He has nothing good to say and he’s trying not to lose. Simple as that.
Not Ted Cruz
U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz has been a loud anti-abortion crusader throughout his political career.
But as reproductive rights loom over the election season as a key issue for voters, Cruz is uncharacteristically quiet.
The Texas Republican, running for a third term in the Senate, is locked in a tight race against U.S. Sen. Colin Allred, D-Dallas, who has made restoring access to abortion and blaming Cruz for the toppling of Roe v. Wade central to his campaign.
This past week, Allred’s campaign, boosted by an influx of cash from Senate Democrats, began airing an ad on TV and streaming platforms across the state that blasted Cruz for his anti-abortion record.
Texas has banned almost all abortions — including in cases of rape and incest — since Roe was overturned. Since then, Cruz has been more careful about how he engages on the topic. He has repeatedly called abortion a state issue, while offering more vocal support for in vitro fertilization.
Cruz, through a spokesperson, declined a request for an interview. The Texas Tribune reached out to his campaign eight times over six weeks to ask about his positions, posing nine initial questions via email and several follow ups on topics ranging from his past support for a national abortion ban to how he squares his belief in fetal personhood with his support for IVF — a process which routinely involves the disposal of fertilized embryos.
Cruz’s campaign did not respond directly to questions, instead providing links to previous statements he had made on the topic in other interviews. Those statements did not address several specific questions.
You have to respect the effort. The Trib spends the rest of the story going over individual pieces of legislation and rhetorical items and how they all fit into the bigger picture, but really it all comes down to one basic truth: Ted Cruz will never vote for a bill that will make abortion access more readily available, and he will never vote against a bill that makes abortion access more restrictive. It’s just not any more complicated than that.
He may be the clearest example of the rot in Texas politics, but Ken Paxton is hard to top.
I saw part of a new ad for Teddy this morning and it’s more trans-panic. Some grumpy old veteran rants about someone in the military getting a sex change operation and how dare the taxpayer $ fund it!! So much for those “kitchen table issues” that voters supposedly really care about.
This issue gets a big yawn from me. Unlike the sports issue, there’s no credible claim of someone having a possible unfair advantage. I would bet that there’s not very many of those surgeries happening in the ranks of the military, and given the current recruitment shortfalls, it’s probably more cost effective to retain qualified trans people.