risking everything on everything
Cruz, a tea party favorite, is one of the most vocal proponents of defunding the Affordable Care Act, President Barack Obama’s health care reform law. He’s spent months championing the cause. But on Wednesday, as House Republican leaders unveiled their latest plan for sinking Obamacare — tying a measure to defund the law to a must-pass resolution that keeps the government running — Cruz thanked House Republicans for their fight, and said they’re on their own.
“[Senate Majority Leader] Harry Reid will no doubt try to strip the defund language from the continuing resolution, and right now he likely has the votes to do so,” Cruz said in a statement. “At that point, House Republicans must stand firm, hold their ground, and continue to listen to the American people.”
Aides to top Republicans in the House, where GOP leadership has already been struggling to keep the party together on the measure, were beside themselves. And once granted anonymity, they didn’t mince their words.
“We haven’t even taken up the bill and Ted Cruz is admitting defeat?” fumed one senior GOP aide. “Some people came here to govern and make things better for their constituents. Ted Cruz came here to throw bombs and fundraise off of attacks on fellow Republicans. He’s a joke, plain and simple.”
Another aide said Cruz’s comment “exposes how [Senate conservatives] have deliberately misled their constituents and the grassroots for eight weeks. This isn’t leadership, it’s hypocrisy.”
The basic problem is two fold. Â One: the electorate in mid term election years is different from the electorate in presidential election years. Â If the 2008 electorate had shown up in 2010, the Democrats would have surely lost the House, and had a good wipe-out state-side, particularly in the South, but it would be more manageable, and not quite as dramatic an effect in redistricting — the other problem: I don’t much care that one election brings in the crazy, because there’s another election coming up — the problem with the 2010 election is that it happened in 2010, whereby redistricting would cement a lagging House Republican majority and a whole slew of state-houses no matter how things move in 2012 and beyond.
I like the idea that there are now Republicans criticizing Ted Cruz from the right as “a joke”. Â But they may have a point. Â He hyped up a futile and nihilistic procedure for political and fundraising purposes, and now that its come to some fruition …
Meanwhile… in North Carolina.
Jim Duncan, the chairman of the Chatham County Republican Party, said Wednesday that he is beginning an exploratory effort to challenge 2nd District Republican Renee Ellmers in a primary next year.
Duncan, a retired computer industry leasing executive, didn’t offer any direct criticism of Ellmers, but he said there was “a craving for leadership.â€
Duncan, 65, is the son of a New York police detective who was born in South Carolina. He has become heavily involved in Republican politics, helping rebuild the Chatham County GOP in recent years. He is also a co-founder of the Coalition for American Principles, a nonpartisan group active in 2010 to help elect conservatives in Chatham, Orange and Wake counties.
Sure. Â Democrats of the old “John Calhoun” variety.
And cue this Slade Gorton quote. Â Interesting in Ellmers’s case, and probably the latest round of Republicans getting in with a “tea party”, it’s less about “appealing to a broader constituency” than simply the act of actually “Governing”.
Which begs the question… will Ted Cruz now get a Republican Primary opponent?
And now we can get your kind of three parts of the Republican Party… the ones who know and won’t want to talk about a government shutdown and default and defund Obamacare, the ones who do but know that they need to back away from it, and those that want to go full speed ahead…
House Republican leaders didn’t want a confrontation over Obamacare but were coerced into it by conservative lawmakers who refused to support their original stopgap measure to lock in low spending levels without the threat of a shutdown. Other Senate Republicans expressed similar concerns about risking a shutdown.
And we can, I suppose, partial apart the various Conservative Money bags backing which and which… what are the Koch Brothers funding moving to — group 2 or group 3?
The big question… does this mean Ted Cruz will end up with a Primary opponent?