Opinion: Ted Cruz Is An Unprincipled Hack

Cruz Was Supposed To Be the Chosen One

by Elias J. Atienza

For a time I thought that Ted Cruz was going to stand by principle. That he was going to stick to his guns and not endorse Donald Trump. He made headlines all across the nation by telling voters to vote their conscience. To vote for candidates that would protect the Constitution.

He put out the dying embers of his principles when he endorsed Trump. Instead of standing up for principles, he caved into pressure. Ted Cruz was the last staunch conservative who could have held onto his beliefs. But the pressure of Donald Trump was too much.

Cruz failed us.

But was it really surprising?

Dating back to last year, I saw how Ted Cruz said one thing and supported another.

Cruz has the ability of being the smug guy who claims he is the best simply because he says so. Rand Paul said it best in during the Fox News debate.

“What is particularly insulting, though, is that he is the king of saying, ‘Oh, you’re for amnesty. Everybody’s for amnesty except for Ted Cruz.’ But it’s a falseness. And that’s an authenticity problem — that everybody he knows is not as perfect as him, because we’re all for amnesty.” 

Conservatives and libertarians who supported Ted Cruz had to see the evidence. He flip-flopped on many issues; criminal justice reform, immigration reform, and NSA spying. He was the man who claimed to be the ideological successor of the Ron Paul liberty movement while also calling Edward Snowden a traitor.

And this man has failed to deliver on many things. Ted Cruz failed on spending when he voted for a continuing resolution which increased spending by over $400 billion. He voted for an amendment last year which would increase military spending by $100 billion without offering any spending cuts. Rand Paul did offer an amendment which would increase military spending by a huge amount, but offered cuts in other sections.

As Kevin Boyd pointed out in Rare:

By forcing Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz to vote against his defense spending increase amendment, which cut spending, Rand Paul went on the offensive on an issue that is seen as a weakness.

Paul forced Senators Rubio and Cruz to choose between fiscal conservatism and increasing defense spending. In rejecting Paul’s amendment, both Cruz and Rubio prioritized increasing Pentagon spending above fiscal responsibility.

On Thursday, Paul attempted to give every Republican who voted for the Rubio-Cotton amendment every dollar of what they asked for in defense spending—but they had to actually pay for it.

And let’s not get started on Audit the Fed. Ted Cruz, the same man who bragged about being an original sponsor of Audit the Fed in the CNBC debate, failed to show up for the vote. Cruz had didn’t show up because it didn’t have the votes. And yet Marco Rubio, who rarely shows up to work, voted for it. Rand Paul showed up and voted for it. Bernie Sanders, who was campaigning for President at the same time as Rubio, Paul, and Cruz, showed up for it.

Cruz didn’t show up for Attorney General Lynch’s nomination vote. He was criticized for not showing up for it. But in his defense, he said,”Absence is the equivalent of a no vote.” I’m going to take his word for it on Audit the Fed.

Of course, he would sign Audit the Fed if he was President. But I don’t think he will ever have the opportunity.

Ted Cruz has also abandoned criminal justice reform, a cause he once championed along with Rand Paul. As Jacob Sullum writes in Forbes:

“The Texas senator—once a leading Republican critic of excessively harsh criminal penalties, especially for nonviolent drug offenders—had effectively traded places with Grassley, a law-and-order Iowa Republican who has long resisted efforts to reduce those penalties.” 

In addition to above travesties, Ted Cruz voted for the arms sales to Saudi Arabia. Senator Mike Lee and Rand Paul, along with Bernie Sanders and (God forbid) Elizabeth Warren voted no on it. Why did he vote to arm a despotic religious theocracy? I don’t know, but he was for carpet bombing and “making the sand glow.” So there is that.

And some of you may ask, but what about Rand Paul? After all, he endorsed Trump. But there is a massive difference between Rand Paul and Donald Trump. Rand Paul did not go up on stage, in front of tens of millions of people watching, and ask the world for them to vote their conscience. Paul did not write an entire Facebook post outlining his support for Trump. Instead he is quietly supporting him; which isn’t good but at least he isn’t trending on Facebook like Cruz.

Cruz sacrificed his principles for the sake of political expediency. This endorsement wouldn’t have been a big deal if he had endorsed Trump back in July. But instead he took the “high road” and then decided he would cave in instead of standing up for himself.

No he has to face the conservatives who applauded him on principle. His supporters who cheered him on standing up to Donald Trump. Instead he is supporting a man who insulted his wife, convinced tens of thousands of people his father was somehow related to the assassination of JFK, and is not a conservative in any sense.

As AllahPundit wrote in Hot Air:

“Remember his big blow-up at Trump on the morning of the Indiana primary? Remember when he called him a “sniveling coward”for insulting his wife? Remember the day after his convention speech when he told the Texas delegation that he wouldn’t be a “servile puppy dog” towards someone who’d attacked his family as viciously as Trump did? Cruz doesn’t grapple with any of that in his endorsement. Evidently, if you’re running against Hillary Clinton — or really any Democrat, since few of Cruz’s objections are specific to Clinton — you can be as personally wretched as you like and Ted Cruz, man of principle, who became a big deal on the right for refusing to go along with his party, will … go along with his party.”

 

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