No, Sen. Reid. Tell me what you really think [Politico link]:
“He’s a coward,” Reid angrily said, referring to Boehner’s private push for federal health care contributions for lawmakers and their staff. Boehner later backed legislation to end those subsidies in order to win points with House GOP conservatives. “He’s a coward!” Reid exclaimed. [via]
Challenge to the commentariat: design the holiday cards those two will exchange.
And then there’s everyone’s least favorite Texan. And I do mean everyone:
And on Wednesday at a private luncheon, several Senate Republicans — Dan Coats of Indiana, Ron Johnson of Wisconsin and Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire — assailed Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, who has led the movement to block funding for the health law.
Ms. Ayotte was especially furious, according to two people present, and waved a printout from a conservative group friendly to Mr. Cruz attacking 25 of his fellow Republican senators for supporting a procedural vote that the group counted as support of the health law.
Ms. Ayotte asked Mr. Cruz to disavow the group’s effort and demanded he explain his strategy. When he did not, several other senators — including Mr. Johnson, Mr. Coats and even Mitch McConnell, the minority leader — joined in the criticism of Mr. Cruz.
“It just started a lynch mob,” said a senator who was present.
Put that last in the latest in Republican misappropriations of history…but I’m loving imagining that lunch.
Even better? The next line in the NYT piece:
Despite the uproar, Mr. Cruz did not offer a plan for how his party could prevail in the shutdown battle and suggested his colleagues were defeatists.
Increasingly, it seems to me, Tailgunner Ted (R-TexCanada), resembles no one so much as this guy:
Or at least, so I devoutly hope.*¹
*Indulging in a little historical hyperbole of my own, I guess. Sue me.
¹In fact, Cardigan would be a step up from Our Ted:
“His progression through the Army was marked by many episodes of extraordinary incompetence, but this can be measured against his generosity to the men under his command and genuine bravery. As a member of the landed aristocracy he had actively and steadfastly opposed any political reform in Britain, but in the last year of his life he relented and came to acknowledge that such reform would bring benefit to all classes of society.”
Image: Francis Grant, James Brudenell, 7th Earl of Cardigan, c.1841 — or about 13 years before his most infamous exploit.
Villago Delenda Est
Oh, Cardigan would definitely be a step (or three or six or ten) up from our Ted.
Cruz may be intelligent, but he’s also a self-absorbed, narcissistic asshole who is making the mistake of kicking the people upon whose backs he needs to climb.
shortstop
Dude’s been in office for nine months. Wonder what the next 5 1/4 years will be like — not just for us, but also for him, with no one but the 27%, 30 guys in the House and Mike Lee on his side?
Belafon
Daily Kos actually had a very good diary up. We on the left must not allow the Republicans or the media to turn this into Cruz’s shutdown. It is the Republican shutdown. They own it. If they really had not wanted it, they could have ignored Cruz.
Betty Cracker
More schadenfreude here. (Boehner raises prospect of a “Grand Bargain” at White House meeting; Democrats laugh in his face.)
MattF
Back in the day, the Brits had a way of dealing with a leader who didn’t ‘do his utmost’:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Byng
Ash Can
I would have added the adjective “fucking,” but other than that, right on, Harry.
As for holiday cards, Reid’s to Boehner would come in the form of a flaming bag of shit by the front door. Boehner’s to Reid, OTOH, would never actually reach Reid, with Boehner having fucked up the address sufficiently to render it undeliverable and dumped into the dead-letter black hole.
nemesis
Of course Cruz is a clown and a dangerous one at that, we might be better served if Tailgunner Ted were not completely destroyed just yet. Lets say he gains some popularity in the coming years leading up to the 2016 elections, but the gop elites continue to hate on Cruz, maybe, just maybe, he runs a 3rd party campaign, which, of course, dooms the gop nationally. It would be must see tv to witness the gop deveour its own.
debbie
Wow, Ayotte used to be one of the crazies.
Splitting Image
Ted Cruz has happened once before, as tragedy, so the farcical aspects of the Texas Firebrand are just and fitting.
shortstop
@debbie: She still is. But she’s on Team McCain, which doesn’t like Team Cruz one little bit.
shortstop
@Ash Can:
Awesome.
Adolphus
I actually think Cruz is more of a Harry Flashman without the charm the ladies love so much.
Ash Can
@debbie: She still is. She and her anti-Cruz colleagues can all go eat shit and bark at the moon. They’re as big a part of the problem as Cruz is. He’s everything they deserve.
