Ted Cruz Praised As A GOP Jesus Christ At Iowa Fundraiser

Ted Cruz is being praised as a Republican Jesus Christ willing to be crucified for the GOP’s ideology. In Iowa Friday at an annual Ronald Reagan fundraising dinner, Cruz, a Tea Party Republican freshman U.S. Senator from Texas, was hailed as a martyr willing to stand on principle rather than actually pass legislation or compromise.

LOOK: Ted Cruz: Government Shutdown I Started Was About Fundraising

“As an audience of 600 Republicans awaited the arrival of Sen. Ted Cruz Friday night at the Iowa Events Center, conservative Christian activist Steve Scheffler came to the podium to give thanks to God for the Tea Party savior — and plead for more principled conservative leaders like him willing to ‘be crucified for their belief system.'” writes Buzzfeed’s McKay Coppins.

The ballroom full of amens that followed went a long way toward explaining why Cruz — fresh off a failed crusade to dismantle Obamacare that resulted in a 16-day government shutdown and a political disaster for his party — has been greeted with such adoration by Tea Party crowds in recent days.

In Cruz, conservatives have found something better than a champion for their cause or a defender of their values. They’ve found a martyr.

“Every time one of these guys attacks him, it’s good for him,” said one Iowa Republican operative. “He’s like a superhero. The more bullets that get shot at him, the bigger and stronger he gets.”

Of course, Cruz’s actions earlier that led to the GOP shutdown of the federal government cost American taxpayers $24 billion and hundreds of thousands of jobs. When it was over, accomplishing nothing except a huge drop in the Republican Party’s favorability ratings, Cruz declared victory.

He also admitted it was all a fundraising ploy.

And that fundraising focus was not lost on Friday. Not only was Cruz at the Reagan Dinner to raise money for the RNC, he was there to pad his own war chest.

At one point, he asked everyone in the room to take out their cell phones and text a given phone number — an instruction many dutifully followed, adding hundreds of valuable phone numbers to his campaign’s list, should he decide to run for president in 2016.

This is the new Tea Party, the new GOP: take no prisoners, grab as much cash as possible at any cost, and go to Washington not to rule, but to fight for an America that never was, and never will be.

 

Image: Ted Cruz at the Reagan Dinner in Iowa. Photo by Stephen Mally via Instagram

Hat tip: The Raw Story