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UPDATE VI: You must read this take down of The Lying Canadian (© NoBullU.com) at the Washington Post, Ted Cruz needs an intervention, which notes how despised Cruz is:
"If Cruz does not make it to the presidency, he will no doubt blame the “establishment.” But whether he recognizes it or not, his wife and political advisers surely understand that alumni, roommates, law clerks, former staffers in the George W. Bush campaign and White House (and the president himself), members of Congress and others who have known Cruz — lots and lots of people — consider him socially awkward, nasty, dishonest, a blatant apple-polisher and all-around creepy guy. You can write off a few of these critics as jealous of his success, or liberal antagonists, but all of them? There is something badly amiss here. Cruz, who so obviously lacks emotional intelligence, cannot recognize it, but those closest to him surely must see that something is awry. . .
Politics is about building alliances and trust, having your team’s back and refusing to grandstand to your side’s detriment. It’s also an additive exercise. Drawing bold lines is fine, but you lose unless you can bring people over to your side. Simply inveighing against others will not do it, nor will playing the persecuted victim. . .
[I]f all you have is ambition, the burning desire to climb over others, it becomes evident to voters and colleagues alike. You know the type — the guy always looking over your shoulder to scan for a more important person in the room to engage; the fellow convinced whatever job he has is not big enough for him; and the person so intellectually dishonest, he is willing to rewrite history, deny his own statements and look you in the eye to say “Black is white” and “Up is down.” (Even when apologizing to Dr. Ben Carson for his team spreading a rumor on caucus night that Carson was dropping out, Cruz felt compelled to lie, claiming CNN initially reported Carson was dropping out. CNN blasted back: “What Senator Cruz said tonight in the debate is categorically false. CNN never corrected its reporting because CNN never had anything to correct. The Cruz campaign’s actions the night of the Iowa caucuses had nothing to do with CNN’s reporting. The fact that Senator Cruz continues to knowingly mislead the voters about this is astonishing.”) These behaviors do not sit well with people, who soon catch on that you are using them for selfish ends. Superiors see you are an annoying kiss-up, and other see you as desperate or phony.
Cruz’s shortcomings make it hard to build a winning coalition — or to function in the Senate. The great irony is his ambition may be the biggest barrier to obtain what he thirsts for and has schemed so long to obtain."
UPDATE V: CNN "never, ever reported that Carson was suspending his campaign. . .
In a statement issued mid-debate, CNN proclaimed:
'What Senator Cruz said tonight in the debate is categorically false. CNN never corrected its reporting because CNN never had anything to correct. The Cruz campaign’s actions the night of the Iowa caucuses had nothing to do with CNN’s reporting. The fact that Senator Cruz continues to knowingly mislead the voters about this is astonishing.'"
Read the Washington Post, Ted Cruz just smeared CNN on national television, and the network struck back.
UPDATE IV: "I followed both Cruz and Trump this week at multiple campaign events across New Hampshire. It was, in a sense, a pleasure to see them use their prodigious skills of character assassination against each other. It was demagogue against demagogue: lie vs. lie. Both men riled their supporters with fantasies and straw men.
But there were discernible differences. Trump owned anger. Cruz, by contrast, had a lock on nastiness. Trump is belligerent and hyperbolic, with an authoritarian style. But while Trump fires up the masses with his nonstop epithets, Cruz has Joe McCarthy’s knack for false insinuation and underhandedness. What sets Cruz apart is the malice he exudes.
Cruz jokes that “the whole point of the campaign” is that “the Washington elites despise” him. But Cruz’s problem is that going back to his college days at Princeton, those who know him best seem to despise him most. Not a single Senate colleague has endorsed his candidacy, and Iowa’s Republican governor urged Cruz’s defeat, then called his campaign 'unethical.' . .
In a single speech in Nashua last week, (Cruz) mischaracterized things said by, among others, Jimmy Carter, Chris Wallace, guests on Sean Hannity’s show, Atlanta’s mayor, Rubio and, of course, President Obama.
I asked the Cruz campaign Thursday evening to substantiate several of these claims. After this column was published online Friday afternoon, the campaign provided citations that didn’t back up what Cruz had alleged. Unsurprising: Cruz’s purpose is not to inform but to insinuate."
Read the Washington Post, The utter nastiness of Ted Cruz.
Read also the Washington Post, Why the Cruz campaign’s 'dirty tricks' matter, which notes that "Cruz’s own words may come back to haunt him. In comparing the IRS scandal to President Richard Nixon’s dirty tricks and decrying attacks on political opponents, he made clear that the person at the top of an organization bears responsibility. ('No politician has the right to use the machinery of the Executive Branch to target their political enemies. When Richard Nixon did it, it was wrong and he rightly resigned from the presidency in disgrace for his abuse of power.')"
UPDATE III: Cruz lied to win the Iowa caucuses, then lied about the lying.
Read Mediate, Yes, Cruz Campaign Did Lie About CNN Starting Ben Carson Rumor.
Republicans lose the general election if they nominate The Lying Canadian (© NoBullU.com). (Except if Dems are so stupid as to nominate Sanders.)
UPDATE II: It may be over, but It Was A May-To-December Bromance while it lasted, between "Official Trump-Brand Trump, Donald Trump", and Cruz, a "Masterdebator":
UPDATE: Haley was given an illegal 16 years prison sentence after stealing a calculator from Walmart, "a crime that merited a maximum two-year prison term. But prosecutors incorrectly applied a habitual offender law. . .
[Cruz, as solicitor general of Texas, defended the case in the U.S. Supreme Court.]
Cruz’s behavior in the Haley case is almost the dictionary definition of pharisaism: an overzealous application of the letter of the law in a way that violates the spirit of the law, as well as fairness and mercy.
Traditionally, candidates who have attracted strong evangelical support have in part emphasized the need to lend a helping hand to the economically stressed and the least fortunate among us. Such candidates include George W. Bush, Mike Huckabee and Rick Santorum.
But Cruz’s speeches are marked by what you might call pagan brutalism. There is not a hint of compassion, gentleness and mercy. Instead, his speeches are marked by a long list of enemies, and vows to crush, shred, destroy, bomb them. When he is speaking in a church the contrast between the setting and the emotional tone he sets is jarring.
Cruz lays down an atmosphere of apocalyptic fear. America is heading off 'the cliff to oblivion.' After one Democratic debate he said, 'We’re seeing our freedoms taken away every day, and last night was an audition for who would wear the jackboot most vigorously.'
As the Republican strategist Curt Anderson observed in Politico, there’s no variation in Cruz’s rhetorical tone. As is the wont of inauthentic speakers, everything is described as a maximum existential threat.
The fact is this apocalyptic diagnosis is ridiculous. . .
But Cruz manufactures an atmosphere of menace in which there is no room for compassion, for moderation, for anything but dismantling and counterattack. And that is what he offers. Cruz’s programmatic agenda, to the extent that it exists in his speeches, is to destroy things . . ."
Cruz exploits and exaggerates . . . fear. . .
The best conservatism balances support for free markets with a Judeo-Christian spirit of charity, compassion and solidarity. Cruz replaces this spirit with Spartan belligerence. He sows bitterness, influences his followers to lose all sense of proportion and teaches them to answer hate with hate. This Trump-Cruz conservatism looks more like tribal, blood and soil European conservatism than the pluralistic American kind."
Read The New York Times, The Brutalism of Ted Cruz.
Read also the Washington Post, David Brooks’s choice words on Cruz — ‘satanic’, ‘pagan’ — draw fire and a little brimstone.
Former Canadian citizen Ted Cruz got an insider loan from THE bank the government saved during the bailouts, Goldman Sachs, then hide the loan and lied about it, all while pretending to be "a populist firebrand who criticized Wall Street bailouts and the influence of big banks in Washington. . .
As a GOP Senate staffer put it, 'It’s amazing that this guy can rail against crony capitalism when he is one of its biggest beneficiaries.' . .
This is precisely the sort of slick, dishonest conduct he accuses professional politicians of undertaking."
Read the Washington Post, 10 reasons that Goldman Sachs loan is a nightmare for Ted Cruz.
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