Yes, because goodness knows Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has never thrown a political punch below the belt in the course of his career. Via The Hill:

The two senators bickered as Cruz rose to object to Reid’s motion to appoint conferees to a House-Senate budget committee. … He said Cruz’s request to eliminate all taxes in a final House-Senate budget was absurd. “The senator from Texas was on the losing side…now he wants us to adopt the losing side’s view or we cannot go to conference,” Reid said. “My friend from Texas is like a schoolyard bully,” Reid added. “He pushes everybody around and is losing and instead of playing the game according to the rules, he not only takes the ball home with him, but he changes the rules that way no one wins except the bully who tries to indicate to people that he has won.” Cruz, a Tea Party darling whose rhetoric has sometimes raised eyebrows among Republicans, shot back that “I wasn’t aware we are in the schoolyard.” Reid cut him off saying “enough.”

Heh. Sen. Reid simply couldn’t bring himself to understand how it is that Republicans could possibly blocking an effort to go to conference on the budget — although Sen. Cruz’s concern was that the non-filibusterable conference report could be used to raise the nation’s debt ceiling, and he was asking that Reid amend his motion to go to conference to classify any provisions raising taxes and/or the debt ceiling as out of order before proceeding further — hence the apt display of schoolyard-style petulance.

Funny you should mention that though, Sen. Reid. Over the weekend, longtime Democratic strategist James Carville said of Sen. Cruz: “I think he is the most talented and fearless Republican politician I’ve seen in the last 30 years. … And this guy has no fear. He just keeps plowing ahead. And he is going to be something to watch.”

To which Sen. Cruz responded on Fox News this afternoon that he was flattered by Carville’s kind comments, but to all of his haters out there, it’s just a little amusing that “a number of people have criticized me on the grounds of civility and, in particular, have insulted me while doing so,” no?