Ted Cruz and the Art of the Dirty Trick
By Amy Davidson
. . . .
CNN, which was covering the press conference, cut back to the anchor Brooke Baldwin. “O.K.,”
she said. She paused and collected herself. “Just so we’re all crystal
clear here, when Senator Cruz, with all due respect, tries to throw my
network and CNN under the bus, let me stand up for my colleagues and
journalists here.” Her face bore an expression that, if Cruz stays in
the campaign much longer—and he will, maybe to the end—will need its own
name. After explaining, again, what CNN had reported, Baldwin turned
back to her guest, Representative Mark Meadows, of North Carolina, who
has endorsed Cruz, and apologized for getting “fired up.” Meadows smiled
and said that he knew how hard the job was—“it’s one thing to report,
it’s another to verify it”—as if, again, Cruz’s only error had been to
trust the media. Baldwin squinted, tilted her head, and stopped him.
“Congressman,
forgive me, but I’m going to call out B.S. when I hear B.S. And that
was B.S.,” Baldwin said. If only someone would do that during the
debates. Later on Wednesday night, Cruz acknowledged that “CNN got it
correct.” He added, “Miracles happen.” He had moved on to attacking
Trump. During the months when Cruz was flattering Trump and mimicking
his bigotry, he seems also to have been building up his own store of
personal insults, which he is deploying now. But Cruz’s blunt objects
are always finely sanded and polished. Donald, as he refers to him,
is “fragile” and a “child.” He is a Twitter addict, and, Cruz said, “We’re
liable to wake up one morning and Donald, if he were President, would
have nuked Denmark.” One couldn’t dispute that general picture,
though the choice of Denmark is odd. (Perhaps it was a backhanded way to
also irritate supporters of Senator Bernie Sanders, who points to
Scandinavia as an economic model.) But Cruz is also working hard to
portray Trump as soft on immigration and as someone who wouldn’t be as
ruthless a deporter as he would be. How is it that when a leading
G.O.P. candidate finally, forcefully turns on Trump, it only serves to
underscore the ugliness that Trump has added to our political
discourse? This week, Cruz released a video
decrying not just Trump’s deals but the whole concept of deal-making.
The video also attacks Mitch McConnell, the Republican Senate Majority
Leader, and John Boehner, who was, until recently, the Speaker of the
House, to the extent that one might think they were also running against
him in the primary. Cruz himself is introduced with a closeup shot of
his cowboy boots.
Many politicians
are shameless; what seems to set Cruz apart is his unhidden pride in the
craft of the political slur, the artistry of nastiness..
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