AlterNet - 7h ago
By Alex Henderson
Image via Gage Skidmore.© provided by AlterNet
Former Republican Tim Miller was once a GOP strategist, but these days, the Never Trump conservative is a scathing critic of former President Donald Trump, the MAGA movement and Trump’s allies — including Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas. Miller recently got into an argument with Cruz, who described him as a “hack”; in an article published by The Bulwark on October 10, Miller lays out an abundance of reasons why he considers Cruz the epitome of a “hack” and exemplifies so much that is wrong with the Republican Party in 2022.
The argument occurred at an event at a MAGA-themed restaurant in Queen Creek, Arizona, where Cruz was campaigning for two far-right “Stop the Steal” Republicans: gubernatorial nominee Kari Lake and Blake Masters, who is trying to unseat centrist Democratic incumbent Sen. Mark Kelly. Cruz grew testy when Miller brought up the Big Lie — the false claim that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from Trump — and the Texas senator tried to change the subject.
“Ted Cruz called me a hack last week,” Miller explains. “Usually, I wouldn’t think twice about this. I mean, Cancún Cruz is the guy who groveled in front of his orange daddy after Trump said his wife was ugly and his father was a murderer. It’s a classic cycle: The abused becomes the abuser. But the more I thought about it, the more I wondered if maybe Ted was on to something — after all, he might be the nation’s premier expert on the subject of hackery.”
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At the event in Queen Creek, someone in the crowd shouted “2000 Mules” — a reference to Dinesh D’Souza’s widely criticized documentary on the 2000 election. Cruz responded, “Text ‘2000 Mules,’” but after that, the Texas senator didn’t want to discuss the Big Lie when Miller brought it up.
Miller told Cruz, “Hey, senator, nice to see you in Arizona. You objected to the 2020 vote here…. Since then, there have been a few audits. The Republican governor, the Republican Senate president, the Republican speaker of the House all said the election was fair. Do you disagree with Doug Ducey and agree with Blake Masters and Kari Lake? Or have you changed your view? It’s been two years now.”
In response, Miller recalls, Cruz “launched into a rant about how ‘the people of Arizona’ don’t care about the 2020 election” and “insisted that what they really care about is gas prices and food prices and the rising murder rate.”
“Before he could continue his listicle,” Miller explains. “I interrupted. ‘The people of Arizona voted for Joe Biden, though. Right? Did they not?’ Cruz proceeded to call me a shill and a hack and repeatedly shouted, ‘You’re done, you’re done’ as I continued to try to get an answer to a very simple, yes-or-no, factual question about the 2020 election result — that he had tried to overturn. Blake Masters offered a similar deflection during his debate with Mark Kelly the next night, backing away from his more direct claims about voter fraud in favor of word salad about how Big Media, Big Tech, and the FBI were to blame for Trump’s loss.”
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Miller continues, “Consider the incongruity. On the one hand, the people who go to see Cruz, Masters, and Lake at MAGA-themed restaurants are obsessed with election fraud. They are obsessed with election fraud in large part because they were told by Cruz, Masters and Lake that they should be obsessed with it. But at the same time, the people on stage no longer want to talk about election fraud. And they don’t just want to avoid the subject. When pressed, they’re not even willing to hold to the same fact-set they were pushing just a few months ago!”
If Cruz had acknowledged that President Joe Biden legitimately won the 2020 election, Miller emphasizes, the MAGA crowd in Queen Creek would have “booed” him.
“Not only do the MAGA ‘people of Arizona’ care about the Big Lie — they care about it so deeply that they will cast out any heretic who doesn’t adhere to the creed,” Miller laments. “Cruz is desperate to let Republican voters continue to believe that he thinks the Lie is true, but is also worried about losing swing voters if they decide that he’s not just another craven pol they can live with, but a weirdo true believer.”
Miller adds, “The deal Ted Cruz struck with the orange devil required him to put his conscience in a box. He can have everything he ever wanted — short of the presidency, LOL — as long as he keeps quiet about just a few little things: his wife’s dignity, his father’s honor, and the results of the 2020 election. For all these reasons, Ted Cruz can’t tell the truth about this uncomfortable subject, Cruz lashed out at me. I disrupted his incoherent posture by asking him a question that, as a matter of Republican politics in the Year of Our Lord 2022, he can’t answer. So, you tell me who the hack is."
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