FROM THE ANNALS OF POLITICAL HYPOCRISY
He’s baaack! Yes, Teodoro de la Cruz—U.S. Junior Senator from Texas and Pride of the Tea Party—has cut short his impromptu family vacation in Cancún, only to return to mostly jeers, not cheers. Turns out Terrible Ted was just being a dutiful dad and responding to his two young daughters’ requests to get out of their “freezing” Houston home asap. Ted did just that this Wednesday past aboard a United Airlines flight, ready with his wife and daughters to brave the blazing 80-degree heat of Cancún; at least he got a good price of $309 a night at the Ritz-Carlton. He also did right by the ASPCA by leaving behind the family pooch “Snowflake” in the care of a security guard.
What more can you ask of the man? “What’s happening in Texas is unacceptable,” he told reporters who had caught up with him at the Cancún airport. Since that was scarcely news, reporters questioned him on how he could take a tropical vacation when his constituents were without potable water and freezing to death without heat. He later admitted he had had thoughts aloft that he might be making a mistake leaving his state, stricken as it was by the wintry blast, but he was just being a “good dad” (kids to blame?) and he had planned to return to Texas Thursday, after only a day in the sun. (He had reservations through Sunday).
Ted flew home wearing a Texas flag mask, proof apparently that he was a loyal son of the Lone Star State. It didn’t fly. His early homecoming set off a snowstorm of criticism. Seems the whole world was cross with “Lyin’ Ted,” as a former president once branded him. Criticism was general and bipartisan, incoming from all quarters. [It’s] “something he has to answer to his constituents about” state Republican Party Chairman Allen West told the AP. “I’m here trying to take care of my family and look after my friends and others that are still without power.”
West’s counterpart, Gilberto Hinojosa, chairman of the Texas Democratic Party, was more offended: “This is about as callous as any politician can get…He’s a politician that really has never cared much about anybody but himself.”
Still other Texans found the stench of Cruz’s hypocrisy particularly offensive, compounded as it was by his strident moralizing just two months earlier. December second Holy Cruz had cried “utter” “hypocrisy” on Austin’s Democratic Mayor Steve Adler when his honor flew to Cabo San Lucas at a peak in the COVID-19 plague. “Don’t forget [Mayor Adler] who took a private jet with eight people to Cabo,” Cruz wrote, “and WHILE IN CABO recorded a video telling Austinites to ‘stay home if you can…this is not the time to relax.’”
Adler apologized. And Cruz? Well, he said that in “hindsight” the timing of his Cancún getaway might have been ill-advised, but then again, he did want to be a “good dad.” Alibis often serve as apologies.
It is widely reported that Senator Cruz is the least respected member of that august body, even though he tried to make amends by entertaining his colleagues with a lengthy reading of Green Eggs and Ham. That’s nice, but not enough to erase the charges of “self-promotion,” “opportunism,” and “dishonesty” heard for years from politicians of both political parties.
If these flaws were not enough, we must not overlook Cruz’s recent ugly and repugnant competition with Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri to be heirs to Trump’s mindless flock; can you think of a better launching pad for a presidential run on the Republican ticket in 2024? All you have to do, and both of them did just that, was agree with the twice-impeached madman yclept Trump that he had won the 2020 presidential election in a landslide.
There is a way to determine the winner of that competition and punish the presumptuous pair. Lock Cruz and Hawley in separate rooms, provide them with food and water, and have each make a hand count of the 155,125,907 ballots cast for Biden and Trump. The one closest to the official breakdown wins the Republican nomination…if there is still a Republican party when they finish.
Case dismissed. Justice is served.