Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), who has long been decried by the left as a deranged conservative, says it is actually the Democrats’ liberal base that is “bat-crap crazy.”
Cruz, who led a conservative revolt that resulted in a 16-day government shutdown in 2013, says Democrats are setting new standards for obstruction in the Senate.
“The anger on the left, I’ve never seen anything like it. They’re right now opposing everything. Democrats in the Senate are filibustering everything,” Cruz told conservative radio host Mark Levin at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference in Oxon Hill, Maryland.
Cruz noted that it has taken Trump a longer time to get his cabinet picks confirmed by the Senate than any other president in history due to Democrats using procedural delays that he never imagined, like requiring the entire Senate to vote on routine paperwork.
He says the Democrats tactics are being driven by their angry base and lawmakers’ fear of facing a primary challenge.
{mosads}“Right now Democratic senators are more scared of their base than they are of the voters. A liberal Democrat told me a couple weeks ago, ‘Listen, we’re afraid of being primaried,’” Cruz said.
“The Democrats took as the lesson of this election that Hillary [was] too moderate. So their lesson is they need more Bernie Sanders, more Elizabeth Warrens, that’s where Senate Democrats are,” he added.
Cruz has argued that Republicans need to be ready to trigger the so-called “nuclear option” to change the Senate’s rules with a party-line majority vote to change.
On Thursday, he did not touch specifically on rules reform but urged fellow Republicans not to let Democrats slow Senate business to a standstill.
“I think it is likely they will continue to oppose everything. The answer for us is they can’t shut down the Congress. They prevent us from doing anything, so we need to look at tools that can get things done despite a Democratic filibuster,” he said.
Cruz predicted that a second Supreme Court seat will become vacant over the summer, ramping up pressure on Democratic senators even more.
Then, Cruz predicted, there would be a “full Armageddon meltdown.”