Linda Featheringill
It’s fun to watch the Republicans shout at Cruz but when are they going to start voting contrary to his directives?
It don’t mean a thing if you don’t have that vote.
the Conster
I wouldn’t be surprised to hear that Rafael’s been found dumped in a landfill in New Jersey.
Citizen_X
Knitting a button-up sweater, right?
negative 1
@Belafon: Not trolling, just wondering, why? There are advantages to both pinning it to him and not, from where I can see it. If they can brand it as Ted’s shutdown it ends a lot faster.
negative 1
@Citizen_X: The Charge of the Light Sweater Brigade
Poopyman
Hey, don’t blame Cardigan for the Light Brigade fiasco. He was just following his orders. More or less.
Bitchin’ sweaters, though.
Cruz is fast becoming a non-entity at best (worst). At worst (best), he’s becoming a symbol of everything that’s wrong with the Republican Party.
Mark B.
I get opposing the health care law. I don’t agree with it, but if you are opposed, you can campaign against it. What I don’t get is once the health care law passes, is validated by the Supreme Court, then refusing to pay for it. It’s already a law. You guys passed it. Now pay for it. There’ no room for negotiation here. It’s a done deal. Now pay the bills you ran up, congress.
Ash Can
@shortstop: I cheated, though, because I didn’t describe Boehner’s actual card to Harry. It would probably be something like “Happy Birthday” on the front, crossed out, with “Merry Christmas” scribbled in the margin. (The inside would be untouched — birthday sentiments, John Kasich’s signature, and all — except for a few splotches of spilled scotch.)
aimai
@Adolphus: I don’t think so. Flashman was an honest coward and a rake. Cruz obviously fancies himself much, much, more than that. He thinks he’s a bold hero. Flashman never thinks that of himself.
Adolphus
@aimai:
I was thinking more of his loud flatulence causing the Charge of the Light Brigade, but you are right. I shouldn’t generalize.
Higgs Boson's Mate
The Republicans are locked into being the battered spouse of whichever strongman lurches into their party. Sure, they’ll threaten to leave him. If they do they’ll just wander around like chickens with their heads cut off until they find themselves another strongman.
Cassidy
@negative 1: We’re already there. Might as well kill the beast with it.
shortstop
@Ash Can: Ha!
@Mark B.: The most disquieting thing about the current GOP and its supporters is their apparently bottomless ability to flatly deny realities they find unpleasant. Don’t like the ACA? Pretend it’s not a done deal even after months of debate, passage by both houses, upholding by the Supreme Court and a second election in which the other guys campaigned mostly on repealing it. Obama leading Romney in all the polls? Every pollster in America, except for our two or three guys, is a shady liberal who’s skewing the numbers. Climate change implies lifestyle changes? Must be cooked up by the famously profit-seeking scientific community to smack down the altruistic fossil fuel industry. Uncomfortable with having a black man in the White House? Insist he’s an illegitimate president for reasons of foreign birth or ACORN-stolen elections. Threaten to impeach him for the “tyranny” of being elected twice and having the nerve to propose legislation we oppose.
It’s not like Republicans have ever been nice people. But as recently as a couple of decades ago you could still catch them trying to sell actual policies as alternatives to Democratic policy work, rather than simply pretending that Democratic-presented facts don’t exist or are unknowable.
Anya
@debbie: She’s still one of the crazies. She’s just fighting for her share of the crazy vote and Cruz is threatening that.
NorthLeft12
Tom, As a Canadian I am politely requesting that you stop referring to Mr. Cruz as a Canadian. He moved to Texas [where he belongs – sorry Texans] and is now a US Senator. You “wanted” him, you got him.
Funny, but Cruz would be completely unelectable here in Canada. He would horrify pretty well all of the Canadian Conservative Party, and even in right leaning Alberta would be hard pressed to get elected. Especially if he ever dared to go off on our health care system.
aimai
@Adolphus: Oh, well, carry on! However even then he didn’t intend it, whereas Cruz clearly does intend it.
SRW1
@debbie:
Being out-crazied apparently has a sobering effect.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Old Blackbottle. I think you have something there. The charge of the Light Brigade wasn’t his fault, but he was sure an utter tool on how how he ran the 11th Hussars.
For those of you don’t know Cardigan chewed out one of his officers for daring to bring a beer to the officer’s mess table. Turned out it was a bottle of port but Cardigan refused to back down. Cardigan said it was beer, so by god it was beer no mater what the facts were. It got such a mess it ended up in the London papers and when Cardigan appeared in public crowds would mock him as “black bottle” and he would stand there an insist he was right.
