringently they have always been enforced. Once, I ate six more than my daily recommended serving of pinto beans and I still must send annual reports to the government to prove I haven’t repeated the offense. I had to embroider a bean on my bodice and walk among the community while everyone cried, “Shame! Shame!” I remember those terrible days of the Let’s Move initiative, when I took a 30-second break from moving in order to adjust my shoelaces, and the IRS ate my whole family.

Or the day when they changed the food pyramid from a stacked pyramid of food to a series of triangles urging someone to work out — how many people were whisked off to the Food Pyramid Reeducation Facility. I am still there! I could never wrap my mind around what a tomato was, deep down, and whether it was recommended or not. I haven’t seen the outside world in years!

I’m glad we’re mad. No matter that the new guidelines don’t exist. When they do, I can anticipate how bad it will be. Without our weekly allotment of beers, how will we know what presidential candidate we like for unclear reasons? It won’t just be limiting men to two drinks. Why, I hear they won’t even let men describe how whiskey tastes. And in my experience, that is half the fun of drinking whiskey. If you can’t say something like “this is so peaty … I am getting hints of the Piltdown Man in there,” it’s like you didn’t drink it at all. Soon, I hear, if you even utter the phrase “this has hints of,” someone from the Government comes and slaps the drink right out of your hands. And I doubt they’ll stop there. Remember the ceiling fans? If you don’t remember, that’s because they erased your memory, too! All of these things have happened, just as invasively as I’ve described. Again, I am writing this from the facility where they are making me recite every piece of text from ChooseMyPlate.gov before I am allowed to consume my daily bean.

The p(o)int is, Ted Cruz is correct. The government needs to stop meddling with Americans’ private lives by doing horrible, invasive things like one official suggesting in an interview with a British tabloid that he might possibly change his recommendations for how many drinks a week are healthy. It is good that the people are rising up. If this is not tyranny, what is? Certainly not things that are happening in Texas on a daily basis, like seizing control of people’s uteruses and denying trans kids gender-affirming care. No, this is a free country, and the government needs to stop meddling so we can go back to enjoying our majestic freedoms like being forced to give birth, whether your doctor recommends it or not. Or watching the loudest, angriest parents get veto power over what books your kids are allowed to read.

You know the Mel Brooks quip: Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you fall in a sewer and die. This is like that, but for government overreach. Tyranny is when you say that you might suggest I drink less beer; freedom is when I force you to give birth and deny you autonomy over your own body. Hooray, beer! I love beer.

Allred Is Within 5 Points Of Cruz In Texas Senate Race

These charts reflect the results of a recent University of Texas at Tyler Poll -- done between May 10th and 21st of 1,413 registered Texas voters, with a 3 point margin of error.

The results should please Democrat Colin Allred. Just shortly after announcing his candidacy, he is only 5 points behind incumbent Republican Ted Cruz. And 14% of voters say they don't know which they'll vote for.

Add to this the fact that Cruz has a negative 8 point favorability rating, while Allred has a positive 2 point rating. While most Texans already have a solid opinion of Cruz, about 48% say they don't know enough yet about Allred. Allred has several months to define himself to the voters.

It will still be tough to beat Cruz in red Texas, but I think these numbers show that Allred has a reasonable chance to win.

Cruz Votes Against Preserving Our Democratic System

The following is by the editorial board of the Houston Chronicle: 

The chaos of the attempted coup on Jan. 6, 2021, is far from behind us. Congressional hearings are still sorting through evidence while the former president cozies up ever closer with right-wing extremists. Some elected officials are working to ensure that such a scene never unfolds again.

It’s heartening, then, that a bill meant to protect against some of the events of that consequential day has garnered bipartisan support this week in the name of defending democracy.

The Electoral Count Reform and Presidential Transition Improvement Act would make it more difficult for insurgent interests to overturn the results of a presidential election by requiring more members, one-fifth of both the House and the Senate, to agree to raise such an objection. Currently, it only takes one member from each chamber to do so.

It also clarified several other procedures that former President Donald Trump had tried to use to challenge the 2020 election results, including pressuring the vice president to intervene.

“After 150 years, the Electoral Count Act needs some modest updates,” Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said. “The chaos that came to a head Jan. 6 of last year strongly suggests that we find careful ways to clarify and streamline the process.”

