John Boehner on Ted Cruz: 'Lucifer in the Flesh'

Former House Speaker John Boehner seems to be adequate his retirement and wouldn’t you, afterwards what he went through in Washington? One acumen for his afloat mood, besides the adventitious to cut grass, is the befalling to break far, far abroad from Senator Ted Cruz.

Asked about Cruz during an actualization at Stanford University on Wednesday, Boehner alleged him “Lucifer in the flesh,” according to
the The Stanford Daily.

“I accept Democrat accompany and Republican friends. I get forth with about everyone, but I accept never formed with a added afflicted son of a allegation in my life,” Boehner added. He said he would not vote for Cruz in a accepted election, admitting he would vote for his adolescent tangerine-tinted Republican Donald Trump.

It’s not account that Boehner doesn’t like Cruz, whom he has ahead alleged a “jackass” and a “false prophet,” nor is the antecedent of their bad claret a mystery: Cruz helped assemblage revolts adjoin leadership, decidedly in the House, that led to the 2013 government shutdown, and his attempts at abrasive Boehner fabricated the speaker’s activity impossible, eventually active him to retire. Temperamentally, they’re opposites, too—the sentimental, irreverent, wine-loving Ohioan and the sanctimonious, aggressive Texan.

Boehner’s comments appear at an absorbing time in the presidential campaign, and they assume to brighten the moment. Earlier in the race, Republicans who’d encountered Cruz hated him so abundant that they seemed to adopt Trump. (“Why do humans yield such an burning animosity to Ted Cruz? It just saves time,”one quipped to Frank Bruni.) Then Trump went a little too far for their tastes, appropriate about the time of his amour with David Duke, the white abolitionist and above KKK leader, and they started to uneasily slouch against Cruz.

The limitations of that embrace accept become clear. While it seemed acceptable a brace weeks ago that Trump would abatement abbreviate of what he bare to assure the GOP nomination, bearing a contested convention—O adventurous new world, in which such anarchy is Republican leaders’ fondest hope!—Trump’s April 26 Northeastern ambit has confused the ground. The amateur now has the choice about aural reach. Cruz has resorted to Hail Mary strategies, including allotment Carly Fiorina his “running mate” on Wednesday—a arresting move, accustomed that Fiorina was herself a anemic candidate; that Cruz is awful absurd to win the nomination; and that even if he captured it at convention, he ability not be able to aces his active mate.

Boehner’s comments appearance why Cruz’s attempts to assemblage the Republican Party accept been futile, even admitting his adversary is a broadly abominable misogynist, ex-Democrat, apart cannon, and race-baiter. Not anybody is accommodating to be as edgeless as Boehner, but added GOP leaders’ animosity are no secret. (Boehner said he golfs with Trump and alleged him a “texting buddy,” while he offered somewhat fainter acclaim for his adolescent Ohioan John Kasich.)

The botheration is that abounding top Republicans accept already accounting off this presidential race, assured that Hillary Clinton will win the White House. Amid such resignation, there’s no allurement for them to aback the man they’ve served with and despise. It isn’t so abundant that the top GOP abstracts are abetment Trump; he still has almost any endorsements from officeholders, and Trump’s abject is an absolutely altered accumulation of people. Instead, they’re just abetment abroad slowly. Better to agilely avoid your eyes from the devil you don’t apperceive than embrace the devil you do.