Sen. Ted Cruz's latest shutdown crusade over Planned Parenthood funding has alienated everyone in Washington, except his
couple dozen minions in the House, to the point that his Senate colleagues have given up any pretense of talking about him in polite terms. It's
gotten so bad that Cruz has even lost his trusty sidekick and lil' buddy, Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT), and is having a very hard time finding anyone who will help him out in signing his pledge to defund Planned Parenthood.
"I don't want to use a failed tactic for political purposes knowing that it's not going to succeed," said Sen. Dan Coats (R-Ind.). "It will certainly get Sen. Cruz a lot of attention, which is obviously something that anybody running for president would want to get." […]
Cruz is circulating a letter among senators hoping to get them to sign on to his vow to oppose any bill that funds Planned Parenthood this month, but his colleagues aren't biting.
In an interview, Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R-N.H.) said it’s "obvious" Cruz is only making this his latest cause to boost his visibility in a presidential campaign. And Ayotte, who withdrew her name from Lee's 2013 letter on Obamacare, said she will "absolutely not" sign onto Cruz’s latest missive. […]
Whereas in late August of 2013, Lee had secured pledges from 14 senators to defund Obamacare in the spending bill, Cruz is just getting started on his lobbying effort. But Lee, a frequent Cruz ally, hasn't yet signed on, and conservative Sens. Jim Risch of Idaho and Deb Fischer of Nebraska, who jumped into the Obamacare fight, are keeping their powder dry this time.
Even Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI), who no one will ever mistake for a Mensa candidate, knows that Cruz's ploy is poison. "Let's pass protection of life 20 weeks and after. That would be a reasonable response here," he tells Politico. "Develop a winning strategy rather than one that's guaranteed to lose." Ayotte, Johnson, and a raft of other Republicans up for re-election don't want to have to run with the stench of shutdown, and are not buying Cruz's assurances that "[i]t is only in the twisted, inverted logic of the Washington Beltway that anyone other than Barack Obama would bear responsibility for that shutdown."
It's the whole of Congress vs. Ted Cruz and his couple dozen House followers. And the small minority of extremist Republicans who make up the presidential primary base. But guess who's going to get their way on September 30, all because Mitch McConnell and John Boehner are incapable of leading.