Queen Victoria often complained of William Gladstone that “he speaks to Me as if I was a public meeting.” Ted Cruz suffers from a similar problem. He has no personality outside of elective politics; he finds it hard to read a room or adjust to new circumstances; and he seems genuinely to believe that his audience is incapable of noticing his machinations, even as he telegraphs them for all the world to see. There is a great deal of “How do you do, fellow kids?” about Cruz. Groveling before Tucker Carlson, he said that he’d misspoken. But there was not a single person in America — including Carlson, who laughed derisively — who believed him. Given his objectives, Cruz would have been better off had he simply said, “Look, Tucker, I still want to be president, and your taking shots at me is hurting me, so tell me what I need to say to make you stop, I’ll agree to say it, and then we can all move on.”
Ted Cruz debases himself for the base
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