Daily Meme: Why Is Ted Cruz This Week's Shiny Object?

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  • Hey, remember when Marco Rubio was destined to be the 2016 Republican nominee? That first week of August seems so long ago now. And so do the times we were talking about this in February. Or April. The circadian rhythms of the senator from Florida's 2016 buzz are laughably predictable at this point...
  • ... as are the moments when his sparkle fades and another conservative star take the mic. Like Chris Christie! Or Scott Brown (no, we don't get it either)! Or Ted Cruz! God, there's like 12 of them.
  • But the arc of Cruz's rapid rise and fall in the news cycle this week offered the best reason yet for choosing to tune out all this election clickbait for at least another year.
  • Cruz started off the week dealing with a revelation (if we've learned anything about electoral ambulance chasers, it's that they love good longform ... birth certificates), which quickly veered away from actual political concerns and descended into a deep bog of grade-A maple syrup jokes.
  • Thinkpieces were written.
  • #slatepitches were tossed.
  • Obsessions were alleged.
  • Questions of dubious merit were posed.
  • In the end, the Texas senator's frontrunner bubble may have popped (just like every single blink-and-you'll-miss-it-frontrunner before him), but Cruz's chances for snagging the big prize almost surely remain unchanged. But never fear: We've gone back to discussing the Old Faithful of Republican primary frontrunners-Rand Paul! Did you hear? Chris Matthews-who predicted that Rudy Giuliani would be the Republican nominee in 2008-is certain that Paul is going to win. The senator from Kentucky also might be just the man we deserve-if not the man we want-to run against Hillary Clinton!
  • Or maybe Marco Rubio is-again! Did you hear he's going to a fundraiser? And why won't Chris Christie tell us what he thinks about social issues? And OMG Jeb Bush!

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