3 Times the Old Ted Cruz Contradicted the New Ted Cruz

Presidential hopeful Ted Cruz doesn’t always sound like $695/hour lawyer Ted Cruz.

Tony Gutierrez/AP Photo

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Presidential hopeful Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) talks a good game as an uncompromising conservative. But before he vowed to destroy Obamacare only to admit he may use it, before he forsook rock’n’roll—back when he was a private appellate lawyer charging $695 an hour, Cruz forcefully argued positions that contradict what he now espouses. Some examples from the Ted Cruz Wayback Machine:

Federal stimulus money

THEN: In 2009, he wrote a brief arguing that giving federal stimulus money to retired Texas teachers “will directly further the greater purpose of economic recovery for America.”

NOW: Obama’s economic program is “yet another rehash of the same big-government stimulus programs that have consistently failed to generate jobs.”

BIG JURY AWARDS

THEN: As a lawyer, Cruz defended a $54 million jury award to a severely disabled New Mexico man who had been raped in a group home, asserting that “a large punitive damages award is justified by the need to deter conduct that is hard to detect and often goes unpunished.”

NOW: Wants to spread Texas-style tort reform—which caps punitive damages at $750,000—to the rest of the nation.
 

The death penalty

THEN: Cruz worked on the Supreme Court case of a Louisiana man who’d been wrongfully sentenced to death, stating that prosecutorial misconduct undermined “public confidence in the criminal-justice system.”

NOW: “I trust the criminal-justice system to operate, to protect the rights of the accused, and to administer justice to violent criminals.”

BEFORE YOU CLICK AWAY!

“Lying.” “Disgusting.” “Scum.” “Slime.” “Corrupt.” “Enemy of the people.” Donald Trump has always made clear what he thinks of journalists. And it’s plain now that his administration intends to do everything it can to stop journalists from reporting things they don’t like—which is most things that are true.

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BEFORE YOU CLICK AWAY!

“Lying.” “Disgusting.” “Scum.” “Slime.” “Corrupt.” “Enemy of the people.” Donald Trump has always made clear what he thinks of journalists. And it’s plain now that his administration intends to do everything it can to stop journalists from reporting things they don’t like—which is most things that are true.

No one gets to tell Mother Jones what to publish or not publish, because no one owns our fiercely independent newsroom. But that also means we need to directly raise the resources it takes to keep our journalism alive. There’s only one way for that to happen, and it’s readers like you stepping up. Please help with a donation today if you can—even a few bucks will make a real difference. A monthly gift would be incredible.

payment methods

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