‘You Deserve an Unwavering Fighter’: Ted Cruz Appears in Campaign Ad for Dan Crenshaw Primary Challenger

LEFT: Dan Crenshaw (Chip Somodevilla/AP) RIGHT: Ted Cruz (AP Photo/Mariam Zuhaib)

Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) has not only endorsed Texas state representative Steve Toth’s (R) campaign to unseat Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-TX), but is featured in a new ad promoting it.

“You deserve an unwavering fighter, a Republican who walks the walk. That’s why I’m proud to endorse Steve Toth for Congress. Steve Toth has a strong record of standing up for limited government, faith and freedom, and fiscal responsibility. Washington needs a no-nonsense Texan like Steve Toth to secure our border, fight alongside Trump, and put money back in people’s pockets. Please join me in electing Steve Toth,” said Cruz in the spot, which was put on by the Alamo Freedom Fighters PAC.

Cruz’s advocacy on Toth’s behalf is notable not just because of Cruz and Crenshaw’s high profiles, but because on the surface, they appear to be like-minded. Both the senator and congressman are more traditional conservatives with interventionist, Reaganite foreign policy views. And both have  feuded with the GOP’s newer, more isolationist wing and its avatar, Tucker Carlson.

“I think Tucker is dangerous. I think what he’s saying is wrong. And I’m calling him out and I’m calling him out over and over and over again,” said Cruz last November. “Tucker’s gone down a very dark path. And I don’t want to wake up in five years and see the Republican Party have gone down the path of the Democrats. If we have a country where both parties are viciously anti-Israel and welcoming and even celebrating of antisemitism, that is an ugly place. And one of the things, when you go down the road of antisemitism, it very quickly leads you to anti-capitalism and anti-Americanism.”

Carlson, meanwhile, has referred to Crenshaw as “Eyepatch McCain” — a reference to the eye Crenshaw lost as a Navy Seal fighting in Afghanistan — while the congressman has called Carlson a “cowardly, know-nothing elitist who is full of shit.”

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