Ted Cruz's One Night in Paradise Is Not the Only Texas Republican Failure in Need of Discussion
It does us no good to chalk everything up to Partisan Bickering when only one side is engaging with reality.
_By Jack Holmes
Feb 18, 2021
https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a355493...nl22908463
photo by stefani reynolds various sources afp photo by stefani reynoldsafp via getty images
STEFANI REYNOLDS / Getty Images
You might think that, considering his spouse is a managing director at Goldman Sachs, Ted Cruz would fly private if he were attempting to flee for the balmy climes of Cancun while his home state of Texas—the one he has theoretically devoted himself to serving in public office—sinks into turmoil.
That might be the best defense the senator has at the moment, considering neither he nor his staff have come out to deny that he jumped on a United Airlines flight to Mexico on Wednesday while millions of Texans were preparing to try to survive the night.
The state has been rocked by winter weather this week that quickly took the state's infrastructure past the breaking point. It's not just that people's lights are out. They don't have heat as the sub-freezing temperatures arrive with each night. Some of the state's largest cities are under boil-water orders, but many people can't actually boil water, since they're without electricity or gas. Things are beginning to improve on the ground now, but it has been something approaching a failed state.
So it's almost beyond belief that Cruz would take a commercial flight, in full view of hundreds of other travelers, under these circumstances. It would be so shameless as to reinforce the notion that shame no longer functions in our society at all.
Imagine that. And yet Fox News is reporting that that's what he did. Even before the story was confirmed, some rushed to Flyin' Ted's defense on the basis that the pictures going viral weren't him, but even if it was, what was he supposed to do about the power grid?
This included conservative luminary Erick, Son of Erick, who chalked it all up to "performative drama" on the basis that Cruz was never going to personally go out with a wrench and fix a natural gas pipeline, or whatever.
In this formulation, a United States senator has no role to play while a deadly crisis brings his state to its knees. Nothing he can do! Everyone knows the job is to trigger the libs on Twitter and interview people for your podcast, and you have no power whatsoever to do things for your constituents who are in desperate need of food, water, and heat.
Just have to let nature take its course—or, more accurately, let other people actually do something. Never mind that Beto O'Rourke, Cruz's opponent in the 2018 Senate race and currently a private citizen without institutional authority, has organized people to make 151,000 calls to Texas senior citizens who could be in trouble right now.
Now Cruz is on his way back after one night in paradise. You can imagine him in seat 36C—it appears he once again just missed out on an upgrade, a tough break considering these flights may cost him the 2024 presidential nomination—trying to conjure up his excuse.
Will he say he was merely accompanying his family on the first flight? Dropping them off in Cancun, as one does? Seems like his spouse, Heidi Cruz—who, again, is a fairly formidable operator in the financial-services industry—could find her own way, but who's to say? More likely, he'll go with something about Cancel Culture, and the digital mob of bloodthirsty leftists who are out to get him for "things he's said and done."
We all eagerly await The Explanation.
And it might just work, too. Many of his Republican colleagues have spent this week blaming the Texas power grid failure on the Green New Deal, a policy platform that has not been implemented at the national or state level.
But somehow, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and her comrades infiltrated the Republican-run Texas state government, smuggling wind turbines in to generate clean energy but also serve as time bombs that would one day go off and destroy the state's grid.
Except for the fact that wind power was not the main factor in the electrical infrastructure collapse. It's just a lie that Governor Greg Abbott and others push on Fox News to avoid taking responsibility for what's happening.
But again, anything can work. And not just because the voters Cruz and Abbott depend on for support exist almost entirely within the closed epistemic system of right-wing media.
The thoroughly mainstream Axios had a report this morning in which we learned that "the power outages in Texas are the latest in a series of disasters that will be harder to fix—or prevent from happening again—because Americans are retreating to partisan and cultural corners instead of trying to solve problems."
It seems the problem is Both Sides. "There's always another uncivil war to be fought," Axios said sagely, "even when democracy, global health and now climate change are on the line."
houston, tx february 17 propane tanks are placed in a line as people wait for the power to turn on to fill their tanks in houston, texas on february 17, The situation in Houston has been dire.
The Washington Post / Getty Images
Of course, the Republican position for three decades has been that climate change does not exist. Or, more recently, that it is not a pressing issue. Or, even more recently, that there's nothing we can do about it without destroying our economy.
None of these positions reflect reality, where climate change may have exacerbated this week's weather in Texas.
The recently departed Republican president tried to withdraw from the World Health Organization and international cooperation more generally—not a great sign for our national interest in "global health."
And of course, the same president incited an insurrection to overturn the result of a free and fair election, for which he received the broad support of his Republican colleagues.
In fact, it's now the number-one litmus test to be a Republican. Failure to back The Big Lie gets you censured. Not a great sign for the party's interest in democracy.
As for Texas specifically, the Axios piece grants that the power-grid situation is the result of policy choices by political actors. Deregulation, unhooking the power grid from the rest of the country to avoid federal oversight, refusing to weatherize the energy infrastructure even after a warning event in 2011. An honest look at all this would involve examining the express political choices made by the Republican elected officials who have run the state for years.
