Populist Ted Cruz

This may be a little late to the point but watching Ted Cruz’s faux filibuster last week was one of the most frustrating and obnoxious rants I have seen from either party in congress in a while. Im not too impressed with the fact that he was able to keep talking for approximately 21 hours as it sounds like members of both the Republicans and Democrats know he is more than capable of that. However, his ability to hijack the Senate and use it for his own narcissistic self promoting purposes under the guise of “sticking up for the American people” is truly astounding.

Senator Cruz wants to come across as a populist fighting for regular Americans but there is only one thing this guy is truly interested in: Ted Cruz.

Cruz is truly a “Washington insider” or an establishment guy. If you need proof of that you need not look any further than back to the early 00’s when he worked for the Bush/Cheney campaign and helped file their pleadings following the election errors in Florida. He was rewarded well with a position in the U.S. Justice Department as associate deputy attorney general. Not a demanding position by any means but one well connected with higher ups in the administration and would help a younger Cruz with the contacts he would need to obtain a higher profile office as well as giving him plenty of time to survey changing political climates across the country.

Enter the Tea Party. Cruz jumped on-board and posed as an outsider challenging the system. He knew the only way he was going to become a senator was to tack violently to the right, so he mastered the Tea Party lingo and rode the train all the way to D.C., where his fakery has reached epic proportions.

There is definitely no shortage of narcissists in DC but Senator Cruz seems to take the cake. One of the largest decorations in his office would be the oil painting of him. In fact its not just of himself. Its an oil painting of himself arguing a case before the supreme court while other people make paintings of him.

As of now Senator Cruz is focused on shutting down the government and dismantling Obama-care. However, its pretty obvious that between his latest stunt in the Senate for media attention and his carefully coordinated past working up to the office he holds now that he has presidential aspirations. The real question should be whether or not the Republican party can survive his political ambitions with most Americans poised to blame the GOP (according to a recent CNN survey) in the event of a government shutdown, or is a worse case scenario, a default on US debt.