Tonight Ted Cruz jumped in the ring with Beta O’Rourke again for a one hour debate. He did very well as he did last time, taking every answer very seriously and crushing O’Rourke.
Watch the full debate below:
If you want to watch a great clip from Ted Cruz on his answer to tax cuts causing ‘trillions in debt’, watch here.
* * * From earlier * * *
Also, here’s an article from CNN on how Beta is misrepresenting his mother’s political background to win voters:
On the campaign trail, Rep. Beto O’Rourke has cast his mother, Melissa O’Rourke, as a lifelong Republican. The Texas Democrat’s comments serve a purpose: his Republican mother is the exact sort of voter he’ll need to win over in order to defeat GOP Sen. Ted Cruz in the red state and become the first Democrat to win a Senate seat there for the first time since 1988.
Tucked in a lengthy BuzzFeed News profile of O’Rourke in August, however, he himself acknowledged that his mother’s politics were not as clear-cut as he lets on in his stump speech.
“I introduce my mom sometimes, and I kid her a little bit, like ‘my mom’s a lifelong Republican, but we got her to vote for us in this race.’ One day, she came up to me, and she said, ‘You know, that’s just not right: I would describe myself as an independent now, not a Republican. Definitely not a Democrat.’ I don’t know what the size of that universe is, but anecdotally we’re meeting a lot of people who have described themselves that way,” Beto O’Rourke said.
A CNN KFile review found Melissa O’Rourke’s voting history and political contributions support the more nuanced picture of her political identity.
Melissa O’Rourke has largely voted in Democratic primaries in Texas since 2000, and she has donated money to candidates from both parties. She donated to Cruz and Republican Mitt Romney in 2012, but she also previously donated to the presidential campaign of then-Democratic Sen. Barack Obama in 2007.
Even after his comments in the BuzzFeed News story, O’Rourke continued to tout his mom as recently as on Saturday as a Republican, when he said, “I am the son of a Republican mother who we have convinced to vote for me in this election.” O’Rourke has repeatedly made similar comments in speeches, citing his “Republican mother,” so much so that the remark has a frequent line of the candidate on the stump and in a press release, according to news reports.
Melissa O’Rourke said in an interview with CNN’s KFile that she has generally been more of a Republican until recent election cycles but has voted for more Democrats regionally.
“But for the most part I have voted Republican probably nationally and then more regionally, more Democrats,” she said. She added that she voted in Democratic primaries because “that’s the party that’s going to win” in El Paso. She said she did not remember why she voted in the Republican primaries in 2006 and 2010.