What an extraordinary disappointment Ted Cruz is. On paper, the man should be a star. He’s intellectually gifted, he has a remarkable memory, and, on the vast majority of public-policy questions, his political instincts are sound. But he’s a coward, and, at this level, cowardice represents an intractable flaw.
Worse, Cruz is transparent in his cowardice. One must assume that Cruz believes himself to be a practitioner of political chess, and yet he seems oddly unaware of his tendency to prefigure each and every move through a loudspeaker. On Wednesday, as part of a mawkish paean to the Capitol Police, Cruz described the events of January 6, 2021, as “a despicable act of terrorism.” A day later, he went on Tucker Carlson’s show to explain sorrowfully that “the way I phrased things yesterday was sloppy, and it was, frankly, dumb.” What had changed in the interim? Nothing had. This wasn’t Ted Cruz carefully debating the meaning and suitability of words and making a handful of concessions in the process; this was Ted Cruz noticing that his previous position had made him unpopular with his base and finding another one on the fly. Its accuracy notwithstanding, there was nothing “sloppy” about Cruz’s use of the word “terrorism.” Indeed, he had used that word in both official statements and interviews on a number of occasions before this week, including on January 7, 2021, on January 8, 2021 (twice), on January 25, 2021, and in May 2021. The difference this time was that someone with a big platform attacked him for it, and, coward that he is, he couldn’t take the heat.
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