By Anonymous
I like Ted Cruz. Seriously. Any Libertarian presence within the Republican Party is cool with me. However, Ted Cruz really struck out on this whole Obamacare issue. Obamacare can be described as nothing less than an absolute “mess” (to keep it politically correct for now), and this really should come as no surprise to anybody with even a smidgen of common sense. That’s why Ted Cruz should’ve kept silent on the issue. Well, not silent, but he shouldn’t have been willing to take the a large burden of the blame for shutting the government down and almost allowing the United States to default on its debt. I’m not saying that this was his fault. But the media outlets across the nation are. And let’s be honest, the Republicans lost the government shutdown battle. The Republican Party has reached an all-time low, at least according to Post-ABC surveys. Only 32% of responders have a favorable view of it, while 63% have an unfavorable view (almost 40% have a strongly unfavorable view). On top of that, 53% of people are blaming the Republicans for the shutdown, with another 15% blaming both parties. In other words, 68% feel that the Republicans are at least partially responsible for this. The Republican Party discussion is for another time; this is about Ted Cruz, who also suffered in favorability polls. Shortly after his 21-hour September 24th speech about the Affordable Care Act, which happened to be the fourth longest speech in the history of the Senate, 29% of respondents to a HuffPost/YouVote poll approved of Cruz while 31% disapproved and 41% had no opinion. In the latest version of the same poll, Senator Cruz’s numbers have slipped substantially to 43% disapproval and 31% approval. While Ted Cruz does seem like a “F#%$ the Haters” type of guy, those numbers definitely won’t help his presidential aspirations. That slide probably has a lot to do with the media attacking Cruz during the implementation stages of Obamacare. And here lies the problem: had he not made himself a spectacle, and had the shutdown been avoided, the media wouldn’t have been able to attack him, meaning they would’ve had to fill their programs with other coverage. They would’ve had to talk about the disastrous Obamacare website problems. They would’ve talked more about the irony of the phone line being 1-800-318-2596, and how the corresponding letters spell out 1-800-F1UCKYO. You’d know that the website cost enough to pay a technician $200 an hour… for 5,000 years. And it didn’t work, but I guess that’s what happens when you only take one bid. Sometimes, it’s easier to fix a problem by letting everyone realize how much of a problem it actually is. This was one of those cases in which that would’ve been extremely simple to do. At least Senator Cruz can smile knowing he isn’t Victor Cruz (even though both are playing for teams that have had horrific records in the recent past).