Cruz Control

Fresh from his triumph of talking to himself on the Senate floor for a non record-setting 21 hours (thereby giving new meaning to the phrase, “Capital punishment”), Sen. Rafael Edward “Ted” Cruz (R-TX) got into the weeds by venturing that he wouldn’t be willing to give up his paycheck should the GOP force a government shutdown.

That quote became politically toxic when Pentagon sources disclosed that the Armed Forces would have to forego getting paid for the interregnum should the GOP persist in its suicidal efforts to defund a bill that –- according to a CNBC poll -- 40% of the public does not want to see defunded and another 30% might well support if only they could understand it.

Had he not been enervated by his self- aggrandizing fauxlibuster, the Senator might have recalled that U.S. Senators are statutorily exempt from any such payroll cutbacks, so he could better have said (however cynically) “of course I’d be happy to give up my paycheck if our brave service-members are also to be so penalized”.

I suggest that the senator is capable of such irony in view of his assertion, some 17 hours into his self-absorbed monolog, that he would be perfectly happy if his speech got no press coverage whatsoever.

One is therefore led to speculate that, should Boehner & Co. succeed in gutting Obamacare, and a new, GOP-written chimera were to rise phoenix-like from its ashes, the Senator would be perfectly happy to see it tagged, CruzCare.