Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) is the man who stood on a debate stage and smiled when Trump called his father a “terrorist,” and later sucked up to Trump. He’s the man who fled to sunny Mexico when his state’s power grid failed and his constituents froze, some to death.
He can’t blame it on stupidity. Although a son of wealth, privilege, and private-school education, he’s unquestionably very smart. He graduated with honors from Princeton and Harvard Law School, where one of his law professors (the famous Alan Dershowitz) called him “off-the-charts brilliant.”
But he is stupid. Intelligent and smart are different things. There are stupid geniuses, and people of ordinary intelligence who perform brilliantly. It’s what you do with the mind God gave you that counts. Ted Cruz is turning his gifts into trash-talk and stupid nonsense.
You can read just about anyone Ted Cruz story and feel embarrassed by him, and for his constituents who elected him (why?). Today’s edition, from The Hill (here), goes like this: The Democrats have “weaponized impeachment.”
Really? A rabid partisan might believe that, but no reasonable person would think so.
Trump’s first impeachment was for holding Congress-approved military aid to Ukraine, a U.S. ally, hostage for fabricated political dirt on his political rival, Joe Biden. This was a gross abuse of the powers of his office. It also has separation of powers implications, because it involves the president interfering with something Congress wants to do, and you gotta expect Congress to react to that.
Trump’s second impeachment was for inciting the violent attack against the Capitol that injured dozens of police officers, resulted in or contributed to five deaths, and was for the purpose of interfering with the constitutional process of certifying a presidential election with the ultimate goal of overthrowing our democracy and installing an unelected strongman in the White House. If that doesn’t justify impeachment, then nothing does. At a minimum, the fact 7 Republican senators joined the Democrats in voting for removal lends credence to the validity of the charges.
Cruz also said, “If we take the House, … then I think we will see serious investigations of the Biden administration,” adding, “I do think there’s a chance of that,” referring to “the possibility of a Republican-majority House impeaching Biden.” This is where he threw in the “Democrats have weaponized impeachment” (which they haven’t),k and he appears to being laying the groundwork for Republicans to do just that, presumably in retaliation for the Trump impeachments.
We could debate grounds for impeachment until the cows come home. People are opposite sides of the political fence aren’t going to agree on that. Ultimately, it’s a political process. The Founders did try to put some constraints on it, so it wouldn’t become a partisan weapon, but were intentionally vague about grounds. Most scholars agree the phrase “high crimes and misdemeanors” is broader than criminal acts. It can include, for example, neglect or dereliction of duties of office.
There’s general agreement in the legal and academic communities that it doesn’t, or shouldn’t, include policy judgments on which reasonable minds could differ. In order to make decisions at all, presidents need some leeway to be wrong or make mistakes. Otherwise, decision-making would be paralyzed or at least severely chilled.
Nor should impeachment ever become a device used to reverse election outcomes. That also seems to be a key element of any Republican impeachment effort against Biden, given that the vast majority of Republicans, including some in Congress, have never accepted Biden’s election victory (and never would, no matter how clearcut it was, although it was clearcut enough to satisfy all but the most insanely partisan folks that the 2020 election wasn’t “stolen”).
The basic theme of my thoughts is that impeachment should be available but not misused. For several years, Pelosi held back the impeachment hawks in her own party. When Trump committed impeachable offenses, she didn’t allow the process to become a wide-ranging critique of his presidency, but kept it narrowly focused on clearly articulable, and easy to justify, reasons for removing him from office.
The ultimate test of the validity of that process is whether she and her party would have removed a Democratic president (say, Hillary Clinton, or Joe Biden) if they did the same things Trump was impeached for. Hopefully the answer is “yes.” But we have no way to know.
One thing is clear, though: Ted Cruz is off-the-charts nonsensical. In the Senate, he makes Texas look bad. God forbid he should ever be president.
Somewhat related story (from 2016 campaign): Trump insulted Ted Cruz’s wife, too (story here); but as we all know, Ted (hearts) Trump anyway.
Photo: Same to you, Ted
Republican presidential candidate Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, speaks during a town hall meeting at Furman University on Monday, Dec. 7, 2015, in Greenville, S.C. (AP Photo/Rainier Ehrhardt)