When you’ve lost Ted Cruz…
Donald Trump’s immigrant child concentration camp gambit isn’t going particularly well for him. Polls show that fewer than one-fourth of Americans support him on it. Every former First Lady has condemned him for it. Those who were never quite sure about him now seem to be aligning against him. Those who have always been trying to oust him are now more emboldened than ever. And now Trump has even lost Ted Cruz. No, really.
Conservative Republican Senator Ted Cruz, who is up for reelection in November and is in serious danger of losing to upstart Democratic candidate Beto O’Rourke, has introduced legislation in the Senate aimed at dismantling Donald Trump’s immigrant child camps. More to the point, Cruz’s legislation calls for giving Trump nothing in return: not his border wall, not anything.
This is huge, because if you’re Donald Trump and you’ve lost Ted Cruz, it means you’ve lost. Cruz is likely doing this because he’s afraid that if he remains on the wrong side of this issue, it’ll make it easier for O’Rourke to knock him out in November. It demonstrates that even Cruz, one of the most tone-deaf people in all of politics, understands where this is headed.
Ted Cruz’s bill isn’t that far off from the existing bill that every Democratic Senator has already signed onto, based on how the Texas Tribune is describing it. We’ll see if this translates to more Republicans signing onto Cruz’s bill, or if it’s a sign that Republicans like Cruz are going to signing onto the Democrats’ bill. Either way, it’s a sign that Donald Trump can’t hold onto the social conservative flank of his own party on this issue. Ted Cruz is still a creep who holds abhorrent positions on a number of issues, and he’s only doing this because he’s afraid he’s going to lose his Senate seat, but at this point we’ll take all the help for these kids that we can get.
