More From the Formidable #NeverTrump Resistance

Remember Ted Cruz, Man of Principle, and his bizarrely overhyped refusal to endorse or not endorse Trump at the RNC, which of course became an endorsement of Trump as soon as the polls showed him with a chance of winning? His ballad continues:

In weeks of conversations with his allies, “team player” was a phrase frequently deployed and with unambiguous purpose. Cruz has always been a partisan—it’s easy to forget he chaired Lawyers for McCain and worked for George W. Bush—and feels, perhaps, that after four years of feuding primarily with his own party there will be some absolution in inflicting punishment on the cartel members from across the aisle. When Cruz visited Trump Tower in mid-November, according to sources present, he told the transition team that with Jeff Sessions’ nomination as attorney general, the new president would need a “champion” in the Senate to lead some of his toughest fights. And then he volunteered.

Cruz showed his fitness for the position in early January when he battered Al Franken and his fellow Democrats on the Judiciary Committee for their questioning of Sessions one day, then turned around the next and vouched for another Trump cabinet pick, introducing Rex Tillerson, a fellow Texan, to the Foreign Relations Committee. None of this escaped the hopeful eye of Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who, despite their history of hostilities, singled out the junior senator from Texas during that week’s Senate Republican luncheon. Applauding his efforts, McConnell turned to his onetime nemesis and gave him a nickname: “The new Ted Cruz.”

Trump cannot only defeat you for the party nomination but literally insult your spouse and accuse your father of conspiring to kill JFK, and you’ll still fall right into line. I think this behavior was both predictable and rational, but the credibility people gave to #NeverTrump would be hilarious if the consequences weren’t so terrible.

Again, it’s nice to think that this will be a Carter-like situation in which Congress and the White House are simply unable to collaborate effectively and fail to get much done, but I see no sign whatsoever that this is going to happen.

[Via Kilgore]