Cruz vs. McCain: The GOP’s bitter schism

It’s becoming the best show in Washington, said Jonathan Weisman in The New York Times. The “Old Guard versus the Tea Party” is a death match between two kinds of Senate Republicans, and it just may shape the country’s immediate future. One side is led by veteran Sen. John McCain, who wants to forge compromises with Democrats on immigration and the deficit. On the other is “a new generation of conservatives,” led by Sens. Ted Cruz, Mike Lee, and Rand Paul, who see compromise as tantamount to treason. The feud spilled onto the Senate floor last week, said Sean Sullivan in The Washington Post. McCain—who’s called Cruz and his allies “wacko birds”—chided a “small group of senators” for attempting to “paralyze the process” in the Senate. “We’re here to vote, we’re not here to block things,” he said. His disdain evident, Cruz fired back that “there may be more wacko birds in the Senate” than McCain realizes.

This is a“fundamental split” with deep philosophical roots, said Jonathan Chait in NYMag.com. McCain is a hawk on foreign policy, and he and his neocon allies desperately want to reverse the sequestration cuts to the Pentagon. As a pragmatist on social issues, he sees immigration reform as a necessary step for Republicans to remain viable in national elections. But to achieve those goals, the Old Guard knows it has to negotiate with Obama and congressional Democrats. The Cruz/Tea Party faction is staking out a “stance of total opposition” to Obama, meaning no immigration reform, no budget, and no replacement for sequestration cuts. Good for them, said Daniel Horowitz in RedState.com. Democrats will turn any compromise into a “vehicle for fast-tracking tax increases, debt ceiling increases, and other nefarious policies.” Total opposition is the only sensible policy.

For Cruz’s personal political ambitions, that well may be true, said John Dickerson in Slate.com. His conservative fans “love his brand of truth-telling,” and if he runs for president in 2016, he can raise all the cash he needs from the grass roots. But in the short run, his obstructionism could cost other Senate Republicans dearly. Democrats might hold the “firebrand freshmen” up as proof that the Senate is broken, thus justifying a change to the filibuster rules that would rob Republicans of the ability to block legislation. If McCain and Cruz hate each other now, imagine what they’d be calling each other then.

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