If Fox News tries to sell Ted Cruz as the conservative Barack Obama, are they damning him or helping him?
There are so many laugh-out-loud moments in this clip it's hard to know where to begin. Dorothy Rabinowitz hails Cruz as a magnificent orator, hard-liner on foreign policy, and one who can inspire the conservative base to action. But overall, this is an on-air attempt to damn Cruz with faint praise, just as they did in an editorial earlier this week.
It's clear both from the WSJ editorial and Peggy Noonan's pile-on the next day that Cruz is hardly their candidate of choice.
Still, Cruz' 2016 bid offers them the opportunity to criticize President Obama while marginalizing Cruz. One of the moments that stands out for me in this clip is the one where they compare Cruz' stint as Solicitor General of Texas to Obama's ten years as a State Senator. Panelist Dan Henniger sneers that Cruz is more impressive because he had "more responsibility" as Solicitor General than Barack Obama did as "community organizer and state Senator," but cedes the point that Cruz is so disliked he can't get anything done.
In the end, the comparison fails for a simple reason. Cruz is a wacko bird and Obama isn't.
