Consider this story that comes from a Latin poem. It seems a mountain had gone into labor and was groaning terribly with birth pangs. A mountain giving birth; naturally, that excited everyone and rumors spread concerning great expectations for such an event. In the end, the mountain gave birth to a mouse.

That reminds me of New Jersey governor Chris Christie. From all indications, Christie was positioning himself for the Republican presidential nomination in 2016 and was considered by many pundits to be the front runner in that regard. Here is a guy bigger than life, or so it seemed. Then, this guy gives birth to a “mouse.” The “Bridgegate” debacle surfaces and suddenly Christie is anything but a standard-bearer; he is more like a detour sign.

Allegations that Christie was in on the creation a traffic jam of apocalyptic proportions for a New Jersey town whose mayor refused to endorse him has sent Christie’s presidential hopes plummeting. It’s another case of a mountain rumbling and groaning and, in the end, giving birth to a mouse.

Likewise, another Christie-type: Staten Island Republican congressman Michael Grimm produces his own “Grimm’s fairy-tale” and, in the process, lumps himself with ogres and trolls and mean ol’ giants. Grimm, not realizing that the cameras were still rolling as they say, threatened to throw a reporter off a balcony on Capitol Hill following the recent State of the Union address. Seems the under-sized reporter asked the mountainous, weight-lifting Grimm about a federal probe into his campaign finances and Grimm got in the reporter’s face,  called him a “little boy” and threatened to rain down his mighty rage on the physically overmatched reporter.

In the end Grimm was just another mouse — and not a mighty one at that — who let the world see that when a mountain rumbles it might be nothing more than gas or a mouse. I’m sorry, the congressman ended up squeaking.

Texas’ junior senator Ted Cruz is a little different from the brawling, bare-knuckled, in-your-face Easterners, Christie and Grimm. But ideologically, Cruz is just as tenacious; tenacious enough to shut down the government last year. Cruz’s mountainous presence in the U.S. Senate has created a “divide” of sorts in his own party. He won’t bend, as with the immigration issue. “Amnesty” isn’t in the senator’s vocabulary.

Imagine Ted at the Alamo. Would he have kicked out all the immigrants in that iconic structure as they faced down the huge army of General Santa Anna in the fight for Texas independence? What immigrants, you ask? You know, like Davy Crockett and his Tennessee volunteers. Would Ted have turned down all that immigrant money that came from the United States in support of freeing Texas from Mexico? My guess is Ted would have been a little more mousy on the walls of the Alamo than he is in the halls of Congress.

All I’m saying governor, congressman and senator is, relax a little and take a deep breath. Let’s take a picture of the three of you smiling and not threatening. Everybody say “cheese.”

Bob Morgan is a retired, award-winning journalist and an author.