Ted Cruz was on the floor of the Senate today making the case about defunding Obamacare and keeping the government open.
While he may not be successful, as even Mitch McConnell abandoned the cause and the sniping from Republicans continues — even as to his eligibility for President — at least he was making the case.
New: Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell will not support Cruz-Lee Obamacare filibuster strategy. http://t.co/M5hcXKTjpi
— Byron York (@ByronYork) September 23, 2013
This video starts with some procedural issues in which Cruz asked for unanimous consent to approve the House Obamacare defunding bill, and Harry Reid not surprisingly objected. Jump ahead to 6:25 for Cruz’s statement on the merits.
The Senate rules are byzantine, resulting in the need for counter-intuitive maneuvering. Coupled with the lack of will in the Senate Republicans, those rules likely doom Cruz to failure this time. But it’s a failure of the will at many levels.
The reason Cruz is called foolish is that Democrats are willing to play a game of chicken over shutting down the government, and Republicans are not. That is the complete opposite of the media narrative willingly adopted by Cruz’s Republican opponents.
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I hate it that these guys know what Cruz is doing for the American people; but they don’t want to do the right thing for the American people. They need to be treated as traitors.
“There is never a wrong time to do the right thing.”
Lou Holtz
Cruz has looked deeper into this than most people see. He knows that it ultimately will fail BUT when it does, the whole O’bammyCare issue will lie squarely on the backs of the democrats which in turn could bode badly for them in 2014.
Sometimes people need to look beneath the surface in order to see the destination…
I learned from Magnum, P.I. the difference between absolute failure and relative success.
To illustrate, one may fail in business absolutely. No question. The business failed.
The relative success comes in when you consider HOW you failed. If you were honest, if you were straight up with your creditors and your employees, if you did nothing underhanded to keep afloat…
that was relative success.
It has to do with personal integrity.
The past 5 years have revealed how little integrity our elected representatives in Washington have. The attack on Sen Cruz by the GOP Establishment reveals not an opposition party, but just another wannabe entity.
Integrity? Chief Justice Roberts was the one who forgot the meaning of the word as he let such an abominable fascist bill be inflicted on this country, whereby destroying everything the Founders stood for.
Cruz has revealed what little support we have in Washington. Now it’s up to us to get them out of there.
Wonder if ANY of the disgusting RINO’s have argued before the Supreme Court?
Cruz has..
The Left and put a mustache on him, look like Hitler, Harry Reid would piss and moan if The Angel Moroni, was Republican with convictions like Cruz.
Reid ain’t lookin’ so good.
How’s this new one party political system gonna work?
And, what will it be called? The Demopublicans? The Republicrats? How about the Sh!teaters Party!?
I am so upset with the Republican leadership I cannot even comment without wanting to use cuss words. I know the downside of a third party, but if I am going to lose I prefer to do it with the courage of my convictions and standing on principle. Pragmatism is leading us down the primrose path to serfdom and the Republican party refuses to fight anything. I, for one, and I suspect many others, am more than ready to jump off this ship of cowardly pushovers and self-serving pragmatists.
I feel the same. What I’d like to know is where is Rubio? He was up front and center with Schumer, no less, not too long ago.
The Duty of an Opposition is to oppose. Quoted by Randolph Churchill.
Mr. Cruz understands this far better than Mr. McConnell and the rest of the feckless Republicans.
Oppose. Stand up. Oppose. Block. Oppose. Call out. Oppose.
This is how your party becomes known for its principles. You have to explain why you oppose and doing so brings clarity and power to the argument.
McConnell and most of the other Pubs are all about process. That is why they are losing the argument — no one knows what the reasons are for their ‘opposition’. All the public (and most of the insiders) see is process, not principle. So it’s easy to do just what the MSM is currently doing, and blame them for mindless maneuvering.
It is mindless indeed. Mr. Cruz understands that he has to stand up and oppose, and say why, and back it up. He shows that he has a spine. People respond to that. That’s what you have to do to return to power. Otherwise why vote for the Pubs?
