Ted Cruz Wins the Shameless Olympics

Will somebody put a net over the ten-month Senator from Texas and give him a saliva test for political rabies? Under attack from Conservative Republicans of all stripes as a destroyer of his party, Ted Cruz goes to the White House and lectures the President on how he must modify Obamacare.

What’s Spanish for chutzpah and meshuga?

If there is a thin line between brilliant and balmy, Cruz keeps crossing it with no apparent awareness he is leading an invisible army into battle. With no evidence whatsoever, he has convinced John Boehner that Tea Party troops are under his command and holding the White House hostage.

Yet JohnMcCain tells Fox News that Cruz is “not representing us,” and would-be Presidential candidate Rep. Peter King tells Wolf Blitzer, “President Obama should send a campaign contribution to Ted Cruz. He has done more to boost Obamacare than anyone." Even Grover Norquist is feuding with him.

The Shutdown and debt-ceiling crisis have yet to be resolved, but Rafael Edward Cruz has won the 2013 Shameless Olympics hands down.

“It’s one thing to have a reputation as a loudmouth,” says a respected Conservative, “it’s quite another to have a reputation as a loser. That’s what the shutdown fight has done to Cruz. Among true believers he’ll be the one who was a leader in a fight that surely would have won if the squishes hadn’t sold them out. But for most party actors, including many sympathetic to Tea Partyism, he’s going to be the guy who ran up the wrong hill.”

Like the loony who huffs up the stairs in the old movie “Arsenic and Old Lace, dressed as Teddy Roosevelt, waving a wooden sword and yelling, “Charge!”