Cruz has gone from the insufferable nemesis of Republican traditionalists to their last, best hope, and the likes of Mitt Romney, Lindsey Graham and Jeb Bush have now given him endorsements — or approximations thereof — that will go down in political history as some of the most constipated hosannas ever rendered.
They hardly mention Cruz’s name. They barely manage to assign him a single virtue.
“Consistent,” Jeb Bush called him — in a Facebook post. He apparently couldn’t rouse or debase himself to a proper news conference.
He was following the lead of his younger brother Neil, who had signed up with Cruz a few weeks earlier and explained, “I commit this from my head, not my heart.” There’s a sentence you won’t find on a Valentine’s Day card.
Graham professed his devotion during an interview on “The Daily Show.”
“I’m on the Ted train, absolutely,” he told Trevor Noah, but when Noah pressed him about the charms of that particular mode of transportation, he confessed that he would have preferred another — possibly an Edsel, maybe even a tricycle with a wobbly front wheel. “He was my 15th choice. What can I say?”
Not much that’s laudatory, apparently. Cruz is the love that chokes on its own words.
Frank Bruni, “Lose With Cruz: A Love Story”, The New York Times (27 March 2016), SR3.