Quote of the Week...from Ted Cruz

I'm not serving in office because I desperately needed 99 new friends in the U.S. Senate.
                                                                    ---Ted Cruz

Last week I quoted progressive Democratic senator Al Franken, who has recently come out with a new book, Giant of the Senate.  In it he largely disparaged the approach that junior Texas senator Ted Cruz had taken to relations with him and his fellow senators.  Almost immediately after taking office in January 2013, Cruz would often bluntly confront his Senate colleagues with very little consideration for courtesy and tact...two of the more offended senators were Diane Feinstein (D, CA) and Mitch McConnell (R, KY), the latter being Cruz's own caucus "boss".  This public grandstanding rubbed a lot of people the wrong way, including me.  And then he ran for president for the 2016 election...and my opinion of Ted Cruz dramatically changed...

Yes, Ted Cruz is very theatrical with his oratory, and if you disagree with a lot of what he is saying...as I do...he can come across as smug and patronizing.  Yet I am not one of his colleagues: I'm just one of 300 million+ Americans, and if I look at him from that viewpoint Cruz imparts respect to me.  I was particularly impressed with the gracious manner with which he dealt with the unprecedented viciousness of rival candidate Donald Trump's attacks against him during the campaign. I am also thoroughly perplexed as to why much of the important core base of political support from conservative evangelical Christians jumped over to support someone with an unapologetically degenerate character instead of Cruz, who would have been their ideal president (or Marco Rubio, for that matter).  As the campaign wore on and it looked as if Trump would get the nomination, Ted Cruz did not resort to personal attacks against his primary opponent but rather continued to run on the issues and directed his criticism primarily at the Democratic opposition...talk about grace in the face of adversity.  And then his speech at the Republican National Convention was nothing short of brilliant...

Whenever I watch the floor proceedings of the U.S. Senate and Ted Cruz pops into view, either serving as the presiding officer, giving a speech, or casting a vote, I continue to scrutinize him to see if my newfound respect for him is correct...or if he really is that obnoxious dude I saw just a few years ago.  I suspect he's a little of both: one-on-one, he is not very likeable...but he's one of the smartest people in the Senate and an excellent orator.  The other day he spoke in the Senate about seven planks of what he deems to be a formula for success with tax reform if they are implemented: my leanings toward the Democrats notwithstanding, a lot of what Senator Cruz said made sense to me.  Without any hint of a doubt, I would feel much, much more secure and confident about our future here in America...in spite of my political differences with Ted Cruz...were he now our sitting president instead of what we've been handed...