The only way the Pubs lose the House in 2014 is to cave in to the Democrats on the sequester and ObamaCare. They’re doing just that.
It should be noted that the only person (that I can see) who is out there forcefully and vocally defending Cruz is Sarah Palin.
In fact, that’s about the only thing you need to know.
DELUSIONAL !
Yes, ObamaCare will prove to be a disaster. But most people are still just shrugging it off. Why? Because insurance companies have screwed up access to medical care for such a long period of time, now … People are just frustrated.
The bad news is that this is a FEDERAL takeover of private medical care, most people (except for about 20 million), who have coverage! Jobs provided them. Just as jobs provided 40 hour work weeks. But, no more! In today’s world we’ve created part-timers. (Not in other countries! People, let’s say in China, work 50 hour weeks.)
We’ve destroyed the work ethic.
We’ve destroyed the jobs market. Including sending jobs overseas. So, if you’re a cabinet maker, here, in the USA, there are no companies where you can go to do skilled work.
Add to this that ObamaCare is intrusive. And, you’re NOT trying to reach a small right wing segment. The GOP should have been reaching out (just like Pope Francis is doing) … doing away with the dogma. And, talking “embraceable love.”
This speech isn’t going anywhere. It’s not going to topple what BOTH PARTIES have done … with congress critters toodling their ways to lobbyists. And, collecting da’ money.
In the “good news” department, Ed Snowden’s leaks are now a GLOBAL debate. Health care? There are people who believe what they’ll get is “free.” And, may even be better than the crap insurance companies are selling them now?
For 2014, it’s going to be hard to break through the propaganda assault the media are champs at delivering.
While, yes. ONE MAN, Snowden, bravely just changed one facet of the world. Not one single politician has the capacity to do anything like this.
Plus, as bad as ObamaCare IS, it has “we’re trying” written all over it.
What would be nice? If Mitch McConnell can’t get re-elected in Kentucky in 2014. It would be a beautiful thing to see him fall.
Snowden bravely ran away to Russia, all the while bravely passing our national security information to our nation’s enemies. Snowden is a treasonous spy.
What’s destroyed the work ethic is 40 years of increasing American worker productivity and 40 years of flat or declining American worker wages + 40 years of skyrocketing Manager rewards.
Has this Senate Majority leader even passed a budget resolution in 5 years? What’s with all the “Continuing” resolutions? Why not an ACTUAL BUDGET?
Traitors indeed, they don’t even care to do their jobs anymore, they just want the power and prestige, but that latter perk is swiftly evaporating.
Continuing resolutions are absolutely hideous. The only way to cut government spending is for Congress to follow regular order and debate each major appropriation bill individually. When CRs are used to fund the government, they just take the prior fiscal year budget, increase it by the amount mandated by law, and that becomes the new budget. It’s on auto-pilot unless you get a fluke of nature like the sequester.
Chuck U. Schumer is the one who developed the “no budget” Senate strategy. He understood that if the Senate refused to pass budgets in regular order, then at the end of each fiscal year on Sept. 30 there’d be a crisis. Republicans were faced with a choice: either pass a new CR at the elevated spending levels to keep the government operating, or refuse to pass it and then the Democrats would blame Republicans for shutting down the government. Win-win for Democrats.
It’s absurdly perverse. The Senate Democrats suffer no penalty for refusing to do their job and pass appropriations during regular order and that guarantees and automatic crisis at the end of the fiscal year. Then if Republicans refuse pass the CR to solve this crisis intentionally created by Democrats, then Republicans get blamed by Democrats and promoted by the corrupt media as being anarchists, hostage takers, extremists, etc.
Ted Cruz decided that Obamacare may be unpopular enough to finally throw a wrench in this corrupt “budgeting” process. He gets almost no support from the career Republicans, who I assume are getting daily calls from insurance company and hospital lobbyists and executives – the REAL beneficiaries of Obamacare – who are begging Republicans not to end the new gravy train Democrats have created for them.
