Cornyn and Cruz are forging an early bond, and not just on the policy front. Cornyn, Cruz strike up an alliance

Texas Sen. John Cornyn is quickly establishing himself as a conservative hard-liner in his new leadership role as the No. 2 Senate Republican. And one of his first moves has been to strike up a friendship with tea party star and fellow Texan, Sen. Ted Cruz.

In the new Congress, Cornyn is rapidly flexing conservative muscle over fiscal issues and President Barack Obama’s Cabinet nominees. It comes at the same time he is seeking an alliance with Cruz, the freshman senator who pulled off an upset victory over an establishment favorite in last year’s Texas GOP primary.


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Cornyn’s early moves show how tough it will be for the White House to extract concessions from Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s increasingly conservative conference and leadership team. And they demonstrate how GOP leaders have been quick to take the new tea party stars in the Senate under their wings, a buddy system both freshmen and senior senators find politically beneficial.

By establishing himself as an outspoken conservative leader — with ties to the new tea party star — Cornyn can help shore up vulnerabilities on the right as he worries about fending off a prospective GOP primary challenger in 2014. And for Cruz, close ties to the leadership give him a chance to rapidly develop a legislative portfolio and secure spots on key committees, which ordinarily would take junior senators years to achieve.

The Texas dynamic mirrors McConnell’s swift move to court the junior senator from his state, tea party star Sen. Rand Paul, whose help the leader would most likely need if he faces a primary opponent in 2014. Cornyn, likewise, could benefit from Cruz’s intervention in a 2014 primary challenge. But Cruz wouldn’t explicitly say in an interview that he’d endorse Cornyn in a 2014 primary fight.

The growing clout of junior members is part of the Senate’s changing nature, which Cornyn says is positive for the institution.

“It used to be the new guys would come in, and they would sort of be quiet and not say much and wait a respectful period of time to give their maiden speech and wait patiently at the bottom end of the table and work their way up in gaining seniority,” Cornyn told POLITICO. “That’s not the world we live in now. … There’s no pledge period or a hazing interval.”

Right out of the gate in 2013, Cornyn announced flatly he would oppose Chuck Hagel, as the defense secretary nominee, and called on the president’s CIA pick, John Brennan, to be delayed until inquiries into leaks of classified information absolve him of any wrongdoing. As calls grow for a comprehensive immigration solution, Cornyn said last week that border security must come first.

The new Senate Republican whip has also taken a stance that surprised many senators: raising the specter of allowing a partial government shutdown if no serious deal to slash spending is reached.

And in the interview, Cornyn said he was not convinced the country would immediately default if Washington does not raise the debt ceiling, a sign of the tough negotiating position the GOP is taking on the first big fight of the new Congress.

While he’s given McConnell notice before taking such positions, Cornyn is well out front of the famously mum GOP leader, who has given little indication of how he’d approach these hot-button disputes.

But Cornyn’s conservative stances do square with those of Cruz — one of three Republican senators elected in 2012 — who has signaled he’s ready to push an unyielding brand of no-compromise conservatism as senator.

Cruz and Cornyn are establishing an early bond and not just on the policy front. Two former Cornyn aides are now helping run Cruz’s office, and Cornyn helped Cruz secure a coveted spot on the Judiciary Committee. And it was Cornyn’s decision to leave the Armed Services Committee that opened up a spot for Cruz to serve on that panel, giving him a chance to question Hagel in the nationally televised confirmation hearings.

After the 42-year-old Cruz, a Cuban American, rode a tea party wave to victory in his 2012 primary, defeating the favorite, Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst, the spotlight in Texas shifts to the 60-year-old Cornyn’s reelection bid in 2014. The senior senator is well aware he may be targeted in a primary, giving him more incentive to harden his positions.

“My assumption is that everybody is going to be challenged in the primary,” Cornyn said. “I think it’s foolish to assume you’re not.”

In an interview, Cruz praised Cornyn and said the two men have built a “very strong relationship” and would team up to push conservative ideas. But Cruz wouldn’t say whether he’d endorse Cornyn’s reelection bid.

Asked twice if he’d support Cornyn in a general election or against a prospective primary challenger, Cruz would only say: “We have been working very closely together, and I expect we will be working closely together.”

Cornyn downplayed Cruz’s response, noting speculation during last year’s campaign about whether Cruz would back Cornyn’s whip bid, which he ultimately did.

“There’s no separation there,” Cornyn said. “But I don’t blame anybody from saying, ‘Hey, this is 2013. That’s a long time off, and we’ll see how it develops.’ I wouldn’t read anything into that.”

Cornyn — who ran the National Republican Senatorial Committee for two cycles, gaining a net of five GOP seats, but he fell short of winning a Senate majority — has emerged as the heir apparent to McConnell.

And with conservatives still smarting over the fiscal cliff deal, which raised taxes on families that earn more than $450,000, McConnell and Cornyn are in no mood to compromise on raising the debt ceiling in February or extending government spending past March.

Cornyn voted for the fiscal cliff deal because he said it would prevent a tax hike on virtually all taxpayers, though he called elements of the deal “repugnant.” Cruz said if he had been sworn into office at the time, he would have joined just the five other Republicans who voted against what he called a “lousy” deal.

Both Cornyn and Cruz say Republicans should use the debt ceiling and the expiring government funding measure as leverage to cut spending on entitlement programs. And neither seems too worried about a failure to raise the debt ceiling with both arguing that the government would have sufficient revenue to pay off the bills that need to be settled immediately.

“We have more than enough revenues to service our debt,” Cornyn said. “And it may mean that some of the bills don’t get paid as they come in or they get paid on a prorated basis until we resolve this dispute. It could be a matter of days or weeks or maybe even longer.”

Cornyn added he was more concerned with the growing red ink than with raising the debt ceiling.

“We are turning into Greece,” Cornyn said. “You have to [at] some point to ask yourself what is the more serious outcome. To me, the sovereign debt crisis is a far more serious crisis to real people in terms of their jobs, in terms of their opportunity.”

Cruz agreed, adding that if no stopgap measure is passed to extend government funding, a shutdown of federal agencies may not be a bad thing in the long term.

“And we’ve seen that before in 1995 — the government temporarily shut down as a result of Republicans in the House, and the result of that was some political pain,” said Cruz, a former Texas solicitor general. “But it was also year after year of balanced budgets and some of the more fiscally responsible policies we have seen.”

Democrats are shocked that leaders like Cornyn would be floating a possible government shutdown, with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid recently comparing such an approach with one he took as an amateur boxer when he agreed to fight a man who was bigger than him.

“He beat the crap out of me,” Reid told reporters. “So I think Cornyn better be careful. That’s a stupid thing to do. He’s training for a fight, and he’s going to wind up losing it.”