Republicans' memories are painfully short when it comes to anything anyone said longer than a few days ago. But if there's one terrific thing about Twitter, it's that it keeps a record of their nonsense that we can at least throw back in their virtual faces when need be.

Case in point: Senator Ted "Grandpa Munster" Cruz was among the many Republican politicians and pundits who used California's wildfires and power outages in 2020 to make spurious political claims about the ineptitude of Democratic leadership. But now that a much vaster swath of his own state of Texas has been plunged into darkness and cold in the dead of winter due to a similarly aging power grid and the unpredictable forces of climate change, Twitter is making sure Ted's dumb tweets get bubbled back to the surface this week.

On August 19, 2020, Senator Cruz retweeted a notice from Gavin Newsom's office asking Californians to conserve energy before 10 p.m. by setting thermostats to 78 and turning off unnecessary lights and appliances.

"California is now unable to perform even basic functions of civilization, like having reliable electricity," Cruz said. "Biden/Harris/AOC want to make CA’s failed energy policy the standard nationwide. Hope you don’t like air conditioning!"

Well, Californians can now clap back with "Hope you don't like heat when it's freezing out!" while 3.4 million Texans are still without power, two days after a weather system pummeled them with snow and ice, freezing gas wells and crippling the state's energy grid. As the Chronicle explains today, our state's biggest blackouts last year only affected between 250,000 and 500,000 PG&E customers, and the largest one was a pre-emptive shutoff during an extreme weather event to prevent wind-driven power-line breaks that can start wildfires. Both states have inadequate and "non-smart" grids that lack modern battery backups, but Texas has a grid that's cut off from other states, and relies even less on renewable sources — though its windmills froze this week along with the gas wells.

As one Twitterer replied today, "Just about 60 days ago Texas wanted to remove themselves from the Union. Now with 4 million without electricity they went straight to the US government for help. And Joe Biden, without even a second thought, gave them help. He didn't say 'wait a minute that's a red State'."

And what's this? Maybe without Trump to back him up on the virtual playground, Cruz backed down!!!

On Tuesday, he replied to all this online mockery, and coverage of it on The Hill, with a SHRUG EMOJI!!

You're a revolving asshole, Ted! And don't forget it!

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