The Many, Many Reasons Republican Senators Can’t Stand Ted Cruz

Ted Cruz might be the only thing standing between Donald Trump and the Republican presidential nomination, but he only has a single endorsement from a fellow senator — and few colleagues who will even say a nice thing about him in the hallway.

Bob Corker of Tennessee, for example, when asked this week if he considered Cruz a friend, paused for several seconds before eventually replying that Cruz was “an acquaintance.”

Here are some of the biggest moments when Cruz angered the Republican establishment:

Within weeks of being sworn in, Cruz questioned whether Chuck Hagel, a Vietnam-era war hero and former Republican senator from Nebraska up for confirmation as defense secretary, might have been paid off by the North Korean or Saudi governments. Democrats pounced, with some labeling Cruz’s line of questioning a McCarthyite smear. Many Republicans cringed. Cruz would later write in his book that naming North Korea was a tactical error.

In 2013, Cruz took a position as a vice chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, the political arm of Senate Republicans aimed at protecting incumbents and expanding the GOP ranks. But Cruz wasn’t particularly active with the NRSC, and stopped participating after the NRSC aggressively protected incumbents in primaries — including Thad Cochran in Mississippi and McConnell in Kentucky. If there’s one thing senators notice, it’s when their fellow senators don’t have their backs.

(Read more from “The Many, Many Reasons Republican Senators Can’t Stand Ted Cruz” HERE)

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