Ted Cruz Is The Most Hated Member of The Senate

December 3, 2022 8:39 AM

Here's Al Franken explaining why, by way of an anecdote involving Amy Klobuchar, as well as a harsh yet very funny observation by Lindsey Graham. Watch the whole video. It's worth it
posted by BadgerDoctor (42 comments total)

Sorry, I remain unconvinced that Al Franken deserves my attention any more than Ted Cruz.
posted by otsebyatina at 8:45 AM on December 3, 2022 [19 favorites]

I am told Ted Cruz was considered the biggest asshole at Harvard Law when he was there which, well, that's some elite levels of assholery there.
posted by rmd1023 at 8:53 AM on December 3, 2022 [9 favorites]

The thing I find fascinating about Ted Cruz is that seemingly everyone (with the possible but not certain exception of this family) who spends any time with him whatsoever seems to hate his guts, and yet he made his way to the Senate. I guess Senators don't necessarily have to pass the "I'd have a beer with him" test with voters?
posted by The Card Cheat at 8:59 AM on December 3, 2022 [11 favorites]

I actually see this as a testament to the strength of his will and size of his ego. A regular person would just work behind the scenes as an operative or advisor if he saw he had a "people problem."
posted by Selena777 at 9:10 AM on December 3, 2022 [1 favorite]

Otsebtatyna - at least Franken owned up to his error in judgement and accepted the consequences, which is more than Cruz has ever done.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 9:27 AM on December 3, 2022 [48 favorites]

Ted Cruz, like Ken Paxton and Sid Miller, is living proof that any asshole can get elected in Texas with an R after his name.

Cruz's father is a Dominionist evangelical preacher. ISTR reading that Cruz thinks he has a divine mandate to be president. Obviously I have no idea whether that story is true, but the fact that it's credible speaks to Cruz's public persona.
posted by gentlyepigrams at 9:32 AM on December 3, 2022 [7 favorites]

This continues to be pitch perfect:

A Tough Call: Ted Cruz Announced He’s Suspending His Campaign To Tend To His Thousands Of Glistening Eggs
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 9:43 AM on December 3, 2022 [14 favorites]

Otsebtatyna - at least Franken owned up to his error in judgement and accepted the consequences, which is more than Cruz has ever done.

Franken left office, which was a good start, but I still hear his name from time to time, so he clearly hasn't gone far enough away.
posted by Faint of Butt at 9:46 AM on December 3, 2022

Fair enough, EmpressCallipygos. I admit that I dislike Ted Cruz more, for the reason you indicate (and oh so many others). Thinking more on why I still prefer Al Franken stay out of the spotlight, his past behavior and its consequences are more effective as a cautionary tale than his value as a politician.

I can't ignore the way he tends to be brought up in order to cast doubt on the righteousness and wisdom of punishing him, regardless of his own acceptance of it. Him leaving the senate was a powerful indication that our side was willing to do the right thing even if it hurt electorally. I can imagine a world where that didn't seem so abnormal, which could afford responsible consideration of redemption arcs, but don't think we're even very close to that point.
posted by otsebyatina at 9:47 AM on December 3, 2022 [4 favorites]

Look, I will take any opportunity humanly possible to hate on Ted Cruz. The man abandoned the entire state of Texas and his own little white dog to go to Cancun during a major state disaster when the entire state was buried under historic snowfalls and trying to limp along with a wholly nonfunctional power grid. I would say that it's impossible to hate him more, but he's an inventive little cuss; every day he seems to invent new ways to make himself more repulsive and devoid of respect.

I am very suspicious of his current attempts to position himself as somehow 'pro-labor.'
posted by sciatrix at 10:04 AM on December 3, 2022 [19 favorites]

They hated Ted Cruz at Princeton, too. Even at 17 he was apparently loathsome.
posted by Nelson at 10:08 AM on December 3, 2022 [5 favorites]

> The man abandoned the entire state of Texas and his own little white dog to go to Cancun during a major state disaster when the entire state was buried under historic snowfalls and trying to limp along with a wholly nonfunctional power grid.

