Friendly Fire: Ted Cruz is Getting Lit Up by His Own Party
Congress has kicked the can down the road for a couple of months until the next round of full-faith-and-credit brinksmanship. Ted Cruz, the freshman senator from Texas, maintained his cherished ideological purity by voting against increasing the debt limit and reopening the federal government -- this time without obstructing the effort to head off a default.
His failed gambit to defund the Affordable Care Act paid off for him -- if no one else -- in that he has endeared himself even more to the Tea Party. Everyone in America knows his name, even if most of them realize he is the driving force behind a quixotic quest that had no endgame and zero chance of success. But his colleagues are emptying both barrels at him now to any reporter who will listen, blasting what they characterize as a pointless, self-aggrandizing exercise in divisiveness. Republicans, according to a recent NBC/Wall Street Journal poll, have never been so unpopular.
We should note, however, that Cruz failed only if he actually believed he could defund Obamacare with Democrats controlling the White House and the Senate. As far as fundraising goes, it's been a smashing success. In the third quarter ending in September, his joint fundraising organ, the Ted Cruz Victory Committee, took in $800,000. Who knows how much it raised during the shutdown?
Many in his own party haven't fared so well as they watch their collective approval numbers sink. Here are a few of most searing verbal spankings, administered to Cruz not by the opposition, but by his own team:
More at http://blogs.dallasobserver.com/unfairpark/2013/10/friendly_fire_ted_cruz_is_gett.php .
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