'Don't mess with my kids, don't mess with Marco's kids, don't mess with Hillary's kids, don't mess with anybody's kids. 'It used to be for a long time, the rules across the board – that kids were off limits. But my girls didn't sign up for that.'Ĭruz has put his kids front-and-center during some campaign events but said Wednesday that being away from them for days at a time was the hardest thing about running for president. Folks want to attack me? Knock yourself out. 'Everyone expects the mainstream media to be liberal, to be biased.

'I have to admit, when I saw that cartoon – not much ticks me off, but making fun of my girls, that'll do it,' he vented. 'It's not complicated, don't make fun of a five-year-old girl and seven-year-old girl.' 'All of us learned in kindergarten: Don't hit little girls,' he said. He also leads the field in the crucial early caucus state of Iowa.ĭuring a campaign stop Wednesday in Oklahoma, he told reporters that the press should 'leave our kids alone.' His use of the cartoon in a fundraising pitch is, at best, unattractive, as is his use of his kids in a snarky campaign ad.ANGRY: Cruz told reporters on Wednesday in Oklahoma City that seeing his daughters made fun of 'ticks me off'Ĭruz has enjoyed a steady rise in the Republican primary polls and now trails only Donald Trump nationally. There’s no arguing that Cruz invited the cartoon and perhaps deserved it. Sometimes you protect kids from a parent’s dumb decision. If I were her boss, would I have published the Cruz cartoon? It’s a tough call, and having sympathy for candidates’ kids my strong leaning would have been against publication. Telnaes gave the original to me in return for a contribution I made to the charity of her choice. Bush when he good-naturedly chided me for wearing a seersucker suit to his news conference. “When a politician uses his children as political props, as Ted Cruz recently did in his Christmas parody video in which his eldest daughter read (with her father’s dramatic flourish) a passage of an edited Christmas classic, then I figure they are fair game,” she wrote.įull disclosure: I don’t know Telnaes personally, but an incident in which I was involved was portrayed in a 2006 cartoon she did lampooning then-President George W. Telnaes stuck by her work, tweeting, “Ted Cruz has put his children in a political ad - don’t start screaming when editorial cartoonists draw them as well.” Marco Rubio called it “disgusting.” Trump called it “nasty.” Trump, of course, believes he has an exclusive franchise on nasty. Several of Cruz’s fellow GOP presidential candidates joined in his moral outrage. I understand why Ann thought an exception to the policy was warranted in this case, but I do not agree.” I failed to look at this cartoon before it was published. Post Editorial Page Editor Fred Hiatt, in pulling the cartoon from the paper’s website, told readers: “It’s generally been the policy of our editorial section to leave children out of it. Lines that cross from the realm of family-photo politics to the realm of a kid lobbing a political attack line fed to her by grown-ups. Heck, there’s been a rare case or two of candidates showing other people’s kids in order to convey that message.īut this ad rises to the next level by having the daughter perform political lines - lines with an edge to them. There’s a long tradition of candidates showing their kids in ads to get across the family-values message.

There’s also no doubt it’s an ad in which the Cruz children appear for their dad’s political benefit. There’s no doubt the ad is well-done and, for a receptive audience, funny. How about if we leave the grown-up politics to grown-ups - and Donald Trump? The ad ends with this from our current senator and perhaps future president: “I’m Ted Cruz, and I approve this message.” Subtle, right? Then Cruz’s 7-year-old daughter Caroline reads from “The Grinch Who Lost Her Emails”: “‘I know just what I’ll do,’ she said with a snicker, ‘I’ll use my own server and no one will be the wiser.’” The visual showed a book with cover art showing a pants-suited Grinch. “Imagine the greatest Christmas stories, told by the senator who once read ‘Green Eggs and Ham’ from the Senate floor,” a narrator said as the ad began, later adding: “The whole family will enjoy reading stories like ‘The Grinch Who Lost Her Emails.’” The ad showed the Cruz family all cozy on a couch in a room decorated for Christmas.

Ted cruz daughters political carton