It’s not your imagination: Rep. Beto O’Rourke has taken a sharp turn toward attacking Sen. Ted Cruz in his run for the U.S. Senate.

It started here on Tuesday at O’Rourke and Cruz’s second debate, in which the Democratic congressman acidly resurrected “Lyin’ Ted,” President Donald Trump’s mocking handle for Cruz during the 2016 Republican primary. And it continued Wednesday with O’Rourke’s launching of TV ads in which he criticizes the senator directly on education, health care and immigration.

Meeting with the San Antonio Express-News Editorial Board on Wednesday, O’Rourke acknowledged a deliberate shift in his strategy and tone — and insisted it was necessary to combat Cruz’s dishonesty in the race.

“I wanted to make sure these ads that he’s running that are dishonest — ‘Beto has called police the Jim Crow.’ Never said that,” he told me. ‘Beto O’Rourke wants to impose a $10 a barrel tax, he wants to raise your price at the pump by 24 cents a gallon. Beto O’Rourke’s a socialist. Beto O’Rourke wants to do this or that. Beto wants to take your guns. Beto wants to open borders. Beto wants to legalize heroin.’ He has said all of those things.”

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O’Rourke continued, “I became convinced after that first debate that I had to draw a very clear and clean and precise distinction. I’m running on my record. I have the courage of my convictions. … But for having the courage of our convictions is precisely why people don’t talk about criminal justice issues, why they don’t talk about gun violence, because they’re going to be hit with these kinds of lies and this kind of dishonesty.”

Cruz also met with the Express-News editorial board on Wednesday. He clearly was stung by his opponent’s newly confrontational edge.

“You saw him last night unleashing nasty, personal attacks,” Cruz said of the debate. “I mean, going after me directly. By the way, I didn’t respond in kind. … I didn’t impugn his character. I didn’t go after him personally.”

Yet, it’s fair to ask: Has Cruz lied about O’Rourke’s record?

Take the $10 a barrel tax on oil.

This dates back to when former President Barack Obama was in office and Republicans loved to frustrate his agenda. In 2016, Obama proposed a $10 tax on every barrel of oil, paid by energy companies, to fund infrastructure projects.

House Republicans introduced a resolution opposing the proposal, and O’Rourke voted against it.

“So when I said he voted for that, he turned and called me a liar and repeated the ‘Lyin’ Ted — see, he’s just dishonest, he’ll lie,’” Cruz said. “I’ll point out that the media coverage all went with that’s the headline in most of the stories. I do think, look, what I was saying is objectively, in black and white, true, that he voted for that.”

But did O’Rourke actually vote “for” a $10 a barrel tax on oil?

When pressed, Cruz conceded the technicality: “He voted against a resolution disapproving of a $10 tax.”

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That doesn’t deliver the same punch as “Beto O’Rourke wants you to pay 24 more cents per gallon of gas,” as the Cruz campaign has plastered on billboards from here to Dallas.

Cruz has done this again and again in his campaign: amplified a truth to such a degree that it approaches a lie.

“Amplifyin’ Ted,” though, lacks zing. Hence, Trump’s “Lyin’ Ted,” was weaponized anew this week by O’Rourke.

Cruz believes he knows why: O’Rourke is scared.

“I think he and his team are concerned about where the race is,” Cruz said, “and they decided, they got $38 million they just raised and so they’re going to carpet bomb us for the next three weeks and see what happens.”

O’Rourke disputed that.

“I’ve never paid for a poll,” he said. “I don’t have a pollster. I don’t believe in them.”

O’Rourke believes in crowds. For months, he has attracted huge ones at town halls across Texas, including here. At one, he managed to defuse a tense situation.

“We were …on the West Side, we had a big outdoor town hall and there were protestors there who were protesting my stance on gun safety,” he recalled. “And what we did as they were protesting, we invited them into the conversation … handed them the microphone, ‘You ask the questions, I’ll answer.’ One of them afterwards was so impressed, he gave me his card and his cell phone number, and I called him after the rally and said I want to continue the conversation.”

Running as an unabashed liberal in deep-red Texas, O’Rourke is hoping to fuel his campaign in an unconventional way: with naked truths.