That's what the aforementioned Beto O'Rourke got at on MSNBC this morning: "In Texas," he said, "you have an example of what happens when a state is governed by those who do not believe in government to begin with."
Is this false, or counterproductive to point out? This is the party still idolizing Ronald Reagan 35 years after he quipped, "The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: I'm from the government, and I'm here to help."
Of course, Texas Republicans will take the Government's help now, as FEMA is rolling in with generators and supplies—just as they should. Elsewhere, O'Rouke and Julian Castro placed blame on the governor and suggested he was unwilling to take responsibility for the situation. Again, is this wrong? Is it really counterproductive?
According to Axios, it very much is. In fact, it's on par with Abbott's wild bullshit about wind turbines. It's also on par, according to the bullet-point presentation in the article, with the mayor of Colorado City, Texas's insane Facebook rant in which he dismissed people begging for help as entitled moochers looking for "handouts." (People pay for electricity, by the way.)
In this view, examining the philosophy and policies of those who've held power for decades and how they relate to the current crisis is functionally the same as completely delusional rantings with no basis in reality.
(Though the mayor's rant does have some solid basis in Republican orthodoxy.)
It's all lamented as Partisan Bickering, because the performance of civil comity is paramount, regardless of the consequences for powerless, ordinary people whom journalists theoretically represent. This civility even seems to be more important than identifying problems and fixing them so this doesn't happen again.
Because it's simply not difficult to link Republican anti-government fanaticism—which by this point has evolved to an outright rejection of the notion of any kind of commonwealth or collective good to be pursued by the state—to the current situation.
Axios even included Rick Perry's extremely normal declaration that Texans would happily deal with these catastrophes if it meant avoiding federal interference in the state's power grid.
This is a philosophy towards how we should organize our political economy, and based on what's happening, it badly needs interrogation. You might think Now Is Not The Time To Get Political, much like we hear after other American atrocities, which would conveniently forestall the conversation about the failures of Republican anti-governance until half-past never.
Again, it's hard to see how this serves ordinary Texans now reaping the consequences. Calling on Both Sides to just please get along isn't merely futile.
By equating the two positions regardless of their factual content, it provides aid and comfort to the people who caused the mess and would rather keep telling tall tales than grapple with the situation at hand. Maybe nothing would have stopped Ted Cruz from tweeting about AOC from under a beach umbrella, but he certainly feels freer to do so in the current environment .
It does us no good to chalk everything up to Partisan Bickering when only one side is engaging with reality.
_By Jack Holmes
Feb 18, 2021
https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a355493...nl22908463
photo by stefani reynolds various sources afp photo by stefani reynoldsafp via getty images
STEFANI REYNOLDS / Getty Images
You might think that, considering his spouse is a managing director at Goldman Sachs, Ted Cruz would fly private if he were attempting to flee for the balmy climes of Cancun while his home state of Texas—the one he has theoretically devoted himself to serving in public office—sinks into turmoil.
That might be the best defense the senator has at the moment, considering neither he nor his staff have come out to deny that he jumped on a United Airlines flight to Mexico on Wednesday while millions of Texans were preparing to try to survive the night.
The state has been rocked by winter weather this week that quickly took the state's infrastructure past the breaking point. It's not just that people's lights are out. They don't have heat as the sub-freezing temperatures arrive with each night. Some of the state's largest cities are under boil-water orders, but many people can't actually boil water, since they're without electricity or gas. Things are beginning to improve on the ground now, but it has been something approaching a failed state.
So it's almost beyond belief that Cruz would take a commercial flight, in full view of hundreds of other travelers, under these circumstances. It would be so shameless as to reinforce the notion that shame no longer functions in our society at all.
Imagine that. And yet Fox News is reporting that that's what he did. Even before the story was confirmed, some rushed to Flyin' Ted's defense on the basis that the pictures going viral weren't him, but even if it was, what was he supposed to do about the power grid?
This included conservative luminary Erick, Son of Erick, who chalked it all up to "performative drama" on the basis that Cruz was never going to personally go out with a wrench and fix a natural gas pipeline, or whatever.
In this formulation, a United States senator has no role to play while a deadly crisis brings his state to its knees. Nothing he can do! Everyone knows the job is to trigger the libs on Twitter and interview people for your podcast, and you have no power whatsoever to do things for your constituents who are in desperate need of food, water, and heat.
Just have to let nature take its course—or, more accurately, let other people actually do something. Never mind that Beto O'Rourke, Cruz's opponent in the 2018 Senate race and currently a private citizen without institutional authority, has organized people to make 151,000 calls to Texas senior citizens who could be in trouble right now.
Now Cruz is on his way back after one night in paradise. You can imagine him in seat 36C—it appears he once again just missed out on an upgrade, a tough break considering these flights may cost him the 2024 presidential nomination—trying to conjure up his excuse.
