Icy blast of anti-Ted Cruz outrage shows little sign of abating

Wintry conditions eased in Texas on Friday, but a storm of outrage continued to build over Senator Ted Cruz’s quick trip to Cancún, Mexico, at a time when millions of his constituents were still stranded without heat, food and water.

“Texans’ anger with Ted Cruz right now could power an entire electrical grid,” a Houston Chronicle editorial blasted. “He plopped himself down on a direct flight to paradise and left us to fend for ourselves in this frozen hell.”

In a decision destined for future lists of all-time, tone-deaf political blunders, Cruz flew with his wife and two pre-teen daughters to the tropical beach resort on Wednesday, planning to stay for three nights. The Cruz household had become one of millions in Texas to lose power for days in a winter storm tied to the deaths of at least 30 people.

When pictures of him rolling a fat suitcase through the airport went viral, Cruz hastily rebooked his return flight for Thursday morning – too late.

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“Snake on a plane, right there!” late-night host Jimmy Kimmel said on ABC on Thursday night. “Headed, ironically, to the very place he tried to build the wall around.”

“I mean, look, I get that Ted Cruz is tired,” said the Daily Show host, Trevor Noah. “The man deserves a break after trying so hard to overthrow the government, but this is not the time, Ted!”

Not even the chairman of the state Republican party, Allen West, rose to defend Cruz when asked about the trip by the Associated Press.

“That’s something that he has to answer to his constituents about,” West said.

Displeasure with Cruz, who narrowly won his 2018 re-election, was compounded after group chat messages sent by his wife, Heidi Cruz, leaked to media outlets on Thursday night. In the chats, she said their house was “FREEZING” and invited neighbors to join the family at the Cancún Ritz-Carlton hotel, where she said they had stayed “many times” and noted the room price this week ($309 per night).

“Anyone can or want to leave for the week?” Heidi Cruz wrote. “We may go to Cancún.”

The contrast between the Cruz family’s spontaneous vacation and the plight of most Texans unleashed a widening torrent of outrage and ridicule from residents and local city papers.

“He spent just one night out of the country – not long enough for a sunburn, but plenty of time to get blistered,” a Dallas Morning News story quipped.

“He always seemed a little too calculated for such a gross error in political judgment,” the Chronicle editorial board wrote. “We were wrong.”

Even Cruz’s Texas colleague in the Senate, John Cornyn, retweeted an unmistakable dig at his vacationing Republican colleague: “Meanwhile, @JohnCornyn’s Twitter feed is full of helpful news and resources for Texas.”

Cruz tried to repair some of the damage on Thursday, speaking to reporters outside his Houston home, where power had since been restored.

“From the moment I sat on the plane, I began really second-guessing that decision and saying, ‘Look, I know why we’re doing this, but I’ve also got responsibilities,’” he said. “Leaving when so many Texans were hurting didn’t feel right, and so I changed my return flight and flew back on the first available flight I could take,” having previously implied that he had only taken the nearly 1,000-mile flight to accompany his children on the plane.

“Look, it was obviously a mistake,” he added.

At least one person disagreed. The Florida representative Matt Gaetz, one of Donald Trump’s most ardent cheerleaders – and a partner, like Cruz, in Trump’s effort to overturn the results of the November election – staked out a contrarian viewpoint on Twitter after midnight, writing: “Ted Cruz should not have apologized.”

Gaetz did not explain his reasoning. But no other prominent Republican was heard to agree – and Democrats condemned the senator’s jaunt.

“Cruz is emblematic of what the Texas Republican party and its leaders have become: weak, corrupt, inept and self-serving politicians who don’t give a damn about the people they were elected to represent,” said the Texas Democratic party chair, Gilberto Hinojosa, in a statement. “They were elected by the people but have no interest or intent of doing their jobs.”