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US senator Ted Cruz with his wife Heidi Nelson Cruz and children at Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia, on Monday, after announcing his intention to run for president. Cruzs wacko status is precisely his appeal. Photograph: Jay Paul/Bloomberg

Liberals, political reporters and people who revel in the general recurrent ridiculousness of American politics could not hide their delight in the irony of the moment.

On Tuesday, a day after the freshman Republican senator Ted Cruz of Texas announced he would be running for the presidency in 2016, the conservative firebrand and hater of President Barack Obamas health insurance scheme made a surprise admission.

He explained that because of his wifes leave of absence from Goldman Sachs due to his presidential candidacy, he would probably be signing up to Obamas health insurance scheme.

This is the politician, who along with fellow conservatives on the Tea Party wing of the Republican Party in 2013, attempted to derail Obamacare, as the presidents insurance plan is better known, in a vote on the annual funding of federal agencies that triggered a 16-day government shutdown.

The episode raised Cruzs national profile (but badly damaged his own party) when he spoke for a bladder-straining 21 hours on the Senate floor in a speech that saw him fill time with a Darth Vader impression and read the childrens story Green Eggs and Ham.

One political analyst, discussing Cruzs pending Obamacare application, waggishly noted that the character in Dr Seusss story was initially disgusted at green eggs and ham but ended up liking them.

Cruzs announcement that he was running, the first major candidate from either party to declare for 2016, was met in some quarters with the same kind of ridicule as his epic September 2013 speech. Much of the criticism came from his own party, illustrating the depth of anger at his obstructionist tactics in Congress.

To me, hes a guy with a big mouth and no results, said Republican congressman Pete King, who previously accused Cruz of bringing the country to the edge of ruin with the shutdown.

Ted with nukes, Ted with nukes, lets see . . . said South Carolina senator Lindsey Graham, joking during an appearance at the Council on Foreign Relations when asked how a president Cruz would cope with a nuclear standoff. I dunno what Ted would do.

See the original post:
America Letter: Ted Cruzs presidential run sounds irony alarm