There are many smart members of Congress, few as smart as Ted Cruz. There also are many who are unprincipled, few more so than Ted Cruz.
The latest demagoguery from the junior Senator from Texas, as he already eyes a 2028 presidential run, is to impeach two federal judges whose opinions he disliked. This is a partisan hit job, criticized by, among many, the Supreme Court’s Republican Chief Justice John Roberts.
For Cruz, as his one time mentor, former federal Court of Appeals judge Michael Luttig says, this is all about his Presidential ambitions.
In 2016 Cruz had a chance at the GOP nomination until outsider Donald Trump overwhelmed him and everyone else. Trump personally attacked Cruz, suggesting his father was connected to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy and that his wife was ugly.
He held out embracing Trump for a while but when the Republican nominee won he went to him on bended knee. He has worked, with a peripheral exception or two, to placate MAGA ever since.
He was the lead Senator that inflamed the mob trying to overturn the 2020 election on January 6 with a phony objection to the count of the electoral college which Joe Biden won. The objectors, most prominently Cruz, were, “grandstanders,” engaged in “publicity stunts,” declared Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell.
The performative stunt was underscored a year later when Cruz assailed the January 6 mob for a “violent terrorist attack.” When criticized by Trumpites, who cling to the lie about a stolen election, Cruz backed down, groveled, and apologized for those comments.
The rationale for impeaching federal judges James Boasberg and Deborah Boardman is that he doesn’t like their decisions. In over 200 years, only 15 federal judges have been impeached on charges like bribery or drunkenness. Never solely for decisions politicians didn’t like.
Cruz, who graduated magna cum laude from Harvard Law School, surely knows this but the partisan hit job is just too great for him.
He is after Judge Boardman for what he considers too lenient a 97 month jail sentence for a person with a plan to kill Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. The defendant turned themselves in to the police before doing anything.
The bigger target is James Boasberg, chief judge of the U.S. District Court in Washington. He has ruled against the Administration on immigration deportation. He refused to block Trump special prosecutor Jack Smith’s subpoena of some Senator’s phone records who were suspected of aiding Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election. The Judge didn’t know the identity of whose records were subpoenaed and the prosecutor would have been derelict not to check out their involvement.
But Boasberg has been attacked by Attorney General Pam Bondi and the deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche. President Trump called him a “left wing lunatic judge,” demanding his impeachment. Boasberg, widely respected by many Republicans and Democrats, was tapped for the bench first by President George W. Bush and later by President Obama. Both times he was confirmed unanimously by the Senate.
As these attacks intensified, John Roberts weighed in: “For more than two centuries it has been established that impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreements concerning a judicial decision.”
Cruz held his impeachment hearing last week, bringing a supposed constitutional scholar from George Mason University. Critics shredded the case. The hearing had only one purpose, Georgetown law professor Steve Vladeck testified, “to vilify two highly regarded federal district judges” because these Republicans disagree with rulings.
Luttig, in a written statement, savaged Cruz’ constitutional expert for “misleading,” even “contemptible” assertions. He wasn’t any kinder to his former mentee.
Cruz, who clerked for Luttig 30 years ago, idolized him, saying he was “like a father to me,” and suggested he would have nominated him to the Supreme Court.. The Texan’s indefensible challenge to the 2020 election and impeachment antics have totally soured his former mentor.
“I don’t want to speak to Ted Cruz today,” Luttig told me. “He’s a coward.”
The Texas Senator, in his third term, has a long history of personally alienating colleagues. He worked on the 2000 George W. Bush Presidential campaign but the hierarchy didn’t want him in the Administration. That actually worked out well for him as he went on to become Texas’ Solicitor General and win three elections to the U.S. Senate.
The relationship with the Bush family didn’t recover. As President George H.W. Bush aged, his wife Barbara Bush told me that as a gatekeeper, she usually approved requests to see the former President: “When Ted Cruz asked I said NO.”
His personal unpopularity, even in today’s toxic environment, is striking. During the Obama Administration when there was a Supreme Court vacancy, Vice President Biden cracked, “if we nominate Cruz, you’ll have eight vacancies.”
With his sights on the White House, he only occasionally deviates from the MAGA line; he criticized the FCC chair Brendan Carr, a Trump favorite, for threatening the content of broadcasters.
The next Presidential election is a ways off. But it’s hard to see Cruz competing against the likes of Vice President JD Vance or Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
But in this futile quest he’ll do more demagogic damage.
Cruz drank the Trump Koolade
He should plan another vacation in Mexico and stay there.
The Barbara Bush anecdote is devestating. When someones own party elders wont even meet with them, that tells you everything about political capital versus pure ambition. Luttig calling Cruz a coward after being his mentor is brutal too, but its the pattern that's intresting, how presidential ambition keeps driving increasingly absurd positions just to stay relevent to MAGA.