Sen. Kelly Ayotte returned home to New Hampshire on Friday, planning to see “The Nutcracker” with her daughter this weekend.

But there was an unexpected conflict: Texas Sen. Ted Cruz.


Cruz, along with Utah Sen. Mike Lee, took to the floor Friday night to demand Republicans stop President Barack Obama’s executive action on immigration and scuttled a bipartisan agreement to push back votes until Monday, effectively forcing the Senate to return for a rare weekend session and cast a marathon series of procedural votes.

Senior Republicans say there’s a problem with Cruz’s strategy: The GOP lacks the votes to stop Obama on immigration now, the $1.1 trillion spending package was speeding to passage, and they won’t resort to shutting down the government to mount their objections. Plus, the weekend session could allow Obama to get even more of his nominees confirmed.

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So while Cruz and Lee argue they’re taking a hard stand against Obama, the result might allow Democrats to end the year with more of their priorities advanced — and the two conservatives getting nothing.

“I think this is ridiculous,” Ayotte said in an interview.

The fiasco has turned many of Cruz’s colleagues openly against him, a dynamic that might bolster his cred with the tea party wing of the party if he makes a run for the GOP’s presidential nomination in 2016, but could also leave him vulnerable to attacks that he’s more troublemaker than leader — able to shut down the government or stall votes but unable to advance a proactive agenda.

On Saturday, GOP senator after GOP senator teed off on Cruz, arguing that his strategy had blindsided the caucus, forced them to return to Washington and even strengthened Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s ability to exploit the Senate rules and push through 24 of Obama’s stalled nominees. Several senators had to abruptly change plans, including Ayotte, who had to race back to Washington and missed the ballet with her daughter, and Tennessee Sen. Bob Corker, who had to cancel his official trip to Iraq and Turkey this weekend.

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On the floor, angry GOP senators pressed Cruz over whether he was fundraising off of his tactics, sources said, and Maine Sen. Susan Collins ripped him in a private conversation. Several Republicans were discussing whether to mount a protest vote against Cruz: Unite in opposition to his point-of-order challenging the constitutionality of the spending bill’s funding of Obama’s immigration move.

And 20 Republicans, including incoming Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, ultimately opposed the Texas Republican. Cruz and Lee won the backing of 22 GOP senators total, including potential 2016 rivals Marco Rubio of Florida and Rand Paul of Kentucky.

The frustration was abundantly clear in the hallways of the Capitol. Asked if he thought the Cruz-Lee plan was effective, Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch said: “The answer is no.”

“I don’t see how conservative ends are achieved,” said Arizona Sen. Jeff Flake, a fiscal hardliner. “I think it’s counterproductive. Some of the nominations that we had issues with, like the surgeon general, were not going to move forward. Now they’re going to move forward.”

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Sen. Johnny Isakson (R-Ga.) canceled his flight back to Atlanta on Saturday morning and said, “I don’t know what the strategy is.”

On the Senate floor Saturday afternoon, Cruz was defending himself as he was surrounded by a host of GOP senators, including Ayotte, Collins and Deb Fischer of Nebraska.

“In the meantime, you are going to make everybody miserable,” Collins said sternly to Cruz, as she shook her head. She walked away, looked at Hatch and said: “I tried.”

As she walked off the floor, Collins didn’t hold back.

“I’m not happy with the strategy that [Cruz] has come up with,” Collins told reporters. “I think it’s counterproductive and will have the end result of causing nominees who I think are not well-qualified to be confirmed. So I don’t understand the approach that he is taking. I think it’s very unfortunate and counterproductive.”

Even some like-minded conservative senators, like Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions, who huddled with Cruz and Lee on Saturday, didn’t feel compelled to publicly back the strategy.

When asked if he backed the Lee-Cruz move, Sessions would say only that he wasn’t responsible for it.

“I don’t have any more to say about it,” Sessions said.

On Saturday, both Cruz and Lee defended their approach.

“GOP [senators] should quit complaining about Cruz and Lee and start working with us to stop amnesty,” tweeted Amanda Carpenter, Cruz’s spokeswoman.

“The reason why members are still here is because Harry Reid won’t bring a spending bill up for a vote,” Lee spokesman Brian Phillips said. “Mike Lee and Ted Cruz aren’t blocking anything.”

In an interview this week, Cruz declined to say if he had confidence in McConnell, arguing that Republicans were not heeding the calls of voters to block the president’s immigration moves.

“I am hopeful that every Republican will stand up and lead — that we will honor the commitments we made and demonstrate to the American people that it makes a real difference to have a Republican majority,” Cruz said when asked about McConnell. “Sadly, the lame duck is not an encouraging first step in that regard.”

The breakdown occurred Friday night. Reid and McConnell believed they had a deal to delay consideration of the omnibus spending package until Monday and pass a stopgap funding measure that would keep the government afloat through Wednesday. Over McConnell’s objections, Reid planned to begin processing the president’s stalled nominations next week, including a number of federal district judicial nominees and several controversial executive branch nominees, like Vivek Murthy to be the new surgeon general, White House adviser Tony Blinken to be the deputy secretary of State and Sarah Saldana to head Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

After McConnell left the chamber Friday night with no plans to return until Monday, Reid tried to lock down an agreement to schedule the spending vote for Monday evening. But Lee, unexpectedly, objected, demanding a stand-alone vote on defunding the president’s immigration order to defer deportations for millions of undocumented immigrants. Reid said: “I am unable to do that.”

