Senator Ted Cruz has made no secret of his love for The Princess Bride, a cult classic in which an unsuspecting person is forced to listen to a very long story about an immensely quotable, if often factually incorrect, band of misfits that declares revenge on the current government — only to be foiled when this random guy who everyone thinks is a complete joke appears out of nowhere to mess up their plans.
Cruz has been mentioning that it is his favorite film in interviews for years, and apparently he’s been forcing his aides to listen to him recite lines during long road trips. The Wall Street Journal reported in 2014, “When he was too tired to work, he recited extended riffs from his favorite movie, The Princess Bride, in character complete with imitating the voices.” He has offered snippets of his Princess Bride impressions at fund-raisers or when trying to condense his disagreements with President Obama into a single sound bite. The people running his Twitter account are alerted for any opportunities to talk about the movie.
But now that the Texas politician is steadily climbing the presidential polls, he has upgraded his feats of movie memorization to reenacting entire scenes from the film in crucial primary states. At the beginning of November, Cruz showed off his Billy Crystal impression — which involves a fair amount of yelling — to undecided voters at a diner in New Hampshire.
On Sunday, he did the scene again — this time in front of a live audience — while simultaneously providing an in-depth description of the plot.
He has not yet announced whether he plans to build up a resistance to Iocane powder and perform the entire movie in costume during his next visit to South Carolina. The last time he was in Charleston, Cruz — who also does Dana Carvey, Ronald Reagan, Winston Churchill …
… and Darth Vader …
— was asked to do one of his impressions from The Simpsons. As Cruz showed BuzzFeed in June, he has many.
Although Cruz has gone a long way toward proving he is the candidate to trust most when it comes to being prepared for R.O.U.S.’s, he hasn’t had as much success in convincing voters that he is the best candidate on issues like the economy, terrorism, and nuclear weapons.
