On Tuesday night’s episode of CNN’s Crossfire, Sen. Dean Heller (R-NV) stated that Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) is wrong in threatening to filibuster the clean debt ceiling bill that passed in the House on Tuesday. Host Van Jones pressed Heller to answer whether Cruz was right or wrong in wanting to filibuster the bill and force a 60-vote majority. Heller pointed out that at the end of the day, the debt ceiling is going to be raised without any conditions. Basically, Tea Partiers like Cruz need to accept that and move on.
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Cruz has made it known that he plans on objecting to this being passed by a simple majority vote once it makes the Senate floor on Wednesday. Therefore, with Democrats having 55 votes, 5 Republicans will need to cross lines and vote for the bill. It is probably safe to say that while most Republicans don’t want to vote for this to preserve their conservative voting records with various lobbying groups, many of them want to get past this silliness and not deal with the potential political backlash from bringing the country to the financial brink once again.
Another thing to note is that a LOT of Republican Senators positively hate Ted Cruz. They know this is just his attempt to get more publicity for himself and help raise more money from the far-right in order to make what is sure to be a failed Presidential run in 2016. They don’t want to let Cruz grab anymore of the spotlight and bring more negative attention to their party. It would not surprise me if there is a group of GOP Senators huddling right now deciding which few of them will be the ones voting with Democrats to get this debt ceiling raised.
As Heller said, at the end of the day, a clean debt ceiling bill will pass and be signed by the President. Cruz can try to hog the limelight on Wednesday, but I have a feeling that his fellow Republicans are going to nix that as quickly as possible. The fact is that Cruz has very few friends in the Senate after the government shutdown fiasco. They are sick of him and they aren’t going to play along with any of his games if they can help it.
Justin Baragona is the Managing Editor at Politicus Sports as well as Senior Editor at PoliticusUSA. He was a political writer for 411Mania.com before joining PoliticusUSA. Politically, Justin considers himself a liberal but also a realist and pragmatist. Currently, Justin lives in St. Louis, MO and is married. Besides writing, he also runs his own business after spending a number of years in the corporate world. You can follow Justin on Twitter either with his personal handle (@justinbaragona) or the Sports site’s (@PoliticusSports).
