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Cruz’s Pattern of Destructive Self-Promotion

Cruz excels in hijacking causes to raise his own profile.
Ted Cruz IDC leering

This quote from Eliana Johnson’s report on Ted Cruz sums up Cruz’s approach to politics perfectly:

Cruz knows full well that Trump is a buffoon and is bad for conservatism,” says a top Republican strategist familiar with the senator’s thinking. “But he applauds him because it theoretically is good for Ted [bold mine-DL].”

It’s not news that Cruz is interested primarily in self-promotion and is willing to hurt the causes he professes to support if he thinks it will give him a temporary boost. That has been obvious from his conduct during debates over the government shutdown in 2013, his obnoxious display at the In Defense of Christians summit last year, and in numerous other little tantrums he has thrown since taking office. All politicians are self-interested, of course, but Cruz excels in hijacking causes to raise his own profile while doing as much harm to the cause as he can in the process. Then when other conservatives call him out on his self-aggrandizing and demagogic tactics, he seizes on reasonable criticisms of his embarrassing and destructive behavior to paint himself as a martyr for the cause he has just helped undermine. So it is not surprising that Cruz doesn’t care about the damage Trump’s candidacy does to the party or to the reputation of conservatism, because those things don’t really matter to him in the end. What matters to Cruz is whatever he imagines to be “good for Ted.” What Cruz doesn’t realize is that his view of Trump is the one that lots of Republicans and conservatives already have of him.

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