Ted Cruz

When Barack Obama was freshly elected to the Senate in 2004, the liberal media cheered him on, "promoting him for president, you know, before taking the oath [of office]" on the Senate floor in January 2005, NewsBusters senior editor Tim Graham noted in an interview with The Blaze's Andrew Wilkow. By contrast, journalists and pundits persistently attack freshman Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas for hitting the ground running this January with hard-hitting floor speeches and questions in the committee room.

Supposedly conservative New York Times columnist David Brooks, one of Cruz's fiercest critics, certainly never said "Whoa, slow down, Obama!" and "he certainly wasn't doing that when [Obama] decided to challenge Hillary Clinton for the presidency."  In fact, Graham noted, Brooks couldn't give the Illinois senator enough effusive praise during his 2008 run for president, so he "as usual, looks especially ridiculous" for his attack on Cruz, Graham concluded. [watch the video below the page break]

The Washington Post offered a splashy profile of freshman Sen. Ted Cruz on Tuesday, and the most surprising thing about it was a lack of venom. The reporter described “the self-assured, nonstop talker who won national debate championships as an undergraduate at Princeton.”

Cruz “honed his reputation early in his career as a dazzling Supreme Court advocate” and now “has bashed into the national conversation,” most notably in attacking establishment Republicans who’ve called him and other young Senate conservatives “wacko birds.”

Tuesday marks the six month anniversary of Republican Ted Cruz’s election to the United States Senate, but rather than the traditional honeymoon, the liberal media have gone on the attack against the Tea Party hero and emerging 2016 presidential candidate and his conservative beliefs. In their own liberal grassroots circles, leftists have even gone as far to openly hope for Cruz’s death, as the Daily Kos screeched: “Give this man enough rope and a tree, please.”  When former Bill Clinton political strategist James Carville, on Sunday, actually credited Cruz for being “talented and fearless,” it marked a rare moment when TV viewers heard something nice about the Senator.  

From CNN’s Wolf Blitzer lecturing him on his responsible fiscal cliff stance: “You’ve got to deal with reality,” to the Washington Post’s Jonathan Capehart calling Cruz a “jerk,” to MSNBC’s Chris Matthews claiming hate groups “must love Ted Cruz,” the liberal media have assaulted the outspoken conservative over the last six months.

The following is a list of the Top 10 Most Obnoxious Anti-Ted Cruz quotes from the past six months: (video compilation after the jump)

In a web interview after his appearance on ABC's “This Week” yesterday, former New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson, who suddenly withdrew after being nominated by President Barack Obama to be his first Secretary of Commerce in 2009, was asked the following about freshman U.S. Senator Ted Cruz: "Do you think he represents most Hispanics with his politics?"

His answer (video is at link) follows the jump:

On Friday's All In show, with the words "The Sickness" displayed on screen behind him, MSNBC host Chris Hayes began the show with a commentary in which he tagged the NRA as a "far-right fringe organization" that "might be spelling their own demise" by celebrating the defeat of the universal background check proposal. Hayes:

The craziness keeps gushing from Chris Matthews’ mouth like a waterfall. On Tuesday morning, Matthews was anchoring MSNBC’s coverage of President Obama’s third news conference of the year. (Why they didn’t get a real journalist to anchor the coverage, I don’t know.) While waiting for the news conference to begin, Matthews and an array of panelists were discussing the gun control battle that they recently lost. The exasperated analysts seemed to agree that the background check bill failed in the Senate because gun rights advocates were more intense and single-minded than gun control advocates.   

Matthews, picking up on this idea, attempted to glorify the gun control crowd: “Let's keep reminding ourselves that a lot of people who are for gun safety also are for world peace, also for jobs, also for the environment. People who are for guns are for guns.” [Video below. MP3 audio here.]

If there’s one senator that Joe Scarborough and the rest of the folks on MSNBC’s Morning Joe have contempt for it’s Ted Cruz. The freshman Texas senator and Tea Party favorite has been attacked by the morning schmoes on a regular basis, and on April 30 Scarborough -- a formerly conservative U.S. congressman -- went after Cruz once again. 

On Tuesday morning, Scarborough chastised Cruz for, “mocking members of his own party” surrounding the gun control debate in Congress. Scarborough and co-host Mika Brzezinski, who are no strangers to verbally attacking Cruz, described his actions as inappropriate:

The Texas freshman broke tradition on Friday by publicly discussing what went on behind closed doors when fellow Republicans criticized him for giving Democrats ammunition to portray the GOP as obstructionists. [See video after jump.] 

In a new low for David Letterman – on both a professional and comedic level – each night this past week he devoted a Late Show “Stooge of the Night” segment to a Senator who dared to oppose the gun control bill, a law which would have done nothing to have prevented the Newtown tragedy.

