'He stands for everything America doesn’t,' Reid says of Cruz. | John Shinkle/POLITICO Reid: Cruz '16 would be end of GOP

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid says a part of him thinks it would be good for Sen. Ted Cruz to be the Republican nominee for president in 2016, because it would end the GOP.

Reid sat down with Rachel Maddow for her MSNBC show for an interview that aired Wednesday, and she asked the Nevada Democrat about the political capital and fundraising the Texas Republican got out of the government shutdown.


“If I didn’t care so much about our country, I would hope he would get the Republican nomination for president, because that would mean the end of the Republican Party,” Reid said. “With Ted Cruz, I am sure this will help him raise more money.”

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The majority leader said what Cruz represents is antithetical to the United States.

“He stands for everything America doesn’t,” Reid said.

Reid said the Republican Party has been damaged by the government shutdown and he doesn’t believe they’ll risk another.

“The Republican Party is staggering right now. Any poll, have Rush Limbaugh run a poll. No matter who did the poll, this has really hurt Republicans what they’ve done,” Reid said, saying the GOP has offended “everybody” with recent agendas. “I don’t know who they can expect to have a vote for them. I don’t see it. So they’re not going to do it again, is what I’m saying.”

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He also said he’s not as concerned about the tea party Republicans who drove the GOP through the shutdown, but rather the other members of the party that went along with it, voting to repeal Obamacare 45 times.

“My disappointment in all of this is not the 80 or 90 people who live in some other political world that I don’t understand. But my disappointment is the so-called moderates who went along with this vote after vote after vote,” Reid said. “Einstein said this, pure definition of insanity is somebody who does something over and over and over again and expects a different result. So that was my No. 1 concern, that these so-called moderate Republicans went along with this crazy stuff.”

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Reid also addressed recent reports that Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) called him an a—hole, dismissing the incident as over.

“I’m sure he didn’t mean it,” Reid said. “We had a meeting. It’s all over with.”