Tag Archives: Ted Cruz

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Seliger draws GOP challenger; good deal

Incumbents have hated for years my mantra that none of them deserves to be sent back to office without a challenge.

Former state Rep. David Swinford, R-Dumas, would get particularly agitated with me as I extolled the virtue of forcing incumbents to explain themselves, their votes, their policies — why they do what they do on our behalf.

My answer: Too bad, David. That’s why we have elections.

Well, another legislative incumbent, state Sen. Kel Seliger, R-Amarillo, has drawn a primary challenger. He is former Midland mayor Mike Canon, who told the Texas Tribune he intends to file his candidacy papers.

http://www.texastribune.org/2013/12/07/former-midland-mayor-challenging-seliger-sd-31/

The Tribune’s Ross Ramsey notes that Canon’s candidacy could fuel a rivalry between the northern and southern ends of the massive Senate District 31, one of the largest geographically in the state. Given that the state’s population growth has occurred in regions east of here — and given that the law requires each Senate district to have roughly equal populations — that means West Texas districts’ borders keep getting expanded.

There’s long been a bit of tension between north and south in District 31. Before Seliger was elected in 2004, the district was represented by the late Teel Bivins, another stalwart Amarillo Republican; Bivins went on to be appointed ambassador to Sweden. Seliger defeated another ex-Midland mayor in that year’s primary. His most recent GOP challenge came in 2012 from a one-term school trustee from Odessa, whom Seliger trounced in the primary.

On one hand, it’s good for Seliger to be tested by someone within his own party. Primary challenges, indeed contested general elections, serve to keep incumbents on their game and enable them to explain to their constituents why they vote the way they do.

But there might some trouble brewing in this challenge. I don’t know Canon, but I’m going to make a broad presumption that he might be running to Seliger’s right, meaning he comes from the tea party wing of his party. This is the party wing that favors confrontation instead of compromise. Many tea party loyalists in Congress and in state legislators have been known to frown upon Republicans getting too chummy with those dreaded Democrats. Seliger over the years has told me of the friendships he’s developed with legislative Democrats; state Sen. Chuy Hinojosa comes to mind, as he and Seliger apparently are pretty good pals.

As Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst learned the hard way when he lost the GOP primary for the U.S. Senate to Ted Cruz, there’s danger in getting outflanked on the right. Dewhurst tried to tack to the right but it was too late. Cruz inflicted politically mortal wounds on Dewhurst.

Would a challenge from the right, were it to develop, push Seliger farther to at extreme end of the spectrum?

I’m hoping for Seliger’s sake — and for Senate District 31 voters — he stays the course.

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Two senators: same ideology, different styles

Ross Ramsey’s analysis of Texas’s two Republican U.S. senators reminded me of a political truism authored by none other than the late President Richard Nixon.

Nixon, who essentially wrote the modern political playbook, used to say that candidates run to their extremes during the primary and tack toward the center in the general election. The president’s theory applied to Democrats and Republicans.

http://www.texastribune.org/2013/11/25/senate-matter-style/

That might work in most eras and in most states. Not in Texas. Not now.

Ramsey, the editor of the Texas Tribune, says Sen. John Cornyn has stepped right out of “central casting” to be a U.S. senator. White hair, former judge, former state attorney general, handsome features. “Soft face.” He says Sen. Ted Cruz presents a different image. Black hair. Fiery temperament. He’s a TV camera hustler.

Cornyn is running for re-election this year. He might face a serious challenge from his right, from the tea party — aka the wacko — wing of his party. Why? Mainly because he opposed Cruz’s tactic of tying Affordable Care Act funding with the government shutdown earlier this year.

Cornyn is a virtual shoo-in for re-election. To secure his party’s nomination in the spring, he’ll have to say all the right things. He might even have to harden that soft face of his while saying them. He’ll blast the ACA to smithereens. He’ll say mean things about Democrats in general. He might even accuse the president of being something other than a true-blue American.

In another time, though, Cornyn then would veer toward the middle, saying more reasonable things. He would talk about his desire to reach across the aisle to work his “friends on the other side.” He might even mention that he is pals with a few of those Democrats.

But these days, in Texas, the Nixon Axiom no longer seems to matter. Cornyn likely will stay focused on the far right. He might even get more inflammatory as the campaign progresses into the summer and fall of 2014. That’s because so many Texas votes seem comfortable with their senators tossing bombs.

Look at Cruz’s popularity among Texas Republican at this moment. If you’re a Texas politician, all that seems to matter is whether the GOP faithful will stand with you.

All of this could play out as described here, except for one possible factor: whether Democratic state Sen. Wendy Davis’s campaign for governor gins up enough support among women angry at the GOP’s stance on abortion rights. I’m not predicting that will happen.

