TED CRUZ IS PLAYING THE MEDIA PERFECTLY:
What started out with Internet memes and social-media snickers at Cruz culminated last week in Ann Telnaes’s cartoon at the Washington Post in which she depicted Cruz’s daughters as trained, leashed monkeys. The Post withdrew the illustration but did not apologize. Even primary competitor Marco Rubio, a father of young daughters himself, took a break from his fight with Cruz over immigration to defend the Texas senator.
Telnaes, whose Twitter wallpaper features a Charlie Hebdo cartoon, played the victim and censorship cards when criticized by Cruz and his supporters. What Telneas and our other brave truth tellers in media somehow don’t understand is that we on the right don’t care about the attack on Cruz as much as we care about the double standard of the media. Telnaes has the courage to satirize Ted Cruz’s children but not Mohammed. That’s why she’s not Charlie Hebdo. For my part, I wish the Washington Post had left the Cruz cartoon up.
Cruz’s response to Telnaes may have caught some pundits off guard, but for those following him and his campaign, it was vintage Cruz.
He did not respond with bomb-throwing tweets or statements that generate page clicks or mentions on cable news, and the Post’s attempts to anger Cruz enough so he’d hulk out into The Incredible Trump failed. He responded simply by defending his daughters, then by posting a cartoon of his own that portrayed the Washington Post and the New York Times as Hillary Clinton’s leashed lapdogs. It’s perfect red meat for his supporters, and the media fall into their own trap.
This has to be painfully frustrating for pundits and personalities who are attempting to goad Cruz into a fight that would prove he’s not as culturally savvy as Buzzfeed and IJ.com are making him out to be.
This is becoming a pattern for Cruz. Whether he’s halting the debate antics of an obnoxious moderator, responding to the incoherent Twitter rant of a pop star, or debating a Hollywood actress attempting to ambush him with cameras for her own show, Cruz is proving that he’s a savvy professional with a deft ability to handle the media. For those who are eager to see just how far they can push conservative candidates — how far they can go in attempting to Palinize conservatives out of mainstream culture altogether — Cruz must come as an unpleasant shock.
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