WASHINGTON Backlash against Sen. Ted Cruz continues to mount over the shocking spectacle of a riot at the Capitol, and the deadly episode has cast a dark shadow over his ambitions.
Already reviled by the left, the Texan has been targeted in the past week with petitions demanding he resign and lose his license to practice law.
Democrats have called for the Senate to expel him.
The chair of the House homeland security panel wants him added to the no fly list.
But the Biden era that starts at noon Jan. 20 may give the two-term Republican a shot to revive his reputation, allowing him to reprise the role of conservative foil for a Democratic president that he milked in the Obama years.
Cruz is very talented, really savvy. Obviously ambitious. The first time he ran for president he did really well. I would never count him out. But its hard to argue that the last few weeks have been helpful, said GOP strategist Alex Conant. Cruz has angered a lot of people who otherwise could be helpful to him in a future campaign.
Cruz didnt address the mob that stormed the Capitol and he has forcefully denounced the violence. But as one of the leading voices amplifying President Trumps demand to overturn the election, hes been swept up in the fallout from the riot.
Through aides, the senator declined interview requests and did not respond to the demands for his resignation and other sanctions.
Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., suggested that Cruz could be expelled from the Senate under the 14th Amendment, which bars service in Congress by anyone who engaged in insurrection or rebellion or aided anyone who did.
Former aides and campaign advisers have blasted Cruz for colossally bad judgment in abetting Trumps effort to overturn the election without evidence. Many would refuse to help him run for the White House again, and view his prospects as markedly dimmer since the riot.
In a scathing LinkedIn post, Chad Sweet, a longtime friend who chaired Cruzs campaign, denounced him for having aided and abetted [Trump] in his relentless assault on our democracy. Cruzs chief spokeswoman resigned days after the riot, telling colleagues she couldnt continue to defend him.
Others werent exactly rallying to his defense; a number of former advisers declined to comment on the record.
Teds been cancelled. Whether they renew the show later remains to be seen, said one former campaign aide who asked not to be named for fear of job retaliation. Ted made a huge tactical error because his ambition is so — its his fatal flaw. Hes so blindly ambitious.
But Cruzs effort wasnt out of step with some in his party. Of 23 Texas Republicans in the House, 15 voted to scrap Bidens electors in Arizona and 16 voted to reject his win in Pennsylvania.
And even if voters do hold it against him, Cruzs fortunes could soon shift. In the Biden era, hell will have a chance to shine as conservatives balk at efforts to raise taxes, restrict gun ownership, and revive regulations quashed by Trump.
A majority of Americans are going to quickly realize they strongly oppose the extreme policies the incoming administration will advance, and Cruz will be an important figure in those debates, David Polyansky, a former Cruz chief of staff.
Other Cruzworld veterans who arent distancing themselves agree.
Republicans will be looking for leaders who are tough in terms of pushing forward with the same priorities that Senator Cruz has been championing, said Ron Nehring, a former chairman of the California Republican Party who advised the 2016 presidential campaign, I am 100% in support of him, now and going forward. Im judging the totality of Senator Cruz, and that is ultimately how I think people will judge him.
He views those blaming Cruz for the riot as political opportunists, seizing a chance to weaken a rival.
The violent insurrection at the Capitol is obviously unacceptable, Nehring said. People who spoke at that rally do bear some responsibility for inciting what happened.Rudy Giuliani gets up there and talks about trial by combat. What type of signal is that supposed to send?
But Cruz was not at the rally, he noted. He did not call any of those rioters to that protest. He was in the Senate, putting forward what he believed in good faith was a way forward. The accusation is preposterous.
Cruzs election objection
Cruz pegged his objection to Biden electors to a demand for Congress to create an emergency commission to investigate allegations of election misconduct.
A 10-day delay would help the country accept the outcome, he insisted, though critics pointed out he could have demanded an inquiry without trying to invalidate tens of millions of votes and Bidens victory.
Protesters enter the Senate Chamber on Jan. 6, 2021. Two men photographed carrying zip-ties were charged Sunday in a federal court in the District of Columbia.(Win McNamee / TNS)
A protester hangs from the balcony in the Senate Chamber on January 6, 2021, as a mob overruns the Capitol, interrupted a joint session of Congress that later ratified President-elect Joe Biden’s 306-232 Electoral College win over President Donald Trump.(Win McNamee / Getty Images)
Cruz didnt just lend a vote, though. He led a group of 11 senators whose objections triggered the challenges, trying to outflank Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley, the first senator to declare that he would object to Biden electors when Congress reviewed the Electoral College votes.
Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah said Cruz will forever be seen as being complicit in an unprecedented attack on our democracy.
Like Cruz, Hawley had been positioning himself before the riot as a potential heir to the Trump base ahead of the 2024 presidential scramble.
Like Cruz, Hawley did not appear at the rally before the riot. But as the crowd descended on the Capitol, he was spotted pumping his fist in a gesture of solidarity that quickly came to haunt him.
Hawley certainly leaned into this more than Cruz did. And if there are political consequences, Hawley will suffer them, said Conant, who worked on Sen. Marco Rubios 2016 campaign.
