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Ted Cruz faced a barrage of hostile questions Wednesday from angry GOP senators, who lashed the Texas tea party freshman for helping prompt a government shutdown crisis without a strategy to end it.

At a closed-door lunch meeting in the Senate’s Mansfield Room, Republican after Republican pressed Cruz to explain how he would propose to end the bitter budget impasse with Democrats, according to senators who attended the meeting. A defensive Cruz had no clear plan to force an end to the shutdown — or explain how he would defund Obamacare, as he has demanded all along, sources said.

Things got particularly heated when Cruz was asked point-blank if he would renounce attacks waged on GOP senators by the Senate Conservatives Fund, an outside group that has aligned itself closely with the Texas senator.

Cruz’s response: “I will not,” according to an attendee.

The closed-door Wednesday meetings hosted by the Senate’s conservative Steering Committee are supposed to be private, so senators interviewed for this article asked not to be named. The group included Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), Senator Kelly Ayotte (R-NH), and Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI).

....a number of Republican senators privately blame the Texas freshman for contributing to the mess their party finds itself in. And now that they’re in it, they say it’s up to Cruz to help find a solution.

“It was very evident to everyone in the room that Cruz doesn’t have a strategy – he never had a strategy, and could never answer a question about what the end-game was,” said one senator who attended the meeting. “I just wish the 35 House members that have bought the snake oil that was sold could witness what was witnessed today at lunch.”

The anonymous senator went on to describe Tea Party Senator Ted Cruz’s reaction to hostility from his fellow Republicans:

“He kept trying to change the subject because he never could answer the question, It’s pretty evident it’s never been about a strategy – it’s been about him. That’s unfortunate. I think he’s done our country a major disservice. I think he’s done Republicans a major disservice.”
Excerpts from http://www.politico.com/story/2013/10/ted-cruz-blasted-by-angry-gop-co
lleagues-government-shutdown-97753.html]

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That was awkward.

In the clearest sign yet of the potent effect of the government shutdown on the Virginia governor’s race, Republican Ken Cuccinelli avoided being photographed with Ted Cruz at a gala they headlined here Saturday night—even leaving before the Texas senator rose to speak.

Backstage, a source said, Cuccinelli urged Cruz to work with Democrats to end the federal shutdown. But he did not make that point, or even acknowledge Cruz, in short public comments to some 1,100 social conservatives. More at http://www.politico.com/story/2013/10/cuccinelli-shuns-cruz-limelight-
97888.html#ixzz2h3HdLR00]

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“That’s a clever way of saying, ‘We’ll fund everything but Obamacare!’ ‘Cause that’s what you want to do in the first place! So we’ll fund all these things that you want, Mr. President, but aaaaa dadadada no Obamacare. So it’s kind of a back door, Senator.” http://www.mediaite.com/tv/oreilly-to-ted-cruz-you-realize-media-publi
c-blame-gop-for-this-shutdown/]

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WASHINGTON — The hard-line stance of Republican House members on the government shutdown is generating increasing anger among senior Republican officials, who say the small bloc of conservatives is undermining the party and helping President Obama just as the American people appeared to be losing confidence in him.

From statehouses to Capitol Hill, frustration is building and spilling out during closed-door meetings as Republicans press leaders of the effort to block funding for the health care law to explain where their strategy is ultimately leading.

Members of Congress from swing areas and Republican governors appear the most vocal. At a meeting with House Republicans in the Capitol on Tuesday, Representative Dave Reichert of Washington pointedly questioned what the end game is for the party, according to someone who attended and spoke on the condition of anonymity because the session was supposed to be confidential. Mr. Reichert, typically mild-mannered, represents a highly competitive suburban Seattle district.

Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire 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.

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.

Republican elders worry that the tactics of Mr. Cruz and his allies in the House are reinforcing the party’s image as obstructionist, and benefiting Mr. Obama.

The tensions reveal deeper divisions about how to address more fundamental problems facing the party. Nearly a year after a second consecutive and decisive presidential loss, the rebranding effort that almost every top Republican called crucial has been set aside or obscured by the wrangling with Mr. Obama.

That means there has been little progress on issues the party establishment believes are critical to a revival, like an immigration overhaul, or something conservative intellectuals are more eager for, like a populist-oriented economic approach.

“There are certainly opportunity costs to Republicans in the confrontations and crises we’re witnessing,” said Pete Wehner, a former George W. Bush aide and a leading voice for change.

“Even if you don’t lay most of the blame on the G.O.P., there’s no question, I think, that the effort to reform and modernize the G.O.P. — and to rally support among Republicans around that effort — is being at a minimum impeded.”

And the spotlight on further dysfunction in Washington undercuts those Republicans who want to make less polarizing figures outside Washington — especially governors — the new face of the party.

Former Gov. Jeb Bush of Florida at a recent news conference in the capital: “I do think the emphasis of being against the president’s policies, no matter how principled they are, needs to be only half the story, if not less.”

Mr. Bush’s comments reflect what has become gospel among many Republican professionals: that the language and images projected by the Washington wing of the party are interfering with efforts to modernize.

In a speech this week to Republican state officials, Ed Gillespie, a former Republican chairman, lamented how members of the party’s Congressional caucus were “always in the position of talking about what they’re against — what they want to block or repeal or defund.”

The constant focus on Congressional and White House bickering especially annoys Republican governors. There’s a clear contrast there,” Gov. Brian Sandoval of Nevada said of the difference between his fellow chief executives and Republicans in Washington. “People are craving leadership and craving problem-solvers.”

Mr. Haslam of Tennessee noted that governors, unlike House members, have to answer to a much broader electorate, one where “the political pendulum swings back really fast.”

“If you’re in a seat that’s 80 percent Republican, you don’t see the pendulum swinging by very fast,” he said. More at http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/04/us/politics/gop-elders-see-liabiliti
es-in-shutdown.html?partner=rss&emc=rss&smid=tw-thecaucus&_r=2&#h[TcfTcf]

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