Do Cruz, Rubio, Paul And Senate Right-Wingers Have what It Takes To Crash The Budget Deal Today?

The do-nothing House is on vacation already, again. But the Senate is still working. It still haven't approved the awful Paul Ryan-Patty Murray "compromise," in which the plutocrats compromise nothing (as usual) and all the compromise is on the backs of working people. Amazingly, though, it's Senate Republicans threatening to kill the whole thing. There are probably only 3 progressive Democrats in the Senate willing to vote no today. (32 voted no in the House last week.) NBC's Chuck Todd says the budget will pass with little fanfare, even though Reid has to cobble together a cloture vote to shut down the de factor right-wing filibuster against it-- 60 votes. He's counting John McCain (R-AZ), Jeff Flake (R-AZ), Susan Collins (R-ME), Richard Burr (R-NC), and Ron Johnson (R-WI) as sure votes and Rob Portman (R-OH), John Hoeven (R-ND), and Bob Corker (R-TN) are probable votes to shut down the filibuster. That will be enough without more Democratic defections-- which isn't likely. CBS is reporting it differently however and assert, based on a Dick Durbin appearance on Face the Nation Sunday, that the GOP may kill the deal.

“A handful of members of the Senate are vying for the presidency in years to come and thinking about this vote in the context. And others are frankly afraid of this new force, the tea party force, the Heritage Foundation force, that is threatening seven out of the 12 Republican senators running for re-election,” Durbin said.

Indeed, many Republicans have come out against the deal, ranging from Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., the top Republican on the Senate Budget Committee, to lawmakers like Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., who are up for reelection in 2014, to the handful of Republicans eyeing the White House in 2016, including Sens. Ted Cruz of Texas, Rand Paul of Kentucky and Marco Rubio of Florida.

…Outside conservative groups came out aggressively against the deal but still found themselves shut out when the House passed it with a solid bipartisan majority that included more than half of the Republican conference. Last week, House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, publicly lashed out at the groups, saying they had “lost all credibility” and were just using Republican lawmakers and the American people.

House GOP leaders came to the floor to voice support the deal before their members voted last week, and Durbin said they are also reaching out to some of their Senate colleagues to persuade them to go along.

Yesterday the National Memo made an important point that is routinely overlooked by the mainstream media. The Republican civil war is real but it's fueled more by careerism-- and cash-- than by ideology. Ryan thinks he can get to the presidential nomination by compromising. Cruz, Paul and Rubio hope to get it by demagoguery and obstructionism. Cruz "is publicly opposing the Wisconsin congressman’s budget deal, which eases the pain of the automatic sequester cuts while increasing some fees and asking military personnel and federal workers to contribute more to their retirement." (We covered that from a Cruz-free perspective Sunday evening.) It shines a light on "a rift everyone knew existed in the Republican Party had gone public and Ryan and Boehner were now willing to take on the extremist wing of their party to make sure actual governance gets done. But what’s really happened is that the Tea Party movement and the outside groups that fundraise and lobby on behalf of it have lost their usefulness to the Republican Party-- at least temporarily. But are there actual divisions in policy between Paul Ryan and Ted Cruz?"

Both want to repeal Obamacare and gut the federal budget. Both oppose abortion, even in cases of rape and incest. Both support ALEC’s effort to make state legislatures a place where multinational corporations get their whims rubber-stamped.

They currently disagree on one thing-- tactics.

Cruz led the movement that made October’s government shutdown possible. Ryan is currently trying his best to avoid another shutdown.

But in 2011 the congressman was behind the debt-limit hostage situation and reportedly rejected a “grand bargain” that would have actually cut benefits to Medicare and Social Security.

Having voted for everything George W. Bush wanted-- all the spending, tax cuts for the rich and unfunded wars and expansion of government-- Paul Ryan is a verifiable hypocrite. If he actually cared about balancing the budget, he wouldn’t have voted to get rid of the first balanced budget we had in generations as soon as he got the chance. He could have forever eliminated any deficit/debt concerns we have now by simply agreeing to get rid of tax breaks for the rich and corporations.

You know Paul Ryan doesn’t actually care about the deficit.

He is a boilerplate conservative who believes in cutting government to stymie its effectiveness when a Democrat is in the White House. He’s also for cutting taxes and spending profligately when there’s a Republican president, ensuring that the economy grows and there will be even more to cut when a Democrat is back is in power.

This hypocrisy may enrage Democrats but it’s made him one of the most popular members of the Republican Party-- and a serious frontrunner for the GOP presidential nomination in 2016.

Cruz is part of the opposition that can declare it’s for cutting even when a Republican is in the White House-- because he’s never had to prove it. His claims of conservative purity and willingness to oppose the party establishment has made him a hero of the base, who have opened up their wallets to rain down their support.

But its not the grassroots money that wins majorities for the GOP.

Its the Chamber of Commerce and billionaire funders who give Karl Rove hundreds of millions to spend each cycle. These funders saw what happened when Speaker Boehner and Ryan went along with the Tea Party in October-- and they don’t like what it did to the economy or the GOP brand.

John Boehner and Paul Ryan cannot afford another government shutdown. Ted Cruz can.

These men will agree on policy 9 out of 10 times. They disagree on this budget deal and they’ll probably disagree if Boehner and Ryan do the bidding of funders who would actually want to win the presidency again and pass immigration reform.

Ronald Reagan used to say, “Somebody who agrees with me 80 percent of the time is a friend and ally, not a 20 percent traitor.”

But in today’s GOP, the best way to soak the base for scads of cash is to call your enemy a traitor, even if he’s a Republican.

Speaker Boehner is just returning the favor on behalf of his funders.

UPDATE: Reid Gets Cloture

Looks like the Republicans won't be able to stop the budget deal. They just voted on shutting off debate and a dozen Republicans defected-- Lamar Alexander, Roy Blunt, Saxby Chambliss, Susan Collins, Jeff Flake, Orrin Hatch, John Hoeven, Johnny Isakson, Ron Johnson, Lisa Murkowski, Rob Portman and John McCain. That means when the final vote comes tomorrow, Reid will only need a simple majority to pass it. Piece of cake