However, if it does, then President Nixon’s general election strategy is back in play.

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Sen. Cornyn touts GOP ‘family’

U.S. Sen. John Cornyn has launched his re-election campaign with a pledge to seek unity within the Republican Party “family.”

Good luck with that one, senator.

http://www.texastribune.org/2013/11/15/cornyn-touts-big-tent-gop-perry/

Cornyn’s bid for another term in the Senate is likely to succeed next fall. It well might occur with some bumps and bruises along the way.

He spoke at a campaign rally this week of his disagreement with fellow Republican Sen. Ted Cruz over Cruz’s effort to derail the Affordable Care Act; that effort, which included the fake filibuster on the Senate floor, helped produce the 16-day partial government shutdown.

“We had a minor disagreement in the family” over the government shutdown debate, Cornyn said. But, by golly, he intends to work to ensure that Texas doesn’t elect a “Nancy Pelosi clone” as governor, meaning Democratic state Sen. Wendy Davis.

Cornyn and other Republicans, though, keep talking about the so-called “big tent” philosophy they say describes the Republican Party. The big tent, they say, has produced the disagreements within the party. The tea party wing of the GOP, however, hardly seems inclusive of folks Republicans will need to win national elections in the future. I refer, of course, to immigrants, racial minorities, gays, pro-choice women and those who rely on government assistance to help them put food on their tables and clothes on their children’s backs.

Having said all these negative things about Cornyn’s party, allow me to say that I happen to like the senator. I’ve met with him many times over many years, dating back to when he ran for the Texas Supreme Court, state attorney general and then during his time as U.S. senator. We always got along well.

I fear, though, that he’s going to tack too far to the right to protect his flank against those might attack him from the extreme fringes of his party. They’re out there, waiting for the chance to draw blood.

All this unity talk, therefore, is just that. Talk.

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Santorum says Cruz harming the GOP

Rick Santorum knows an extremist when he sees one.

The one-time Republican senator from Pennsylvania and former GOP presidential candidate once blamed contraception as a source of what ails America today. So it is with that intimate knowledge of wacky political rhetoric that he has declared that Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas has harmed the Republican Party’s brand with rank-and-file American voters.

http://blog.mysanantonio.com/texas-on-the-potomac/2013/10/rick-santorum-on-ted-cruz-in-the-end-he-did-more-harm/

Santorum says Cruz is “a face” of the party, not “the face” of it. Cruz’s effort to use defunding the Affordable Care Act as a weapon to shut down the government wasn’t helpful to the cause, which Santorum says is just. He, too, wants to get rid of the ACA. Santorum didn’t think much of Cruz’s fake filibuster, nor does he seem to like the fact that Cruz is everywhere all at once declaring his intention to “do whatever it takes” to get rid of the ACA.

One problem with Santorum’s critique of his fellow Republican, Cruz, is that Cruz doesn’t care that he harms the party. He has done himself more good than harm, if you are to believe some of the polls and the political chatter back home in Texas.

That’s what matters to the freshman senator, who in just nine months has elevated his profile to a level far more visible than many of the more senior members of the body in which he serves.

He’s acting like he wants to run for president in 2016. For that matter, so is Santorum.

Come to think of it, that might explain why one potential GOP conservative candidate for president is criticizing the antics of another one.

Whatever. Santorum makes sense when sizing up the contributions of Ted Cruz to his party’s cause.

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Stay in the Senate, John McCain

The idea that John McCain might not run next year for another term as a U.S. senator leaves me with decidedly mixed feelings.

The Arizona Republican is one of the few GOP wise men left in that august body. My sense is that the Senate needs him to slap some sense into the upstarts who have taken over much of the agenda on Capitol Hill.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/31/john-mccain-spying_n_4184036.html?ncid=txtlnkushpmg00000037

He says the government shutdown was a huge mistake, although he sounds as though he means it as a partisan strategy. No kidding, senator. He doesn’t think much of at least one of the tea party firebrands in the Senate, fellow Republican Ted Cruz of Texas, whom he’s dressed down already for questioning the ethics and integrity of another Republican, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel.

My concern isn’t about the future of the Republican Party. I am rather concerned about whether government can keep working the way it’s supposed to work. Whether the GOP is heading down some sort of path of self-destruction really doesn’t matter to me, although I would prefer to see a healthy — and reasonable — Republican Party perform its role in crafting meaningful legislation.

If John McCain is able to try to talk some sense into his party and continue working with colleagues who call themselves Democrats, then he ought to stay.

Yes, he ticks off many on the far right who consider him one of those dreaded RINOs — Republican In Name Only. He’s no such thing. His voting record is solidly conservative and has consistent with historic GOP values for many years.