That sort of thing must be the "small town values" I've heard so much about.
posted by The Card Cheat at 10:11 AM on December 3, 2022 [2 favorites]

Boehner on Ted Cruz: "I have never worked with a more miserable son of a bitch in my life"
posted by atomicstone at 10:15 AM on December 3, 2022 [5 favorites]

Never heard Ted was on a 'mission from God' before, but that hypothesis does fit quite nicely, thanks for noting it. I've known my share of people who didn't care what anyone thought of them as long as they were in good graces with whatever power they served.

Re Al, I'll just leave this link here and leave it at that. I'm a big fan of E Jean.
posted by zaixfeep at 10:20 AM on December 3, 2022 [1 favorite]

Al Franken was railroaded in a partisan hit. The fact that he left the senate after his horrible crime of making a bad joke when you have people like Matt Gaetz and Jim Jordon still holding office is the real crime.
posted by misterpatrick at 10:23 AM on December 3, 2022 [43 favorites]

Ted Cruz, like Ken Paxton and Sid Miller, is living proof that any asshole can get elected in Texas with an R after his name.

That doesn't explain how he ended up whupping Dewhurst's ass in the 2012 primary tho. That's on the twisted li'l hearts of TX Republicans.
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 10:44 AM on December 3, 2022 [4 favorites]

I thought he was groping women who wanted to take photos and forcibly kissing people, misterpatrick
posted by Selena777 at 10:45 AM on December 3, 2022 [9 favorites]

Cruz is a Senator not despite being regarded as an arrogant dick, but because of it.

Conservative megadonors in 2012 took at look at David Dewhurst - the mainstream GOP candidate for the Texas Senate nomination -- and saw a classic squish: not very smart, and likely to fall straight for the DC cocktail party / White House invite / embassy reception moderating tendency.

They looked at Ted Cruz and said: this is a smart guy who will never be seduced by the Dark Side in large part because he knows he's disliked enough to know that efforts to do so are not going to be sincere. So they backed him big, he beat Dewhurst in the primary, and won easy in the General Election.

In 2018, liberal megadonors kept hearing about how everyone hated Cruz, and figured that what they needed to beat him was a nice guy - Beto O'Rourke. $100 million later, what they didn't figure on is that most Texans aren't in a position to hear stories from people who roomed with him at Princeton or served on the Harvard Law Review with him, and consider being widely disliked by other members of Congress as a badge of honor.
posted by MattD at 10:46 AM on December 3, 2022 [8 favorites]

"This continues to be pitch perfect:"

And this!
tedcruzforhumanpresident
posted by Hairy Lobster at 10:54 AM on December 3, 2022 [3 favorites]

I have heard all the stories about Cruz by the way, and my meta-narrative of these stories is:

(a) Cruz can be very unpleasant to be around

(b) Nevertheless he invests no energy in trying to be more pleasant

(c) Most smart and ambitious people hate how much energy they have to put into being liked, and

(d) They hate Cruz as much from a weird jealousy, as from actual distaste of his conduct

The interesting debate about Cruz- is the extent to which "b" - not trying to be nice - is from not recognizing it, resignation that he can't fix it even he tried, or not wanting to fix it.
posted by MattD at 11:04 AM on December 3, 2022 [2 favorites]

What is the Amy Klobuchar bit? I clicked on the link and watched the video from timestamp it linked to but all it did was rehash the Cancun thing.
posted by sardonyx at 11:08 AM on December 3, 2022 [3 favorites]

I remember reading that after George W. Bush was elected president, almost all of those who had worked on his campaign were rewarded with plum jobs in the administration. Though Ted Cruz had worked on the campaign, he wasn't offered a job. It was said that people usually took an immediate dislike to him, and when one campaign staffer was asked why that was, he snapped, "Because it saves time."
posted by orange swan at 11:09 AM on December 3, 2022 [26 favorites]

Sometimes in the quiet of the night I think about this Ted Cruz family outtakes video from his 2016 campaign and laugh and laugh into the darkness.
posted by mochapickle at 11:24 AM on December 3, 2022 [6 favorites]

I am very suspicious of his current attempts to position himself as somehow 'pro-labor.'

