Ted Cruz has principles...and not much else...going for him.

It’s pretty hilarious to me that Cruz is being praised by some in the media for his “brave” and “principled” stand against Donald Trump at the Republican National Convention. Why is it hilarious to me? Because a) Ted Cruz is the last person on the face of the planet that should get credit for his principles and b) because the thesis of Ted’s speech, freedom, is a concept he at best cherry picks from and at worst has no fucking clue about whatsoever.

Let me just be clear here — I am in no way defending Trump or taking his side in this obvious feud/sexual tension that he and Cruz have for each other. The kinds of things that Trump said about Cruz’s wife would get him popped squarely in the mouth if it were my wife he was talking about. But stop and ask yourself a question — how many times has Cruz dragged President Obama or any other liberal politician through the mud?

Remember when Cruz quipped about what a joke Vice-President Joe Biden is, while Biden was mourning the loss of his son? Such principles! Or how about when Teddy had to apologize publicly to Ben Carson for lying to people about the neurosurgeon ending his campaign just so Cruz could make a cynical play at more votes in the primary? Then he straight-up lied about CNN sending out the information about Carson quitting? Poltifact nailed his “highly principled” ass to the wall for that one.

Oh, and there’s the completely fraudulent mailers Cruz’s campaign sent out in Iowa. They basically told people if they didn’t vote, a report would be made on their permanent record. Can you imagine how angry he’d have appeared to be at Trump, or God help us all Hillary, if they’d have done such a thing?









Frankly, I think it’s fantastic that Cruz snubbed Trump, but it’s kind of like a bucket of diarrhea being dropped on a guy already covered in puke. Fun, sure, but ultimately these two jackasses have just been trying to be the last one to shit on each other the entire primary season. I think they probably both knew they were targeting the same angry, white, bitter voters and that they’d have to duke it out for supremacy, and that’s why they were so mad at each other the whole time.

Putting aside Ted’s laughable and newfound scruples, let’s talk about what he decided to focus his Goldwater-esque speech on, shall we? Freedom.

Of course, the problem is that as an evangelical, Christian dominionist Cruz has as warped an idea of what freedom is as anyone in his party. Freedom isn’t telling adults they can’t get married or have to poop where you tell them to. Freedom isn’t treating every miscarriage like a possible homicide, or treating a rape victim like she might have been given some kind of twisted gift from your God because she happened to get impregnated by the bastard’s attack. Freedom isn’t telling people they can either starve or join the military if they happened to be born into poverty.

Freedom is not a hard concept. Unless you’re Ted Cruz.

But look, all the jokes about the irony of Ted Cruz behaving like he has principles aside, good on Teddy. He really should be patted on the back for not falling in line and endorsing a man who clearly has no business running anything, businesses or countries or otherwise. Cruz should be commended for at the very least drawing a line in the sand that even Paul Fucking Ryan didn’t have a problem crossing. So good job, Ted, on all that shit.

However…

He’s still a douchebag. A right, royal douchebag even. One night of doing the right thing won’t erase all the pretentious finger wagging he did in the Senate. It won’t take away his temper tantrum over Obamacare that cost the government billions of dollars because it had to shutdown over it. You won’t find me counted among those who suddenly feign respect for the man as a whole. So he did one thing right one time, that’s awesome. Now, if he’ll stop defending laws that let state governments trample LGBT people and if he’ll get on board with ending the drug war, maybe I’ll grudgingly respect his “principles.” Otherwise, he’s still just a douchebag.

The GOP’s most principled douchebag.

But a douchebag all the same.