And not entirely without reason and justification, gentlebeings.
I know my Tea Party friends aren't going to enjoy reading and listening to what follows - Cruzer fanboys like Mark Levin lunged reflexively for Mr. Will's bowtie, which is a realm of mindless hero-worship in which only Sarah Palin and Barack Obama had heretofore tread - but it's the truth, and you need to ponder and consider and accept it if you actually want to resurrect the Old American Republic as you say you do:
Veteran political commentator George Will has described the Senate career of Ted Cruz as "peculiar" during a panel discussion Monday on Fox News Channel's "Special Report," The Daily Caller reported.
Will's critique of the junior senator from Texas and tea party conservative is that Cruz is not a Republican team player and makes no effort to face political realities.
"There have been 1,957 senators in the history of this country and I can't imagine there's been a more peculiar career than the one he's having right now," Will said of Cruz.
"He is completely indifferent to the fact that politics is a team sport."
Mr. Will isn't wrong about that, folks. Especially in a legislature. You can't just set yourself up as caucus chieftain and order your colleagues to follow your lead, "....cannon to the right of them, cannon to the left of them, cannon in front of them volleyed and thundered; stormed at with shot and shell, boldly they rode and well into the jaws of death, into the jaws of hell, rode the...." - well, the forty-five, anyway, until January 9th - on a mandatory ideological purity quest that, back in reality, will accomplish nothing other than to further boost your national profile and make your ostensible co-partisans look foolish if they go along with you, and make enemies of those that don't. Which always seems to be Senator Cruz's objective. You can't do that even if you have been elected your party's caucus leader, which Ted Cruz has not and quite clearly never will be.
Politics is, indeed, a team sport. If you're a newly arrived, freshly minted freshman who seeks to both courageously stand on principle but also advance those principles and inspire your new colleagues to emulate your example, you must persuade them, not berate them when they fall short of your standards of philosophical perfection. Otherwise you douse yourself, and the principles you claim to venerate and champion, in a powerful stink that will not attract anyone:
Some Republican lawmakers also were harsh in their comments.
"You should have an end goal in sight if you're going to do these types of things and I don't see an end goal other than irritating a lot of people," said Senator Orrin Hatch, R-UT, in regards to Cruz's tactics on the just-passed budget bill, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.....
Senator Jeff Flake, R-AZ, added, "I fail to see what conservative ends were achieved."
Yes, I left out Susan Collin's ragging on Senator Cruz's "don't confirm a ham sandwich submitted by Barack Obama unless and until he rescinds his unlawful amnesty decree" because she doesn't get the point of that particular strategy. But Senators Hatch and Flake are spot-on in their criticisms from a strategic standpoint. As I wrote yesterday:
[Senators approved by a 56-40 vote Saturday a $1.1 trillion spending bill to fund the government, thereby averting a shutdown. Cruz, supported by Lee, angered Democrats and some fellow Republicans when he moved to force a vote in the Senate on Obama's immigration order, which failed by a wide margin of 74-22.]
And, logically, making it that much less likely that they'll be able to muster a majority for imposing limits on Obamnesty in the 114th Congress, as this vote - which never had a chance, and they both knew it - seems to have been pursued for no other purpose than to try to embarrass and "flush" out GOP Senators who are soft on illegal immigration. Of which they bagged at least nineteen, apparently. Would those nineteen-plus have been persuadable to cutting off Obamnesty next year? A few obviously aren't - Senators McCain and Graham come to mind - while the other half of the Republican side of the "Gang of Eight" from last year is a "probably" (Marco Rubio, since he thinks he's running for president) and a "Who knows?" (Jeff Flake). But it seems to me that Cruz and Lee would have had more to gain by not irretrievably alienating as many of those nineteen(+?) as possible with what amounted to a counterproductive stunt.
Consider that even if the latest Cruz/Lee "Alamo" stand had intimidated every other Republican Senator into quaking submission, their standalone bill still would have been soundly defeated. Why? Because until January 9th, the Republicans are still in the minority. That's why I say that I can see no purpose for the Cruz/Lee move other than to try and embarrass soft-on-border security GOP colleagues.
Now that isn't to say that nineteen (at least) Republican Senators voting against the Cruz/Lee bill out of pique or spite is any less puerile; I agree with Senators Hatch and Flake that there needs to be an achievable objective - a direction for such a gambit to go - or else it's just a fratricidal waste of time. But were I in the GOP Senate caucus, I still would have voted "yea". And, of course, those who voted against it out of ideological disagreement to one degree or another have now been both alienated, probably beyond persuasion to the contrary, and it has now been harrowingly depicted how unlikely rescinding Obamnesty will be even with the majority next year - and thus the new majority will be discouraged, rather than encouraged, to even make the attempt. And what will that provide to Ted Cruz? Why, yet another grandstanding, national-profile-raising opportunity.
For my money, one Mike Lee is worth ten Ted Cruzes, because Mike Lee (1) has both feet on the ground (which is rare for any senator), (2) knows who the enemy is, and (3) knows when to keep his mouth shut, and knows what to say and how to say it when he opens it.
Or, in Willspeak, "good-peculiar."
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