Thursday, February 18, 2021

by
Abby Zimet, Further columnist

Reuters Image, with Bernie from Twitter

Man, Texas GOP pols are the crappy, clueless, self-serving gift that keeps on giving. Turns out Ted Cruz was in a no-witnesses hurry to abet and acquit the leader of a violent insurrection so he could swoop off to his sun-baked, taxpayer-funded beach vacation in Cancun, Mexico, and he was damned if he'd let the messy matter of a few million constituents huddling in the cold and dark and boiling snow for drinking water stop him. Thus was a pot-bellied Cruz outed in multiple images at Houston's airport - in a first class lounge, waiting on line, then on a plane, passport in hand. This from the guy who trashed Democrats for flying during a pandemic, who just told Texans to avoid icy roads and "stay home and hug your kids," who long urged we close the border with Mexico but who was now flocking there to have a better life with his family because conditions in his own state are dangerous and untenable, though he was embarrassed enough to not even tell his staff. Evidently only Ted Cruz is stupid enough to think he wouldn't be noticed en route, despite his wearing a mask he'd defiantly worn in D.C. reading, "Come and take it" - to which gun-control advocate Shannon Watts demurely asked, "You mean his job?" Even Fox News and other conservatives joined in the blowback - "The photos speak for themselves," "Ted Cruz flew to Cancun with his family amid power crisis in Texas," "Ted Cruz jets out to sunny Cancun as Texas shivers in the dark" - leading Twitter to suggest he did less damage when he was the Zodiac Killer.

When he realized Planet Earth was responding with a furious WTF, Cruz backtracked as awkwardly and unconvincingly as only Lyin' - and now Flyin' - Ted could, issuing a statement full of ludicrous claims that carefully tried to toss his young daughters under the bus for peak performance so he didn't have to go there. His family lost heat and power too - he already said they didn't - with school cancelled "our girls asked to take a trip with friends" - because pre-teens always get to ask to go to Mexico on vacation - so "wanting to be a good dad" he flew down with them - though he was carrying a way-too-hefty-bag and CDC advises against nonessential travel including to Mexico and his Goldman-Sachs-wife sent out gleeful texts to friends asking if “Anyone can or want to leave for the week?” to join them at the posh RItz-Carlton on the beach - and he was coming right back - though sleuths found he was in fact booked through Saturday. Online, people were...unconvinced, though one noted it's a shame Texans can't heat their homes with gaslighting. "I too spent a week making sure my kids had fun without school in TX," wrote one aggrieved mom. "They shoveled snow into our bathtub, learned to light candles safely, learned to fill toilet water tanks with buckets, and learned to stand in very long grocery lines to get a 6-pack of drinking water." The hashtag #TedFled was busy; so was a fundraiser for Act Blue to put up Ted Fled billboards. Also busy, meanwhile, was the guy who Texas decided not to make their senator. While Slimy Ted was cozying up to the breakfast buffet in Cancun, Beto O'Rourke assembled an army of volunteers who reached out to over 150,000 senior citizens stranded in the crisis, working to get them food, water, rides to warming centers or whatever they needed. Yeah, nice call Texas.