"[There's] a great comparison between Cruz and the Senate's other Tea Party extremist with big national ambitions, Kentucky's Rand Paul. (There are questions about Cruz's eligibility to run for president, because he was born in Canada to American citizens, but his office insists he's "a U.S. citizen by birth" while disavowing presidential ambitions. Have at it, birthers!) Where the unpolished Paul, a sketchily credentialed ophthalmologist, always seems a little unready for the national spotlight, the Ivy League Cruz is impeccably credentialed and varnished" (www.salon.com).

Cruz's grandstanding may be hurting him even with conservative GOP colleagues. Sen. John McCain famously upbraided him for impugning Hagel's character and patriotism last week. An anonymous Republican called him "Jim DeMint without the charm" in a conversation with columnist Ruth Marcus. He may also be Joe McCarthy without the charm....

McCarthy followed the path of Al Smith, who moved from New Deal innovator to anti-FDR red-baiter after Roosevelt beat the first Irish Catholic presidential candidate for the 1932 Democratic nomination. There was a common-folks appeal to McCarthy's crusade – sadly, my Irish Catholic immigrant grandparents loved him -- with groups like the Catholic War Veterans backing both his anti-Communist vendetta as well as New Deal programs like Social Security.

Cruz doesn't seem to carry such weight with Latinos. He won only 35 percent of the Latino vote in 2012, less than his colleague Sen. John Cornyn, who won 36 percent in 2010 (but he did outperform Mitt Romney, who only won 29 percent of Texas Latinos). Republicans are going to have to understand that Latinos have become a solidly Democratic constituency not because there are so many Latino Democratic politicians (there are more than in the GOP, but still not enough) but because they support Democratic policies on economic and social issues.

As Joan Walsh observes:

[B]ullies like Cruz have a long tradition of playing the victim. When Michele Bachmann, the Tea Party's last incarnation of Joe McCarthy, accused Hillary Clinton aide Huma Abedin of ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, she and her allies likewise claimed persecution at the hands of her detractors (which also included McCain). "It's really an effort to demonize and take down, if they can, a formidable political adversary in Michele Bachmann," anti-Muslim hysteric Frank Gaffney claimed at the time.

Cruz now wears Bachmann's mantle, and he wears it nicely. Playing the persecuted, he challenged reporters to at least investigate Hagel a little bit while they're attacking him.

"A lot of media attention has been focused on the attacks leveled on me and I would encourage all of you if you want to write stories on that great, knock yourself out, but I would ask for every 10 stories you write, attacking me, perhaps write one story on the substance of Chuck Hagel's record," suggested Cruz.

That's good advice. Because if they do, they'll find no substance to Cruz's charges in Hagel's "record," but a lot of substance to charges that he's a 21stcentury Joe McCarthy in Cruz's.
www.salon.com

Would that the shelf-life for all riightie buffoons on reaching the nation's capital and getting exposed as demagogues was no longer than the month is took for Ted Cruz to run from the limelight like a twitchy cockroach.