Ted Cruz pushes the GOP’s immigrant-voting lie deeper into the slime

There is something about Sen. Ted Cruz’s brow, a knitting of his eyebrows, that gives him a default appearance of sheepishness. Or perhaps this is simply projection, an assumption that someone who made the claim that Cruz (R-Tex.) offered at the Republican convention on Tuesday night would feel at least some remorse about having done so.

There have been a number of occasions on which Cruz’s rhetoric has tipped the scales of either pandering or obsequiousness. As the mob was building outside the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, Cruz was on the floor of the Senate making a disingenuous argument about the need to reject electoral votes in support of Joe Biden from states Biden had won. For Cruz, the moment was one at which he could get attention for his fervent embrace of his party’s right-most fringe rather than a manifestation of indifference to a democratic election. This is simply how Cruz approaches politics.

Eight years ago at the convention, Cruz’s tack was different. Then, having been one of the last competitors standing against Donald Trump in the party’s 2016 presidential primary, Cruz declined to endorse his conqueror, earning boos from the audience. Cruz has given Trump supporters no reason to boo him since. He certainly didn’t at the convention in Milwaukee.

“We are facing an invasion on our southern border,” Cruz said as he began. “Not figuratively. A literal invasion. 11.5 million people have crossed our border illegally under Joe Biden.”

That’s not true. A number of those counted as having been apprehended at the border were turned away. Millions more were deported and millions remain in detention.

“But,” Cruz continued, “the numbers don’t show us the true price that our country is paying.”

That cost? That “every day, Americans are dying — murdered, assaulted, raped by illegal immigrants that the Democrats have released.” The accuracy of that sweeping, unsupported statement notwithstanding, it has been demonstrated repeatedly that immigrants are less likely to commit crime than native-born Americans.

Cruz was building to something, though, exaggerating the number of immigrants in the country and the threat they pose so that he could make a staggering, dishonest claim about his political opponents.

“How did we get here?” he asked. “It happened because Democrats cynically decided they wanted votes from illegals more than they wanted to protect our children.”

This is simply grotesque rhetoric.

Over the course of the year, the Republican Party has amplified the idea that elections are at risk from noncitizens. There’s no evidence of this, as House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), the party’s legislative leader on the issue, has said in the past. But it’s a tremendously appealing claim to make because it combines multiple issues that animate the Republican base: the threat of crime, worries about immigration and the belief that elections are subject to rampant fraud.

In each case, those Republican fears are overstated or misguided. After a surge that began during Trump’s administration, crime is down. There’s no evidence that the increase in immigrants crossing the U.S.-Mexico border led to an increase in crime. And, again, there’s no evidence that immigrants are casting votes in federal elections to any significant degree. That was one of the central flaws in House legislation that the Republican majority passed this month: it made it harder to vote to address a nonissue.

That legislation was framed in a way that reflected one of the most toxic arguments that’s gained traction on the right: that immigrants were being brought to the United States specifically to cast votes for Democrats. Speaking earlier Tuesday, Johnson reiterated this idea, as he has so often in the past.

Then came Cruz. This is a man who, more than just about anyone in his party, should understand that Hispanic immigrants are in no way guaranteed votes for the Democratic Party. (His father was born in Cuba.) But he not only elevated the false idea that there was an intentional plan to transition immigrants into Democratic voters but that the party did so despite the putative danger posed to children. Cruz claimed not only that Democrats were encouraging immigration to gain power, but that they were callously sacrificing children to do so.

What can you say about that? You can say it’s false. You can say it’s toxic. You can say it’s opportunistic or cynical or a degradation. But none of this really captures it. It doesn’t capture Cruz, standing on a stage at the convention, speaking on a night in which his party was purportedly demonstrating its commitment to safety, accusing his political opponents of letting boys and girls be murdered so that they can get a few more votes in some House races.

Cruz presumably knows this isn’t true. History shows, though, that he likes to be clever. He’s probably going to be happy that this article exists; it shows he had an impact.

Whatever his appearance, it’s safe to assume he’s not feeling sheepish.