Cruz Says Infighting Cost GOP During Gov't Shutdown Fight, But It Won't Happen Again Next Time

By WILL WEISSERT | ASSOCIATED PRESS | 11 minutes ago in Politics

U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz said Saturday that the GOP lost the government shutdown budget battle because some congressional Republicans turned on others, but that he doesn't think they will make the same mistake during the next political impasse.

"I am hopeful that in the future the Senate will listen," Cruz, the tea party favorite and freshman senator from Texas, told a convention in Austin of the Texas Medical Association.

Cruz staged a more than 21-hour quasi-filibuster in the Senate late last month, helping spark a budget fight in the Republican-led House that partially shuttered the government in an attempt to sever funding for the nation's new health care law.

Then, with the country facing a debt default, leaders in the Democratic-led Senate brokered a deal to end the standoff _ which Cruz dismissed as "selling the American people down the river."

"You don't win a fight when your own team is firing cannons at the people who are standing up and leading, which are the House Republicans," he said.

MORE...

http://www.newser.com/article/da9hfjc84/cruz-says-infighting-cost-gop-during-govt-shutdown-fight-but-it-wont-happen-again-next-time.html