He just happens to be willing and able to talk sense to those who need to hear it.

Pay attention.

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Congressional polls keep plummeting

I keep track of polls on occasion, the favorite of which is the RealClearPolitics.com average of polls.

It keeps arguably the most accurate account of polling activity for one reason: It averages all the polls together, the left-wing polls, the right-wing polls, the neutral polls — all of them. It then calculates the average of all the surveys taken together.

The latest RCP poll average on Congress’s approval with Americans is worth noting.

It puts the approval rating at 9.2 percent.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/other/congressional_job_approval-903.html

It was at 9.6 percent just two days ago. A week before that it was at 10 percent.

Many individual polls suggest that Americans are so angry with Congress’s handling of the budget and debt ceiling kerfuffle that they might return the House of Representatives to Democratic control in next year’s midterm elections.

The thought is putting stars in the eyes of congressional Democrats, namely Rep. Nancy Pelosi of California, who could get the gavel back in January 2015 as speaker of the House.

The Republican House majority is neither narrow or huge. Democrats have to capture 17 seats from the Republicans to win back control. That’s 17 out of 435 total seats. It’s not many. Were that to occur, President Obama could get his legislative agenda unstuck in a hurry. Issues such as immigration reform might actually get passed. Americans also finally might be able to have a budget passed in a timely fashion, without the hysterics and histrionics we’ve seen of late.

The strangest aspect, in my mind, of the fallout from the debt ceiling and government shutdown debacles is that many hardline Republicans aren’t getting the message. They’re vowing to continue fighting the battle — to defund the Affordable Care Act — that they just lost.

I’m sensing that stubbornness lies at the heart of Americans’ disapproval of Congress in general — and in Republicans in particular.

The next year is shaping up as a rough ride for the GOP.

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Cruz doesn’t work for party bosses?

I cannot believe I’m about to write these next five words: I agree with Ted Cruz.

Sen. Cruz told CNN he doesn’t work for “party bosses.” He said he works for Texans who elected him to the U.S. Senate and that he doesn’t care that Senate Republican elders are mad at him for the tactics he used to gum up the government.

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2013/10/20/cruz-to-cnn-i-dont-work-for-the-party-bosses-in-washington/?hpt=po_c1

The fact that I agree that he shouldn’t care what Senate senior statesmen think of him doesn’t mean I support what he did to keep the government shut down and to prevent the Congress from increasing the nation’s debt limit. I still think he’s a loudmouth and a self-serving showman. His own political future remains his key interest, in my view.

His statement about not working for party bosses reminds me a bit of what another Texas Republican did some years ago to stick it in the eye of his party bosses.

U.S. Rep. Larry Combest was a key member of the House Agriculture Committee. However, he disliked the way House Speaker Newt Gingrich was pushing something called Freedom to Farm, a bill that would have dramatically altered U.S. farm policy that helped subsidize farmers and ranchers who, for reasons relating to forces outside their control — such as Mother Nature — couldn’t bring in crops.

Combest told Gingrich then he couldn’t back Freedom to Farm, saying he worked for the West Texas cattle ranchers and cotton farmers who helped elect him to Congress. Combest’s resistance would cost him temporarily the House Agriculture Committee chairmanship, a post he coveted. He didn’t care. Combest stood firmly on the side of his West Texas congressional district.

Ted Cruz, though, isn’t really listening to all Texans if he insists that he is speaking for them in this battle over the budget. Some of us out here may wish the government would curtail spending, but we do not want to see it paralyzed through political dysfunction, which is what Cruz is espousing.

I agree with Cruz that he doesn’t work for the party bosses. He works for all Texans, even those who prefer to see their elected representatives work constructively to get things done on their behalf.

Keeping the government functioning is one of those things.

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Even ‘our SOBs’ may need to get tossed

I’ve been thinking the past few days about my former congressman, the late Jack Brooks, a crusty Democrat who served Southeast Texas for more than four decades before getting beat in that landmark 1994 Republican sweep of Congress.

Jack used to refer to himself as Sweet Old Brooks, which translates into the initials SOB. He was proud of his irascible nature. In fact, Brooks embodied the saying of members of Congress that so-and-so “may be an SOB, but he’s our SOB.”

Some polling has come out in recent days that suggests American voters may be more likely than at any time in memory to throw out their congressman or woman in the next election, largely because of the trumped-up drama that took us once more to the brink of defaulting on our financial obligations.

The faux drama ended late Wednesday when the Senate leadership cobbled together a deal to reopen part of the federal government and lift the debt ceiling so we can pay our bills.

The consequences of defaulting are quite chilling to consider. The financial markets would have collapsed, taking millions of Americans’ retirement accounts into the crapper.