The bill is less restrictive than the version the House passed last week, without a single vote from a Texas Republican, but it won near unanimous support from the bipartisan Senate Rules Committee.

Only one senator refused to vote for the bill that McConnell called “common sense.”

Anybody want to guess which senator deemed the legislation “bad for democracy?” Could it be the Texas Republican who also tried to halt the certification of President Joe Biden’s election to office? The one who, when Trump asks him to jump, says “how high?”

Ding. Ding. Ding.

That’s right, it’s Sen. Ted Cruz, a man whose principles are so limber they’d make Gumby look stiff at the joints.

His plan to delay the certification of the 2020 election with a needless, duplicative audit helped inspire the insurrectionists to attack the Capitol and he kept that hope alive even after, voting to reject Arizona’s election results.

“I think that Senator Cruz knew exactly what he was doing,” Republican Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney said in a podcast earlier this year. “I think that Senator Cruz is somebody who knows what the Constitution calls for, knows what his duties and obligations are, and was willing, frankly, to set that aside.”

Cruz has kept the act up, saying that the election reform bill would reduce “the ability of Congress to respond to the very serious problem of voter fraud.”

Not so. If indeed there is a “very serious” allegation of voter fraud that’s supported by strong evidence, then each chamber should be able to rally support among individual members to challenge the results, even at the higher threshold.

The truth, though, is that while nagging isolated incidents of election fraud still occur, they’re exceedingly rare and firm laws are in place to deal with them. Cases where fraud affects the outcome of elections are almost unheard of in modern times. Indeed, almost everyone in Trump’s orbit has confessed, many under oath, that fraud was not an honest concern in the 2020 election.

A real, honest-to-goodness problem for our democratic republic is unscrupulous politicians such as Cruz and the Texas Republican House members, who would rather play at insurrection than protect America from extremists who are ready to do much more than play.

Cruz Tells Huge Lie To Justify Filibustering Debt Limit Raise

The House has passed a funding bill to keep the government running past September 30th. Included in the bill is a suspension of the debt limit (which needs to be raised pretty soon to keep the government from defaulting on its debts). The bill now goes to the Senate. But in the Senate, Ted Cruz has already said he would filibuster raising the debt limit -- and he has told a huge lie to justify that filibuster.

Steve Been explains at MSNBC.com:

Sen. Ted Cruz indicated last week that he intends to push the nation closer to a deliberate, self-imposed crisis, and as NBC News reportedyesterday, the Texas Republican isn't backing away from his threat to crash the economy on purpose.

Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, promised to filibuster it, saying there is 'no universe' in which he would consent to allowing a simple majority vote on extending the debt limit.

The GOP senator added that extending the debt limit would make it "easier for [Senate Majority Leader] Chuck Schumer and the Democrats to add trillions more in debt."

That doesn't make any sense.

There are plenty of members of Congress who are badly confused about the substantive details of governing. As a rule, Cruz isn't one of them. I've long argued that the Texas Republican's principle political problem is not that he's dumb, but rather, that he assumes everyone else is dumb.

His comments on the debt ceiling capture the problem nicely. As Cruz surely knows, raising the debt ceiling allows the United States to pay its bills, not to clear the way for new spending. The process is about paying for the stuff Congress already bought in the past, not giving lawmakers approval to buy new stuff in the future.

The GOP senator, in other words, is preparing to block important legislation — a bill that would prevent the United States from defaulting on its obligations for the first time in our history — based on a rather obvious lie.

If Cruz follows through on his gambit and his effort succeeds, the results would be catastrophic. As The Washington Post's Catherine Rampell explained in her new column:

The government would have trouble paying Social Security checks, military salaries and all the creditors who'd previously lent money to Uncle Sam. A default would also violate the Constitution, which says 'the validity of the public debt of the United States ... shall not be questioned.' Finally, it would trigger chaos throughout the global financial system. Financial markets currently treat U.S. debt as virtually risk-free, with all other assets benchmarked against it. If we demonstrate that our debt is not really risk-free — that we're instead cavalier about repaying our creditors — panic would tear through other markets as well.

Again, Cruz knows this. So do McConnell and many other congressional Republicans. They've decided to play with matches anyway, even if it's their own country's economy that burns.

