Republicans created Ted Cruz, knew he was a snake, and are now acting all shocked that he’s biting them with venom strong enough to jumpstart a nuclear submarine.

Take Romney hack Jennifer Rubin in the Washington Post yesterday. She calls him a jerk for his narcissistic attack on his fellow Republicans, recounting how he baffled them all with one simple word: squishes.

Ted Cruz is the only person I know who can strut sitting down.

Rubin says Cruz shows a lack of maturity and sophistication. No shoot, Sherlock. And those are his good qualities.

She continues –

For starters, it’s just not smart to annoy colleagues whose cooperation and support you’ll need in the future. Second, as a conservative he should understand humility and grace are not incompatible with “standing on principle”; the absence of these qualities doesn’t make him more principled or more effective. Third, for a guy who lacks manners (see his condescending questioning of Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) he comes across as whiny. They yelled at me! Boo hoo, senator.

I’d like to say one thing to Rubin, the Republican political hack: You lay down with dogs, you get up with fleas. He’s yours. You built him, Dr. Frankenstein.

Ted Cruz wants to be Mr. Republican. That’s fine with me. He doesn’t care whose ox he gores, just so long he draws blood and gets credit for it. That’s why he’s a Republican.

Meanwhile, in the Texan business community …Well, come to find out, the West Fertilizer Company lied to the EPA.

The fertilizer plant that exploded Wednesday night in West, Texas, reported to the Environmental Protection Agency and local public safety officials that it presented no risk of fire or explosion, documents show.

West Fertilizer Co. reported having as much as 54,000 pounds of anhydrous ammonia on hand in an emergency planning report required of facilities that use toxic or hazardous chemicals.

But the report, reviewed Wednesday night by The Dallas Morning News, stated “no” under fire or explosive risks. The worst possible scenario, the report said, would be a 10-minute release of ammonia gas that would kill or injure no one.

So the volunteer firefighters at the burning plant had no idea what they were dealing with. Because it’s easy to lie in Texas. All ya gotta do is check a box.

And why would they lie? They were storing 1,350 times the amount of ammonium nitrate that would normally trigger safety oversight by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS). They didn’t want EPA or the DHS in their business. That might cost them time and money.We all know how Rick Perry feels about the EPA, don’t we? He thinks its sole goal is to kill jobs.

“Somebody has to tell the E.P.A. that we don’t need you monkeying around and fiddling around and getting in our business with every kind of regulation you can dream up,” he said. “You’re doing nothing more than killing jobs. It’s a cemetery for jobs at the E.P.A.”

So, Rick Perry handed us this mushroom cloud on a silver platter.

I cannot wait to hear hear him and Ron Paul explain how the market forces will correct this. The company will declare bankruptcy, its owners will keep their money and the injured people will hold bake sales to pay their medical bills. That’s what we call “Business Friendly” in Texas.

But now Rick Perry, John Cornyn and Ted Cruz just love the Federal Government. I tell you what, I would buy Chris Christie an airplane ticket if he would come down to West, Texas, and shake his finger in Ted Cruz’s face.

Cruz voted against aid for New Jersey but now wants aid for Texas.They can all kiss my big blue butt.

Senator Ted Cruz is fast becoming the new Tea Party brand name as he quickly begins to surpass Marco Rubio as the true arch teabagger. He's repeatedly said that illegal immigrants should not be given a true path to citizenship. That gives him a leg up over Rubio, in my book. In his 2012 Senate debate in Texas---this is what he believes:

When discussing what to do about the 1.65 million illegal immigrants living in Texas, Cruz weaved into the Second Amendment, alleging his opponent didn't support gun rights. "What does this have to do with the question?" Sadler asked before fiercely denying his opponent's allegation. Cruz again said he didn't support a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants living in America, while Sadler said the opposite, as expected.---Source: WFAA-TV Dallas-Fort Worth on 2012 Texas Senate debate , Oct 2, 2012

And as for his beliefs on the immigration compromise that is being hatched in Congress with Rubio at the head of the table:

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) says President Barack Obama wants to “scuttle” immigration reform by injecting a path to citizenship into the debate so Democrats can keep the issue alive for political gain.“The president has been focusing on amnesty — a path to citizenship that skips ahead of the line,” the freshman tea party senator said Wednesday at a speech in Dallas, according to The Dallas Morning News. “That, he knows, is a position not supported by a great many Americans and not a position that will achieve bipartisan cooperation. It’s designed to scuttle the bill.”

The Tea Party is firmly against a path to citizenship, so he jumps ahead of Marco Rubio, who appears to be leading the way to immigration reform for the Senate GOP in a more bipartisan fashion than the hardliners want.

Jane Mayer has a new article out that will give another big woody to the Tea Party: IS SENATOR TED CRUZ OUR NEW MCCARTHY?

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Poor, poor, powerless little Wall Street is having itself a tantrum today over mean old Lizzie Warren, who took her (rhetorical) ax and gave the banker boys 40 whacks:

Sen. Elizabeth Warren's (D-Mass.) meeting with bank regulators Thursday left bankers reeling, after the politician questioned why regulators had not prosecuted a bank since the financial crisis.

At one point, Warren asked why big banks' book value was lower, when most corporations trade above book value, saying there could be only two reasons for it.

"One would be because nobody believes that the banks' books are honest. Second, would be that nobody believes that the banks are really manageable. That is, if they are too complex either for their own institutions to manage them or for the regulators to manage them," she said.

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