Appearing on MSNBC's "Hardball With Chris Matthews," one of former president and right-wing deity Ronald Reagan's sons lambasted Texas Sen. Ted Cruz for his decision to filibuster the recent vote on raising the debt ceiling and, consequently, force some of his fellow Republican senators to cast a necessary but politically toxic affirmative vote.

Asked by Matthews why some conservatives "want to kill their own people," Ron Reagan (who is a liberal, despite his pedigree) agreed that Ted Cruz's strategy was "the big question here."

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"What exactly was on Ted Cruz's mind?" Reagan said. "What was he thinking of in terms of his Senate colleagues? They could have all voted against the debt limit increase, they could have all gone home to their constituents in Tennessee or Kentucky or wherever, and they could have said, ‘We didn’t vote for this thing!’ But no, Ted Cruz put his own people in this impossible, untenable situation. Many of them are facing primaries, many of them may face Tea Party people who are way over to their right, and he forced them to do this!"

Responding in part to Salon's Joan Walsh's assertion that the GOP was on the verge of falling into outright civil war, Reagan went on to say that Cruz "apparently thinks that somebody has got to rise out of the smoking ruins that is the Republican Party, and apparently he feels that somebody can be him."

"He first has to create the smoking ruins, of course," Reagan added, "and he’s doing a pretty good job of that."

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Watch Reagan, Walsh and Matthews try to figure out WTF Ted Cruz is thinking below, via MSNBC:

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