You make an important point. In fact, it is the lack of doing their job – passing a budget – that keeps this meme going. the GOP, like sheeple, keep going along with it. It is the Republicans fault, acting like 2nd class citizens who are afraid to call the Dems out on this (and, of course, many other issues). We continue to let the Dems control the messaging.
BTW, it was my Congressman Rigell, who was the lone GOP vote in the House against the CR. But the lack of a budget and using CRs has been a continuing sore point to him, a businessman, who has common sense…
It is rather ridiculous that a junior senator takes on the mantle of leadership, but it seems Bee-eye-itch McConnell is content with being Reid’s peanut gallery.
Where are our letter-writing machines. We need to be writing, calling, and making demands and being heard. Does anyone have any other suggestions for how we can make some noise in favor of Cruz?
The problem isn’t us writing, it’s that they aren’t listening.
Letter writing? Republicans in congress have staff to insulate them from the wrath of the “little people”.
The Republican party establishment told us to sit down, shut up and take it or.. we’d be stuck with a Barack Obama. Well, thanks for nothing, guys. What good is an opposition party if it’s filled with craven, self dealing, idiots?
Is there a mavin out here somewhere who could edit this video to commence with Cruz, so that it could be forwarded around without the confusing blither by Reid?
Senator Harry Reid made a fascinating statement very recently about the ACA (Obamacare) Bill being the law of the land.
Yes, Congress passed the ACA legislation and Obama signed it, so it is the law of the land. Yet what is in question is the funding to enforce that new law and there’s the rub!
So, why isn’t the Obama administration not following that law? Why is Obama granting numerous extra legal exemptions to that law to many groups of people and to Congress itself.
The ACA supposedly demands that Congress itself be subject to that law; that was included in the language of the law from what the public has been told, yet an autocratic administration exempts those specifically covered by that law.
Senator Reid says that the ACA is the law of the land except that law doesn’t apply to him nor to his staff nor that of his Senate colleagues not to the those in the House.
What is a law when it need not be followed except when it suits someone’s fancy?
Perhaps King George III would have been able to decipher that riddle way back when! Or, is Senator Reid wrong when he says the ACA is the law of the land?
Screw the Banana Republicans!
Cruz is our future.
Cruz is called foolish because he behaves in a foolish manner – IF his goal is, as he claims, to beat Obama-Care.
He hasn’t attended the caucus meetings or shared his plans with the caucus. Even McCain did that courtesy before he went “maverick” on us.
He attacks his fellow Republicans in an insulting and taunting fashion in the ads for his bogus petition, which in reality is just gathering names of suckers for future fundraising appeals. Is that how you win friends and influence people?
Listen up, Ted: if you want and need my help, don’t spend a bunch of money in my state/district implying I am the problem, don’t blindside me with your grandstanding, and have a complete strategy in place that makes some sense before you ask me to go all in with you.
Shorter post above: WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH, Ted Cruz is attacking other republicans for meaningless votes against Obamacare and is making money from it. And he is a politician that is GRANDSTANDING! THE NERVE! Only Democrats get to do that over the graves of gun victims. Only McCain/Graham get to do that whilst stabbing the rest of America in the back. Not CRUZ.
He didn’t even attend the MEETINGS!!
Really? You believe that nonsense you just wrote? I seem to recall Sen McCain calling Cruz and Rand Paul “wacko birds.” I seem to recall McCain calling conservatives “hobbits” meant to be derogatory, though we’re proud of the label.
Either you’re being deliberately obtuse or just plain ignorant, because the bashing since Ted Cruz has come to the Senate has all come from the Establishment GOP towards him, and NOT the other way around.
Do you REALLY want Obama-Care repealed? A true grassroots rebellion and rejection that even Democrats can’t ignore?
Just let Obama and his Klown Kollege of Ivy League Interlekchules try to implement it without interference. Oh, we could insist that government employees all be covered, too, if they refuse that single condition we could win a shutdown fight for once.