The only labor Ted Cruz supports is the labor of women forced to give birth against their wishes.
posted by Thorzdad at 11:59 AM on December 3, 2022 [6 favorites]

Cruz was a clerk for Chief Justice Rehnquist. When Scalia died, Cruz wanted to sit with Scalia's clerks at his funeral and they said no. Then GOP leadership said no, too. You know no one likes you if you get shunned at a funeral.
posted by kirkaracha at 12:16 PM on December 3, 2022 [7 favorites]

Ted is ick but we don't need to hear from Al Franken to know that.
posted by 922257033c4a0f3cecdbd819a46d626999d1af4a at 12:23 PM on December 3, 2022 [4 favorites]

Nothing against E. Jean Carroll, but her calling Al Franken "the least pervy guy I know" says more to me about the other guys she knows than it absolves Franken in my view. I think it also speaks to the degree to which his actions felt like a betrayal of trust. In his performances, both as comedian and politician, I placed a lot of value on his ability to wield words, and trust in him to do so responsibly. How am I meant to trust his apologies in that light?
posted by otsebyatina at 12:30 PM on December 3, 2022 [1 favorite]

Cruz's success is a testament to the strength of the Federalist Society.
posted by Iris Gambol at 1:08 PM on December 3, 2022 [5 favorites]

My favorite thing about Ted Cruz is that he's reached the peak of his arc and he seems completely oblivious to this fact.

He's not going to win a presidential primary, let alone a general election. Nobody is going to tap him for vice president, or give him a spot in their cabinet or on the Supreme Court.

He'll probably get to be a senator from Texas for a while longer, and he'll be a midlist conservative-book hack and a third-tier podcaster into the foreseeable future (i.e., as long as he has PACs and campaign money to fund the lifestyle).

He wants to be Ronald Reagan, or Dick Cheney. He's going to top out somewhere around Lindsey Graham.
posted by box at 1:12 PM on December 3, 2022 [4 favorites]

"(c) Most smart and ambitious people hate how much energy they have to put into being liked,"

Citation needed.
posted by oddman at 1:48 PM on December 3, 2022 [2 favorites]

He's not going to win a presidential primary, let alone a general election.

Where have I heard that before?
posted by klanawa at 2:07 PM on December 3, 2022 [9 favorites]

He's not going to win a presidential primary, let alone a general election. Nobody is going to tap him for vice president, or give him a spot in their cabinet or on the Supreme Court.

From your lips to the ear of the $DEITY he believes in.

That doesn't explain how he ended up whupping Dewhurst's ass in the 2012 primary tho. That's on the twisted li'l hearts of TX Republicans.

There are two large groups of Republicans here in the great state. There are "country club"/"bidness" Republicans who go along to get along and don't care much about things like granting women and black/brown folks and maybe even "respectable" gay people a few rights as long as taxes are low and they make a lot of money.

Then there are the mean ones: the Calvinist types of all Christian denominations who resent that everybody else doesn't live by the same rules they do; the small town gentry who resent that urbanites don't take them seriously politically and financially; the rural folks who resent that Hollywood and New York don't appease them much in cultural terms; etc.

A lot of the mean Republican Texans at the age of most power (younger Boomers and older Gen X, so my peers) were raised in the long shadow of Jim Crow and remember, or have storified memories, of a better time when gender and racial hierarchies were firm, the top of the hierarchy was properly revered, and the rest knew better than to mouth off. It is a life goal of theirs to punish people who don't live by those terms (cf Texas abortion laws, anti-CRT school board/library pushes, showing up with guns at drag queen story time, etc.)

Dewhurst was on the tail end of the "bidness Republicans" and he lost to Ted Cruz, who is a mean Republican's mean Republican. Surviving bidness/country club types sneer at him but generally hold their nose and vote for him in the privacy of the booth. But to mean Republicans, Cruz's own meanness is a feature, not a bug, because he aims it at people they detest too. This is the same reason why a lot of TFG's voters vote for him: he makes life hard for the people they hate.
posted by gentlyepigrams at 2:32 PM on December 3, 2022 [15 favorites]

Ted Cruz in one of my favorite Bad Lip Readings ever. I made a hole and then barfed on the beach...
posted by Ursula Hitler at 3:57 PM on December 3, 2022 [5 favorites]

I recall Al's saying this and it was a big hit at the time.

How the hell is Ted Cruz so hated and yet so re-elected, and he can get married while I can't? Asking for me. Literally any trash man can find someone who will marry him and be impregnated by him, I guess?

