all of the usual partisan GOP pundits closed ranks around Cruz and explained why (if it's even actually him) it's great for Cruz to pop down to Cancun right now got immediately blown out by Cruz hurrying back hours later and the tacit admission he fucked up that entails

it must be so exhausting living a team-based life where you have to reflexively defend any and everything done by your guys and reflexively condemn anything done by not your guys, and yet this is the way so many of us are now conditioned to live in and interact with our society

a tangent, but when shit head al d'amato was a senator from NY media would deride him as "senator pothole" because if a constituent had a minor problem like the street outside their house being fucked up you could apparently call his office and he'd kick some ass to get it fixed

so i find the argument that a US senator is helpless in times of local crisis to be among the more unusual defenses that were mounted. i think there's a lot a senator could think of to do to help their state, provided of course you believed in governing and not just culture war!