Smarmy demagogue Sen. "Tailgunner Ted" Cruz (R-Calgary), a man whose face was made for radio and whose voice was made for silent movies, is imagining that the President somehow noticed his grubby little campaign:
Of course, the President mentioned none of the knuckle dragging Republicans by name in his remarks. Being a desperate, lying demagogue, Cruz needed to pull himself up several dozen notches to a level where he, fierce orphan- and widow- battler "Tailgunner Ted," could go mano a mano with President Obama. As David A. Hopkins put it:
Obama was clearly referring to multiple Republicans; if his remarks responded to any particular candidate, it was Chris Christie, who had earlier explicitly ruled out accepting "orphans under the age of five" for resettlement in America. Today, however, it was Ted Cruz who acted as if Obama had attacked him personally. [snip]That's Today's Face Asking To Be Punched (figuratively speaking, of course).
It seems clear from his statement that Cruz was ready to jump on any opportunity to start a fight with Obama, even if Obama had failed to do him the favor of mentioning him specifically. I have previously suggested that the popularity of Donald Trump and Ben Carson in the current Republican nomination race is a reflection of the formidable power of anti-Obamaism in the contemporary GOP. Cruz's potential path to the nomination almost certainly requires attracting a significant fraction of the Republican vote that is currently parked behind Trump and Carson, so it is in his particular interest to distinguish himself as an Obama antagonist in order to appeal to those voters if and when the Trump and Carson candidacies fade.
