Texas Republican Senator Ted Cruz might expect to have made a few enemies after joining Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., in a filibuster of the nomination of CIA Director John Brennan, a "grilling" of the nomination of Chuck Hagel as Secretary of Defense and his prospective new bill repealing the Obamacare mandate. However, some criticisms thrown at the Hispanic legislator have been seen by many as below the belt.
At the annual Gridiron Dinner in Washington this past Saturday, Obama joked about how difficult it was for the press to keep track of those in the administration.
"I can offer you an easy way of remembering the new team," Obama said. "If Ted Cruz calls somebody a communist, then you know they're in my cabinet."
The joke references a public comment by Cruz in 2010 that at their joint time at Harvard Law School in the mid-1990s, there were more Marxists than Republicans on the faculty. Cruz, who was born in Canada to a Cuban father and American mother, has taken heat recently from other high-profile Hispanics for not being a genuine member of the ethnicity.
One of the criticisms that some have taken umbrage at came from Texas Democrat party chair Rep. Gilbert Hinojosa.
"His last name may be Cruz, but there is nothing ... about the way he thinks and the way he has led his life that in any way is similar to Hispanics in the state of Texas and all across America ... Ted Cruz is as much Hispanic ... as Tom Cruise," he told the Houston Chronicle.
The "Huffington Post" reports that Cruz's worldview is more germane to Latinos in Miami whose Cuban roots, as well as those of fellow conservative Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., have made them "opponents to Communist leader Fidel Castro's" rule, compared to the prevalence of Mexican Americans in Cruz's home state of Texas, many of whom tend to vote Democrat.
Cruz has recently proposed a bill and pledged to use "any procedural means necessary" to initiate a vote on a bill repealing the Affordable Care Act.
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