Ramesh Ponnuru

Rude, entitled, arrogant and off-putting: That’s how the conventionally wise in Washington are characterizing Ted Cruz, the conservative new senator from Texas. It’s a better description of the critics themselves, who are inadvertently helping Cruz build his national fan base.

Some Republicans haven’t gotten to the first step: the one where you admit there’s a problem. In a roundup of reactions to the 2012 presidential election by the magazine Commentary, for example, conservative writer Wilfred McClay says Republican worriers are “wildly overwrought” because the 2012 election was “close.”

Watch what he did, not what he says. President Barack Obama says he won’t agree to spending cuts in return for Republicans’ raising the debt ceiling. Yet he did exactly that in 2011. And he should do it again.

Republicans are vowing to learn from their mistakes in Senate races in 2010 and 2012. Most of them are convinced that they would have 50 seats, not the 45 this election left them with, had they run better candidates. Senate Republicans say they are therefore going to get more involved in primary campaigns.

The debate over President Barack Obama’s health-care law has taken another twist. Now conservatives and libertarians are defending it, while the administration tries to toss part of the legislation out.

While the Romney and Obama camps have made increasingly bitter accusations about each other’s plans for Medicare, a bipartisan consensus on entitlements has emerged in the past few years. Too bad that consensus is wrong.