Share his constituents’ pain.
Advocate for them in DC.
I am sure the trip was planned well in advance of the storm, but the optics are really, really bad. Cruz has probably forfeited any further presidential runs.
Spur of the moment according to Ted.
The trip was planned 2-3 days ago by airhead Heidi.
Actually Cruz admitted that his daughter didn’t like freezing in Texas and suggested the family decamp to Mexico. It was a spur of the moment decision and that is why it is being criticized. As a senator his job, at least originally under the Constitution, was to represent the interests of the state as a whole to the federal government. If he didn’t want to freeze, he should have taken his family back to DC and publicly done whatever he could to marshal assistance from the feds. He said his staff was doing this but the optics look bad.
As an aside, I was involved many years ago in a hostage situation. Family of the hostages were sequestered from the press. After an hour or so the mayor and his wife entered the shelter and asked us what we needed that they could procure for us while we waited. They liaised with the police to get information to the families, brought food, helped set up a television connection so we could view the news coverage. Many years previously I met an eastern transplant to Idaho who was managing an agriculture interest group. When a dam broke just after Memorial Day in 1976, our town was threatened with flood damage. The major sandbagging day was a Sunday when many of us left church, changed our clothes and headed to the local shopping center where dump trucks were discharging plain old dirt to be shoveled into potato burlap bags (which hold 100 lbs of potatoes) as “sandbags/” As I was working, lo and behold, the new manager from the East showed up in a pure white Sunday suit and began shoveling. I noted the ant hive of folks working and suggested he could skip the dirty work. He just smiled and said he wouldn’t miss this for the world. Those are the kinds of politicians and managers who earn respect amid calamity. Not ones who flee the site for balmy weather and phoning in their “help.”
I live in the Houston area - and was without power - not for 24 hours like Ted's house - but for almost 60 hours. My little dog wasn't left home alone like "snowflake" - but was cared for - and my house was a toasty 80 degrees inside (at least in the living room by the fireplace) when it was 14 - 30 outside. Why? Because I know what the frack I'm doing as a man.
This is God getting back at Cruz for his little tweet to Cali in August about their power grid failure and the Austin mayor's trip to Mexico. Carma is a you know what.