Boehner, McConnell, and most congressional Republican realists believe it is both better for policy and politics to govern without continual confrontation and crisis. And, most adamantly, no more government shutdowns. Cruz had accused McConnell of lying to him about the way forward for the revival of the Export-Import Bank in the Senate. One of Paul’s super PACs has suspended fundraising for the candidate, suggesting that he has strayed too far from his libertarian principles.
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“Today was a win for the Washington cartel, and another setback for the American people”, said Sen. As shown on Sunday shows last weekend, three of them – South Carolina congressman Mick Mulvaney, Texas senator and presidential candidate Ted Cruz, and Heritage Action for America CEO Michael Needham – came off as creepy True Believer-type zealots.
“Just real quick: You have no position on McConnell stepping down?” He is the only sitting politician who consistently qualifies for this group.
Those skills, though, are no longer in fashion among party voters who have grown impatient with what they see as endless election-year promises that only fizzle.
If that isn’t an undebatable justification for new Republican leadership in the Senate we doubt we will ever hear one. The tea partyers had demanded that the must-pass measure be used to punish Planned Parenthood, stripping it of federal money because of its practice of supplying tissue from aborted fetuses for scientific research.
On that front, the Kentucky Republican may have won the battle to prevent a government shutdown, but still risks losing the broader war. And he gets this really sick joy in trying to control the Senate floor within his own caucus. Many of those same lawmakers want to preserve stringent “caps” on the spending bills Congress passes every year, and Senate Republicans are generally more eager to revisit the 2011 budget deal that put them in place.
Cruz took a friendly fire from Republicans on the Senate floor Monday when he was denied a voice vote on a bill.
“The question before us now”, McConnell said, “is how to keep the government open in the short term, given the realities we face”.
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McConnell said Tuesday that he and Boehner spoke with Obama recently and that he expects budget negotiations to get underway soon. Boehner has since said he would like to “clean up the barn” before he leaves, taking care of lingering business. Boehner can not survive as Speaker if he does so, because the motion to vacate the chair which is already on the table will be voted on and Boehner dispatched if he does. Along the way, Cruz made several pop culture references – the Sunday night lunar eclipse, the movie “The Terminator” and the novel “Brave New World” – not an altogether unimaginable departure from his marathon 2013 speech two years ago which included a reading of “Green Eggs and Ham”. “The challenge has actually been in the Senate”.
