LOL, Cruz has so little respect in the senate now, he couldn't even get sufficient second on his latest poison pill amendments.
Ted Cruz bullied Republicans for years. Now they’re standing up to him.
washingtonpost.com
Who’s afraid of big, bad Ted Cruz? Not Lamar Alexander. The Tennessee Republican went on the Senate floor to accuse his fellow Republican of proposing actions that would “render ourselves lawless” and cause “chaos.” Alexander reminded the Texas Republican that the Senate “requires restraint and goodwill.”
Not John Cornyn. The senior senator from Texas said that Cruz’s prescription would be a “terrible mistake” and that if his fellow Texas Republican were making a valid point, “you would find other voices joining that of the junior senator, but I hear no one.”
And certainly not Orrin Hatch. The Utah Republican and Senate president pro tempore said on the Senate floor, in remarks prompted by Cruz, that “squabbling and sanctimony” won’t be tolerated.
“The Senate floor has too often become a forum for partisan messaging,” the veteran legislator inveighed. “It has been misused as a tool to advance personal ambitions, a venue to promote political campaigns, and even a vehicle to enhance fund-raising efforts,” — all of which Cruz has done. “ Most egregiously, Mr. President, the Senate floor has even become a place where senators have singled out colleagues by name to attack them in personal terms.”
Finally, Senate Republicans are standing up to the bully who terrorized them the last two and a half years — and they’re finding out he isn’t so tough, after all. After Cruz on the Senate floor Friday called his fellow Republican, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, a liar, his GOP colleagues have moved swiftly to shut down his antics. They voted in large numbers to renew the Export-Import Bank (McConnell’s scheduling of the vote, opposed by Cruz, is what prompted Cruz to accuse McConnell of lying) and they thwarted Cruz and his sidekick, Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) on poison-pill amendments to the highway bill that would have jettisoned Senate rules in order to defund Planned Parenthood, scuttle the Iran nuclear deal and repeal Obamacare.
In a particular humiliation of Cruz, he was unable to get a “sufficient second” for a vote on his Iran amendment Sunday, persuading just three senators — well short of the 20 percent he needed. Such seconds are routinely granted as a courtesy, and longtime Congress watchers couldn’t recall a similar rebuke by senators of a colleague.
</snip> Rest here: washingtonpost.com |
