The traditional stance for a freshman senator is to hold back a bit. Being reticent and deferential are not qualities that come naturally to those who manage to win Senate seats, but most new senators choose, as much as it clashes with their instincts, to tamp down.
Not Cruz.
Since being sworn in fewer than two months ago, the 42-year-old tea party darling has:
●been one of three senators to vote against confirming fellow Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) as secretary of state.
●expressed "deep concerns" with a bipartisan immigration-reform blueprint crafted by, among others, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla).
●introduced his first bill, to "repeal every last word of Obamacare."
●tangled with Rahm Emanuel over the Chicago mayor's "bullying campaign" to have the city's pension funds divest their investments in gun manufacturers.
Most notably, Cruz - a Princeton debating champion, Harvard Law School graduate, law clerk to the late Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and Texas solicitor general - trained his formidable rhetorical skills on two targets: gun-control proposals and President Obama's nominee for defense secretary, former senator Chuck Hagel, a Republican.
Cruz has taken the wear-their-scorn-as-a-badge-of-honor approach with his liberal critics. As he told Glenn Beck last month, "I view all of that as a sign that maybe we're doing something right."
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