Texas newspapers including The El Paso Times, The Houston Chronicle, and The San Antonio Express-News are now calling on Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) to resign in the wake of the recent violent attack on the U.S. Capitol that he helped incite. That attack unfolded under the pretense of the deranged lies about the presidential election that Cruz helped push. No court anywhere in the entire country has at any point accepted the Trump team’s claims of systematic election fraud, but that reality didn’t stop Cruz or the insurrectionists who stormed the Capitol, trying to forcibly block the certification of Biden’s victory.
Sen. @tedcruz: "We will not go quietly into the night. We will defend liberty." pic.twitter.com/xMdu4hmbF4
— The Hill (@thehill) January 3, 2021
In the days prior to the Capitol attack, Cruz belligerently ranted at a Georgia Republican event that Trump supporters would not “go quietly,” insisting that leading Republicans are “proud to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with you as we defend the United States of America” — which sounds like a call to physical action like the violence that unfolded at the Capitol. The El Paso Times called for an investigation into Cruz’s role in inciting the riot, commenting as follows:
‘We call on law enforcement officials to thoroughly explore Cruz’s role in inciting the insurrection. We encourage businesses to reject Cruz’s attempts to raise campaign money off the crisis at the Capitol. Finally, we ask that Congress police its own and vote to expel Cruz.’
In Congress, Cruz helped lead an effort among Republicans to object to the certification of some of President-elect Joe Biden’s electoral votes. He cast this stunt in belligerently self-important terms, insisting that a vote in favor of certifying the electoral college outcome would be an affront to Trump’s supporters. In reality, an affirmation of the truth of the duly documented presidential election outcome — meaning Biden’s win — is not some kind of anti-Trump conspiracy. The basic reality of the recent presidential election outcome is not, in any way, meaningfully in question!
The Houston Chronicle, calling on Cruz to resign, thereby removing himself from the chamber, commented in part as follows:
‘Actually, senators who voted to certify the facts delivered the truth — something Americans haven’t been getting from a political climber whose own insatiable hunger for power led him to ride Trump’s bus to Crazy Town through 59 losing court challenges, past state counts and recounts and audits, and finally taking the wheel to drive it to the point of no return: trying to bully the U.S. Congress into rejecting tens of millions of lawfully cast votes in an election that even Trump’s Department of Homeland Security called the most secure in American history.’
Cruz has denied that he bears any responsibility for the Capitol rioting, having insisted to KHOU that he and other Senate Republicans were merely “debating matters of great import in the chamber of the United States Senate.” This pompously self-important statement obscures the fact that, at the time of the Congressional proceedings to which Cruz is referring, the outcome of the presidential election was not, in any respect, in question.
The San Antonio Express-News added as follows:
‘[It] is Cruz who said only after the siege the ‘president’s rhetoric was irresponsible’ and ‘we are now in the process of a peaceful transition of power to the next administration, the Joe Biden presidency.’ He could have said this long before. After an insurrection is too late.’
Even Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), a very conservative Democrat, recently indicated that he was open to the idea of expelling Cruz from the Senate, although such an internal rebuke would apparently require the agreement of two-thirds of the chamber, which is the same level of Senate agreement that is required for a conviction in a presidential impeachment trial.
