Beltway Republicans vow revenge on Ted Cruz

Image Credit: Ted Cruz via Faceboo

kPublished by: Dan Calabrese on
Monday June 9th, 2014

Of course.

Not that Ted Cruz didn't know this would happen when he came to Washington. He knew exactly what would happen, just as he knew that fear of such consequences tended to scare off many others who understood the nation's problems but didn't want to put up with the consequences of holding their perpetrators accountable.

Cruz has done the very thing we always say we want public servants to do - and the very thing almost all of the claim theywill do if elected, which is to "stand up to the powerful interests" blah blah blah. They talk about it. Cruz actually did it. And if it's not making him friends, he simply reminds himself and us that making friends among the Beltway Establishment is not the reason he went there.
Oh, and by the way . . . it's not making him friends:

Not only are business groups not giving to Cruz, they aren’t giving to many of the outlets that helped elect him, like the Senate Conservatives Fund. “There’s been a push to consolidate the party behind the Establishment and stop the divisive freelancing that has twice cost us the Senate,” says another big GOP fundraiser, referring to the 2010 and 2012 cycles where Tea Party candidate losses prevented Republicans from gaining the Senate majority.

Turning off the big money taps is just one form of revenge. Another is committee assignments. There have not been any overt threats to strip Cruz of committee assignments, but if he refuses to vote for Mitch McConnell for leader next year, that could change. Cruz in February declined to commit to voting for McConnell for leader. “If Cruz votes against McConnell and decides he’s not going to be caucusing with Republicans, kicking him off all his committees is an obvious move,” Feehery says. “This is how [House Speaker John] Boehner is thinking about punishing those who vote against him speaker: no committee assignments and make sure that they get no money from” Republican campaign groups.

Indeed, former Senator Jim DeMint, a South Carolina bomb thrower who was Tea Party before the Tea Party existed, says he was pulled off of committee assignments for being too much of a troublemaker. “Yeah, there were some committee assignments that I was in line for that were put off,” DeMint says. “I was in line after 2010 for Finance Committee and I never got it … Certainly, there were a few cold shoulders here and there.” DeMint was also passed over for ranking member of the Commerce Committee.
It's interesting when you read this piece from Time to see what Beltway types emphasize, as opposed to the things Cruz emphasizes. For the former, it's all about plumb committee assignments and campaign cash. You don't play ball? You don't get money! You don't get the seat you wanted! And apparently such threats are enough to get the attention of most senators, who want the contributions and the cushy assignments above all else.

For Cruz, it's about getting federal spending under control and getting rid of ObamaCare - in other words, things that matter to the people, not to the politicians.

By the way, about the ever-present criticism that Beltway Republicans want the same outcomes as Cruz, but that he chose an ineffective method of going about it: Bolshevik!

The only reason the government shutdown didn't work is that the rest of the Republican caucus lacks the conviction of Ted Cruz. They all say they want to stop irresponsible borrowing and spending, yet when they have the opportunity to stand up and demand concessions from the Democrats, what do they do? Nothing. They run cowering in fear of Obama and the media. Then when one of them actually wants to use the power he's been given by the citizens to do the work of the citizens, the rest of them get mad at him and vow revenge, because it will make them look bad!

If Republicans had followed Cruz's lead, yes, it would have been politically messy, and they would have had to work harder to explain their position to the voters above the cacophony from the media and the Democrats. But so what? Do any of them mean it when they say they'll go there to fight for what's right? Or do they only mean they'll fight until it becomes politically tenuous to do so, which is guaranteed to happen almost immediately?

Because it looks to me like not many are really there to fight for real solutions, instead of for their own political survival, and one of those few is Ted Cruz. That's why they want revenge. He doesn't care that he's not supposed to embarrass them by actually doing his job, and thus call attention to the fact that none of them do theirs.

http://www.caintv.com/beltway-republicans-vow-reveng