Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, a Tea Party favorite and likely candidate for the GOP presidential nomination in 2016, approvingly quoted leftwing former Congressman Dennis Kucinich (now affiliated with libertarian former Congressman Ron Paul’s Institute for Peace and Prosperity) that an American attack on the Assad regime would turn the U.S. into “al Qaeda’s air force.” Even at the beginning of the Syrian uprising, Kucinich was unable to say a bad word about Assad.
“I’ve read where President Assad has made certain commitments, and I would imagine that when things finally settle down, that President Assad will move in a direction of democratic reforms,” Kucinich said [in 2011]. “He has already made that commitment from what I can see.”
After saying he didn’t want to play politics on Syria, Cruz proceeded to do just that by suggesting that the Obama administration is using Syria to distract attention from its alleged failure to deal with the attack last year on the US consulate in Benghazi.
