Senator Mike Lee (R., Utah) doesn’t believe that the Tea Party movement will be weakened if stars such as Senator Ted Cruz (R., Texas), Senator Rand Paul (R., Ky.) and Senator Marco Rubio (R., Fla.) all run for president. But he is a little worried about what would happen if the primary fight between them gets nasty.


“I also hope that they’ll, insofar as some of them become competitors to each other, that they’ll maintain a very civil dialogue between them and they’ll maintain friendships that they’ve built up over the last few years, because we need those,” Lee told National Review Online.

The relationship between Paul and Cruz has worsened since they stood together to mount a filibuster decrying President Obama’s drone strikes program. Just this week, they split over an NSA reform bill. And Paul hired a digital strategist away from Cruz’s political operation.