Why has Ted Cruz grown even more frazzled and shrill than usual? Because he knows that all republican bullshitters like him reach a peak and then end up on the downslide for the rest of their career, and he knows he's on that downslide, and knows he can't stop it.
Republican bullshitters go always through the same career arc. You start off with nonstop lies carefully crafted to appeal to conservative bottom feeders, who quickly build you up, until you reach a point where you're in mainstream America's face for awhile, and they hate you.
If you're a republican bullshitter, the key is to pull off your big career accomplishment – the presidency, corrupt legislation, whatever it is – before the mainstream decides you're a menace to the country starts aggressively pushing back against you.
Because once the mainstream media and the mainstream public decide that you're the most dangerous republican bullshitter, they relentlessly chip away at you. The media digs up your scandals. The public mocks you, and mocks their right wing friends and relatives who listen to you.
At that point even right wingers decide that the republican bullshitter in question has too much baggage and isn't worth hanging onto. Instead, right wingers prefer to seek out a new republican bullshitter, without the baggage, that their mainstream friends won't mock them over.
Mainstream America took big swings at Ted Cruz in 2016 and again in 2018, and wounded him, but couldn't quite send him into a tailspin. Then Cancun was the straw that broke him, he became and overwhelming punchline, and now even right wingers see him as too messy to worship.
So now Ted Cruz is on a downslide. The thing is, republican bullshitters never do recover from being on the downslide. Maybe they can keep their seat for a long time, but they're no longer in position to be an official or unofficial leader, even on their own side. They just fade.
Cruz knows it too, because he's unfamiliar with the human race, but he's not oblivious as to how politics works. So now he's just sort of sitting there for the rest of his career, having to put int he work of a Senator, but getting no real corrupt rewards from it.
A lot of republican bullshitters resign at this point in their career, and cash in with a multimillion dollar payday at a conservative think tank or Fox News. We'll see what Ted Cruz does. Don't be shocked if he "retires" in a couple years. We'll see.
The peak points for republican bullshitters are always interesting. Mitch McConnell, who is savvy, lasted decades before he (arguably) peaked by losing his majority job in the Trump debacle. Ben Carson, who is clinically ill, peaked like two weeks after he entered politics.
But these republicans always peak, because they're all bullshitters, and bullshitters always peak, unless 1) They spend their entire career just under the level of mainstream scrutiny, or 2) They're incredibly savvy enough to survive that scrutiny.
On the other hand, Joe Biden has been in the political spotlight for like fifty years, he's been Vice President, he's been under mainstream scrutiny for most of his life, he's now U.S. President... and he still hasn't peaked. Because he's not a bullshitter. Funny how that works.
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
