Pierce: Ted Cruz Is Now Truly the Devil's Advocate
Ted Cruz Is Now Truly the Devil's Advocate
It turns out that Cruz deserves Trump more than Trump deserves him.
BY CHARLES P. PIERCE
OCT 23, 2018
If Goethe had written the Left Behind novels, his climactic moment probably would have looked like what was on display Monday night in Houston—a man, scrounging the tight, dark corners of his soul, probing every nook and cranny of his essential being, for one last, little splinter of a smidgen of a chip of a portion of a piece of it that he could sell to a political loan shark for another six years in the U.S. Senate. For what doth it profit a man if he gain the Subcommittee on Seapower, but lose his own soul?...
For anyone who followed the 2016 campaign, it was a stunning moment of clarity. It is not often that you see a man put his entire self-worth up for purchase like a broken garden gnome at a yard sale. And it is not often that you see someone so gleefully, greedily grab it up as though it were just another pile of grimy foreign money, just another hotel he could run into the ground. Ted Cruz deserves Donald Trump even more than Donald Trump deserves Ted Cruz. He is now truly the devil's advocate, and the retainer isn't worth the embarrassment. Accept this man, said Ted Cruz. Because he is not the man Ted Cruz called a sniveling coward, said Ted Cruz. Because he is not the man Ted Cruz called a maniac, said Ted Cruz.
“In 2020, Donald Trump will be overwhelmingly reelected as president of the United States,” said Ted Cruz, and you could see the last flickering spark of humanity in him wink softly and then go out. Whereupon Ted Cruz, candidate for re-election, vanished from the proceedings entirely. There were more people wearing Space Force T-shirts—oh, you poor dears—than wearing Ted Cruz gear. The signs were all about anything but Ted Cruz. The president*'s remarks barely mentioned him. Ted Cruz sold that last little bit of himself to the president* and, right there, before God and the world, the president* reneged as though Ted Cruz were an Atlantic City gardener....
Ted Cruz got elected on the first stirrings of the politics of resentment that both beat him in 2016, and forced him to peddle the dead embers of what he used to be to the guy who beat him while paying testament to the guy's greatness. It would be an American political epic, if the characters didn't come so cheap.
https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a24109666/donald-trump-ted-cruz-texas-rally/
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One we have no choice but to watch. 
