GLEN IVY SPRINGS, ARKANSAS — Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX), according to sources close to his campaign, is in a desperate search for the next Kim Davis. Though it doesn’t seem to have helped him in the polls, fellow 2016 Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee (R-AR) garnered a lot of press and put himself in a lot of pictures with the embattled Kentucky clerk who is citing religious beliefs as the reason for not issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples. Cruz tried to get himself into the pictures and cast as a central figure defending Davis himself, but Huckabee “crowded out” Cruz, according to staffers, and now the Texas Republican is in search for someone else who is, according to the Cruz campaign a “living embodiment of conservative hatred.”
“Stories come and stories go,” one Cruz aide told The Political Garbage Chute, “and Senator Cruz is hoping that soon Ms. Davis’ fifteen minutes will be up so he can find another stridently anti-equality elected official to exploit — excuse me — hold up as a shining example of rock-ribbed, core conservative principles.” The same Cruz staff member told us under condition of anonymity and a $100 gift card to Bass Pro Shops that Cruz is hoping to find his own “symbol of recalcitrant discrimination” in Huckabee’s own home state.
Cruz campaign volunteers are currently canvasing Arkansas while their boss is in the state drumming up support. At a campaign stop in Glen Ivy Springs, a reporter asked Cruz if he could confirm the search was underway for a new Davis-like figure that he could glomb onto. “While I can neither confirm nor deny that,” Cruz responded, “I will say that we always have our eyes peeled — then they’re not shut tight in prayer to our almighty, True Blue American God of course — for people like Ms. Davis to hold up as examples of what American freedom looks like.” After a pause, Cruz defined American freedom as “the ability to use my personal religious beliefs to rob you of your personal dignity and civil liberties.”
When asked if he thinks the grandstanding Huckabee did with Davis hurt or helped his chances of winning the general election, Cruz laughed hard. “You really think that’s what any of this is about? Huck’s polling in the same low single digits I am,” Cruz said continuing to add, “and we’ve been stuck at that mark the whole time. Even without Trump, the fact is that the field is crowded and Hucky and I were always going to be fighting for the same fundamentalist votes. Neither one of us had a real shot at winning because we turn people off with our rhetoric.”
“Whether or not it helps win the election isn’t even the point,” Cruz told reporters, “it’s the donations. All of this is about donations. Because we know that our voters aren’t going to put two and two together and call us out for railing against so-called ‘takers’ and then every couple of years we go around asking for huge piles of money to live on.” Cruz said as long as he and Huckabee keep promising that we’ll use that money for an actual campaign” and “not our personal betterment,” no one can say anything legally.
“Well, guess what? If I just keep running and running and running, even with zero chance of winning, as long as people give me money, I get to keep running,” Cruz said. “And that’s why if we found another Kim Davis we’d be so thrilled; these people are great visual aids, tools if you will, for us to get the money we need to keep the machine of our campaigns going. It’s all about the facade of a serious presidential run at the same time knowing full-well we are far too nuts for the general public to give us the goods.”
“But as long as the donor checks don’t bounce,” Cruz said as he was leaving, “I’ll keep losing presidential bids. It’s not about winning. It’s about stockpiling cash. God bless America, and God bless me.”
