This morning, Texas Senator Ted Cruz announced that he will run for president of the United States. This is the logical next step in Cruz's determined lifelong pursuit of status.

But has Ted Cruz already abandoned his most deeply held principles? A 2013 GQ profile captured the uncompromising purity of a younger Cruz's snobbery:

The elite academic circles that Cruz was now traveling in began to rub off. As a law student at Harvard, he refused to study with anyone who hadn't been an undergrad at Harvard, Princeton, or Yale. Says Damon Watson, one of Cruz's law-school roommates: "He said he didn't want anybody from 'minor Ivies' like Penn or Brown."

Yet Cruz—B.A. Princeton, J.D. Harvard Law—chose to make his campaign announcement today at Liberty University, ranked No. 80 by U.S. News among "Regional Universities (South)." Founded by a professional ignoramus to shelter right-wing youth from the dangers of post-Enlightenment learning, Liberty admits 21.2 percent of applicants. That's a little more than half as selective as Penn, and less than half as selective as Brown. It's not even three-quarters as selective as Cornell. (Cornell!)

Why is Ted Cruz hanging out with dimwitted mediocrities?

[Photo via Getty]