Ted Cruz sure generates some over-the-top reactions.
MSNBC’s Chris Matthews calls him the “unsmiling, contemptuous face of the wild, nasty hard right.”
New York Times columnist David Brooks says he “has a face that looks a little like Joe McCarthy.”
Cher tells us that “the smell of sulphur follows him wherever he goes.”
These are all liberals who understandably might find a charismatic Latino conservative Republican US senator like Cruz troubling. But why are Republicans such as Joe Lhota and Peter King piling on by boycotting a GOP dinner in New York where Cruz was the guest speaker?
The answer, they say, is that they object to Cruz because he was against federal aid for New Yorkers slammed by Hurricane Sandy. King has made his complaints here known before. As for Lhota, he says he had intended to keep his own objections quiet. But when the state party chairman, Ed Cox, announced that Lhota wasn’t attending Thursday’s dinner because he was undergoing a medical procedure, Lhota says he felt he needed to correct the record.
Given that the Sandy aid is the root of the Lhota-King boycott, it’s an issue worth revisiting. It’s true that Cruz voted against the final aid bill. But it’s false to say Cruz was opposed to federal relief. In a statement at the time, he expressed his concerns this way:
“Emergency relief for the families who are suffering from this natural disaster should not be used as a Christmas tree for billions in unrelated spending, including projects such as Smithsonian repairs, upgrades to National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration airplanes and more funding for Head Start.”
He voted no on the bill when his fellow pols would not cut the unrelated spending.
Our view is that New Yorkers would be well served if only we had Republicans as willing as Ted Cruz to stand up for the taxpayer. If Lhota and King have their disagreements (even conservatives have some disagreements with Cruz), let them debate them in the open instead of indulging in cheap liberal tropes that paint looking out for taxpayers as Republican heartlessness.