What is Ted Cruz doing, and if it's nothing, then why all the unhappiness and vitriol?

A commenter over at Belmont Club nails the real reasons, I think:


I'm all for Texas - heck it's home to part of the Canadian River - but I don't think the Ted Cruz incident is about a last stand. Nor do I think it is circumscribed or defined by the Obamacare fustercluck.

What we have here is the opening salvo against the ruling political classes. I think that Ted Cruz is using Obamacare as the reason for lobbing the first verbal grenades over the stockade wall into the massed political classes inside the fort - many of whom inhabit the Republican Party.

I think this is the long overdue start of a necessary upheaval in the American political establishment. What course it will take and how it will play out is impossible to know. 

That uncertainty of outcome is exactly what is needed - the living, risky real world meets the tired, moribund old world of deals, cronies, fixes, dynasties, power cartels and endless manipulations to ensure no surprises.

The English longbow was the very first voter's veto because it allowed a peasant to knock the Lord of the Manor off his horse and because it could be done from far enough away to give the peasant a chance to escape by running like hell for the nearest woods. 

The feudal system is no more in Western countries. We use words now instead of the longbow. Words will be sufficient to upset the modern ruling classes. I think it is time to open the windows so that fresh air blows in. Time to put the best dinnerware safely away in the cupboard, send the kids over to Grandma's house and let the war of words begin.

Maybe Americans are embarking on a most interesting Cruz.

Hot words lead to longbows, especially when our elite rulers feel their power slipping away.  I'm stringing my bow right now.