Nonetheless, Letterman got very political in putting a picture of each Senator on the screen, yet the audience at his Manhattan theater remained befuddled, nearly silent after each announcement with, at best, scattered nervous laughter before Letterman followed up with a lame crack at their personal appearance. Those shots (Jeff Flake: “Reminds me a little of Gomer Pyle”; Ted Cruz: “How about a background check on his barber?”) generated a little laughter.

NewsBusters reported Sunday the media's chorus to silence Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tx.) is growing louder.

As fate would have it, at roughly the same time, David Brooks was sitting down for a chat with PBS’s Jeff Greenfield at the 92nd Street Y during which the New York Times columnist said, “It doesn’t help that [Cruz] has a face that looks a little like Joe McCarthy” (video follows with transcript and commentary):

That pesky Ted Cruz just won’t go away. What is wrong with him?

Welcome to the new refrain in Washington as liberal journalists like the Washington Post’s Dana Milbank are stepping up their smear campaign demonize the junior Republican senator from Texas. Milbank, long known for his acid tongue and fealty to conventional liberal opinion did his part by asking on Thursday: “Is there nobody who can tell Ted Cruz to shut up?

An unhinged Chris Matthews exploited another tragedy on Wednesday, connecting the pro-Second Amendment views of Ted Cruz and other Republicans to the shootings of two prosecutors in Texas. The Hardball anchor began by dredging up failed Senate candidate Sharron Angle's three-year-old reference to "Second Amendment remedies." Matthews connected, "If that was frightening enough for you, how about what's happening in Colorado and Texas?...In Texas, two prosecutors were killed, a third has now pulled out of a case against the Aryan brotherhood of Texas for, quote, 'security reasons.'"

Matthews made his linkage totally clear: "We've got a Texas senator, Ted Cruz, who won't let the Senate hold a democratic vote on gun safety. So, no democracy. We've got people out there using guns to get even with public officials, intimidating those they don't kill." Skipping from Angle, to the murder of prosecutors, to Ted Cruz, he snarled, "This is where we are with guns in this country. Second Amendment remedies being executed on public officials. Refusal by some elected officials to let us have a democratic vote on what to do about it." [See video below. MP3 audio here.]

Kossacks, of course, love to trash prominent Republicans -- freshman Texas senator Ted Cruz came in for some notable abuse this past week -- but they by no means neglect the party's rank and file and in some cases identify them as the root of the GOP's supposed madness.

As usual, each headline is preceded by the blogger's name or pseudonym. Daily Kos Week in Review will return in two weeks. Happy Easter!

Chris Matthews on Monday offensively connected Senator Ted Cruz with the actions of disturbed conspiracy theorists who believe the Sandy Hook massacre was a government plot. Talking to Connecticut Governor Daniel Malloy, the Hardball host lectured, "While the world has viewed last December's massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary school as an unspeakable tragedy, some gun rights dead-enders have seen it more as an inconvenient truth."

Matthews began by asking Malloy, "What is it that springs it out of our country's culture that people won't even accept reality in fights like this?" Later in the segment, he played a clip of the "far-right" Cruz battling with Dianne Feinstein last week over gun rights. Matthews snarled, "Well, there you have it. This is the face of the new Republican right." What does the Republican senator from Texas have to do with "Sandy Hook Truthers?" Absolutely nothing. But Matthews wanted to smear Cruz with the association. Ironically, it was the cable anchor who, on February 14, mocked Cruz as the new "Joe McCarthy."

[UPDATE BELOW: Cruz's office responds.] MSNBC's Joe Scarborough unleashed a vitriolic tirade against the left-wing media’s new favorite punching bag, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), on Friday’s Morning Joe. Incensed at Cruz’s questioning of Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, Scarborough attacked the freshman senator as “ignorant” five times.

MSNBC’s resident RINO was upset because Cruz suggested to Feinstein that her gun control bill violates the Second Amendment. According to Scarborough, this is an “ignorant” view: [Video below. MP3 audio here.]

[UPDATE BELOW: Cruz's office responds] CNN's Don Lemon smacked Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) on Friday for being "inaccurate" and "misleading" in grilling Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) on the Second Amendment. Lemon didn't provide any transcript or video of what Cruz actually said, and it turns out he was the one being "inaccurate" and "misleading."

First, Lemon falsely claimed that Cruz argued Second Amendment protections were unlimited, and he cited the Heller case against Cruz: "But it also says – it also says the same thing, the Second Amendment right is not unlimited. Is not unlimited."

At the same time that rising Republican Senate stars Rand Paul and Ted Cruz were making history with a filibuster Chris Matthews, on Wednesday's Hardball, insisted Paul and Cruz must be heroes to hate groups.

