Which seems to match how he regards himself.

“He has come to the reluctant but unavoidable conclusion that he is simply more intelligent, more principled, more right — in both senses of the word — than pretty much everyone else in our nation’s capital,” writes Jason Zengerle in a profile of Cruz in the new issue of GQ. That’s not just a skeptical journalist’s take. That’s many exasperated Republicans’ assessment of Cruz, too.

He has eschewed the slow route to Senate prominence, which would have involved building alliances, for the fast track, which means playing the firebrand, playing to the cheap seats and playing to a news cycle that thrills to conflict.

And he’s lusting to do the same in the 2016 presidential race, especially if Rand Paul’s isolationism means that he can’t seize the role effectively. Cruz has bought into the notion that as a true conservative, he’d mimic Ronald Reagan’s success and avoid Bob Dole’s and Mitt Romney’s failures. This rewrites history, ignoring that the Republican nomination doesn’t go to the firebrand and that two Bushes won three presidencies by lofting words like “kinder,” “gentler” and “compassionate,” adjectives no one would ever affix to Cruz.

But then he’s selective with facts, a trait on jaw-dropping display during the Senate speech. He bemoaned the brinkmanship that other lawmakers engage in, spoke as if there’d never been adequate debate over Obamacare and pretended that the law had been implemented fully enough to be definitively appraised.

He also said, “This country will be better off if we work together.” Because he’s all about harmony.

Here’s more history he forgets: most of the politicians who’ve gone all the way had not just his ambition but also a geniality that’s alien to him and a degree of affection from peers that, by week’s end, he can say a permanent goodbye to. He’s grandstanding and bloviating his way to obsolescence.

To wit: on Monday evening, the Senate’s two highest-ranking Republicans, Mitch McConnell and John Cornyn, rejected Cruz’s particular strategy to defund Obamacare. And Cruz doesn’t come across so winningly in a recent profile in The Weekly Standard, which, like Fox, is supposed to be friendly turf.

Its author, Andrew Ferguson, describes a car ride in which he mulls hurling himself out the door, no matter how rocky his landing, rather than listen to Cruz for another second. The Senate can relate.