I really don't get Ted Cruz. He is supposedly a smart guy, but he does these spectacularly stupid things, like engineering last year's government shutdown, and now giving the Senate the chance to confirm 24 Obama nominees whose nominations had been held up by the Republican party. Is the guy really just not as smart as his reputation suggests? Or is he such an ideologue that he doesn't give a shit about the actual effects of his actions, so long as he is grandstanding about some topic that his base cares about.
