Thread by @ryangrim

lol Cruz must figure he’s politically better off in the Senate minority when it comes to launching another presidential bid, happy to kneecap his vulnerable colleague to make that happen

Trust the process

To walk folks through the logic of how this politically benefits Cruz and other ambitious senators on the right, like this guy below, consider two worlds. One has Rs in the majority but Biden in the White House. That could produce a tough vote on some compromise bill every week

The other world is one where Schumer is majority leader and all you have to do is vote no and fundraise off how horrible these Democrats are. That’s political paradise, and easy to launch a presidential campaign from. And then there’s a third possibility...

Theres a possibility Trump wins. In that case, it doesn’t matter a lot to a Ted Cruz who runs the Senate, since Dems will run the House. McConnell would rather control the senate to keep locking down judges, but that’s McConnell’s legacy, not anybody else’s.

Cruz is smart, he’s thought through all this. He also knows that Tillis needs this bill, he’s getting KILLED on the air as the hypocrite who’s gonna take your health care, and he’s been going after people’s coverage for years so it’s a charge that sticks. theintercept.com/2020/08/09/sen…

But he’s doing it anyway, not in spite of the fact it will hurt the GOP’s chances of holding the Senate, but because of it. It’s a feature, not a bug, and he can say he stood against Obamacare even when it was hard (though it wasn’t hard).

Hawley is doing it too, it looks like. He knows making theSupreme Court fight all about abortion, and saying it out loud, kills Collins, Gardner, and maybe Ernst and Tillis and others, but whatever

Partly it’s that Cruz doesn’t have great options. It’s up or out. He’s keeping his senate seat warm for the Democrat (Beto?) who’ll be favored in 2024.