Ted Cruz is just bad at his job. When his job is as consequential as that of a United States Senator, then Senator Cruz’s incompetence, malevolence, and mendacity make him a national threat.
“The big lie”
Joe Biden spoke on Friday, objecting strongly to Senator Cruz’s equivocation regarding debunked conspiracy theories about widespread voter fraud, and comparing Cruz’s rhetoric to infamous Nazi propagandist, Joseph Goebbels. Biden referred to the Senator’s continued efforts to question the legitimacy of Biden’s Electoral College victory as “the big lie.” Cruz responded with his characteristic false outrage, tweeting,
“Really sad. At a time of deep national division, President-elect Biden’s choice to call his political opponents literal Nazis does nothing to bring us together or promote healing. This kind of vicious partisan rhetoric only tears our country apart.” 5:54 PM · Jan 8, 2021·Twitter for iPhone
Responding with shock to being called out on his cheerleading of thoroughly refuted conspiracy theories is standard operating procedure for Cruz. And had he not been repeating his objections to reality on the floor of the Senate on Wednesday just before he and his colleagues were rushed to a secure location to protect them from a riotous mob invading the US Capitol Building, inspired to insurgency by the exact nonsense that Cruz was preaching, then his “Aw shucks” bullshit response to Biden might have earned him some sympathy. Unfortunately for Cruz, at the very moment he was arguing his objection in the Senate, actual Nazis, convinced of the “big lie” that Cruz and fellow Trump loyalists have cravenly repeated for weeks, were marching down Pennsylvania Avenue in the direction of the US Capitol. When armed and violent men clad in pro-Auschwitz merch, invade, Godwin’s Law becomes more of a gentle suggestion.
“His debate is not only logically flawed, it also exposes his lack of respect for democracy”
Notwithstanding his feeble attempt at rhetorical judo in self-defense of Biden’s public criticisms, what Senator Cruz should be truly ashamed of is the impotent argument he made before his colleagues on the floor of the Senate. Cruz argued that polling showed that thirty-nine percent of Americans believe the election was rigged. “That feeling is nonetheless a reality for nearly half the country,” he said. Thirty-nine percent is not “nearly half” of anything, and a feeling is not a reality. But I digress. Cruz’s point was that polls show a minority of Americans believing that there was election fraud on a state level, so Congress should overstep their Constitutional authority and establish a commission to investigate what federal intelligence agencies, state election security audits, and every court that heard cases regarding election fraud already concluded: there was no fraud. Furthermore, according to Cruz, the representative chambers of democracy owe it to a misguided minority of the population to disrupt the Constitutionally mandated election procedure, already certified by the states. His debate is not only logically flawed, it also exposes his lack of respect for democracy because, by his own admission, sixty-one percent (or nearly one hundred percent by Cruz’s estimation) feel the election was not rigged.
More importantly, another poll conducted overrules whatever poll Cruz cited in his speech. On November 3rd, 2020, nearly 160 million Americans were polled and over 7 million more of them voted for Joe Biden for President of the United States, resulting in 306 electoral votes certified on December 14, 2020, and sent to Congress to be counted. My vote and your vote and your neighbor’s vote and Ted Cruz’s vote were cast and, when those votes were counted, they added up to more for Biden and fewer for Trump. And after they made their way through the recounts and audits and investigations and more than fifty lawsuits by lawyers for the Trump campaign, they remained more for Biden and fewer for Trump. And even when they were unevenly weighted by the Electoral College system in favor of states that favor Republican Presidential candidates, they still tallied as more for Biden and fewer for Trump.
“There is no Constitutional foundation on which to establish such a commission”
Inevitably, mention was made of the 1876 Hayes Tilden election. Nearly a century-and-a-half ago, Congress appointed an electoral commission to examine the disputed results and claims of fraud. This is the commission to which Cruz refers in his floor speech. However, as was pointed out shortly after Cruz made his case by Senator Pat Toomey (R - Pennsylvania), in that election, neither Hayes nor Tilden were the incumbent. Furthermore, during the 1877 proceedings, multiple states submitted competing slates of electors. No state did that this year. Therefore, as Toomey countered, there is no Constitutional foundation on which to establish such a commission. Senator Toomey is a deeply conservative, Trump-supporting Republican from a battleground state. I profoundly disagree with Toomey on almost every issue. In fact, I find his politics abhorrent. But the Senator made a concise, cogent, and well-crafted argument against Cruz’s objection to the count. I can at least respect his ability to make a good case and support that case with facts.
It should be noted that Senator Toomey and I graduated from the same high-school (La Salle Academy in Providence, Rhode Island), which is the only high school in America with two graduates as current, sitting senators. The other being Senator Jack Reed (D - Rhode Island). Apparently the classical education provided to us by the Christian Brothers at La Salle produced a better toolbox for logic and rhetoric. I will go so far as to say La Salle grads are master debaters and cunning linguists.
(Ahem) I said, master debaters and cunning — never mind.
By contrast, Ted Cruz’s tissue-thin argument and flagrant disdain for the democratic process, along with his gymnastic feats of hypocrisy in the servitude of a rejected figurehead of corruption, show the Senator for what he is: an impotent dick. Yet, in a position of such power, as one of only one-hundred members of the upper chamber of the legislative branch of the most powerful government on the planet, falsehoods and fumbling missteps can result in massive repercussions.