“Like it or not, it’s his party now,” David Harsanyi writes at the Federalist:
At some point, Tea Party types may accept that tactical victories are often more important than empty, feel-good stands. At some point, they may accept that one of most effective weapons in policymaking — one that the Left uses with great success — is incrementalism. Fair or not, though, the problem with today’s Republican Party is that the only incrementalism people see is incremental surrender. Like the surrender they saw on the debt ceiling. And if the establishment doesn’t turn that perception around in a hurry, they won’t be the establishment for much longer.
And as Harsanyi adds:
Yes, the establishment works tirelessly within the political realities of the day. Cruz, it seems, is more interested in changing the reality of his situation. Forcing a 60-vote threshold on the debt ceiling wasn’t only about the debt ceiling (which Cruz surely understood would be hiked), and it wasn’t only about his presidential ambitions (which he surely has), but about helping bring a bunch [of] Matt Bevins into the Senate and solidify his position.
Faster please. As great as Cruz personally is, his actual value will become apparent if he really can change the culture in DC. As Milton Friedman once said, “It’s nice to elect the right people, but that’s not the way you solve things. The way you solve things is by making it politically profitable for the wrong people to do the right things.”
[jwplayer config=”pjmedia_eddriscoll” mediaid=”68294″]
Related: Could it be Ted Cruz and Mitt Romney dueling for the GOP nomination in 2016? Hugh Hewitt seems to think so.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member