On the Mark Levin show Thursday Senator Ted Cruz said:

The single thing that Republican politicians hate and fear the most, and that is when they’re forced to tell the truth. It makes their heads explode. And actually look, this debt ceiling example is a perfect example. The Republican members of the Senate, they all wanted the perfect show vote. So the whole fight was, was every Senator in the Senate going to consent to allow a clean debt ceiling, to allow Barack Obama to get a blank check to raise our debt, while doing nothing about spending, with just 51 votes? Now in order for that to happen, all 100 Senators have to consent to it. Now there were an awful lot of Republican Senators who thought that was perfect, cause then they could all vote no, and go home and tell their constituents, “See, I voted no, I did the right thing.” But it only happens if they allow it to happen. And all I did was very simple, I said, listen, when I told Texans when I ran for office, that I’m going to fight with every ounce of strength I have to try to help pull this country back from the fiscal and economic cliff, I wasn’t lying to them, I meant it. So if your ask of me is will I consent to let Harry Reid to do this on 51 votes, the answer is no. I will vote no at every stage against it, because it’s irresponsible, because it’s wrong, because we’re bankrupting our children. And Republicans’ heads exploded, because it meant … Look, make no mistake about it. This was their desired outcome. An awful lot of Republicans wanted exactly what Barack Obama wanted, exactly what Nancy Pelosi wanted, exactly what Harry Reid wanted, which is to raise the debt ceiling, but they wanted to be able to tell what they view as their foolish, gullible constituents back home they didn’t do it, and they’re made because by refusing to consent to that they had to come out in the open and admit what they’re doing and nothing upsets them more.

In one respect I agree with Senator Cruz. Senate Republican Leaders did “want” the clean debt limit bill to pass the Senate and they wanted the political cover of voting no. Senator Cruz exposed this through his objection, forcing not just Senators McConnell and Cornyn, but a bunch of others as well, to vote aye on cloture so that they could get to a final passage vote where the bill passed but all Republicans voted no.

But they were right to vote aye on cloture. Senator Cruz skips over why the others wanted this outcome: the only other legislative alternative was not increasing the debt limit. At that point no one, including Senator Cruz, had an alternative strategy to pass a debt limit bill that cut spending, or repealed or modified ObamaCare, or made any other good policy change.

If you want to defeat a bad bill you need both a better policy and a viable legislative strategy to achieve it. In some cases that legislative strategy could be blocking enactment of any bill, but that would not have worked here. In this case I believe strongly that not raising the debt limit is far worse than enacting a clean debt limit increase.

This then provokes a series of questions for Senator Cruz.

Q1: “Do you agree that not raising the debt limit is a worse policy outcome than enacting a clean debt limit increase?”

If the answer is yes, then:

Q2: “What was your alternative legislative strategy for enacting a debt limit increase that also contained some other reform?”

If the answer is “I didn’t have one,” then:

Q3: “Weren’t the Senate Republicans who supported cloture therefore doing the right thing, even at some political cost to themselves?”

It’s easy for any one person to design a bill that is (debt limit increase + X), where X is a good fiscal or other policy reform. It’s much harder to get a lot of votes for any particular such bill. House Republican leaders were unable to pass such a bill in the House with any X, good or not-so-good.

And once the House had passed the only debt limit increase it could pass, Senate Republicans were stuck in a take-it-or-leave-it position. Informally we say the House jammed Senate Republicans: Senate Rs were forced to choose between two outcomes, both of which they hated. Had House Republicans been able to pass a debt limit increase with an additional reform attached, then Senate Republicans would have had available another, less worse, option.

Last year I proposed a legislative strategy (including in the Wall Street Journal) to get a small policy concession along with a debt limit increase. The House did a version of this strategy and, as a result, successfully pressured a Democratic Senate into passing a budget resolution. I pushed a variant of this strategy again in September, but this time House Republicans couldn’t execute because they didn’t have the votes.

As was the case in last fall’s CR/shutdown battle, this week Senator Cruz did not have a legislative strategy with an endgame. He neither presented an alternative strategy to his colleagues nor pursued one as a lone wolf on the Senate floor. In both cases he simply made a single aggressive tactical legislative move that didn’t point toward an alternative outcome, then accused his colleagues of being cowardly, unprincipled, and deceptive for not following his lead into a blind canyon.

Some will say, “At least Senator Cruz was willing to fight!” Unfortunately, this argument always stops there, and never explains how a willingness to fight without a strategy translates into a policy win. Legislative conflict is not a schoolyard tussle in which the bigger or tougher guy usually wins. It’s not a Hollywood movie in which the hero triumphs simply because he is virtuous. Legislative conflict is more like chess in that the battle is waged according to strict rules. Those who favor bigger government know how to play chess and some of them are quite good at it. Many of those who favor smaller government now seek praise for tipping over the board or eating the pieces. While momentary rebellion is flashy and can feel good for a moment, it’s not a strategy to win, not how you change policy. And the goal is to change policy for the better, not just to build a bigger mailing list, right?

It’s frustrating because I agree with many of Senator Cruz’ substantive policy goals. I want a smaller government and a larger private sector, less government spending, and less debt. I want to replace ObamaCare with consumer-driven health policies. I am frustrated by the President’s economic policies, by those who twist policy to suit their self interests, and by politicians in both parties who facilitate that behavior.

But having the right policy goal isn’t enough to succeed, to change policy. You also need a legislative strategy with an endgame and some chance of success. As best I can tell Senator Cruz didn’t have one last fall and he didn’t have one earlier this week. His tactical legislative moves, then and now, need to be considered in that context. The same is true for his public comments surrounding those legislative moves. His objection this week served only to expose that Republicans were boxed in, forced to choose between facilitating passage of a bill they didn’t like and an even worse policy outcome. And they were boxed in because they could not build sufficient support for a unified legislative strategy that had a chance of success.

I hope that in the future Senator Cruz can use his intellect, political savvy, and external base of support to produce effective strategies that produce the good policy results we both support, instead of using his prodigious skills and resources only to assign blame for the bad outcomes.