Cruz's Big Lie: Critical Race Theory Is As Racist As The KKK

Republican right-wingers have recently bent over backwards trying to defend white supremacy and white privilege. But none has been as ridiculous in those contortions as Ted Cruz. The Texas senator might as well be trying to claim the sun rises in the west and sets in the east as his latest huge lie -- that critical race theory is as racist as the Ku Klux Klan! That should remove any doubt as to whether he is a racist and ignorant supporter of white supremacy.

Here is part of the response to Cruz's idiotic lie from Kevin M. Kruse at MSNBC.com:

At the conservative Faith and Freedom Forum this past week, Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, launched an attack on critical race theory. Such rants have become a staple for Republicans lately, but Cruz set himself apart by asserting that the legal theory was “every bit as racist as the Klansmen in white sheets.”

To say this is nonsense feels painfully obvious. The Ku Klux Klan’s ideology began with the premise that racial differences were an obvious biological and scientific fact and that all human activities had to be organized around that fact; critical race theorists take as their starting point the belief that race is a fiction, that it’s an invented concept that has no basis in biology or science.

The Klan worked to put its racist beliefs into action through Jim Crow laws in the South and immigration restrictions for the nation as a whole; critical race theorists have devoted themselves to identifying the remainders of that racism in the law and rooting it out.

And, most obviously, the KKK was a terrorist organization responsible for decades of white supremacist violence that included thousands of murders, mutilations and bombings of African Americans and other minorities. The law school professors behind critical race theory are not.

Despite the vast differences between the Klan and critical race theorists, Cruz twisted himself into knots insisting they were the same by grossly misrepresenting the scholarly field. "Critical race theory says every white person is a racist," the senator asserted. "Critical race theory says America's fundamentally racist and irredeemably racist. Critical race theory seeks to turn us against each other and if someone has a different color skin, seeks to make us hate that person."

Cruz offered no evidence for these claims, because there is none. Far from arguing that individual white people are all racist, critical race theorists assert that focusing on the actions of individuals is meaningless because racism is more deeply rooted in larger structural and systemic problems.

Rather than believing America is “irredeemably racist,” critical race theorists have stated that their reckoning with the submerged role of racism in America is a path to redeem the nation and fulfill the promises of emancipation and the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments. Critical race theorists also do not seek to turn Americans against each other, but rather to help them understand the actual history of the nation they share as citizens.

While Cruz’s claim that critical race theorists are “every bit as racist” as Klansmen is laughable, it notably fits into a larger historical pattern in which white southerners asserted that the critics of white supremacy were just as bad — or worse — than the defenders of white supremacy.

During the civil rights era, segregationist leaders across the South complained that they were being besieged by “extremists on both sides,” by which they meant white supremacist organizations like the Ku Klux Klan and its white-collar counterpart, the White Citizens’ Councils, and civil rights organizations, like the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). . . .

Convincing ordinary Americans that the enemies of the Klan were just as bad as the Klan itself was, of course, the entire point. It still is.

This is a tried-and-true line of attack from those who wish to preserve the status quo, but in this instance it’s especially egregious. Critical race theorists seek to expose the ways in which white supremacists — like Long, the Louisiana state legislature, or Johnson — abused the powers of their offices to embed racist principles and policies in our political and legal systems.

It’s bad enough that Cruz slanders them. But it’s even worse that he uses the exact same line of argument against them that those segregationists did.

Cruz Wins Court Battle To Legalize "Quid Pro Quo" Corruption

Did you think it's illegal to give a congressional candidate an expensive gift to get him/her to listen to your point of view on bills before Congress? It is supposed to be, but members of Congress (and their rich donors) are very good at finding ways around that. Ted Cruz recently went to court (and won) to allow donors to send him money after he won an election -- money that goes directly into his personal bank account. It's a devious way to legalize quid pro quo corruption!

The following is part of an article about this by Richard W. Painter at MSNBC.com:

Thanks to a win for Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, in a lawsuit last week against the Federal Election Commission, campaign contributors now have a foolproof way to make sure the money they donate goes right into a winning congressional candidate's personal bank account.

Post election contributions are included in the $2900 maximum per donor contribution per election cycle and can be made to a candidate who wins or loses. But post-election contributions are particularly appealing to donors who prefer to know that a candidate has won before they contribute.

Contributors may want their money to go to the winning candidate's personal funds, ensuring maximum gratitude and maximum probability of reciprocity (the Latin phrase for this is "quid pro quo," but we're not supposed to talk about that).

