Foreign Policy magazine has made a stark pronouncement about Texas Senator Ted Cruz. According to FP’s Erica Grieder, Cruz is “the most hated man in the U.S. Senate.”
In a March 29 piece, Grieder made this extreme judgment based on the new Senator’s outspoken positions on many issues, as well as on how irksome he is to old guard Senators who imagine that first-year colleagues should be seen and not heard.
Grieder starts her piece with several gratuitous insults. Right off, she says that Cruz is “the human equivalent of one of those flower-squirters that clowns wear on their lapels.” She then calls his initiatives and ideas “non-sequiturs” and says they are “self-defeating.” This was all just the first paragraph.
Next we learn that Cruz has “irritated” Democrats like Dianne Feinstein and been a “headache for GOP leaders.” This all because he stands up strongly for his principles and the positions that got him elected.
Does this really make him “hated,” though? He may elicit distaste in these old guard Senators and in those Senators that stand squarely against his principles, but “hated”? That is quite a subjective assessment.
Grieder’s piece isn’t all attack. She correctly points out that Senator Cruz often focuses on economics, putting “economic liberalism” at the center of many of his positions. Cruz calls his ideas a sort of small-government-based “opportunity conservatism.”
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