Still, with that prospect hanging over Americans’ heads, a number of senators and House members voted against the deal to prevent the default. Who voted no? Among them were Texas’s two GOP senators, John Cornyn and Ted Cruz and my current Republican member of Congress, Mac Thornberry.

Thornberry said on TV tonight that he voted “no” because the deal didn’t solve any problems; it only postponed for a few months a situation that he thinks will repeat itself when the debt ceiling is set to expire once more.

I guess my question for the dissenters is this: How would you propose to solve all those problems at the last minute?

I’ll concede that the political system is badly broken. However, Thornberry, Cornyn and Cruz all are part of what ails it. They, of course, blame the other party — just as the other party blames them.

So, to fix the problem they proposed letting the government default on its debts, allowing the economy to crash, keeping federal employees furloughed and maintaining maximum dysfunction in our federal government. Reminds me of the old Vietnam War axiom of “destroying the village in order to save it.”

To think that some folks still wonder why Congress’s approval rating is in the sewer.

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Cruz making more enemies daily

Sen. Ted Cruz cannot possibly understand what he’s doing.

The Texas Republican seems to be doing everything possible, all within his power, to alienate the leadership of his party, not to mention the elders of the U.S. Senate where he has served all of nine months.

As Dana Milbank notes in his Washington Post column, Cruz has done what was thought to be virtually impossible, which is create a massive amount of wreckage in record time.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/dana-milbank-in-debt-limit-and-shutdown-defeat-ted-cruz-is-one-sore-loser/2013/10/16/d896d180-36b4-11e3-ae46-e4248e75c8ea_story.html?hpid=z7

McConnell brokered a deal with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid that reopened the government and staved off a default of our national debt obligations. That wasn’t acceptable to Sen. Cruz, who said the Washington “establishment” caved in. To whom he wasn’t entirely clear.

Cruz then stormed in front of a bank of TV cameras at the very time McConnell was making his own statement about the deal. I am quite certain the Senate’s chief Republican is not going to forget what Cruz said and did any time soon. As McConnell was trying to put some kind of positive spin on what he and Reid accomplished, Cruz was turning the spin in precisely the opposite direction.

Team player? All for one and one for all? Neither of those notions has a place in Ted Cruz’s vocabulary.

Cruz said the Senate should have “listened to the American people.” My hunch is that the 81 senators who voted for the McConnell-Reid deal were listening to the people — who were telling them to end this madness, to get the government operating fully and to avoid plunging this nation into default.

It’s Ted Cruz who needs to have his hearing checked.

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Senate Loudmouth Caucus about to expand

I’ve taken great pleasure the past several months savaging the boorish behavior of rookie U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas.

His “crime” has been an inability to keep his trap shut while learning the ropes of the institution to which he was just elected in November 2012. He jumped right into the thick of the fray — and right in front of every TV camera in sight — to tell the world what he thinks about everything under the sun.

I’m sick of the sound of his voice — and he’s only been a senator for nine months.

Cruz is a member of what we ought to call the Loudmouth Caucus in the Senate.

His ranks are likely to expand early next month. The beauty of the Loudmouth Caucus is that it’s a bipartisan organization. Anyone can join. Cruz is about to be joined, no doubt, by a Democratic colleague from New Jersey.

Ladies and gents, let’s welcome Sen. Cory Booker.

Booker is the mayor of Newark, N.J. He won a Democratic primary a few weeks ago and is set to be elected to the unexpired term of the late Sen. Frank Lautenberg. Yes, Booker has a Republican opponent, but it doesn’t matter. Booker’s going to win the election. Then he’ll run for re-election to a full term later and he’s likely to be re-elected.

Why is this man’s pending entrance into the Senate worth noting? It’s because he’s going to battle Cruz tooth-and-nail for face time on every TV news camera one can find on Capitol Hill. I’d put money on that.

Booker is as uninhibited as Cruz. He loves the sound of his voice. He loves seeing his face on TV. He talks and talks and talks — and at times it’s nearly impossible to follow the man’s train of thought.

Booker has made a name for himself as Newark mayor by doing some unconventional things, such as rescuing a resident from a burning building. He’s also picked up a shovel and cleaned out storm drains. He’s a working mayor, or so he would have us believe.

Booker is likely to set out proving he’s a working senator, too — although I’m not sure we’re going to see him performing manual tasks the way he has done as mayor. He’s likely just to talk a lot about all the hard work he will do.

I’ll make this prediction: Booker will anger his Democratic colleagues as much as Cruz has angered his fellow Republican senators. Given the anger that permeates the capital these days across party lines, it’s a given Booker is going to have enemies on the other side — just as Ted Cruz did — the moment he takes the oath of office.

Get ready for a lot more noise coming from the World’s Oldest Deliberative Body.