Another Achilles Heel for Ted Cruz

Josh Marshall points out another one on Talking Points Memo.

While there's no doubt Cruz is a dyed in the wool conservative, he is also pretty transparently a major bullshit artist. While it is not clear that he is really more conservative than several of the other GOP presidential aspirants, his strategy has been to keep finding rhetorical points and symbolic battles to demonstrate that he is in fact way more conservative than anyone else in the Republican party and the only true hope of oppressed and denigrated conservatives nationwide.

But Cruz seems to be at heart a debater, of the college debate variety, where the point is debate and making the strongest, most tactically deft arguments for basically any position no matter how ridiculous or whether you think it's true. Lynch, Obamacare, gay marriage are all just debating points in his battle to out-conservative the other contenders in the presidential race. But they don't appear to be any more than that. And he's not quite careful enough or doesn't care enough to keep that at least partly hidden.

I believe that Cruz opposes gay marriage. But I also doubt you'll find Mike Huckabee making the same rounds in Manhattan or hiding beyond the 'leave it to the states' mantra.