Cruz between a rock and a hard place
by digby
If he does this his base will be very, very unhappy. If he doesn’t it’s going to be even harder for him to consolidate support to fight Trump. This is the the GOP’s dilemma in a nutshell. Their base, whether the racist xenophobes or hardcore movement conservatives (or both!) demand total fealty. Any deviation is treason.
But the institutionalists have some clout among themselves:
Senior Senate Republicans are calling on Sen. Ted Cruz to rebuild his strained relationships with his colleagues and apologize to Majority Leader Mitch McConnell before the party establishment considers consolidating behind his presidential bid.
Cruz has increasingly called for Republicans to unify behind his candidacy in order to take down front-runner Donald Trump. But in interviews Tuesday with CNN, it’s clear Cruz’s fellow GOP senators are not willing to do that, at least not yet.
Republican senators said that Cruz must return to Capitol Hill and make the case directly to his colleagues to help ease long-festering tensions. And a large number of Republicans said the fence-mending starts with this: Apologizing to McConnell for calling him a liar last year on the floor of the Senate.
That message — to smooth things over with Senate Republicans in a private session — was personally delivered by fellow Texan and McConnell’s chief deputy, Sen. John Cornyn, who spoke with Cruz by phone after the candidate won their home state’s primary earlier this month.
“I actually made that suggestion to him when I talked to him last,” Cornyn said when asked if he thought Cruz should apologize for his McConnell remarks. (A spokesman later said that Cornyn did not seek an apology but urged Cruz to speak directly to the Senate GOP Conference.)
Others had similar suggestions for Cruz.
“I think he’s got some bridges to build here,” said Sen. John Thune, the No. 3 Senate Republican. “I think it would be helpful obviously for him — if he thinks he is going to be the guy or wants to be the guy — to come back here to mend some of those fences that he tore down when he was here.”
“That was not proper as you know, and I raised hell about it,” Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah, the longest-serving Senate Republican, said of Cruz’s criticism of McConnell. “I’m a great believer of repentance and changing, and I think there’s a gradual change there that I’m noticing, which is good.”
Hatch also had this to say of Cruz: “It’s always helpful when you admit you’re wrong.”
Right. But if Cruz is seen genuflecting to the Senate, his supporters could easily bolt to Trump. Apparently, he knows on which side his bread is buttered.
Jeff Roe, Cruz’s campaign manager, signaled that the Texas senator was unlikely to begin wooing his colleagues.
“It’s not like we have some phone tree of U.S. senators to endorse,” Roe said. “We never built our campaign that way.”
Cruz is all-in with the conservative movement whether he wins the nomination or not. And in the event he isn’t, once the smoke has cleared, he’s the undisputed leader of that movement — and maybe the GOP. Oh my God.
Update: Lindsey Graham has endorsed Cruz. This isn’t a huge surprise. He has hinted that he might do this for a while because he thinks stopping Trumps is more important and he is obviously prepared to lose with Cruz in the fall rather than take a chance on Trump. It will be interesting to see if anyone follows him.
But either way, Cruz isn’t going to apologize to a bunch of senators for being a conservative firebrand. I’m sure he’ll take their support but he’s not going to beg for it.
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