Thanks to Cruz's successful lawsuit, candidates now can make unlimited use of a mechanism that gives these contributors a bigger voice in Washington.

In the suit, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit held that candidates for federal office and their campaign contributors have a constitutional right to deploy a scheme that works around both campaign finance laws and restrictions on personal gifts to members of Congress. . . .

Here's how it works:

A member of Congress is running for re-election. He raises $6 million for his campaign by Election Day, but he wants to spend more. So he lends his campaign $1 million more from his personal funds. After he wins the election, he continues to raise money for the same campaign from donors who contribute money not for the purpose of winning that election or the next one but solely for the purpose of paying back the congressman. Their contributions go into his campaign bank account and out again into his personal bank account. Dollar for dollar, every post-election contribution these donors make goes directly to the congressman.

The potential for corruption in this scenario is obvious. The economic reality of the transaction is that the post-election campaign contribution is a gift to the congressman. The congressman was willing to spend $1 million of his own money on his campaign, which is permissible under current campaign finance laws. But then, after he won the election, he solicited more contributions so he could get paid back by people willing to donate for the sole purpose of paying him back.

If we want to allow unlimited gifts to members of Congress, this post-election contribution and loan repayment should be allowed. But that's not the rule. Both the Senate and the House have strict rules about gifts. Gifts to members from registered lobbyists are flatly prohibited, members may not solicit gifts as they do campaign contributions, and gifts from people other than members' families and a few other sources are generally limited to no more than $50. . . .

Post-election political fundraising and candidate loan repayment are potentially massive workarounds for the gift rules. This is one more way politicians and their campaign contributors, like some businesspeople, come up with clever ways to avoid the law. . . .

Explicitly saying there is a quid pro quo is a great way to book an extended stay in federal prison. So, as with a great many campaign contributions, it's "wink-wink, nod-nod." But in these situations, the usual professed motive for campaign contributions — the donor's desire to help a good candidate win — is absent. The candidate has already won.

Another difference is that this campaign contribution goes directly into the candidate's pocket and benefits him personally. Yes, there is a dollar limit on individual contributions to campaigns, but corporations and other entities can establish political action committees that raise massive amounts of individual contributions from their employees, customers, suppliers and others for political campaigns, including, now, a campaign war chest that can be used for an unlimited dollar amount of post-election payoffs of loans from the candidates themselves. . . .

Either this line of cases will be reversed, whether by a less activist federal judiciary or by constitutional amendment, or we will cease to live in a representative democracy. We will have the best elected officials that money can buy. And now the money need not be given solely for the purpose of electing a candidate, but simply to pay off the candidate after he has already won and is ready to do what is expected in return.

The Cancun Trip Hurt Cruz's Approval Rating

 The chart above is from the Morning Consult Poll. Each point reflects a 10 day moving average of at least 2,000 registered voters in Texas, with a margin of error of only 2 points.

Note that Cruz's actions following the January 6th riot cost him some support -- from 48% approve to 41% disapprove on the 6th to 45% approve to 44% disapprove ten days later (16th). But his trip to Cancun while his fellow Texans were suffering from the winter storm and no electricity cost him even more. He now has 43% approve to 48% disapprove -- a negative 5 point margin.

He's still popular with Texas Republicans, but even among them his disapproval rose from 17% to 22%.

Democrats Help People While Republicans Ignore Their Suffering

 

The photo above is very telling. It shows Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortz joining Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee and Rep. Sylvia Garcia in filling boxes at a Food Bank in Houston. Rep. Ocasio-Cortez had flown to Houston after raising $4 million dollars to help Texans survive the winter disaster. That money went to local food assistance organizations in Texas.

That's what Democrats do. They help people who are struggling to survive. 

Meanwhile, Texas most prominent politician, Senator Ted Cruz, raised nothing for less fortunate Texans and flew to Cancun with his family to escape the winter disaster. He returned only after being roasted by the media.

But while Cruz's blunder may have been more public, the truth is that he just did what Republicans always do -- ignore the suffering of their fellow Americans while taking care of themselves and their rich friends.

John Pavlovitz probably says it best in this searing post on his own website:

You’ll never go broke betting on Republicans to do the wrong thing.

