Ted Cruz says his hard-line strategy to defund Planned Parenthood and risk a government shutdown is about doing the “right thing” and following through on Republicans' vows to conservative voters.

If it's a new day, then there must be another article in Politico about Republican efforts to politically assassinate Ted Cruz. For everyone who thinks only Donald Trump (or the amnesty loving Ben Carson ) is the only genuine outsider who has the credentials to fight the Washington, D.C. establishment, read about the one man who has actually been doing it. Once again, Ted Cruz is trying to defund Planned Parenthood, and once again, Vichy Republicans are gearing up to frag Cruz's big tent:

But many of his Republican colleagues say it’s really all about Cruz.

Yes, it is really about Cruz. It's about their hatred of him. And if you think defunding the abortion mills is "hard line," perhaps you might prefer Kelly Ayotte's "soft line" views about acquiesing in funding virtual infanticide instead:

In an interview, Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R-N.H.) said it’s “obvious” Cruz is only making this his latest cause to boost his visibility in a presidential campaign. And Ayotte, who withdrew her name from Lee’s 2013 letter on Obamacare, said she will “absolutely not” sign onto Cruz’s latest missive.

“There are not enough votes to even get (to) 60 in the Senate. But even if you could get by that (hurdle), the president is going to veto it and we certainly don’t have 67 votes,” Ayotte said. “So I guess I would ask: What’s the strategy for success?”

So Ayotte's argument is: if we don't want to fund something, and Obama wants something funded, we have no choice but to give in. Kelly Ayotte is the Betsy Ross of white flag knitting.

I don’t want to use a failed tactic for political purposes knowing that it’s not going to succeed,” said Sen. Dan Coats (R-Ind.). “It will certainly get Sen. Cruz a lot of attention, which is obviously something that anybody running for president would want to get.”

Dan Coats was a senator. Then he retired, cashed in, and became a lobbyist, and now he's come back through the revolving door to do more good work for K Street.

“Let’s pass protection of life 20 weeks and after. That would be a reasonable response here,” said Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.). “Develop a winning strategy rather than one that’s guaranteed to lose.”

Hey, there's a conservative voice, right? Wrong! Pushing a separate standalone bill would be meaningless. It would never get the 60 votes needed in the Senate to fight filibusters. The Planned Parenthood funding, by contrast, is must-pass, and can be stopped with only 51 votes, and Johnson knows that, but he wants to distract attention with his own symbolic bill because he has no stomach for a fight with Obama.

People say that Ted Cruz will not win this battle, and they are right. How can he, when most Democrats and Republicans are against him? But the fact that he is willing to wage this fight, even alone, shows that he has persistence, shows he is a fighter, and shows he has real beliefs. And guess what: he's been doing this for years, even before he ran for president.