Ted Cruz Has No Problem Misleading Voters for Even the Faintest Semblance of Praise

On Monday, the Supreme Court released its opinion in Masterpiece Cakeshop, a case that decided the fate of a Colorado bakeshop owner who refused to create a wedding cake for a same-sex couple on the grounds that doing so would violate his religious beliefs. After the state's Civil Rights Commission found that his conduct constituted unlawful discrimination, Phillips decided to fight back.

In a 7-2 decision, Justice Anthony Kennedy, writing for the majority, found that the commissioners were inappropriately hostile toward the owner at his hearing, and that he therefore never got a fair shake. Kennedy noted, for example, that the commissioners were critical of the idea that religious beliefs can ever be carried into the public sphere, and that one "even went so far as to compare Phillips' invocation of his sincerely held religious beliefs to defenses of slavery and the Holocaust." The owner "was entitled to the neutral and respectful consideration of his claims," the opinion concludes, and an administrative official submitting proof positive of Godwin's Law in an on-the-record hearing was strong evidence that he didn't get it.

This is what the Court did. What it did not do is create a new rule of law stating, for example, that business owners can discriminate against same-sex couples if they feel compelled to do so by their religious beliefs. It did not find that requiring the bakeshop owner to bake same-sex wedding cakes would violate his First Amendment rights. It just said that the arbiters in this case were a bit too zealous in the execution of their duties, and that going forward, courts should ensure that disputes like this one are resolved "without undue disrespect to sincere religious beliefs, and without subjecting gay persons to indignities when they seek goods and services in an open market."

This is, in legal terms, a "narrow" ruling, and media coverage of the Masterpiece Cakeshop case made frequent use of the term. The reasoning hinged on the particular facts of the case, and isn't helpful to the resolution of future matters. "The outcome of cases like this in other circumstances," Kennedy concluded, "must await further elaboration in the courts." It is the sort of result that satisfies neither side: Both were hoping for a sweeping ruling in their favor, and both were told to try again next time, because the Supreme Court does not deal in hypotheticals.

I say all this because a certain segment of the population, too enamored with the disparity between the numbers 7 and 2 to conduct ten seconds of Google research, elected to lose its mind. How, they asked, could such a decision possibly be characterized as "narrow"? To them, it was yet another example of the liberal mainstream fake-news media putting its spin on the unvarnished truth. Here's South Carolina congressman Jeff Duncan:

Here's Fox News anchor Bill Hemmer:

Here's Donald Trump Jr., who never misses the opportunity to weigh in on something about which he knows nothing:

In his write-up for Infowars, noted constitutional scholar Alex Jones wrote that "Just because the scope of the ruling doesn’t extend beyond the facts of the case doesn’t make the decision itself narrow," which is, of course, exactly what it does.

Perhaps it does not come as a shock that a mediocre Tea Party congressman, a wannabe Sean Hannity, the president's worst offspring, and the Sandy Hook truther are uninterested in accurate reporting and/or are not well-versed in the parlance of the Supreme Court. One man who you might assume to be a bit more comfortable with the subject matter, however, is Texas senator Ted Cruz, a former Harvard Law Review editor who argued nine cases before the Court while serving as Texas's solicitor general. Disappointed though he might be with the limited nature of the Masterpiece Cakeshop holding, surely Cruz wouldn't be so disingenuous as to exploit this same bit of ambiguity, would he?

I like to goof on the Wacko Bird around here for being a transparent sycophant who will literally humiliate his own family to curry favor with politicians who openly hate his guts. But days like this one are helpful reminders that Cruz is also an intellectually dishonest charlatan who has no qualms about misleading constituents in order to promote an ideological agenda. It would be so easy for a lawyer of his renown to clear up the confusion and end this "fake news" outrage cycle by explaining what "narrow" means in context. Instead, Cruz feigns ignorance, knowing full well that he'll earn more retweets for performing dogmatic fealty than he would for exhibiting moral courage. Even though he knows better, he doesn't have the heart to do anything different.