Posted on 06/29/2015 5:47:07 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
NEW YORK CITY – By his own telling, it’s been a lifelong struggle for U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz to rein in his self-described “cocky” nature.
In adolescence, young adulthood, and now as a junior senator running for the presidency, he has rubbed people the wrong way – and he is self-aware about it.
“When I was in junior high and a geek, I thought that popularity was the Holy Grail,” Cruz said in a New York City interview with The Texas Tribune about his new memoir, A Time for Truth.
“And in high school, where I achieved some modicum of popularity, I discovered it wasn’t all that,” he added. “That it was far more important to stick to your principles and maintain your integrity.”
Cruz's youthful efforts to fit in, according to his memoir, included changing his first name from from “Felito” to “Ted” and signing up for sports teams. It also meant downplaying his intellect by tucking his ace grades away from other kids' sight.
He had a relatively charmed trajectory through the Ivy Leagues to a U.S. Supreme Court clerkship and onto George W. Bush’s 2000 presidential campaign. He was high enough in the food chain as a policy aide at the campaign's Congress Avenue headquarters to earn a Bush nickname, “Theodore,” a term of endearment for his serious nature. And as a litigating attorney, Cruz played an integral role during the 2000 Florida recount.
Cruz came away from the campaign experience with big dreams of serving in a senior role in the second Bush administration, writing in the memoir that he imagined himself as “the equivalent of Michael J. Fox’s character in The American President – the young, passionate idealist urging the president, in the heat of battle, to do the right thing.”
He described being devastated when that did not come to pass. In the book, he blamed it on being "far too cocky" on the campaign, and burning "a fair number of bridges" by interjecting his opinions — to the chagrin of campaign elders.
“As a result, the first year of the Bush administration was one of the hardest of my life,” he added. “But it also turned out to be one of the most important because I couldn’t blame anyone else for my situation – if I wanted things to change I had to look inside myself.”
In many ways, Cruz finds himself in a similarly rocky situation in the U.S. Senate. At least 16 times in his book’s first 19 pages, he writes of his party’s Senate leadership in less than flattering terms.
Among their perceived transgressions: surrendering to the Democrats, risk aversion, “chicanery” and caving in to President Obama.
This isn't just in Cruz's book; in recent weeks, he's added "Washington cartel" terminology to his campaign messaging, and appears to be running as much against his own party as the Democrats.
In the Monday interview, Cruz described himself more as the recipient of fire from Senate leaders than as the one lobbing the bombs. But his criticism of “GOP leadership” hits close to home. The Senate’s second-ranking Republican is Cruz’s fellow Texas senator, Majority Whip John Cornyn.
“John Cornyn and I are friends,” Cruz said Monday when asked if he was calling out his senior senator in the memoir. “We have a good working relationship together. We’ve worked together for Texas on many issues, and I expect we continue to do so for years to come.”
Still, he didn’t exactly let Cornyn off the hook.
“When I speak about GOP leadership, that is deliberately written in the generic, rather than in individuals,” he said. “Because it gives any individual senator the opportunity through his or her actions to behave differently. It gives the opportunity for a change of course.”
I personally don’t care how cocksure he is of himself. We need someone who is off the charts full of himself and not afraid to get the job done.
You need that kind of confidence and conviction to withstand the almost certain arrows the media and the inside the Beltway crowd are going to shoot at you.
No, Mr. Cruz, you just go ahead and be who you are and do what you’ve got to do. And never mind what ‘they’ say...
The libs are really ripping Ted in the comment section of the Texas Tribune. Definitely needs some freeping.
He’s the kind of leader we need. While other potentials are flailing around, yelling, and flipping their toupees, Cruz is laying out policy to deal with judicial tyranny.
Amazing...but he was ostracized because he didn’t play well with others?
I rather like the rebel - the one who isn’t afraid to be different and in his case admire him for his convictions. We need a leader, not a go along to get along.
The Tribune is an Austin-based paper, so there’s that.
To not have served in the 2nd term of Bush was probably a blessing.
In retrospect Bush II was responsible for leading the 2006 Comprehensive Amnesty effort which handed Congress over to the democrats.
Bush’s willingness to let Wall St. police itself, standing down the SEC and cozying up to bankers and traders that gave him a standing ovation on the floor of the NY Stock Exchange can rightly be said to have created an environment for criminal banking that gave the White House to Obama.
The GOP establishment’s god-awful lameness in the 2008 and 2012 elections and their corrupt sellout behavior since have helped the democrats lead us to where we are today.
If Ted had been involved in all that, he wouldn’t have as much credibility today. He would likely have been collateral damage.
For those who believe in God and see God’s hand in all things, it’s not a stretch to believe it possible that Ted Cruz was drawn away from the Bush catastrophic collapse to avoid tainting his reputation with the nation’s worst financial crisis in its history, a crisis that continues to play out today.
That explains it. Being from PA, I’m not aware of which city in Texas, is home to which newspaper. But, one thing I do know from Free Republic is that Austin is a liberal hell hole.
Ted Cruz Ping! This speaks Larges Volumes about the mans Characters
“When I speak about GOP leadership, that is deliberately written in the generic, rather than in individuals,” he said. “Because it gives any individual senator the opportunity through his or her actions to behave differently. It gives the opportunity for a change of course.””
Im impressed, again.
Thank you Ted!
Daily Digest Ted Cruz Ping! WTF? Where did you come up with that. Ted OLSON was the lead on that and Ted Cruz was just one of many staffers.
Cruz assisted in assembling the Bush legal team, devising strategy, and drafting pleadings for filing with the Supreme Court of Florida and U.S. Supreme Court, the specific case being Bush v. Gore, during the 2000 Florida presidential recounts, leading to two successful decisions for the Bush team.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Cruz
They must really be scared he’ll win.
“When I was in junior high and a geek, I thought that popularity was the Holy Grail,”
Can’t say I relate. Except for the geek part. I was nothing if not a geek.
There is a big difference between “won” and “assisted”.
In your opinion perhaps.
Here’s a tip: words mean things.
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