Of course, Ted Cruz jetted off to Cancun in middle of a monstrous winter storm along with his family, leaving millions in his home state without power; in frozen, flooding homes they could not escape; in mile-long lines in frigid temperatures waiting for a few grocery items to sustain their families—literally dying from events that people who care about humanity don’t try to escape from and the kinds of urgent moments true public servants thrive in.

It was so on brand that we shouldn’t be the least surprised.

Ted Cruz represents the heart and soul of the Republican Party: that’s why he left people in pain, that’s why he fled a crisis, that’s why he will be defended by his callous Republican counterparts—and why so many GOP voters will vote for him again, should they survive their cruelty.

He is not an aberration, he is what they are.

Ted Cruz is the defective moral compass of those who’ve spent the past twelve months doing everything they could to be a deadly pandemic’s greatest allies and causing nearly half a million Americans to die; after four months of stoking fake election fraud conspiracies that incited a murderous assault on our nation’s Capitol, one they exonerated their inexplicable 2024 Presidential hopeful of, despite his clear desire for and work to create; after weeks of being so enamored with defending their disgraced cult leader’s non-existent honor, they’ve been useless in creating a stimulus plan to rescue those millions whose lives have be upended by a historic health crisis he did nothing to combat.

There is no sense of right and wrong here with these people, only what they believe they will get away with: which, according to the steadfast sycophantic adoration of their base, seems to be anything up to and including murder.

Ted Cruz finally wore a mask, not to protect anyone else but to conceal his malfeasance: to try and escape Texas unrecognized, so he could bask in the warm glow of his privilege while the people he daily manipulates to support him have their lives decimated.

While he attempted a brazen and stunningly tone-deaf dereliction of duty, people like Beto O-Rourke (the empathetic leader Texas could have had) and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, one of the convenient target’s of Cruz’ stratospheric social media snark rushed to fill the gap in leadership left by Cruz and his cohorts. They are embodying the best of America while Americans face their worst. Again, this is not surprising.

But perhaps the greatest tragedy of the events in Texas isn’t the brutality of the weather or the loss of life or the destruction of property or Ted Cruz’ disgraceful selfishness—or Matt Gaetz and Ben Shapiro’s abjectly ridiculous defense of him.

The greatest tragedy is that Red voters don’t seem to care that Republican politicians don’t give a damn about them; that they are inconsequential, disregarded, useless pawns—and they’re seemingly completely fine with that as long as they can take elections and feel like they’re winning.

Dying in the cold to own the Libs.

The Real Reasons Cruz Returned From Mexico (Satire)

Senator Ted Cruz committed a giant political blunder. While his fellow Texans were suffering without heat in a below zero winter storm, Cruz and his family flew to Cancun in Mexico (where it was a balmy 80 degrees. He returned after one day there, saying he just took his family there and really wanted to be in Texas to help his constituents. No one believes that. He returned because he was being roasted in the media (and had become a joke on social media).

With her tongue firmly planted in her cheek, Eva Raggio of the Dallas Observer has "discovered" the real reasons Cruz returned from Mexico. She writes:

Through some relentless independent research, however, we were able to find the real reasons Cruz returned to Texas.

1. He’d forgotten to bring his “I really don’t care do you? “ jacket.

2. His all-inclusive hotel didn’t include free porn.

3. He got an alert for an Amazon package arrival and didn’t want to risk it getting stolen.

4. He was really on a secret plastic surgery trip but the doctors said they could not make him look “more like Stormy Daniels.”

5. He forgot he left his garage door open.

6. He couldn’t find a Taco Bell in Mexico. Or any “Tex-Mex.”

7. He got mad when someone mistook him for a worm from a tequila bottle.

8. The hotel manager refused to have staff fold the towels into the shape of baby elephants.

9. He was triggered when he watched The Mandalorian on the flight there and was reminded that Gina Carano was kicked off the show. 

10. His suite update was canceled, and he’s against cancel culture. 

11. He forgot that Mexico also had coronavirus.

12. He'd read a sign on the airport that said he was "duty free," but then later learned he'd misunderstood.

13. He couldn’t find a hairdresser who’d refused to shut her salon during lockdowns.

14. He didn’t realize people wanted him to do his job when he’s consistently asked to resign.

15. He wanted to watch the Rover landing and couldn’t find reliable Wi-Fi.

16. He couldn't take more sun because he was sufficiently roasted on the internet.

17. Mexico didn’t want him there.

18. His family didn’t want him there.