When House Republican leadership withdrew the first draft of their Quickly Deport Refugee Children Act of 2014 on Thursday and promised to deliver a new bill that would deport refugee children (plus others) even more quickly, Republican fingers were
quick to point at one man: Rafael Edward Cruz, aka Sen. Ted "Calgary" Cruz.
“The message is that Ted Cruz and a handful of Republicans have hijacked the party,” said Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.).
Asked how it fell apart, King said: “Because of Ted Cruz.”
The Washington Post's Robert Costa
takes us inside the events that show exactly why those Republicans are blaming Cruz:
The beginning of the collapse of House Speaker John A. Boehner’s border bill came Wednesday evening, when Texas Sen. Ted Cruz gathered more than a dozen House Republicans at his office in the Dirksen building on Capitol Hill.
It was there, as Boehner (R-Ohio) held his own meetings on the other side of Constitution Avenue, that Cruz heard that the speaker didn’t have enough votes — and realized that if his House allies held firm, he could rupture the fragile coalition supporting the measure.
Cruz, for his part, denies forcing the action:
“The suggestion by some that House members are unable to stand up and fight for their own conservative principles is offensive and belittling to House conservatives,” Cruz said. “They know what they believe and it would be absurd for anyone to try to tell them what to think.”
I actually think that's a fair point. Cruz isn't really telling the hardliners what to think. I mean, there were right-wingers who believed the same things Cruz believes long before he was born. But he's still playing an important role: He's helping organize the GOP's uber-freakshow and in the process helping them realize that if they act in unison, they can have tremendous power within the GOP.
Whether or not they realize it, however, their power does have limits, and in fact can easily be defused—but only if the actual Speaker of the House decides to show some leadership. All he needs to do is forge a coalition with Democrats to run the House in a slightly less partisan fashion. It's exactly what he's done every time that he's really needed to get something done—like ending the government shutdown, when he needed Democratic votes to finally reopen government because nearly two-thirds of the GOP conference voted against it.
But as long as Boehner decides to pursue a GOP-only approach to governing, then Ted Cruz is going to be his most important partner in governing. That might be enough to keep Boehner's job safe as Speaker, at least for now, but it definitely guarantees something else: This House will continue to be the least productive House in history.