Way back in early February, we heard that Ted Cruz had decided to start playing nice with his fellow Republicans.

What a difference 10 days make.

After Speaker John Boehner moved Tuesday to pass a "clean" debt-ceiling increase, relying on Democratic votes in the House, it looked like the increase could have an easy path through the Democratic-controlled Senate. Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew said the nation would hit the debt limit at the end of the month, and with Congress on recess until February 25, Wednesday's vote was almost do or die.

But the freshman senator from Texas had other ideas, as he often does. Instead of consenting to pass the increase with a bare majority, Cruz announced he'd filibuster, requiring a 60-vote threshold to invoke cloture on the measure. Perhaps sardonically, he told Politico he didn't think that would annoy his GOP colleagues.

You can see where this is going. When the cloture vote came up Wednesday afternoon in the Senate, Democrats voted for it en masse, but the measure still needed a few votes to pass. After a tense hour, and with the nation's full faith and credit on the line, it fell to Republican Senators Mitch McConnell and John Cornyn to, well, pick your cliché: swallow the bitter pill, take one for the team, walk the plank. Once it was clear there were enough Republican votes to invoke cloture, several of their GOP colleagues joined them and voted for cloture. The final vote was 67-31, not even close. A short time later, the Senate passed the increase 55-43, in a vote that required only a simple majority.