No Matter What Anybody Says, Not Shaving’s Not Saving Ted Cruz

The key to likability was there all along, hiding in plain sight for Ted Cruz, Texas’ junior senator. Turns out, he didn’t need to be a fan of The Simpsons, country music or The Princess Bride in order to convince people that he wasn’t a time-traveling serial killer doing his best to infiltrate the highest levels of power. All Cruz had to do was grow a beard, as he started doing in November, and suddenly the press and everyone else is eating out of his hand.

Local media love the damn thing. 

Ted Cruz's beard is still a thing, and people kind of love it https://t.co/5QGWAglgso pic.twitter.com/oZE4WMdFeC

— WFAA (@wfaa) December 14, 2018

So do pollsters and state legislators. 

The beard would have won @TedCruz the 2016 GOP primary.https://t.co/2B9RvJ4zUZ

— Frank Luntz (@FrankLuntz) December 10, 2018

Thanks! https://t.co/4bKS1IcYOu

— Ted Cruz (@tedcruz) December 14, 2018

Big-time, national investigative journalists betrayed their objectivity just to tell everyone how handsome the former presidential candidate has been looking during the lame duck session. 

I deserve the ratio but….Ted Cruz’s beard looks good. pic.twitter.com/swkG9zqevU

— andrew kaczynski (@KFILE) December 12, 2018

As is required for any political ephemera, Slate chimed in with a think piece. (Cruz’s beard is “semi-hot,” Christina Cauterucci opined.)

Thoughts on the unwelcome semi-hotness of Ted Cruz’s new beard: https://t.co/0YQXUTB0ci

— Slate (@Slate) December 7, 2018

People seriously can’t get enough of this thing.

The Observer news vertical really doesn’t know what to make of the whole thing. We’re partial to our own beards, sure, but that has more to do with force of habit and general laziness than anything else. Looking for a second opinion, we polled Paige Skinner, our arts and music editor and admitted bearded-dude fan, for her thoughts on Cruz’s scruff.

“You can’t make Ted Cruz hot, but the beard helps,” she told us. “I can’t get the GIF of him eating whatever it is fell out of his nose out of my head, though.”