It is news these days when Republicans dare to object that Donald Trump is making hypocrites of them, on deficits or trade or the boundaries of presidential power. But Ted Cruz, a conservative senator from Texas, set a particularly striking example of consistency recently on free speech. While other conservatives who once gloried in deriding leftist cancel culture were celebrating government pressure on a broadcast network to muzzle a late-night comedian, Jimmy Kimmel, Mr Cruz condemned it as “dangerous as hell”. He couched his defence of speech not in high principle but in instrumental terms: “It might feel good right now to threaten Jimmy Kimmel, yeah,” he said on September 19th on his podcast, “Verdict with Ted Cruz”, “but when it is used to silence every conservative in America, we will regret it.”