Cruz kept an unusually low profile for most of the past week. Before and after Wednesdays impeachment vote in the House, he kept mum and hasnt said how hell vote at trial. In Trumps first impeachment, he advised the defense team on legal points and political strategy, and served as one of his most vocal advocates.
The hiatus from the spotlight and social media may have been designed to let emotions over the riot subside.
Sen. Ted Cruz and other members of Congress pray after Vice President Mike Pence declared the final electoral vote counts making Joe Biden the next president, early Jan. 7, 2021. Trump supporters interrupted the joint session of Congress when they stormed the Capitol.(SAUL LOEB / AFP via Getty Images)
On Thursday, roughly a hundred leading conservatives penned an open letter defending Cruz, Hawley and the six other senators and 139 House members who objected to Biden electors.
The violence committed at the Capitol was reprehensible they wrote, but moves to punish or to exile will not build us up, they will only serve to marginalize, radicalize and destroy.
Polarizing figure
Polls have long shown Cruz to be a deeply polarizing figure.
Events of the last few weeks have cemented that.
An ABC News/Ipsos poll conducted Jan. 8-9 — two and three days after the riot — found that 72% of Americans dont trust Cruz to protect democracy, which was even more than the 68% who viewed Bidens election as legitimate and the 67% who blamed Trump for the violence.
Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, left, speaks with Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley during a joint session of Congress to count electoral votes on January 6, 2021.(OLIVIER DOULIERY / AFP via Getty Images)
On the other hand, his standing among Republicans suggests a future less dim than his detractors wish for him.
An Axios/Ipsos poll conducted Jan. 11-13 that asked different questions about fallout from the riot found that 61% of Republican voters approve of Cruzs recent behavior lower than the scores for Pence (74%) and Trump (63%) but well ahead of those for McConnell (42%), Hawley (46%), Romney (34%) and Speaker Nancy Pelosi (14%).
An Economist/YouGov survey conducted Jan. 10-12 found that 72% of Trump voters had a favorable view of Cruz though 81% of Biden voters view him unfavorably, and nearly all of them hold intensely negative views
Cruzs law license isnt in jeopardy, but more than 11,000 lawyers and law students have signed a petition calling for him to be disbarred in Texas and the District of Columbia on grounds that he led an effort to undermine the peaceful transition of power and incited an insurrection by repeating dangerous and unsubstantiated statements regarding the election.
Nearly 16,000 people have signed a petition by Voto Latino, a voter registration group, on MoveOn.org asserting that Sen. Cruz has blood on his hands and calling on him to resign.
The riot and its aftermath did give a fresh 15 minutes of notoriety.
Teen Vogue called him a pompous windbag.
For two months, Cruz joined Trump in beating the drum of election fraud until Trump loyalists were deaf to anyone Republican, Democrat or nonpartisan journalists, not to mention state and federal courts telling them otherwise, wrote the Houston Chronicle in one of several Texas editorials calling on him to resign. And yet, Cruz insists he bears no responsibility for the deadly terror attack.
In a round of damage control interviews with Texas TV stations in the days after the riot, Cruz distanced himself from Trump in a way he hadnt done since they reconciled after the bitter 2016 primaries.
The presidents language and rhetoric often goes too far, he told KTRK-TV in Houston, calling Trumps speech to the crowd that would soon storm the Capitol reckless and then asserting that I have disagreed with the presidents language and rhetoric for the last four years.
In fact, Cruz routinely ignored questions about the latest outrageous Trump tweet or comment, saying he hadnt seen it or didnt have time to keep up with everything Trump said.
The most recent deflection occurred just three days before the riot, when a recording surfaced of Trump prodding Georgias top elections official to find him enough votes to winevidence of Trumps refusal to accept Bidens victory and the lengths he would go to cling to power.
I get the media wants to report all sorts of things and get everyone distracted by whatever else is going on, he said while stumping for Senate candidates in Georgia.
Differences with Trump
To be sure, Cruz distanced himself from Trump on a number of points over the years, though invariably focusing on his own positions without condemning the presidents.
When Trump hedged after the Charlottesville clash, Cruz explicitly condemned neo-Nazis. When Trump threatened sanctions against Mexico, Cruz argued in favor of free trade.
Conant said Cruzs efforts now to put distance between himself and Trump come across as inauthentic in a way voters arent likely to reward.
Any politician who appears calculating at a moment of national crisis is doing himself no favors, he said.
In a 2018 Senate debate in Dallas, Cruz was asked how he could cozy up to a former rival who dished out such contempt during the 2016 campaign. Cruz replied that he had a choice: nurse a grudge, or set aside the animosity so he could get things done for Texas.
When Trump won the GOP nomination and then the presidency, the entire political universe changed. People like Senator Cruz and others had to adapt, said Nehring, the Cruz supporter.
Open defiance would have seemed petulant given their 2016 rivalry, and consigned him to pariah status like such unrelenting Trump critics as Jeff Flake, the former Arizona senator, he said.
Politics is the art of the possible, Nehring said. What is Senator Cruz going to do, rise up and publicly chastise the president every time theres a disagreement?read more
‘Ted’s been cancelled’: Cruz’s 2024 ambitions hobbled by Capitol riot, but he could rebound in Biden era – The Dallas Morning News
