Senator Ted Cruz is so intent on shutting down the government to punish President Obama for his immigration action that Cruz is willing to keep Attorney General Eric Holder in office in order to do it.
Apparently, Fox News liked Cruz’s shutdown threats, issued a few days ago on The Kelly File, so much that he was back on Fox News Sunday today to reiterate them.
Along with shutting down the government outright, Cruz wants to completely obstruct it, too:
CRUZ: Step number one that I have called for is the incoming majority leader should announce if the president implements this lawless amnesty, that the Senate will not confirm any executive or judicial nominees, other than vital national security positions, for the next two years, unless and until the president ends this lawless amnesty.
Host Chris Wallace challenged that strategy: “Are you saying the Senate should refuse to confirm Loretta Lynch, the president’s new nominee for attorney general and thereby leave Eric Holder, who you don’t like very much, in that position even longer?”
Wallace had to ask the question twice before Cruz would answer. But, yes, that is exactly what he meant:
CRUZ: In my view, the majority leader should decline to bring to the floor of the Senate any nomination other than vital national security positions. Now, that is a serious and major step. It is a power the majority leader has, and nobody else has any ability to alter—if the majority leader announced that, it would impose real consequences on the president and the administration.
Then it was on to Cruz’s even bigger goal:
CRUZ: And the second big check we’ve got, the second constitutional power we’ve got is the power of the purse, and we should fund one at a time the critical priorities of the federal government, but also use the power of the purse to attach riders. We’ve got to demonstrate that the campaign words Republicans used on the trail were more than just talk, that we’re willing to honor our commitment.
Wallace challenged the wisdom of that noting that that would likely shut down whole departments and bring on a backlash."It didn’t work very well with Obamacare, sir.”
As far as Cruz is concerned it worked just fine:
CRUZ: Well, let met point on you, you notice, at the time, you and a lot of folks in the press said what a disaster it was to stand up and fight on Obamacare. That it was going to cost Republicans the majority. It was going to cost seats.
Let me point out, we just had an historic election where we won. It’s going to end up being nine seats in the Senate. We retired Harry Reid. We’ve got the biggest majority in the House since the 1920s. And the number one issue that candidates campaigned on was Obamacare.
Now, listen, it was a mistake for President Obama and Harry Reid to force a government shutdown, but it was not a mistake for Republicans to stand up and fight on Obamacare. And not only did the disaster that a lot of folks predicted not happen, it was the biggest victory we’ve had in a long time. Republicans need to actually do what we say we will do, and not just have a lot of empty smoke.
Here we go again, only with more Republicans.
Watch Sen. Shutdown Cruz below.
It’s amazing that voters can’t seem to understand how insane it is to continue electing people to serve in the government when those people don’t seem to want to actually serve.
If Cruz were to catch on fire, the only thing I’d do for him is to go to the closest gas station, buy a gallon of gas, go back to where he’s still burning and throw the gas can in his direction.
