Bannon’s war on GOP forces Cruz to straddle line
Senator passes former Trump strategist’s test but risks outsider image while building bridges
WASHINGTON — Speaking to a gathering of conservative grass-roots activists in Tyler last month, Texas U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz did little to hide his frustration with the Republican-controlled Senate.
His speech at a Grassroots America-We the People annual “Champions of Freedom Dinner” came just days after the failure of the GOP’s last-ditch effort to repeal the Affordable Care Act.
“Texans are frustrated by Congress’ inability to deliver on our promises,” Cruz said, warning that failure to repeal Obamacare could make 2018 a “disastrous election” for Republicans.
In the leadup to 2018, it is clear that the Republican Party is at war with itself, and the opening salvos already have enveloped Cruz as he transforms from iconoclastic GOP outsider to champion of President Donald Trump’s agenda.
Once booed off the stage at the Republican National Convention for his failure to endorse Trump, Cruz has been adopted by pro-Trump activists seeking the ouster of Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell and his leadership team, which could include McConnell’s second-incommand, Texas Republican John Cornyn.
Cruz has not joined the calls for McConnell to yield the Senate leadership. But an outside group affiliated with former chief Trump strategist Stephen Bannon is waging a public war against McConnell, mainly by helping Republican primary challengers taking on senators who back him.
Explicitly missing from Bannon’s hit list is Cruz, who faces no significant primary challenge, so far, from the party’s right wing.
Bannon left the White House in August to go to “war” against Trump opponents and now is committed to challenging every Republican incumbent in the Senate, “except Ted Cruz.”
“We are declaring war on the Republican establishment that does not back the agenda Trump ran on,” Bannon, chairman of Breitbart News, told Fox News host Sean Hannity a week ago. “Nobody is safe. We’re coming after all of them, and we’re going to win.”
Bannon’s first victim may have been Alabama Sen. Luther Strange, who succumbed to a GOP primary challenge last month by firebrand Christian conservative Roy Moore, who has vowed to oppose McConnell.
Growing fault lines
For Cruz, Trump’s most bitter and long-lasting opponent in the 2016 Republican presidential primaries, Bannon’s embrace has forced a straddle over a growing fault line in Republican politics.
Asked about Bannon, the Cruz campaign cited a statement the senator gave Texas reporters last week seeming to distance him from Bannon’s campaign.
“My consistent policy has been to stay out of incumbent Republican primaries, and I intend to continue doing the same,” Cruz said. “I trust the voters; the voters can make the decisions.”
The Cruz camp did not respond to written questions about whether he supports efforts to oust McConnell as Senate Republican leader, one of the conditions for Bannon’s support.
Some of the leading figures in Bannon’s coalition, however, have been current or former Cruz allies, including influential conservative activist Brent Bozell, president of the Media Research Center.
Bozell, who endorsed Cruz’s 2016 run for president, was one of a halfdozen hard-right conservatives who signed a letter Wednesday to McConnell attacking the Senate’s lack of major accomplishments, including the failure to repeal the Affordable Care Act.
Copied on the letter were Cornyn and other members of McConnell’s leadership team. Cornyn’s office declined comment.
“It is time for you and your leadership team to step aside for new leadership that is committed to the promises made to the American people,” the letter said.
Among the other signatories were former Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, who endorsed Cruz’s presidential campaign, and Tea Party Patriots co-founder Jenny Beth Martin, another Cruz backer.
Another prominent Bannon backer is wealthy New York investment banker Robert Mercer, a mega-donor who put substantial financial muscle behind Cruz’s presidential campaign.
“We are declaring war on the Republican establishment that does not back the agenda Trump ran on. Nobody is safe. We’re coming after all of them, and we’re going to win.” Stephen Bannon, chairman of Breitbart News
Despite his high-test clashes with Trump last year, Cruz remains a favorite of the conservative movement, and has settled in with Trump — dining at the White House with their wives.
Although Trump and Cruz share much of the same conservative base, the 2017 version of Cruz also has sought out productive alliances in the Senate, the locus of the “Washington cabal” he ran against in the primaries.
