Why Ted Cruz is the real-life Frank Underwood

The senator from Texas may not be a sociopathic murderer. But he is the most shamelessly Machiavellian player in Washington.

Ted Cruz
(Image credit: (Illustration by Lauren Hansen | Cruz image by Jeff Malet/maletphoto.com))

Most of the press coverage of the just-completed CPAC conference focused on Rand Paul's victory in the straw poll for the second year in a row. But I'm far more interested in and concerned about the man who moved up from a seventh place showing a year ago to a runner-up position last weekend: Texas Sen. Ted Cruz.

All of my political instincts tell me that if Cruz ended up as the Republican nominee, he'd be far too ideologically extreme to appeal to mainstream voters. He would lose in a landslide, demonstrating far more vividly than the recent defeats of John McCain and Mitt Romney that, at least when it comes to national-level contests, the GOP is undergoing an electoral implosion.

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Damon Linker

Damon Linker is a senior correspondent at TheWeek.com. He is also a former contributing editor at The New Republic and the author of The Theocons and The Religious Test.