Not only is Ted Cruz, a junior 9-month old senator the current star of the GOP, but the media is also padding his prospects for a 2016 presidential campaign. By placing such a tremendous amount of importance on conflict and dramatic actors on the political stage, the media is complicit in this entire shutdown debacle.
On a somewhat unrelated note, there is also a spectacular amount of bias in how the nationality of the senator is presented. During the first few years of President Obama's tenure, the media fell in love with the "Birther" narrative, despite being largely critical of it. Despite attempts to dismiss demands for President Obama's birth certificate and lawsuit after lawsuit challenging the legitimacy of his election, the media's encouraging deluge of coverage ultimately validated the movement. However, such a conversation has been almost entirely absent regarding Ted Cruz's Canadian birth, which is wholly ignored by the former "Birthers" who tried to throw President Obama out of office on account of his formerly alleged foreign birth (polls as recent as late-2012 posit that 55% of Republicans still think Obama was born outside of the US), despite also having an American mother like Cruz. Not only does this double-standard exist on the right, but the media's coverage of this issue is also out of balance.
To be clear: I believe that Cruz is entitled to run for President, despite the claims previously made by prominent Republican activists and leaders to the contrary regarding the definition of a "Natural-Born Citizen."
http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/power-players-abc-news/ted-cruz-faults-his-party-for-agreeing-to-lousy-deal-to-reopen-the-government-211727075.html;_ylt=A2KJ2UYaZZpSFVkAAAjQtDMD
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