"And then I told Mitch that I still wasn't going to intervene in his primary, and he thanked me profusely."
At a closed-door lunch meeting of Senate Republicans Wednesday, the freshman conservative told his colleagues that he would not intervene in their 2014 primary fights or fundraise for the controversial outside group [The Senate Conservatives Fund, or SCF]. Cruz added that the SCF’s decision to try to defeat sitting GOP senators in their primaries was its alone, according to several people familiar with the session.
As you may recall, two weeks ago the Senate Conservatives Fund
endorsed Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell's tea party-backed primary opponent, Matt Bevin, and
just yesterday, they began airing anti-McConnell ads.
McConnell, not surprisingly, welcomed Cruz's pledge to steer clear of his primary, but not without suggesting that Cruz had dragged his feet for too long:
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) told Cruz that Paul took such an action six months ago, but he thanked the Texas conservative for doing so. Other GOP senators also thanked Cruz, sources say.
But while Cruz apparently wanted his colleagues to see his words as an olive branch, his spokeswoman made it clear that the substance of Cruz's position on groups like SCF or primary challenges against incumbents has not changed:
“He’ll continue working with them [SCF] to promote common conservative policies but not get involved in their endorsement or fundraising decisions,” Frazier said. “SCF’s organization is not just about primary politics but promoting conservative causes that Republicans across the spectrum can support.”
As Cruz's spokeswoman pointed out, Cruz has never been involved in the SCF's endorsement decisions, so his position on the group is the same as it's always been. Moreover, long before the shutdown Cruz
said that he wouldn't be getting involved in incumbent primaries, so what he said in private was nothing new.
If Cruz followed Sen. Rand Paul's lead and endorsed McConnell's renomination, that would have been a big change. But that's not what he did, and the fact that his colleagues were nonetheless grateful that he's continuing to stay on the sidelines shows that they are more afraid of him than he is of them.
