When Sen. Ted Cruz gave an impassioned speech on the Senate floor, last week, he ruffled a few feathers. Calling Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell a liar in front of everybody is just not done. “Elder party statesmen have not been amused,” the Los Angeles Times reports:
On Sunday, 81-year-old Orrin G. Hatch of Utah, the GOP’s most senior senator, opened the chamber’s session with a reminder to colleagues of the ground rules.
“Squabbling and acrimony may be tolerated on the campaign trail,” said Hatch, who urged senators colleagues toward comity and decorum, and to keep their egos in check.
Cruz defended himself. “It is entirely consistent with decorum … to speak the truth.”
The “squabble” was over the Export-Import Bank, mainly. Cruz blurted out how McConnell had betrayed his own party members in the Senate by cutting a backroom deal for the crony-capitalist moral hazard that is the Ex-Im.
Regardless (or because of?) Cruz’s truth-telling, the Senate rebuffed Cruz and “voted to advance the Export-Import bank and deny the presidential hopeful a vote on his amendment.”
Crony capitalism continues.
But note an odd aside in the LA Times’s account. The paper went out of its way to identify Ex-Im as “opposed by the powerful Koch brothers but supported by a bipartisan coalition of business interests, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.”
The Kochs were brought up … for what reason?
So vilified by the left, these days, the Kochs are a red herring … which the Times threw into the issue like an Erisian apple, nudging Democratic readers not to sympathize with Cruz.
We can’t have his anti-crony-capitalist stance attract Democratic readers, now, can we?
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
7 replies on “Cruz “Loses””
There’s a special place deep in the dung pile for both McConnell and Boehner. In cooperation with Obama, the Three Amigos have this broken county to the point of a death rattle.
Hooray for Cruz. Yeah I know he is running for Prez, but it took some balls to stand up and say what he said. Despite the fact that he closed with the mandatory requiem to Bibi, Sheldon Adleson„ Inc and the AiPAC lobby. That’s where he lost me.
Agreed on all counts, Skip.
To chastise the truth does not go with me. Cruz made remarks that need to be made.
The Republican Establishment cannot allow “truth” to interfere with their consistent betrayal of their voters.
It’s about time someone exposed the unethical practices that go on in Congress on both sides and how the parties often sell out their own party members let alone their constituents. Cruz has and will continue to have my support.
It is consistent, 2WarAbnVet.
Barbara — He has earned our respect for speaking truth to power here.
Thank God we have at least one man in Washington with a backbone. My vote and my prayers are with Ted Cruz! We need more just like him.