After Lee objected, Reid saw an opening. He brought the Senate back into session Saturday to begin processing nominations through a series of procedural votes. Senior Republicans were furious. By skipping a weekend session, McConnell had hoped that Reid would relent on nominations next week as senators grew anxious about returning home for the holidays. But the Lee-Cruz strategy essentially gave Democrats an opening to begin the process Saturday.

Catherine Frazier, another Cruz aide, said in an email: “I don’t think the American people have much sympathy for senators complaining about having to work on a Saturday. Reid could have called these noms votes at any time.”

The relationship between Cruz and the GOP caucus has been frosty ever since he joined the Senate in 2013. He’s used his fights with Hill leaders to portray himself as a fighter for the GOP grass roots trying to “make D.C. listen” to the demands of the conservative base for a smaller, more accountable government. But his tactics have been met with mixed success — with the most infamous push, to defund Obamacare, effectively resulting in a 16-day government shutdown last year that did little to stop the health care law.

“This reminds me very much of the shutdown last year where the strategy made absolutely no sense and was counterproductive,” Collins said. “I believe we’re in the same kind of situation today.”

Since the elections, Cruz has made a number of demands that Republicans have promptly ignored. After calling for a short-term funding bill to defund Obama’s immigration policy, 162 House Republicans ended up voting for a long-term $1.1 trillion omnibus package instead, punting the immigration fight until early next year, when Republicans officially take control of the Senate.

Cruz urged lawmakers to reject a defense bill because of what he called “an extreme land grab.” But it won approval with 300 votes in the House, followed by the backing of 89 senators.

Cruz said before the election that Republicans should block all nonessential business in the lame-duck session so the new GOP-led Senate can review them next year. But that call was promptly ignored, including by Cruz himself. And now, as Republicans prepare to take control of the Senate, Cruz has called on McConnell to block virtually all presidential nominees until the White House relents on immigration.

But McConnell and much of his conference have no plans to follow that advice.

“It’s a bad idea,” Flake said of Cruz’s uncompromising tactics. “You can only do that so much. You can’t do that all the time.”

The tug-of-war on Capitol Hill is emblematic of the larger push by GOP leaders to take back control of their party from the hard-line conservatives who have dominated the debate in the past several years. After McConnell won a resounding victory in his reelection race and the GOP establishment defeated tea party groups in Senate primaries across the country, Republicans feel emboldened to push back on tactics they believe could blow their chance at showing voters they can govern without provoking a national crisis.

And with greater numbers in the House and Senate next year, Republican leaders can now afford to lose members on the right flanks of their conferences and still have a shot at advancing their agenda.

“Sen. McConnell and I are making the best decisions we can to demonstrate that we are a responsible alternative to what we had the last four years,” said incoming Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn, a fellow Texas Republican, when asked about Cruz’s tactics. “So no single member is going to determine that direction. It’s going to be what’s best for the conference — and what’s best for our brand.”

In an interview Thursday in the Capitol, Cruz said the hodgepodge of legislation being pushed through in the lame duck suggests that Republicans are not heeding the calls of voters who want a different kind of leadership from Capitol Hill. He said Republicans should have never agreed to have a lame-duck session in the first place and instead should have punted all bills into the new all-Republican Congress.

“There’s a reason why months ago I argued that the continuing resolution should not expire on Dec. 11 — right in the middle of a lame duck, which is designed to force through a series of terrible bills that become vehicles for giveaways to K Street and to lobbyists, and I will confess — it is a bipartisan offense,” said Cruz, a former Texas solicitor general. “You have politicians in both parties who are willing to abuse the system and focus far more time responding to the interests of the powerful and well-connected in Washington.”

Even as he’s become marginalized in the Senate, Cruz, 43, is still wildly popular with the Republican base. He’s a hit on conservative talk radio and among staunch social and fiscal conservatives, a base of power that could make him influential in a Republican presidential primary. Battling with Republican leaders could very well bolster his standing among his staunchest conservative supporters, who have little trust in McConnell and House Speaker John Boehner.

Before Saturday, Sessions said Cruz’s tactics are necessary to push back against executive overreach, arguing the president is moving forward to give “amnesty” to millions of immigrants in the country illegally.

“The very balance between executive and legislative branches are at stake here, and Congress has to defend the constitutional order,” Sessions said.

Still, as Cruz dishes out red meat to the conservative grass roots and at tea party-inspired news conferences on Capitol Hill, he also appears to be cognizant of his limits inside the dome. Though he continues to put out vicious news releases and make searing speeches, colleagues say Cruz is not forcefully advocating these hardball tactics in closed-door meetings, perhaps recognizing they would be promptly ignored.

“I haven’t heard him in the caucus,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.).

Other conservatives who may run for president, like Rubio, said that while he’d back a short-term spending bill to defund the immigration order, he was skeptical such a strategy could work.

“I would love to defund the immigration order. I just don’t know how we’re ever going to do that if the president is going to veto it,” Rubio said in an interview earlier this week. “It doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try; if there’s a way to do it, I would support it. But I think we have to be realistic because the president will veto it.”

Cruz said such talk has been the problem with Republicans on the Hill, promising one thing to voters and acting differently in Washington.

“There is a reason people are so cynical with Washington,” Cruz said. “They are used to politicians who say one thing on the stump, and get to Washington and do the exact opposite. What I am urging my colleagues in both houses to do is simply do what we said: honor our commitments.”