“Democrats shut down the government rather than be under the same law they insist you must obey!”
But other than that, let ’em go forward. It’s already falling apart. It’s a disaster. All this crap of Cruz’ does is give Obama the GOP to blame for it. “It woulda been so cool, but they defunded it to kill the children.”
When the enemy is digging himself a hole, don’t stop him.
Yeah except that it is harming both my field and my life directly. It has caused me to lose my health insurance and is causing and unaffordable increase for new insurance that is crappier than my existing plan.
What has Bitch McConnell done all these years except play reach around with Reid? Seriously Rand Paul and Cruz are doing more for the image of the party than McConnell and his quislings ever did! They are projecting hope for “change.” What are Boehner and McConnell promising? They are offering no principles, no plans, no hope, but they do have a nice cushy Obamacare free existence and some nice consultants telling them what they want to hear.
John Boehner was given the speakership in 2010, and what exactly has he done, besides whine like Bitch McConnell? Pass bills funding Obamacare and increasing taxes just to name a couple. And now they want to pass amnesty for illegal aliens and bomb Syria because YOLO. Why don’t we just go full retard and pass a 40$/hr minimum wage, assault weapons bans, grant Obama unlimited authority to raise the debt limit, single payer and then just disband Congress. What the HELL did I vote for these freaking idiots for anyways?
Another thing. I am sick and tired of you Republican apologists whining about people actually TRYING to make a meaningful effort to do something to stop this crap. I am seeing almost exact same postings on other blogs that you posted here about the exact same tripe. I know that the Obama people pay to troll the internet, are the “Republicans”, aka the consultant party (since it appears that no sane person runs this political party) doing the same crap now too?
Somebody needs to step up and primary McConnell.
Not that they’d likely win, but at least having done so everyone would know why McConnell lost Kentucky in the general election – lack of support from the base.
Because without that support McConnell cannot win re-election.
Corker and Alexander need to keep that in mind as well.
Eight months into his rookie year and Cruz is already leading his party. His opponents can’t understand how this has happened and go after him with an establishment-wide ad hominem attack. All Cruz did to assume leadership – in deeds, if not in title – was to simply step into the void left by the GOP leadership’s refusal to lead. McConnell is learning that he must sit on the Senate throne, not hide under it. I hope Boehner is watching and taking notes.
Harry Reid KNOWS how to get the votes!
He’s a man with a very small personality. BUT he gets the job done!
The senators, a collection of 100 of them, ALL have needs and wants. This is Reid’s forte. He knows how to count votes. And, how to get other senators to give him their votes. It’s a quid-quo-pro process. Reid knows how to get votes!
It seems Pelosi also has an ability to get all her chickens in a row. Boehner doesn’t. In part because there’s no “republican standard” that he recognizes as worth the trouble of upholding.
For democrats, it’s liberal at the left end. Then, there are the progressives, who can attract some of the libertarians. (That’s a majority right there.)
Ted Cruz has Sarah Palin in his corner. This encompasses the size of Rush’s audience. Something like 10-million people. Where there are 230-million voters. Winning is like a pile of money: Quantity counts.
Plus, now, the ObamaCare debate is coming down to the wire. It hasn’t really attracted much of the mainstream, in that they’re willing to go out and vote for “the other side.”
Let alone the reublicans aren’t really exposing much of another side. It’s a place where McCain became a face of leadership. Cruz is trying to run around him by flanking right.
While the ObamaCare flip-flops will consume both sides of the aisle. One reason you’re not successful at “blaming Obama” is that he’s a flaming incompetent. No one thinks Obama can do much more than hit a golf ball. (And, he doesn’t do that well.) Nor does he even shoot baskets well.
His name appears on a bill that shoves everyone’s health care into the Federal arena. It’s like the TSA. With MORE jobs for people who aren’t skilled.
It’s the jobs under-employed people now want! What’s it called? Paper pushing.
Even if you have a law degree, it will be nothing but paper pushing through our lame court system. Sometimes, the papers will be written in foreign tongues.