It’s widely known that Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, is a shameless opportunist. But could he be even more shameless and opportunistic than we believed?

Potentially yes, according to a report from The Washington Post published this week detailing just how closely Cruz worked with then-President Donald Trump to overturn the 2020 election results. Reporter Michael Kranish also revealed that Cruz has known Trump’s attorney John Eastman — who authored legal memos he hoped would be used to deny the certification of the election — for decades. That raises questions over whether Cruz coordinated directly with the White House on legal strategy designed to undermine the election......

According to the Post, Cruz and Trump began working on plans to undermine the election two days after Election Day, to the surprise of many of Cruz’s aides. Cruz spoke to Trump directly on the phone, acted as a Trump surrogate spreading 2020 disinformation on Fox News and pitched himself as a legal asset because of his experience working with George W. Bush’s campaign during the recount of the Florida vote in 2000. Among other things, Cruz agreed to represent Pennsylvania Republicans’ attempt to block certification of their state’s presidential results before the Supreme Court. (The Supreme Court didn’t end up taking the case.) And as Cruz backed a lawsuit arguing that Texas had the authority to throw out election results in several other battleground states, some of his advisers worried he was turning his back on his conservative federalist principles.

But perhaps the most shocking possibility raised by the Post’s reporting is the implication raised by Cruz and Eastman’s friendship. Cruz and Eastman met while clerking for then-U.S. Appeals Court Judge J. Michael Luttig nearly 30 years ago. Cruz’s plan calling for the Senate to delay the certification of the 2020 election results seemed to be running on a “parallel” track to Eastman’s legal memo......

The main point here is not to indict Cruz. Here we have a politician obsessed with keeping his finger on the pulse of the party, who felt that his own presidential prospects would be enriched by trying to overturn an election. More important than Cruz as a self-aggrandizer is Cruz as a signpost of the direction of the party. Cruz is a consummate follower of trends — and he's continually shown us that the Republican Party is sliding rapidly toward outright disdain for democracy.