"His fellow senators loathed him"

 

“[Rafael Edward] Cruz (R-Texas) has long had a public reputation as an unctuous asshole. Even so, his staffers have tended to hold him in high regard as a kind and geeky man who treated his underlings well even while his fellow senators loathed him. Now, though, ‘most of Cruzworld is pretty disgusted’ with the senator for choosing to back Donald Trump’s absurd claims of widespread election fraud, in the words of one former aide. As another former aide put it, ‘Everyone is upset with the direction things have gone, and the longer they’ve been with the senator, the more distaste they are expressing.’

“…Cruz waited to endorse Trump until late September 2016 and has been behind the president ever since. He has dismissed Trump’s vile personal attacks on him during the 2016 primary when Trump called his wife ugly and accused his Cuban-born father of being part of a supposed conspiracy that killed John F. Kennedy. Since all that, Cruz has walked back his fervent criticism of Trump as ‘a pathological liar’ and ‘utterly amoral.’ Cruz continued to be so eager to court Trump’s favor that he even offered via Twitter to represent the president before the Supreme Court in a scurrilous election lawsuit about the 2020 election.

“…In conversations with former Cruz aides, it was suggested Cruz’s objections were motivated by one thing and one thing only: the desire to outflank Senator Josh Hawley in the 2024 Republican presidential primary for the Trump base. As one former senior White House official put it, ‘Ted for sure thought that Hawley had jumped the line, like, ‘How dare you!’ After all, Cruz’s presidential ambitions have long been a topic of discussion among his alumni. ‘We’ve all talked about 2024, it never left the discussion,’ said a former aide. ‘From the moment he dropped out of the race [in 2016], the organization was building for 2020. Now, none of us are certain where the path is to 2024.’

“…Cruz’s attempts to appeal to Trump’s base didn’t even impress those in the outgoing president’s orbit. The former senior White House official was scornful of the effort. ‘I think Cruz has tried at different times to be an ally to the president. For somebody so rough on him before. But he now has shown himself to be a craven, calculating politician and somebody who incited — arguably, he helped incite this. That’s what everyone got out of this.’

“‘He’s supposed to be a smart asshole,’ said the former top Trump aide. ‘That’s where there’s a bit of consternation for me. He’s totally misguided by his own bullshit. He buys into his bullshit more than other people. He’s supposed to at least be a smart, savvy asshole.’

“For Cruz, it’s a return to a familiar role in some ways. As one former aide put it: ‘He really believes he’s an outsider. He psychologically thinks like an outsider and feels most comfortable taking up the political causes of outsiders.’ But at this point, it’s not fellow Ivy League graduates or fellow senators ready to cast him out — it’s the people who have spent years of their lives in service of his ambitions. That doesn’t make him an outsider anymore, just alone” (Intelligencer).