During a segment on the liberal Southern Poverty Law Center's new study about an increase of anti-government hate groups, Matthews demanded which politicians they supported: "Who do they root for?! They don't root for Rand Paul? Pat Buchanan? I mean who? They must like this new guy Ted Cruz. They must love Ted Cruz, c'mon!" (video after the jump)

Oh those open-minded liberals.

On Thursday, the Harvard Crimson cautioned conservatives about attending their fine school in an article titled "Warning: Do Not Enroll. If you might want to insult Harvard down the line, go elsewhere":

The liberal media’s effort to demonize Sen. Ted Cruz continues. On last Friday’s episode of PBS’s Inside Washington, the mostly left-leaning panel of journalists piled on the criticism of the junior senator from Texas. The attacks were focused on Cruz’s questioning of Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel during Hagel’s confirmation battle. Moderator Gordon Peterson presented the topic like this: “The Tea Party activists love this guy for being so aggressive. I’m wondering how this aggression so early in his career plays on in the Senate.”

But according to panelist Evan Thomas, a Politico contributor, Cruz is not merely aggressive; he is dangerous: “You need to watch this guy, because there are a lot of demagogues out there, but not that many who are that smart. He is really, really smart, and that makes him potentially dangerous.” [Video below. MP3 audio here.]
 

Just when you thought the pathology from Mike Malloy couldn't get more alarming, the man outdoes himself again.

A left-winger so beyond the pale he was once fired by the ardent redistributionists at Air America Radio, Malloy has carved out a niche for himself as the radio host most likely to self-immolate from his own bile. (audio clip after page break)

At what point will the public tire of liberal journalists lamenting that the Republican Party is overwhelmingly white and thrilled about it? They've been drawing that cartoon so long surely they'll eventually run out of ink. They love their 2012 narrative that every non-white group is rushing to Obama and the Left, and they want to keep it that way.

So what do you do when the GOP elects or nominates a black, or Hispanic (as they've done constantly)? You rip them personally, mercilessly. Ask Justice Thomas.

Wait a sec: aren't liberals supposed to be the edgy dudes who like to buck the established order?  The ones who glorify guys with the guts to "speak truth to power"? So what could possibly have turned these hipsters into a bunch of suddenly stodgy sourpusses reaching for their Miss Manners?  Looks like in-your-face is no longer in style when the upstart in question is—horrors!—a conservative!

Continuing his campaign for proper etiquette--and against Ted Cruz--Frank Bruni appeared on Morning Joe today.  The New York Times columnist recently wrote a cranky column calling Cruz an "an ornery, swaggering piece of work."  Bruni took things one stodgy step further, calling Cruz a "whippersnapper." Frank fulminated over Ted's temerity in actually voting against the august John Kerry.  View the video after the jump.

Newly minted Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, a Tea Party politician, is "raising bipartisan hackles" and otherwise being a "bad boy" in the previously collegial U.S. Senate, opined political reporter Jonathan Weisman on the front page of Saturday's New York Times: "Texas Senator Goes on Attack And Raises Bipartisan Hackles."

Clearly disturbed about Cruz's treatment of Obama's nominee for defense secretary Chuck Hagel, reporter Weisman even put a mike in front of not one but two liberal Democratic senators who likened Cruz to notorious Sen. Joe McCarthy. Well, at least Cruz is liked by what Weisman called "ardent conservatives."

The trashing of Ted Cruz continues apace in the bien-pensant MSM. From the New York Times, to the Washington Post, to Politico and elsewhere, the liberal media has the new Republican Senator from Texas in its sights.

Joe Scarborough is clearly camped out on the Cruz-bashing bandwagon.  Earlier this month, so offended by Cruz was the sensitive Scarborough that he wouldn't deign to mention him by name.  Today, not to be outdone by Frank Bruni, who called Cruz "an ornery, swaggering piece of work," Scarborough declared that Cruz acts like "a carnival barker at a local Republican event."  View the video after the jump.

In his brief time in the United States Senate, Ted Cruz (R-Texas) is already making a name for himself on Capitol Hill, with the February 15 edition of Politico suggesting that his “no-compromise, firebrand style could turn off voters.” 

In the 36-paragraph article, Politico’s Manu Raju waited until the 18th paragraph to include any direct quotes from the freshman Tea Party senator. What's more, Raju peppered the piece with numerous anecdotes meant to cast Cruz's assertive style in a negative light:

Behind closed doors, some Republican senators report that Cruz, in his stone-cold serious prosecutorial style, speaks at length when it’s far more common for freshman to wait before asserting themselves, particularly ones who were just sworn in.