Belafon
@NorthLeft12: Hey, this Texan never wanted him. No one asked me.
shelly
Hmmm. So port good, beer bad?
burnspbesq
I’m sure that all of the Republican Senators and Congressment from the Dakotas are going to have fun explaining to their constituents, who are about to get hit by a blizzard (yes, a blizzard, in the first week of October), why they can’t have any Federal assistance in digging out and repairing the damage.
burnspbesq
@the Conster:
If the EPA weren’t shut down, it would probably sue to enjoin the creation of a new Superfund site in New Jersey, which already has more than its fair share.
Adolphus
@aimai:
I’m not convinced of that, especially after the report from a Republican House lunch meeting where they demanded to know what Cruz’s next step or strategy was and he had nothing for them. I wouldn’t have been surprised if he was thinking “But I just made that speech to get some foxy Fox commentator tail. You mean you people took me seriously?”
peej
This won’t hurt Cruz in the Republican presidential primaries at all. The true believers will tell themselves that the RINO squishes betrayed him and his crusade. If only they had stayed strong, they could have gotten all they wanted. However, if he makes it past the primaries and is nominated, the anti-Cruz commercials write themselves. If nothing else, he’s shown his incompetence at planning. And how to handle situations where what actually happens doesn’t follow his fantasies.
Bex
This goes a long way toward explaining Ted Cruz. RLC is not an extremist site. The author is a Methodist minister. shar.es/KRCuN
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@shelly: Hmmm. So port good, beer bad?
Not just beer is bad – it was drinking beer makes one unfit to be an army officer. Keep in mind Cardigan never was in combat and the officer he was chewing out was a combat vet. It was moments like that why Cardigan got so associated with the Charge of the Light Brigade, at which Cardigan was accused of cowardice.
soonergrunt (mobile)
@shelly: Port was a”gentleman’s” drink. Beer was not.
Suffern ACE
The ACA is going to end up more like the EPA. Where there is a consituency of voters who like the idea of clean water but vote to end “evil regulations”. This little reform is going to need to be defended no matter how many people claim to like it.
MattF
@Bex: That’s just all so weird to me. Put it into the “Inscrutable Gentiles” folder.
NonyNony
“I don’t know how we’re going to get out of this mess I’ve made worse, but you people are all defeatists for believing that I should have had a plan in the first place! Defeatists!”
I’m not going to weep for the Republicans though. When they realized this jackass didn’t have an actual plan they should have been trumpeting to high heaven that he was an idiot without a plan. But they’re all too scared to say anything that might rile up the Teabaggers.
For crying out loud people – you’re freaking Senators! What is the point of being a Senator if you have to live in fear of a handful of billionaires and a bunch of loons that engage in Revolutionary War cosplay? Just go get a private sector job where you only have to live in fear of maybe ONE billionaire (the guy who owns your company) and typically zero Revolutionary War cosplayers. And let someone else take a stab at doing your job.
Redshirt
If Freerepublic.com is any barometer of Wingnut thought (I think it is), Ted Cruz is THE MAN! The only true Conservative, and all the rest (save Sarah, who is still beloved) are dirty RINO’s working for the Libtards.
Seriously. They love him, now. But having watched other true conservatives rise and fall in their eyes, it’s only a matter of time before Cruz betrays them as well.
Matt McIrvin
@burnspbesq:
To hardcore conservatives, they’re quite successfully spinning the shutdown as caused by Obama and Harry Reid (I just saw a dude ranting on Facebook about how it was Reid that shut down the government, don’t ask me how), so I don’t think they’ll have any trouble.
Bex
@MattF: It is weird and there are more than a few crazies who believe it and preach it. They want the country to be a theocracy with themselves in charge. It’s about power, but they try to disguise it with religion.
Omnes Omnibus
@Matt McIrvin: At this point (hell, for a while now), the hardcore conservatives don’t matter. Nothing will reach them. OTOH, the fellow travelers who have been going along with it are potentially reachable on issues like this.
Yastreblyansky
Indeed, Cruz’s loyalty to his staff is shown in his willingness to stand with David Vitter in denying them normal health benefits.
Cervantes
@Bex: RLC is not an extremist site.
Tony Campolo is a leader in the Christian evangelical left movement. He was more or less a Clinton ally in the 90s.
bobbo
Again with the “lynch mob.” To paraphrase Atrios, why not just call it The Holocaust?
azlib
Why should Ted care? The other Senators are all voting his way.