The 10 best insults Republicans hurled at Ted Cruz this week
The junior senator from Texas is in hot water with two groups of his GOP colleagues, and they aren't holding back
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) has become something of a piñata for two groups of congressional Republicans: Those who eagerly support his exhortation to strip all funding for ObamaCare, and those who think risking a government shutdown over an ill-fated ObamaCare-defunding measure is daft politics.
It's pretty obvious why the second group would be annoyed with Cruz, who has been goading the House GOP to go all-in on the defunding plan for months, including through Cruz-branded TV ads (watch below). The first group is miffed because, when the House agreed to go along with Cruz's high-stakes defund-or-bust plan this week, Cruz issued this statement:
This was seen by House Republicans, rightly or wrongly, as Cruz conceding that his own plan — get the GOP-led House to include defunding ObamaCare in the must-pass federal spending bill, then fight like hell to get the Senate on board, propelled by a "tsunami" of grassroots outrage — is doomed, and probably always was. They didn't appreciate the pep talk/kiss-off, and they let him know it, through social and news media.
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Here are some of the best insults, snide comments, and other bits of pointed criticism congressional Republicans and their aides aimed at Cruz this week:
If you didn't notice that all of those barbs come from Republicans who refused to comment on record, Cruz did.
But not all the shade-throwing was anonymous. Here's Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) not-so-sublty criticizing Cruz (Princeton '92, Harvard Law '95):
And in the House, Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.) calls Cruz's defund-ObamaCare plan a "fraud against the American people," and against House Republicans. "Whether it's Custer, whether it's kamikaze, or whether it's Gallipoli or whatever, we are going to lose this," he tells CNN:
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On the other side of the GOP divide, Rep. Sean Duffy (R-Wis.) is one of the House conservatives pushing for the defunding strategy:
Democrats are watching the infighting with nervous bemusement — gawking at rivals engaged in an internecine knife fight is fun, but government shutdowns aren't. MSNBC's Chris Hayes plays it pretty straight, though, with this three-minute explainer on how we got here:
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Peter has worked as a news and culture writer and editor at The Week since the site's launch in 2008. He covers politics, world affairs, religion and cultural currents. His journalism career began as a copy editor at a financial newswire and has included editorial positions at The New York Times Magazine, Facts on File, and Oregon State University.
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