Mixed messages
While Cruz once accused McConnell of lying, he sometimes is credited with being one of the key players in behind-thescenes efforts to bring together conservatives and moderates on a health care bill the entire Senate Republican caucus could support.
“Senator Cruz has made a very strong effort to try to work within the Senate GOP caucus to help President Trump pass his promised agenda to the American people,” said Texas tea party activist JoAnn Fleming, executive director of Grassroots America.
To some analysts, Bannon’s public blessing could complicate Cruz’s work in the Senate, even if it delights his grass-roots backers in Texas.
“Just as Ted Cruz is trying to ingratiate himself with the establishment, here along comes Bannon and says, ‘This is my guy,’ ” said Cal Jillson, an expert on Texas politics at Southern Methodist University. “He had moved over to acceptability, but never close enough that he had to worry about his outsider image. Bannon has confused that a little bit.”
Cruz’s only declared Republican primary challenger so far, Houston energy lawyer Stefano de Stefano, said Bannon’s endorsement of Cruz should give pause to traditional Republicans like himself.
“This is reinforcing the message I’ve had since the beginning,” de Stefano said. “Cruz is on the extreme fringe. He’s the face of why things don’t get done in Washington.”
Although Cruz has positioned himself as the president’s champion in the Senate, some Trump supporters say his initial reluctance to support the latest GOP health care bill played a significant part in its demise.
“The bill lost momentum, and Cruz did not step up to the plate,” said Houston GOP fundraiser Mica Mosbacher, a member of Trump 2020 National Advisory Board. She said her frustration has made her consider backing de Stefano in Texas’ GOP Senate primary.
Any primary threat to Cruz, however, is more likely to come from the right than the center.
While other Republican entrants have been rumored, few conservative activists see the need.
“Cruz is strong in Texas,” said Texas Constitution Party Chairman Scott Copeland. “Everybody knows it would be a waste of money to go against him.”
‘Just not united’
Few also think that in a deep “red” state like Texas, Cruz would need Bannon’s support to vanquish Beto O’Rourke, a congressman from El Paso who is trying to become the first Democrat to win statewide office since 1994.
If some conservatives see Bannon and Cruz as disruptive brothers in arms, long-time Cruz supporters remember Bannon as the mastermind behind a Trump campaign to savage Cruz and other Republicans in the primaries.
While the personal bruises have faded, frustrations have mounted inside the party as legislative victories have proven elusive and Trump has resorted to sniping on Twitter at McConnell and key Republican lawmakers.
“We won, but we’re just not united,” said Houston businesswoman Deborah Kelting, a Cruz fundraiser and a “Never Trump” delegate at the 2016 convention.
Democrats see Bannon’s war against centrists and moderates in his own party as a gift, an intramural clash that could result in unelectable Republican hard-liners going into general elections in toss-up states that could decide the balance of power.
Some cite Sharron Angle, the Tea Party heroine who ran unsuccessfully as the 2010 Republican nominee for the Senate seat in Nevada, or Christine O’Donnell, a conservative activist whose 2010 Senate campaign in Delaware collapsed amid reports of her past interest in witchcraft.
“My consistent policy has been to stay out of incumbent Republican primaries, and I intend to continue doing the same. I trust the voters; the voters can make the decisions.” Sen. Ted Cruz
Republicans currently hold 52 seats in the Senate. That would seem like a slim majority to gamble, except for the fact that the 2018 Senate election map favors the GOP, with 10 Democratic senators up for reelection in states Trump won in 2016.
Activists’ hopes
With high hopes of retaining their majority, some in the activist base say Cruz can play an inside game helping to push a conservative agenda in Congress, while Bannon mans the barricades outside for Trump.
“When we were on defense with President Obama, Cruz was noncompromising. He was ‘No,’ ” Kelting said. “Now, he’s not going to compromise the core principles of what Republicans promised, but he’s kind of like, get in between, ‘What can you live with? What can’t you live with?’ ”
Kelting also reads Bannon’s outsider challenge less as a threat than an effort to put pressure on the GOP — laying down a marker for who is helping the president and who is not.
“It’s more of a message to the others,” she said. “That if you don’t go to Washington to do what you were sent to do, we’re going to challenge you.”