In Case You Were Wondering, Ted Cruz Didn't Go to Washington to Make Friends

When your interviewer opens with “How much do your colleagues, just, despise you right now on the floor?” you might get the sense that some politicians and the media don’t like you.

Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas got that question from ABC’s Jonathan Karl, and he doesn’t care if has made some enemies in the Beltway.

Cruz responds to Karl, “There’s an old saying that politics, it ain’t beanbag. And you know I’m not serving in office because I desperately needed 99 new friends in the U.S. Senate. And you know what, there is an inverse relationship. Given the choice between being reviled in Washington, D.C. and appreciated in Texas or reviled in Texas and appreciated in Washington, I would take the former one hundred out of one hundred times.”

Worth pointing out: The media never accuses even the most strident leftist Democrat of “making enemies.” Liberals are always cast as “lions” or “warriors” who take “lonely stands” or who function as the “conscience of their party.” Even if they left a secretary to drown earlier in their career, or were once Grand Whatevers in the Ku Klux Klan. You’ll never hear the media attach any positive labels to someone like Ted Cruz. The best media notes any Republican can get is to be called “experienced” or a “maverick” who “reaches across the aisle,” which means they earn media plaudits for going along with Democrats. And “experienced” tends to be shorthand for “old.”

Cruz continued: “And I’ll tell you when I go back home in Texas, I have a job that I was elected to do and that’s to represent 26 million Texans to fight for them. And they are frustrated, just like people all over this country. Their top priority is jobs and economic growth and Washington isn’t listening to them.”