We all know by now that Ted Cruz went on vacation while Texas froze.
Over the last week, millions of Texans have suffered in the cold as workers tried to restore power amid freezing temperatures and icy conditions. So far, the official local death toll from the snow, ice and power outages stands at 24.
Rather than stay behind and help coordinate aid and federal assistance, the state’s junior senator went to Cancún, if only for a day, before widespread outrage brought him back to the United States.
Of course, Cruz is not the governor. He has no formal power in the state government of Texas. His is more a failure of optics and political leadership than governance per se.
Greg Abbott, who is the governor of Texas, doesn’t have that excuse. As Texans froze, he went on Fox News to falsely blame renewable energy and the as-yet-realized Green New Deal for the crisis in Texas. “This shows how the Green New Deal would be a deadly deal for the United States of America,” he said. “Texas is blessed with multiple sources of energy, such as natural gas and oil and nuclear, as well as solar and wind. But … our wind and our solar got shut down and they were collectively more than 10% of our power grid, and that thrust Texas into a situation where it was lacking power on a statewide basis.”