Political Irony

By now, almost everyone knows that while (normally balmy) Texas was suffering freezing weather with millions of people without power, Ted Cruz took off for a vacation in Cancun, Mexico. He was originally busted by fellow travelers (his own constituents?), who posted photos of Cruz in the airport and on the airplane.

Cruz tried to claim that he was just being a chaperone for his daughters.

However, this didn’t really pass the smell test. It seems more likely that he is flying back only because he got busted. If he was actually busy “using all our resources” to deal with the situation in Texas, someone else could have flown down with his kids if necessary. In fact, since his girls were traveling with “friends”, aren’t there any adults on the trip too? If not, is Cruz actually leaving his 10- and 12-year-old daughters alone in Cancun with their friends and no adult? I don’t think so.

Later on Thursday, to nobody’s surprise, the NY Times published text messages sent by his wife, Heidi Cruz, that showed that Cruz was indeed lying. The Cruz family hastily planned the trip to escape their freezing home, and Ted Cruz only decided to return to Texas early when the photos of him went viral.

Text messages sent from Ms. Cruz to friends and Houston neighbors on Wednesday revealed a hastily planned trip. Their house was “FREEZING,” as Ms. Cruz put it — and she proposed a getaway until Sunday. Ms. Cruz invited others to join them at the Ritz-Carlton in Cancún, where they had stayed “many times,” noting the room price this week ($309 per night) and its good security. The text messages were provided to The New York Times and confirmed by a second person on the thread, who declined to be identified because of the private nature of the texts.

Wow, even their friends ratted them out.

Did anyone actually trust Ted Cruz to ever tell the truth? After all, the Republicans in Texas are busy blaming the failure of their power grid on the Democratic Party’s proposed “Green New Deal”, which doesn’t even exist yet. In fact, sustainable energy sources like windmills performed much more reliably in this cold snap than the fossil fuel plants that supply over 80% of the electricity in Texas.

Not to mention that when California had some power outages last August due to a heatwave, Cruz tweeted “California is now unable to perform even basic functions of civilization, like having reliable electricity. Biden/Harris/AOC want to make CA’s failed energy policy the standard nationwide. Hope you don’t like air conditioning!” Luckily, the internet never forgets. When people reminded Cruz of his earlier snarky comments, he had to admit “I got no defense. A blizzard strikes Texas & our state shuts down. Not good. Stay safe!”

I guess his idea of staying safe is to flee for less frozen climes. As fellow Republican Meghan McCain pointed out, “Very Marie Antoinette”, and that there’s a “lot of heads to roll.” Indeed, Cruz has criticized other politicians in the past for traveling in the wake of crises. And in the middle of a deadly crisis, Cruz had Houston police escort him to the airport. Cruz also left his dog, ironically named “Snowflake” back in the FREEZING house. At least Mitt Romney took his dog with him.

Next, people noticed his clothing. First his mask:

Second, he’s wearing a Patagonia shirt. If you recall, Patagonia is the clothing company that is putting tags like this in their shirts:

There is some consensus that Patagonia wrote the one in the photo specifically for Cruz.

Finally, I leave you with this hilarious sarcasm from Alexandra Petri:

I, Ted Cruz, am hearing now that my decision to go to Cancun while Texas is devastated by a winter storm and when millions remained without power was — wrong!

This has been very confusing for me. I was just doing what I thought made sense, based on my entire life’s experience of how people respond to my being somewhere, which is to say: They get mad that I am there and say they want me to leave.

One thing I know about myself is that I am Ted Cruz. “I like Ted Cruz more than most of my other colleagues like Ted Cruz. And I hate Ted Cruz,” is something one of my former colleagues said about me. People are always commenting things like that. John Boehner called me “Lucifer in the flesh.” Sen. Lindsey Graham said, “If you killed Ted Cruz on the floor of the Senate, and the trial was in the Senate, nobody would convict you.”

There is a long-running joke that I am the Zodiac Killer, which is not something there usually is about people who are universally liked. My college roommate wrote, “Ted Cruz is a nightmare of a human being. I have plenty of problems with his politics, but truthfully his personality is so awful that 99 percent of why I hate him is just his personality. If he agreed with me on every issue, I would hate him only 1 percent less.” Flowers wither at my approach; the sun shrouds itself in shadow; no matter what haircut I have, people agree that it is wrong. And I think this time, it really is wrong!

Seeing Texas in crisis, my reasoning was that the last thing anyone would want would be for me to show up. I assumed that the only thing that could make everyone’s experience worse would be the addition of Ted Cruz. “My power is out… I am breaking up my furniture to burn it… and Ted Cruz is here!” That third thing would be the thing that broke you, I think.