Cruz has said that many of his GOP colleagues are 'scared.' Cruz taunts fellow Republicans

Ted Cruz is taking his hardball tactics to a whole new level.

The Texas freshman senator and his senior aides are unleashing a barrage of attacks on their fellow Republicans for refusing to support their plan to choke off Obamacare as a condition for funding the government. Cruz’s chief of staff is lambasting fellow conservatives like Oklahoma’s Tom Coburn for serving in the “surrender caucus.” His top political strategist has compared Mitch McConnell to Barack Obama. And the senator himself has said many Republicans are “scared” to wage this fight.


The results have sparked something of a GOP civil war over an issue that, ironically, the GOP is united behind — repealing Obamacare. Cruz’s strategy is a departure from the usually clubby chamber, as he’s grown increasingly alienated from his caucus.

( PHOTOS: Key quotes from Ted Cruz)

The essence of the clash is this: Cruz can’t comprehend why his GOP colleagues don’t welcome the fight, while more senior Republicans think the junior Texan simply doesn’t understand — or care — about the dire political consequences for their party of a government shutdown. Plus, Cruz’s critics think the plan to repeal Obamacare is destined to fail.

But worries about a shutdown are falling on deaf ears.

“There is a powerful, defeatist approach among Republicans in Washington,” Cruz told conservative radio host Dana Loesch earlier this week. “I think they’re beaten down and they’re convinced that we can’t give a fight, and they’re terrified.”

( QUIZ: Do you know Ted Cruz?)

Cruz isn’t alone in the crusade, which is also being waged by two other possible 2016 candidates — Marco Rubio of Florida and Rand Paul of Kentucky. Sen. Mike Lee, the Utah Republican and tea party favorite, is also leading the charge. Cruz, Rubio and Lee held a discussion of their proposal on the Senate floor on Tuesday — one immediately rebutted by Coburn, whose office on Tuesday distributed a new Congressional Research Service report concluding that “if government were shut down, funding for Obamacare would still continue.”

But Cruz and his aides are going even further than the other conservatives, lashing out at GOP naysayers in unusually personal terms.

( WATCH: Cruz: ‘I don’t trust the Republicans’)

Indeed, Cruz is part of a new breed of Republicans who relish the intraparty warfare, believing that a push for GOP purity will help build their stature within the party while pulling Republicans further to the right. His tactics go even further than those employed by former South Carolina Sen. Jim DeMint, who waged intense battles over Senate primaries but was more selective in choosing which fights to wage against his party in the Capitol.

Cruz’s uncompromising style has won him legions of fans on the right — a fight that started earlier this year when he battled Chuck Hagel’s nomination as defense secretary, continued when he helped block House-Senate budget negotiations because of concerns over a debt ceiling hike, and intensified when he fought with Rubio and GOP senators over a bipartisan immigration bill.

The fight has intensified in recent weeks after Lee circulated a letter, which now includes 12 signatures, asking for support to oppose any budget bill that includes Obamacare funding. That letter has become a test among some GOP groups — including the Club for Growth — of whether Republicans are serious about eliminating the law before much of it takes effect at the beginning of 2014, and it has put McConnell and others up for reelection next year in a tough spot.

Some Republicans point out that even if funding for Obamacare is eliminated in the continuing resolution, much of the law will still stand because of mandatory health care spending enacted under the Affordable Care Act. Many Republicans have stark memories from the Clinton-era shutdown fights and believe the GOP took the lion’s share of the blame for a politically disastrous fight.

“We should do everything we can to delay the individual mandate for a year. But my view is that this is not really what the public is interested in. You shut the government down: That means people lose Social Security checks,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.). “I don’t think linking the two is a very good idea.”

McConnell’s primary opponent, Matt Bevin, has called on the GOP leader to publicly pledge he will oppose any bill that provides funding for the law.

McConnell has repeatedly deflected questions about whether he will sign the Lee letter.

“We’ve had a lot of internal discussion about the way forward this fall,” McConnell said Tuesday. “There’s no particular announcement at this point.”

Others believe Cruz’s gambit is aimed at boosting his own brand ahead of a possible presidential bid.

A former top Senate GOP leadership aide, who asked for anonymity, said Cruz’s latest battle “isn’t about principle and it isn’t about party.”

“It’s about promoting Ted Cruz’s presidential ambitions, and he and his team are making clear that retaining the House or winning back a Senate GOP majority are all secondary to that goal,” the source said. “It’s a shortsighted and selfish political strategy but one that fellow Republicans are unfortunately having to get used to.”

“The Republican infighting is hurting our brand,” said one Senate Republican aide, who fretted that Cruz’s divisive tack would alienate voters and hurt GOP efforts to retake the Senate.

