Here’s Ted Cruz’s angle:
He has condemned the terrorism that took place on Jan 6, because this is obviously the best take from a broad, electoral perspective. Excusing insurrectionists is not a viable electoral strategy, and will only appeal to the crackpot far right (i.e. the Trumpists).
However, doing this alienated the Trumpists, because they are themselves terrorists and insurrectionists. Cruz is afraid to stand up to them, so he then cowered and groveled, begging for forgiveness.
This is the problem that the GOP has now. Their base is incompatible with a broad electoral victory. You can’t get support from the majority of Americans, and ALSO the GOP base, because they are diametrically opposed in fairly fundamental components of their ideology and indeed even their perceptions of reality.
They’re struggling with how to deal with this. Some more traditional members of the GOP are fruitlessly trying to walk this line between the two, but it simply does not work, and that’s where Cruz is now…and he’s getting raked over the coals for it.
In some ways, the Trumpist base is actually more rational, in that they aren’t even trying to combine these two incompatible versions of reality. They’re just going all in with their fantasy version. While this is an incorrect view of reality, and thus doomed to failure, it’s at least internally consistent in some weird way.
Since they aren’t trying to reconcile their stuff with a reality that is perceived by society at large, to achieve electoral victories they are left with the choice we see them going for… just stop the majority from voting at all.
So, anyway, all that aside, Cruz is a piece of shit and a coward who is trying to appeal to two incompatible views of reality, because he lacks the spine to take a position and defend it.
