All the political buzz is about Ted Cruz today. Little of it is flattering.
Having run a scorched-earth campaign calling for defunding Obamacare by any possible means, he has reached his put up or shut up moment.
After months of fiery rhetoric, Cruz and his allies are scrambling to salvage their strategy. For starters, Cruz wants Reid to make an exception to Senate rules that would make it easier for Republicans to block Obamacare funding.
And he expects Sen. Reid to do this, why?
When that fails, Cruz wants other GOP Senators to vote against a procedural bill that will allow the Senate to consider the House bill. In other words, he wants them to vote against the House bill that defunds Obamacare. Heritage Action already has warned the GOP senators that a vote against the House bill will look bad on their wingnut scorecards.
So when that fails, he wants the House to pass individual funding bills to keep the government from shutting down.
“The House should hold its ground and start passing smaller resolutions one department at a time,†Cruz said. “The House is the only body where the Republicans have a majority. My job is [providing] as much support and air cover as we can for the House to stand up and lead.â€
Regardless, the House should stand its ground, and if Reid kills this Continuing Resolution then the House should pass smaller CRs one at a time, starting with the military. Dare Reid to keep voting to shut down the government.
That’s right. He wants to hold the military hostage to defund Obamacare.
I doubt even Cruz expects any of this to happen . He’s trying to cover his butt so he can blame everybody else if the GOP fails to stop Obamacare.
See also Charles Pierce.
I do like the countdown to Armageddon at the top of the Don’t Fund It! page. But yes, they have persuaded over one half of one percent of the US population to sign their stupid petition, so clearly the people are on their side!
Maha,
Thanks for the ‘heads-up’ on Orphan Black. After Episode 2, I am hooked.
Chief — you’re welcome. Believe me, it keeps you hooked.
Wile E. Cruz-ader: Super-NOT!!!-Genius!
He’s been flapping his big, fat, Joe McCarthy-like mouth since even before he came into the Senate, and tainted that chamber with his presence.
And now he’s desperate, because while he sure as hell talked-that-talk, he can’t strut-his-strut up to Senator Reid, and make any demands.
Reid will laugh in his face!
Wile E. Cruz-ader looks like yet another Texan with a whole lotta hat, and the only thing even vaguely resembling cattle, is the bullsh*t coming out of his big, fat, Joe McCarthy-like mouth.
Is it just me, or is Harvard man Ted Cruz not nearly as smart as he’s cracked up to be?
Josh Marshall has an interesting write up on Cruz over at TPM, since, apparently, they went to Princeton together and Marshall’s wife went to Harvard law with him. No surprises really, he was an a-hole then and he’s an a-hole now. Self serving and arrogant, but he is smart. I think it sounds like every republican I’ve ever known. Except for the smart part.
Apparently Ted’s newest plan is to filibuster the House bill, but he’s already convinced some of the wingnuts (who don’t really grasp legislative procedure) that he’s not filibustering the bill, he’s filibustering CLOTURE. Of course, you can’t filibuster cloture, since cloture is the mechanism by which a bill comes to a vote, and is just a vote with no debate, after a petition is submitted by the requisite number of senators. And, if he could engineer a defeat of cloture, all that would accomplish would be to keep a vote on the House bill from happening. Which we call what? Yes, filibustering the House bill.
Still, it seems to make some wingnuts feel all sanctimonious and smart to say he’s filibustering cloture. And he’s probably going to use some rhetorical nonsense like that when he attacks the GOP senators who are actually going to vote FOR cloture, so that the bill can go to a vote, so they can vote FOR the G.D. bill.
I don’t know what his game is..my best guess is he’s going for teaparty martyrdom by way of a purification ritual. He might look like a fool as a political strategist in the now, but come 2016 he’ll be a Tea party deity. When other conservatives are scrambling to save their political hides, Ted will be carrying their banner into the last hoorah.
Saipan for Obamacare! It never hurts to be the last man standing to suck up the glory for the battle against Obamacare.. Even if Obamacare turns out to be the greatest blessing this country has ever known, the ones who stood against it will gain the greatest stature within the conservative mind.
It’s got nothing to due with Obamacare…yet everything to do with Obama.
Another possible consideration is that if he doesn’t get the expected payday in national politics for 2016. He’ll certainly secure his political future in Texas. There’s gold in them thar teabaggers!
This guy is building up a campaign warchest based on milsleading ads against Obamacare. There being no laws against lying in politics, he can continue as long as he wishes and as long as the rubes keep sending money. Sad. I continue to be disappointed in the administration’s failure to counter the lies forthrightlly and with passion. They have allowed the past year for the cons to create their own reality. There is now a convinced bloc of voters who will not see reality.
I divide intelligence into useful categories:
.
CLEVER: the ability to get things done despite obstacles
INTELLIGENT: the ability to discern beforehand whether a thing should be attempted
WISE: the ability to learn from past mistakes
Republicans, as a group, are quite clever, certainly more clever than Democrats, as a group. But few Republicans seem to be intelligent or wise, which I think are higher levels of intelligence. Not sure Democrats are orders of magnitudes better in these last two categories, but small increments here are huge in the outcome.
Jonah Goldberg’s stretch of the conservative imagination, Ted Cruz, the GOP’s Obama drew some great, all negative comments in the LAT (usually the commenters skew heavily wingnut). And Charles Pierce once again easily demonstrates why he’s in the top 1% of op ed writers.
moonbat.. Great link and great comments…this one gave me a big laugh.
A poor man’s William F. Buckley, with a thin patina of intellectual horsepower (but without a transmission), this carpet-bagging slimeweasel will be left on the ash-heap of history.
When I look at him I feel queasy, something is very wrong with that man. I suspect something horrible happened to him as a child, his father is even crazier than he is! Only the “state” of Texas could deliver such a physically and intellectually unattractive senator, who would have guessed we would miss Kay Baily Hutch?
He does bear a resemblance to McCarthy, both physical and spiritual. I’m not sure if I’m seeing that resemblance by the power of suggestion or my own internal powers of observation.. But either way there’s a definite match in similarities between Cruz and McCarthy.
Senator Cruz, Have you no shame?
Senator Cruz, Have you no shame?
Or have you no brain! Shouldn’t he be sitting over at the Sénat du Canada?