Less than a day after Carter reveals brain cancer, Ted Cruz already attacking him

"Ted Cruz Criticizes Carter Day After Wrenching Talk on Cancer," says the Bloomberg headline, and so we are obliged to take another rubbernecking glance at the most repellent man in politics.

A day after Jimmy Carter appeared on national television to talk about the cancer that's ravaging his body, Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz criticized the former president's administration in a speech in Iowa.

"I think where we are today is very, very much like the late 1970s," the senator from Texas said on the Des Moines Register's political soapbox stage at the Iowa State Fair.

"I think the parallels between this administration and the Carter administration are uncanny: same failed domestic policies, same misery, stagnation and malaise, same feckless and naïve foreign policy," Cruz said. "In fact, the exact same countries—Russia and Iran—openly laughing and mocking at the president of the United States."

Reporters later questioned the dubious tastefulness of Cruz launching into a tirade about the supposedly "feckless" Carter less than a day after Carter disclosed cancer had spread to his brain; Cruz dismissed their concerns.

"We can always have a discussion about public policy," he said. "The public policy of the late 1970s didn't work. [...]

Cruz, of course, only a few months ago had to apologize for publicly mocking Joe Biden immediately after Biden's son Beau died of brain cancer, hence the reporter questions on whether he specifically intended to be an asshole this time around too or if it was just an oversight.

Oh, and Cruz also dodged questions over whether presidential candidates should really be calling children "anchor babies," because that's pretty much where we're at now. Testing the waters of just how racist you can be before the Republican base starts to think it's a little much even for them, and so far finding no particular limit.