Most infuriating to his colleagues is that Cruz and GOP senators actually agree on the goal — repeal Obamacare — but they disagree on the approach. And they certainly think it makes little sense to publicly trade political potshots.

“Cruz has lots of support and is not intimidated by the establishment at all,” said Amy Kremer, the chairwoman of Tea Party Express, who said Cruz and his allies “are doing exactly what they were elected to do.”

Cruz has flatly said his GOP colleagues need to have the courage to fight this battle — and is urging the conservative base to redirect its ire at his fellow Republicans. At a Heritage Foundation event on Tuesday, Cruz said a potential shutdown is “not as calamitous as many paint it.”

Cruz also said the defunding effort stands in stark contrast from previous “symbolic” votes by Congress — especially the House — to repeal Obamacare. He chastised Republicans who “love to have a fig leaf vote” but hesitate to take real action on a must-pass spending bill.

“We need to get 41 Republicans in the Senate to make the same commitment or get 218 Republicans in the House,” Cruz said Tuesday. “A lot of Republicans are nervous about this fight. They’re nervous about being blamed for a government shutdown. My question that I have raised to a bunch of my colleagues: What’s the alternative? … I’ve yet to hear any alternative.”

Privately, a number of senior GOP aides are miffed at what they see as personal jabs launched on Twitter by senior Cruz aides, including the senator’s chief of staff, Chip Roy, a former aide to John Cornyn, a Texas senator who took his name off the Lee letter last week. Those aides were unapologetic Tuesday for their public criticisms.

Roy sarcastically quipped on Twitter that it is “shocking” that Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) opposes the hardball Obamacare funding tactics given that McCain is “someone talking to [Sen. Chuck] Schumer 5x a day and the White House daily.”

Coburn told The Washington Examiner, “The worst thing is being dishonest with your base about what you can accomplish, ginning everybody up and then creating disappointment.”

“Since when is a promise to fight disastrous policy ‘dishonest?’” Roy tweeted in response: “No, the worst thing is giving up & leaving your base believing there is no need to be a Republican any longer.”

Coburn downplayed the attacks Tuesday, saying he had “no ill will” toward Roy. But he quickly added: “He knows I’m not part of the surrender caucus.”

Jason Johnson, Cruz’s chief political strategist, publicly took on McConnell for not signing Lee’s letter.

“Ted Cruz, Mike Lee & Rand Paul support #DefundObamacare — Mitch McConnell, Karl Rove & Barack Obama oppose. Clearer now?” Johnson said. “Do GOP senators who say they’ll repeal #ObamaCare later really think they’ve earned our trust?”

Johnson has cast the Republican establishment’s reluctance to unite around Lee’s Obamacare letter as a strategy coming from “the brains” who spent $1 billion and promised a victory in 2012. He said it translates to: “Stand down on #DefundObamacare — trust us, we know how 2 win in ’14.”

Johnson wrote in an email that though his tweets represent only his view, the medium is important “to shatter the cone of silence preferred by the establishment so folks who don’t live in the D.C. bubble know what really happens in this town.”

“I didn’t sign up to help Sen. Cruz in order to notch another campaign victory on my belt, I signed up to do everything in my limited power to reduce the government’s role in our lives,” Johnson said. “Naive? Maybe, but we won’t give up the fight.”

Roy even suggested the lack of unified GOP support for opposing spending bills with Obamacare funding is “a good way to lose the House.” But Coburn, and others, have disputed that analysis, saying in an interview last week that employing Cruz’s strategy will “make sure” Democrats take the House next year.

In emails to POLITICO, Roy said his job “is to advance and defend Senator Cruz’s policy priorities,” and winning the fight on defunding Obamacare is central to that job. Roy said he’s not been told to stand down by members or aides.

“The Washington establishment uses every tool at its disposal to push its own narrative on the American public — and in this case, it’s the narrative of ‘we can’t,’” Roy said. “They plant stories, strong-arm members and try to create fake ‘wins’ for cover that simply do not change the status quo. It is important that we push back.”

Some senators brushed off the attacks.

“He and Sen. Cruz are entitled to their opinions, but I don’t pay that much attention to that kind of thing because I believe in my position,” McCain said of the attacks by the senator’s chief of staff. “It wouldn’t be the first person who has criticized me.”

North Carolina Sen. Richard Burr, who has called the defunding push through the budget bill the “dumbest idea” he’d ever heard, shrugged off the attacks.

“It doesn’t matter to me what he does. The only thing that’s important is that I’m on Sen. Cruz’s bill to eliminate Obamacare.”