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http://www.politico.com/story/2015/...-mcconnell-rand-paul-book-119565.html?hp=t2_r
Ted Cruz’s campaign against his Republican colleagues — especially Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell — is getting increasingly personal.
The freshman senator from Texas has never shied from attacking the men and women whom he works alongside each day. But Cruz, lodged in the middle of the 2016 GOP presidential pack, is taking his criticism of fellow Republican senators to a new level — rhetorically and in his new book out Tuesday, “A Time for Truth.”
Cruz accuses McConnell and GOP leadership of maneuvering to dry up his fundraising and plant hit pieces in the press aimed at hurting him politically. He says GOP leaders cowered from joining him in big fights over the debt ceiling, Obamacare and gun control, accusing his colleagues of “mendacity” and capitulating to Democrats to avoid bad headlines.
He contends that McConnell misled him in vowing to stay out of primaries when Cruz accepted a senior-level position at the National Republican Senatorial Committee. And he accuses a GOP rival, Rand Paul of Kentucky, of parroting McConnell’s talking points by seeking to “undermine” his efforts to defund Obamacare during the 2013 fight that led to the government shutdown.
“During my time in the Senate, I’ve been amazed how many senators pose one way in public — as fiscal conservatives or staunch tea party supporters — and then in private do little or nothing to advance those principles,” Cruz writes in his 342-page book.
Disparaging Washington, of course, is one of the more timeworn campaign tactics of presidential hopefuls. What’s less typical is the personal, pointed way Cruz is doing it as his campaign ramps up. He’s leaning heavily into his brand of unapologetic and confrontational conservatism, arguing that GOP leadership’s compromises with Democrats are nothing more than “surrender.”
Yet presenting himself as a polarizing figure at war with the party establishment is a risky way to try to become the Republican presidential nominee.
Cruz’s book is in keeping with his stepped-up effort in recent days to portray himself as the one GOP candidate who’s taken on party leadership. On the Senate floor last week, he accused unnamed Republicans of “quietly celebrating” the Supreme Court’s decision to uphold Obamacare subsidies. After vocally endorsing trade legislation backed by party leaders, Cruz flipped on the issue, bemoaning in an op-ed “corrupt” Washington deal making on the matter and singling out McConnell and House Speaker John Boehner for misleading conservatives.
And in the opening chapter of his book, Cruz calls out McConnell and his GOP colleagues for “chicanery” by publicly opposing an increase in the borrowing limit while privately trying to let the debt ceiling increase in 2014 without their fingerprints. When he told a California GOP donor in 2014 about the debt ceiling dispute, Cruz recalls the donor saying repeatedly: “The bastards.”
“In the 2016 primary, you’re going to have 15 candidates up there going, ‘I’m conservative. No, no, I’m conservative.’ And what we see is they go to Washington and they don’t do what they said they would do,” Cruz told NPR Monday in an interview about his book. “I think the question Republican primary voters should ask is, ‘When have you stood up against the Washington cartel? When have you stood up against leaders in our own party?’”
Don Stewart, a McConnell spokesman, declined to comment.
Since coming to Washington in 2013, Cruz has co-sponsored only three bills that have become law, none of them controversial. But in his book, Cruz suggests that cutting deals to pass legislation shouldn’t be the gauge of senatorial success.
“Sometimes, people ask me, ‘When you have a room full of Republican senators yelling at you to back down and compromise your principles, why don’t you just give in?’” Cruz wrote. “The answer is simple. I just remember all those men and women who pleaded with me, ‘Don’t become one of them.’”
In his book, Cruz writes that immediately after he won his 2012 Senate race, McConnell made a “concentrated effort to befriend me.” Cruz said he was “wary,” but “glad to reciprocate.” He joined McConnell on an official trip to Afghanistan and Israel and was the GOP leader’s guest at the 2013 Alfalfa Club Dinner. McConnell awarded Cruz with plum committee assignments — even a spot on the Senate Rules Committee, which is typically reserved for more senior members.
Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2015/...nell-rand-paul-book-119565.html#ixzz3eUvfbgX9
Ted Cruz’s campaign against his Republican colleagues — especially Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell — is getting increasingly personal.
The freshman senator from Texas has never shied from attacking the men and women whom he works alongside each day. But Cruz, lodged in the middle of the 2016 GOP presidential pack, is taking his criticism of fellow Republican senators to a new level — rhetorically and in his new book out Tuesday, “A Time for Truth.”
Cruz accuses McConnell and GOP leadership of maneuvering to dry up his fundraising and plant hit pieces in the press aimed at hurting him politically. He says GOP leaders cowered from joining him in big fights over the debt ceiling, Obamacare and gun control, accusing his colleagues of “mendacity” and capitulating to Democrats to avoid bad headlines.
He contends that McConnell misled him in vowing to stay out of primaries when Cruz accepted a senior-level position at the National Republican Senatorial Committee. And he accuses a GOP rival, Rand Paul of Kentucky, of parroting McConnell’s talking points by seeking to “undermine” his efforts to defund Obamacare during the 2013 fight that led to the government shutdown.
“During my time in the Senate, I’ve been amazed how many senators pose one way in public — as fiscal conservatives or staunch tea party supporters — and then in private do little or nothing to advance those principles,” Cruz writes in his 342-page book.
Disparaging Washington, of course, is one of the more timeworn campaign tactics of presidential hopefuls. What’s less typical is the personal, pointed way Cruz is doing it as his campaign ramps up. He’s leaning heavily into his brand of unapologetic and confrontational conservatism, arguing that GOP leadership’s compromises with Democrats are nothing more than “surrender.”
Yet presenting himself as a polarizing figure at war with the party establishment is a risky way to try to become the Republican presidential nominee.
Cruz’s book is in keeping with his stepped-up effort in recent days to portray himself as the one GOP candidate who’s taken on party leadership. On the Senate floor last week, he accused unnamed Republicans of “quietly celebrating” the Supreme Court’s decision to uphold Obamacare subsidies. After vocally endorsing trade legislation backed by party leaders, Cruz flipped on the issue, bemoaning in an op-ed “corrupt” Washington deal making on the matter and singling out McConnell and House Speaker John Boehner for misleading conservatives.
And in the opening chapter of his book, Cruz calls out McConnell and his GOP colleagues for “chicanery” by publicly opposing an increase in the borrowing limit while privately trying to let the debt ceiling increase in 2014 without their fingerprints. When he told a California GOP donor in 2014 about the debt ceiling dispute, Cruz recalls the donor saying repeatedly: “The bastards.”
“In the 2016 primary, you’re going to have 15 candidates up there going, ‘I’m conservative. No, no, I’m conservative.’ And what we see is they go to Washington and they don’t do what they said they would do,” Cruz told NPR Monday in an interview about his book. “I think the question Republican primary voters should ask is, ‘When have you stood up against the Washington cartel? When have you stood up against leaders in our own party?’”
Don Stewart, a McConnell spokesman, declined to comment.
Since coming to Washington in 2013, Cruz has co-sponsored only three bills that have become law, none of them controversial. But in his book, Cruz suggests that cutting deals to pass legislation shouldn’t be the gauge of senatorial success.
“Sometimes, people ask me, ‘When you have a room full of Republican senators yelling at you to back down and compromise your principles, why don’t you just give in?’” Cruz wrote. “The answer is simple. I just remember all those men and women who pleaded with me, ‘Don’t become one of them.’”
In his book, Cruz writes that immediately after he won his 2012 Senate race, McConnell made a “concentrated effort to befriend me.” Cruz said he was “wary,” but “glad to reciprocate.” He joined McConnell on an official trip to Afghanistan and Israel and was the GOP leader’s guest at the 2013 Alfalfa Club Dinner. McConnell awarded Cruz with plum committee assignments — even a spot on the Senate Rules Committee, which is typically reserved for more senior members.
Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2015/...nell-rand-paul-book-119565.html#ixzz3eUvfbgX9
