McCaskill Slams the 'It's All About Ted Show'

Sen. Clarie McCaskill (D-Mo.) accused Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) of not listening to voters in general but only the “loud” ones.

She told MSNBC that “the moderates need to muscle up here.”

“You know, everybody on — in this far extreme, unreasonable, irrational right, is afraid of somebody running against them from the right. And they need to be afraid of a moderate Republican running against them,” said McCaskill, who defeated challenger Todd Akin in the last election cycle.

“And people — and Boehner really needs to show courage here. I know that he’s calling this Cruz’s shutdown. Boehner knows if he puts a clean funding resolution on the floor, it passes. And, you know, speakers have to do what’s best for the country sometimes. And he’s not. And he knows it,” she continued.

“And so, I really think Boehner needs to get some courage. Maybe he needs to take an afternoon off and golf and contemplate, and come back and put a simple six-week funding — by the way, at their level, which we completely compromised on, at their spending level, get us through this six weeks, and then let’s sit down and figure out how we pay our debts and bring down federal spending.”

She added that “most of us understand that there are very loud voices and then there are a lot of voices that don’t make a lot of racket.”

“Ted is clearly totally enamored with the very loud ones that are an echo chamber for him, and doesn’t realize how many Americans don’t agree with him and how many — and here’s the thing,” McCaskill said.

“When he had a moment in the Senate after he did his big it’s-all-about-Ted show, how many Republicans voted with him in the Senate? The majority of them rejected him. Those 25 senators that rejected his tactic, they now need to really help the other Republicans find their way. It was only 19 that voted with Ted Cruz and 25 voted against him.”