Will he say he was merely accompanying his family on the first flight? Dropping them off in Cancun, as one does? Seems like his spouse, Heidi Cruz—who, again, is a fairly formidable operator in the financial-services industry—could find her own way, but who's to say? More likely, he'll go with something about Cancel Culture, and the digital mob of bloodthirsty leftists who are out to get him for "things he's said and done."
We all eagerly await The Explanation.
And it might just work, too. Many of his Republican colleagues have spent this week blaming the Texas power grid failure on the Green New Deal, a policy platform that has not been implemented at the national or state level.
But somehow, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and her comrades infiltrated the Republican-run Texas state government, smuggling wind turbines in to generate clean energy but also serve as time bombs that would one day go off and destroy the state's grid.
Except for the fact that wind power was not the main factor in the electrical infrastructure collapse. It's just a lie that Governor Greg Abbott and others push on Fox News to avoid taking responsibility for what's happening.
But again, anything can work. And not just because the voters Cruz and Abbott depend on for support exist almost entirely within the closed epistemic system of right-wing media.
The thoroughly mainstream Axios had a report this morning in which we learned that "the power outages in Texas are the latest in a series of disasters that will be harder to fix—or prevent from happening again—because Americans are retreating to partisan and cultural corners instead of trying to solve problems."
It seems the problem is Both Sides. "There's always another uncivil war to be fought," Axios said sagely, "even when democracy, global health and now climate change are on the line."
houston, tx february 17 propane tanks are placed in a line as people wait for the power to turn on to fill their tanks in houston, texas on february 17, The situation in Houston has been dire.
The Washington Post / Getty Images
Of course, the Republican position for three decades has been that climate change does not exist. Or, more recently, that it is not a pressing issue. Or, even more recently, that there's nothing we can do about it without destroying our economy.
None of these positions reflect reality, where climate change may have exacerbated this week's weather in Texas.
The recently departed Republican president tried to withdraw from the World Health Organization and international cooperation more generally—not a great sign for our national interest in "global health."
And of course, the same president incited an insurrection to overturn the result of a free and fair election, for which he received the broad support of his Republican colleagues.
In fact, it's now the number-one litmus test to be a Republican. Failure to back The Big Lie gets you censured. Not a great sign for the party's interest in democracy.
As for Texas specifically, the Axios piece grants that the power-grid situation is the result of policy choices by political actors. Deregulation, unhooking the power grid from the rest of the country to avoid federal oversight, refusing to weatherize the energy infrastructure even after a warning event in 2011. An honest look at all this would involve examining the express political choices made by the Republican elected officials who have run the state for years.
That's what the aforementioned Beto O'Rourke got at on MSNBC this morning: "In Texas," he said, "you have an example of what happens when a state is governed by those who do not believe in government to begin with."
Is this false, or counterproductive to point out? This is the party still idolizing Ronald Reagan 35 years after he quipped, "The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: I'm from the government, and I'm here to help."
Of course, Texas Republicans will take the Government's help now, as FEMA is rolling in with generators and supplies—just as they should. Elsewhere, O'Rouke and Julian Castro placed blame on the governor and suggested he was unwilling to take responsibility for the situation. Again, is this wrong? Is it really counterproductive?
According to Axios, it very much is. In fact, it's on par with Abbott's wild bullshit about wind turbines. It's also on par, according to the bullet-point presentation in the article, with the mayor of Colorado City, Texas's insane Facebook rant in which he dismissed people begging for help as entitled moochers looking for "handouts." (People pay for electricity, by the way.)
In this view, examining the philosophy and policies of those who've held power for decades and how they relate to the current crisis is functionally the same as completely delusional rantings with no basis in reality.
(Though the mayor's rant does have some solid basis in Republican orthodoxy.)
It's all lamented as Partisan Bickering, because the performance of civil comity is paramount, regardless of the consequences for powerless, ordinary people whom journalists theoretically represent. This civility even seems to be more important than identifying problems and fixing them so this doesn't happen again.
Because it's simply not difficult to link Republican anti-government fanaticism—which by this point has evolved to an outright rejection of the notion of any kind of commonwealth or collective good to be pursued by the state—to the current situation.
Axios even included Rick Perry's extremely normal declaration that Texans would happily deal with these catastrophes if it meant avoiding federal interference in the state's power grid.
This is a philosophy towards how we should organize our political economy, and based on what's happening, it badly needs interrogation. You might think Now Is Not The Time To Get Political, much like we hear after other American atrocities, which would conveniently forestall the conversation about the failures of Republican anti-governance until half-past never.
Again, it's hard to see how this serves ordinary Texans now reaping the consequences. Calling on Both Sides to just please get along isn't merely futile.
By equating the two positions regardless of their factual content, it provides aid and comfort to the people who caused the mess and would rather keep telling tall tales than grapple with the situation at hand. Maybe nothing would have stopped Ted Cruz from tweeting about AOC from under a beach umbrella, but he certainly feels freer to do so in the current environment .
