Ted Cruz Is the Fightin'-est Presidential Candidate

March 23, 2015

5:29 PM

If you woke up this morning feeling as though America might be on the cusp of a new birth of freedom, it wasn't your imagination. It was because Ted Cruz has formally announced his campaign for president. Although Ted Cruz will not, in fact, become president, he's still an interesting character for any number of reasons. Let's take a moment to look at his two-minute announcement video:

It's nice to see that he's doing his part to support America's stock footage industry. And if you were wondering how a guy with Cruz's record of legislative non-achievement might run for president, your answer is here. About 30 seconds in he says, "That's why I've worked so hard to lead the fights to defend these cherished values." I always perk up whenever I hear a candidate say he "led the fight" on something, because many years ago I spent some time writing campaign flyers for candidates, and "led the fight" was a rhetorical mainstay. The question I was often confronted was, Where is the line between "I fought for X" and "I led the fight for X"? What it usually came down to was that if all a legislator did was cast a vote, then he "fought for" that admirable thing, while pretty much anything more than that could count has having "led the fight." You didn't need to actually write a piece of legislation to engage in fight-leading; sometimes, having a press conference or appearing on television was all that it took to establish leadership. After all, a fight can have lots of leaders.

So which fights has Cruz led? Let's keep listening:

"That's why I've worked so hard to lead the fights to defend these cherished values. Like the historic battle to defund Obamacare. Standing up to the leadership from both parties to fight a debt ceiling increase. And putting everything on the line to stop President Obama's illegal and unconstitutional amnesty."

You may have noticed that Cruz lost all these fights he led. Obamacare is still funded, the debt ceiling was raised, and Obama's executive actions on immigration stand, for the moment anyway. Now "Ted Cruz: A Record of Principled Failure" might not be the best campaign slogan, but as far as he's concerned, the outcome is secondary; what matters is the fight itself.

So he goes on: "Your fight is my fight," he says, and near the end, "I'm ready to stand with you to lead the fight." So now you know what Ted Cruz's campaign will be about. It's about fighting, and leading fights, and standing together while you and he lead fights, or at least he leads the fight while you gaze up admiringly at his fight-leading.

A second Trump administration will cement a right-wing majority on the Supreme Court for a generation, and put our collective future in the hands of someone who will be virtually unchecked by our institutions. The country has shifted rightward, and the reverberations will ensue for potentially the next few decades. In this climate, a robust independent media ecosystem will be more important than ever. We're committed to bringing you the latest news on how Trump's agenda will actually affect the American people, shining a light on the stories corporate media overlooks and keeping the public informed about how power really works in this country.

Quality journalism is expensive to produce, and we don't have corporate backers to rely on to fund what we do. Everything we do is thanks to our incredible community of readers, who chip in a few dollars at a time to make our work possible. Any amount you give today will help us continue reporting on what matters to our democracy.

You can help power this newsroom by making a one-time donation or by becoming a member today.