Tag: ted cruz

House to give Ted Cruz, et al a shot at defunding #Obamacare.

Bob Costa over at NRO reports:

Leadership sources tell me the House GOP will soon vote on a continuing resolution that simultaneously funds the federal government and defunds Obamacare. Speaker John Boehner and Majority Leader Eric Cantor are expected to announce the decision at Wednesday’s closed-door conference meeting.

This means the conservatives who have been urging Boehner to back a defunding effort as part of the CR have won a victory, at least in terms of getting the leadership to go along with their strategy. But getting such a CR through the Democratic Senate and signed into law will be very difficult — and many House Republican insiders say a “Plan B” may be needed.

Continue reading House to give Ted Cruz, et al a shot at defunding #Obamacare.

Concern Troll Watch: David Brooks is terrified that Ted Cruz (and Heritage) will succeed.

David Brooks is very upset at all those recalcitrant Republicans elected in 2010.

“What’s going on in the House, and a bit in the Senate, too, is what you might call the rise of Ted Cruz-ism,” Brooks said. “And Ted Cruz, the senator from Canada through Texas, is basically not a legislator in the normal sense, doesn’t have an idea that he’s going to Congress to create coalitions, make alliances, and he is going to pass a lot of legislation. He’s going in more as a media-protest person. And a lot of the House Republicans are in the same mode. They’re not normal members of Congress. They’re not legislators. They want to stop things. And so they’re just being — they just want to obstruct.”

Two things on this:

  1. David Brooks is apparently looking to build street cred among the Birther crowd. “Senator from Canada?” What’s next, arguing that the Moon landings were faked and that there are aliens on ice in Warehouse 23?
  2. …Yes, in fact, a critical number of Republicans in Congress “want to obstruct.”  And there’s a reason for that.  Let me show you a graph from 2011: Continue reading Concern Troll Watch: David Brooks is terrified that Ted Cruz (and Heritage) will succeed.

Tweet of the Day, Here We Go Again edition.

Seriously, this is exasperating.

The ‘natural born’ bit in the US Constitution was put in there to keep us from having some charismatic European royal show up in a crisis in the early Republic, get elected President, and then turn the whole shebang into a monarchy all sneaky-like. It was not put in there to make the kids of immigrants ineligible for the Presidency, and frankly that’s what the entire birther thing seems to have evolved into at this point. Or, given that it’s involving Donald Freaking Trump trying to log-roll Ted Freaking Cruz, ‘devolved.’

Moe Lane

PS: Friendly reminder: this is private property, and the leaseholder is cranky on this particular subject.

Tweet/Video of the Day, This Is Why We Got Ted Cruz Elected edition. [NSFW]

I am a connoisseur of Fuck you, Senator John McCains. So are many of you. I believe that we can all agree, though, that this is one of the finest Fuck you, Senator John McCains that you will ever, ever watch. Ladies and gentlemen: Senator Ted Cruz.

Sorry about the swear words up there, but that was just too good a smack down for me to bowdlerize my admiration.

Harry Reid has nobody to cry to about that big meanie Ted Cruz…

…so he’ll just cry about it:

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) called freshman GOP Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) a “schoolyard bully” during a contentious exchange Monday on the Senate floor.

The two senators bickered as Cruz rose to object to Reid’s motion to appoint conferees to a House-Senate budget committee.

Cruz’s great sin? “He asked that Reid amend his motion to go to conference to make out of order any provisions raising taxes or raising the debt ceiling.” …No, I’m not exactly sure where the term ‘bully’ would apply, there.  I could conceivably see ‘pain in Harry Reid’s ass’ – which is indeed Ted Cruz’s intent, and possibly chief amusement while on the Senate floor – but ‘bully’ implies that a man who has spent a quarter-century in the Senate is somehow innately intimidated by a first-term junior Senator from Texas.

What a… fascinating revelation.  And potentially one that’s useful, as well.

Moe Lane

James Carville respects Ted Cruz in public.

James Carville had some nice things to say about Ted Cruz:

“I think he is the most talented and fearless Republican politician I’ve seen in the last 30 years,” Carville asserted emphatically, as the panel discussed Cruz’s reported presidential aspirations. “I further think that he is going to run for president, and he is going to create something.”

That’s not to say Cruz would win, Carville noted, but “this guy has no fear. He just keeps plowing ahead. He is going to be something to watch.”

The ‘no fear’ thing here rings true to me.  I’ve met Ted Cruz on a couple of occasions, and I’ll say this about him: seldom have I met a man in Washington who visibly gives less of a sh*t about what Official Washington thinks of him than the Senator does.  He’s not really in DC to be liked.  I’m not entirely certain that Senator Cruz likes to be in DC at all. Continue reading James Carville respects Ted Cruz in public.

Ted Cruz reaches out to grieving daughter of Sandy Hook victim.

(Via Hot Air) A couple points about this…

The daughter of the Sandy Hook Elementary School principal who died in the mass killing in December could not join others from her community this week to lobby for gun control.

So she turned to Twitter to reach out to the 15 senators who indicated they would engage in a filibuster to block legislation on gun control. She said she just wanted them to vote, not put roadblocks in the way of debate and voting.

Only one of the senators called Erica Lafferty after her tweet – Ted Cruz.

…in no particular order: Continue reading Ted Cruz reaches out to grieving daughter of Sandy Hook victim.

QotD, Ted Cruz Can Do Math In His Head Too, Ye Media Elitist Snobs edition.

Byron York, on Ted Cruz [Link fixed: thanks to jbird in comments]:

Cruz has gotten a huge amount of coverage for his strong performances at hearings involving Chuck Hagel, guns and immigration. For whatever reason, some in the press have been amazed that a Princeton- and Harvard-educated lawyer, former solicitor general of Texas and winner of multiple cases before the U.S. Supreme Court would be good in a hearing room. He is.

You’d think that both Byron and I would have gotten used to the incredibly provincial mindset that dominates journalism in the Imperial Capital; and I think that normally we have.  But every so often they still unfavorably surprise us.

#rsrh QotD, I Will Cheekily Change George Will’s Punctuation For Him edition.

He is perfectly welcome to yell at me for it, but it just looks better with the I capitalized and the semicolon grafted in.  Sorry about that. Anyway, Will in passing, while on the subject of Ted Cruz and James Madison:

In a republic, which is defined by the principle of representation, the people do not directly decide issues; they decide who will decide.

#rsrh My personal recommendations for the TX Primaries.

The primary is today in Texas, and as the title says: I have some suggestions for you.  I’m putting them here because although I do not expect that RedState would particularly object to the first two, I am in point of fact making a recommendation in a Democratic primary, and RS has a policy of not helping out liberal Democrats unless we really, really need to.

Anyway: Continue reading #rsrh My personal recommendations for the TX Primaries.