As for Al, his sexual stuff broke my heart and unfortunately he's never sounded very apologetic about it years later, which makes me continue to write him off.
posted by jenfullmoon at 4:30 PM on December 3, 2022 [3 favorites]

sardonyx: "What is the Amy Klobuchar bit? I clicked on the link and watched the video from timestamp it linked to but all it did was rehash the Cancun thing."

Yeah, start from the beginning of the video, I think the timestamp link was an accident.
posted by team lowkey at 4:33 PM on December 3, 2022 [1 favorite]

Ted Cruz has money and political power and name recognition. That's the reason why anybody would be interested in him. It's not for him, it's for the trappings his lifestyle brings.
posted by sardonyx at 10:11 PM on December 3, 2022

His wife has her own prestigious and remunerative career.
posted by Selena777 at 10:19 PM on December 3, 2022 [1 favorite]

Most smart and ambitious people hate how much energy they have to put into being liked

Many people who call themselves "smart" and "ambitious" use both words as an expression of how alienated they feel from other people, and how they feel like they deserve to be considered separate to the rest of humanity. They hate how much energy they have to put into being liked because they struggle to see other people as human beings, think that "being liked" is a game of calculated manipulations, and are "ambitious" in part because aspiring to power is a part of their fantasy of dropping the facade and treating other people like they're not human to begin with.

These people envy Ted Cruz, not because he "doesn't have to pretend," but because he does, in fact, have enough power that he gets to treat other people like shit.

I have met smart and ambitious people. "Most" of them are capable of doing the thing that actually-capable politicians are: not the part where they say what other people want to hear, but the part where they form coalitions, identify how they might help other people and how other people might help them, and generally create strategies that lift them and the people around them towards higher, better places.

I have also met "smart" and "ambitious" people. I'll take actual intelligence and genuine ambition any day.
posted by Tom Hanks Cannot Be Trusted at 4:28 AM on December 4, 2022 [4 favorites]

It is not that Ted Cruz thinks that, wherever he is, he is the smartest guy in the room.

It is that Ted Cruz knows that everyone else knows that he is the smartest and most talented guy in the room, that he is gracing them with his presence, and that his rise to the top is both inevitable and curiously delayed. He is the third-highest GPA in his class who would knife nuns in the face in order to get that valedictorian speech that he covets. He is old-school Starscream. He is better than you, he can list why he is better to the fourth decimal place, and the sooner that you anoint him as your better, the easier it will be for all concerned.

Eric Swalwell commented once that Cruz views his Senate career as a big game, as performance art. He's playing out whatever maneuvers will bring him personal gain, and that is tied to the rise of the contrarian right, so that's what he's been and will continue to be. Like Jim Jordan, he doesn't have to make sense or have any consistency as long as he's being loud, in front of a camera and they spell his name right. Unlike Jim Jordan, he thinks that he's scoring intellectual points and proving his superiority at all times, and cannot understand why alliances are not lining up behind him in response.

He also has an uncanny knack for reaching for the brass ring at precisely the wrong moment, angering just the right people to ensure that he'll be blackballed every time that he attempts to rally Republicans behind him. And for all of our benefit, let's hope that continues.
posted by delfin at 7:46 AM on December 4, 2022 [7 favorites]

How the hell is Ted Cruz so hated and yet so re-elected, and he can get married while I can't?

You think that's the biggest question about Cruz? Mine is how was this guy a debate champion at Ivy League schools, and yet constantly gets dragged on twitter with the dumbest arguments? Even if it's his staff writing them, it's still indicative of idiocy.

Lots of people hate Ted Cruz, but he draws bigger than many of my favorite bands, so the guy has fans.
posted by The_Vegetables at 8:58 AM on December 5, 2022 [2 favorites]

His wife has her own prestigious and remunerative career.
Flashback: Trump interviews Heidi Cruz, once the subject of his ridicule, for World Bank president post (CNN, Jan. 31, 2019). She's been a managing director at Goldman Sachs for the last decade.
posted by Iris Gambol at 11:10 PM on December 5, 2022 [1 favorite]

If you've never been exposed to the fundie fridays youtube channel, the first 7 minutes will probably be a bit WTF. But it's a great breakdown about Cruz's surprisingly a bit under the radar crazy evangelical bona fides.
posted by atomicstone at 7:09 AM on December 6, 2022