Ted Cruz plays chess -- even when he's playing chess.
The GOP's leading strategist, who has led his party to the brink of a shutdown in an attempt to defund Obamacare, tweeted out an image of a chess board earlier this week, telling Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) that it was his move.
The twitpic was meant as a boast that his effort to pressure the House to follow his Obamacare strategy had succeeded. But a close inspection of the board shows that Cruz -- or whoever set up the pieces -- doesn't really play chess. Each side's queen is supposed to be positioned at the start on her own color -- the white queen on the white square and the black queen on the black square. Cruz, the junior Republican senator from Texas, as noted on Twitter by Business Insider's Joseph Weisenthal, had the white queen on the wrong square.
It raises the question: What is Cruz trying to say with his coded message? Is he saying something progressive about his take on gender norms in society? Is it an homage to President Obama's red-state/blue-state refrain?
Or does he just not know what he's doing?
CORRECTION: A previous version of this entry stated both queens were on the wrong squares. Only the white queen was incorrectly placed.
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