Link:

The elite academic circles that Cruz was now traveling in began to rub off. As a law student at Harvard, he refused to study with anyone who hadn’t been an undergrad at Harvard, Princeton, or Yale. Says Damon Watson, one of Cruz’s law-school roommates: “He said he didn’t want anybody from ‘minor Ivies’ like Penn or Brown.”

I don't think he has much emotional intelligence. By most accounts, the more you know him, the less you like him. The only people who turn out for him are true believers, because he's good at telling those people what they want to hear. But as Karl Rove once wisely said, it's not about what people say. It's about the pictures on your teevee when the sound is turned off.

And that's where his problem begins.

Ted Cruz was raised by doting, batshit crazy Bircher parents who apparently told him from the time he could walk that he was Special and had A Mission. He's as batshit crazy as they are, and seems to believe this. After all, he's the new Senator from Texas! (But, you know, Texas. Mark that one on the curve. Exhibit A: Rick Perry.)

Ted Cruz will never win a national election for the simple reason he cannot win enough of the female vote. He has, for lack of a better term, a Richard Nixon problem. He inspires a visceral mistrust. He looks like a sneak, like every soap opera villain who's up to no damn good. (Which is also my theory about why George W. Bush did so poorly with the female vote.) As soon as someone makes a YouTube video of him that's intercut with clips of Richard Nixon, he's toast.

There's also his startling resemblance to Sen. Joe McCarthy: