Cruz Breaks With Senate Tradition While Criticizing Colleagues

In his short time in the Capitol, Senator Ted Cruz of Texas has shown little regard for long-standing rules of decorum in the ultimate exclusive club, the 100-member U.S. Senate. But on Friday, the freshman Republican violated the club’s Omertà, publicly disclosing the closed-door dealings of the Senate Republican Conference â€" and trashing his colleagues in the process.

Stopping by a Texas summit of the Tea Party-aligned group FreedomWorks, Mr. Cruz called many of his colleagues “squishes,” forced to stand on conservative principles by the uncompromising stands of a triumphant trio of Republican “constitutionalists:” himself, Mike Lee of Utah and Rand Paul of Kentucky.

At stake was the gun control legislation that the Senate dragged down earlier this month. At issue for Mr. Cruz might be his exposure of a series of closed-door luncheons in which fellow Republicans took the three to task for announcing in advance that they would filibuster every single vote on the gun measure, including the simple motion to take up and begin debating the bill. Such meetings are expressly off the record.

“We’ve had probably five or six lunches with a bunch of Republican senators standing up and looking at Rand and Mike and me and yelling at the top of their lungs, I mean really upset,” he told the group to laughter and titters, according to a video posted by a Tea Party blogger and promoted by the liberal group People for the American Way. “And they said, ‘Why did you do this? As a result of what you did, when I go home, my constituents are yelling at me that I’ve got to stand on principle.’ I’m not making that up. I don’t even bother to argue with them. I just sort of let them yell.”

The cause for criticism was a letter the trio of Tea Party-backed senators had written a letter announcing their intention to filibuster gun safety legislation that was making its way through the Senate, meaning that even the motion to proceed to the gun legislation would take 60 votes. That gave President Obama an invitation to publicly demand fair consideration of the bill and proposed amendments â€" and a refrain, “they deserve a vote.” In the end, the filibuster on that motion was easily broken, 68-31, with 16 Republicans joining joining the Democrats. That proved to be the bill’s high-water mark. No other significant gun control amendment could muster 60 votes, the Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, of the majority leader, pulled it from the floor rather than press forward to a final filibuster vote that it could not overcome.

By Mr. Cruz’s account, the procedural vote to take up the bill had deeply divided the Republican conference, split between those who were prepared to keep gun control from even reaching the Senate floor and those who said the issue should be openly debated.

“Here was their argument,” Mr. Cruz said of his adversaries in the Republican Conference. “They said ‘Listen, before you did this, the politics of it were great. The Democrats were the bad guys. The Republicans were the good guys. Now we all look like a bunch of squishes.’”

“Well,” he said he responded, “there is an alternative. You could just not be a bunch of squishes.”

His account of those closed-door meeting does conflict with others. The New York Times reported on one blow-up when Senator Susan Collins, Republican of Maine, angrily confronted the three senators about advertisements running in her home state accusing her of backing an Obama-backed gun grab. Those ads were financed by an obscure gun rights group with close ties to Mr. Paul. According to several aides familiar with the confrontation, Mr. Cruz defensively jumped in to say he had nothing to do with the ads. Mr. Paul, in contrast, stormed out, saying he felt subject to an Inquisition.

Friday’s speech was not the first time Mr. Cruz may have acted counter to some of the Senate’s norms. Earlier this year, he suggested a former Republican senator, Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel, might have accepted money from the nation’s enemies, prompting some Senate Democrats to accuse him of McCarthyism.

And last month, in a testy exchange in the Senate Judiciary Committee over guns, Mr. Cruz accused Senator Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California and one of the Senate’s most senior members, of an insufficient understanding of the Constitution and its Second Amendment.

“I’m not a sixth grader,” she snapped back. “I’m not a lawyer, but after 20 years I’ve been up close and personal with the Constitution. I have great respect for it.”

“Senator Cruz’s speech further cements his reputation for grandstanding and representing the Tea Party instead of the people of Texas,” said Michael Keegan, president of People For the American Way. “Cruz is rapidly alienating senators on both sides of the aisle. He may be a darling of the Tea Party, but he’s a growing political liability for the G.O.P.”

“Senator Cruz promised 26 million Texans that he would fight for conservative principles every single day, and that’s exactly what he has done and will continue to do,” said Catherine Frazier, a spokeswoman for Mr. Cruz. “Privately and publicly, he is urging Republicans to stand for principle, and he is encouraged that in recent months so many Republicans are standing up for liberty. Whether on drones or guns or repealing Obamacare, Republicans have stood together and defended the Constitution, and, as a result, are winning the argument.”

Follow Jonathan Weisman on Twitter at @jonathanweisman.