Ted Cruz has a problem.
He wants to become the “anti-Trump” candidate for president of the United States. He’s seeking a way to get Ohio Gov. John Kasich to bow out. He believes he can coalesce enough “true conservatives” behind him to derail Donald J. Trump’s march to the Republican Party presidential nomination.
The junior U.S. senator from Texas, though, needs some help from his colleagues in the Senate. But as Politico reports, he is nearly universally detested by his fellow senators. And that’s just the Republicans with whom he serves.
Cruz needs to build some relationships. I don’t mean “rebuild.” He’s got to start from scratch.
He’s been in the Senate for slightly more than three years. He’s halfway through his very first term in the very first elected public office he’s ever held.
As Politico reports: “Cruz’s relationship with his colleagues is now a central paradox of his campaign: He’s openly arguing for the party to rally behind him, but Republican senators are plainly wary of going anywhere near him. Those who feel burned by Cruz in the past say he’ll come to them only if he decides it’s in his self-interest. ”
The man who leads the Senate — the body’s top Republican — once was on the receiving end of a barrage that Cruz leveled at him. Remember when the Cruz Missile called Majority Leader Mitch McConnell a “liar” in a speech on the floor of the World’s Greatest Deliberative Body?
How does McConnell put that epithet behind him? How does McConnell gather the forces to help one of their own take down this “interloper” named Trump.
Moreover, Sen. John McCain — the GOP’s 2008 presidential nominee — has taken Cruz to task in public for his intemperate remarks about a couple of fellow Vietnam War combat veterans, John Kerry and Chuck Hagel.
Finally, he’s been campaigning against the very “Washington establishment” where he works these days. He’s an “outsider,” he says.
Something tells me Cruz’s efforts to put distance between himself and his Senate colleagues ain’t going well with the ladies and gents with whom he serves.