This really is ridiculous and I don’t care if you disagree. In fact, I dare say if you disagree you need to put some big boy britches on and grow up.
Ted Cruz, the sitting United States Senator for Texas, is not a line man. He is not a power supplier. He doesn’t drive a bucket truck. And, on top of it all, he has zero responsibility, role, jurisdiction, or governance over the power grid for the state of Texas. Ted Cruz is a United States Senator, not a Texas State Senator.
He has zero jurisdictional duties.
The Senator took his family to the beach to escape the cold in Texas.
People are crying over nothing. They’d prefer it if Ted Cruz stay home and emote or tweet or make public performance efforts to show he cares. Misery loves company.
The people of Texas have been let down by their systems and state. They are freezing. They are uncomfortable. They are discomfited. They are angry. I get the anger. Still…Ted Cruz couldn’t do a damn thing about the power and I realize Texans are frozen, cold, and frustrated. Letting emotion get the better of the situation driven by a press that hates Ted Cruz’s guts is silly.
Yes, yes, yes, it looked bad. It was bad optics. Cruz should have stayed behind and fed the homeless in front of cameras and said nasty things about the Electric Reliability Council of Texas. Not doing anything substantive but in front of the cameras at home instead of removing his family was clearly the right call.
Now, if Ted Cruz did summon police in Texas, as has been reported, to help his family depart, then that was wrong and the public should hold him accountable for that. But I’m not sure that is confirmed.
Otherwise, a man who could not control the situation or fix the situation decided instead to take his family to a warm beach.
The people whining are the ones who should be heckled, not a man taking his wife and kids to the beach.
Optics my foot. Send all the politicians to Cancun and the situation would probably get fixed faster anyway.
Another thing — all the yelling about whether it was the renewals or the fossil fuels distracts from holding the bureaucrats responsible for this accountable. Now all the yelling about Ted Cruz again distracts from holding the actual culprits accountable for their poor decisions.
And another thing — this situation is completely different from the Mayor of Austin going to Cabo. That dude told everyone to avoid crowds and social distance and he fled the state to do exactly what he’d prohibited everyone else from doing.
The fact that leftwing media hacks think the two situations are comparable speaks volumes about the third rate hackery in modern American newsrooms. Note how many of the major headlines are leftwing publications:
Maybe Cruz should have burned his house down to warm his neighborhood. Surely then everyone would feel better. But at least everyone is so busy yelling at each other that the bureaucrats who caused the problem have time to come up with excuses.
Erick, thank you for having integrity, and be willing to give light to opinions that disagree with yours! You give me hope!
By sharing this:
https://ewerickson.substack.com/p/a-fair-rejoinder-on-ted-cruz?r=4813i&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&utm_source=copy
You showed courage and fairness. You don’t have to agree, but you have the courage to share a balanced view.
That is what most other commentators, on both sides, do not have. And that it’s the core of our current challenges and division.
Thank you! Keep it up.
You nailed it, Erick, with this line:
"Optics my foot. Send all the politicians to Cancun and the situation would probably get fixed faster anyway."
We have here a perfect example of what Rush used to call ":symbolism over substance." When I heard about this, I knew Ted Cruz had done the wrong thing, but based ONLY on the appearances of it, not because he could have gotten Texans' power and water service back on sooner. His REAL sin is giving the enviro radicals something with which they can try to bamboozle Americans into supporting a project which, if brought to fruition, will inevitably lad to more Texases and Californias, complete with rolling blackouts. We're already seeing the effects of this here in Indiana; prices at the pump have shot up almost 50 cents/gallon since Inauguration Day, as the markets price in the long term effects of the Keystone XL cancellation, with, I'm sure, more to come.
The whiners will have plenty to complain about in days to come, although I doubt they will be able to realize that put 2+2=Joe Biden as regards energy prices. That's probably why they keep insisting that getting the precise answer in mathematics is somehow evidence of "white supremacist" thinking.