To Democrats and those with a sense of history, Sen. Ted Cruz is a Latter-Day Joe McCarthy; to Senate traditionalists, he’s a jerk; to Tea Partiers and base Republicans, he’s a breath of fresh air.
But each verdict is consistent with and utterly secondary to a greater fact: Cruz is exactly the guy to keep the GOP tied to its losing 2012 ways basically forever. In political terms, he’s a Democrat’s dream Republican.